Well, let's see. For a long-term campaign to work, you basically need to keep the players interested. In the main, that boils down to one thing: pacing. Let everything fly too quickly and you're going to run out of ideas quickly and will be introducing replacement villains or situations every other week, leading to the whole thing feeling just like a series of one-offs with the same character. Take things too slow and the players may feel that they have no effect on the game's world. There are a number of devices that you can use to assist in the pacing of a game, some of which require planning and some of which can be dropped in at a moment's notice as a stop-gap measure.

Most notably with pacing you want to have an over-arching storyline planned out well in advance. It's usually something big, like evil warlords taking over the world or freeing earth from the aliens, but it doesn't have to be. Big scenarios are just easier to string out. It's wise to have certain information and revelations to dish out once every three sessions or so, so that that players feel the story is progressing. "Oh my god, the Mighty Zovulon owed Evil Count McDoomstiensson a debt of honour all these years and now he's got to repay it by betraying us??? No way! But he's a good guy!" Stuff like that. You need to plan these ahead really, for fear of the dreaded anachronism, but you don't have to plan out how players get from one revalation to the next which allows you to a) avoid railroading, and b) freshen the game up whenever you feel it's getting stale, rather than having to wait for the players to get to a pre-arranged point.

Generic facts about relations between the main characters are useful in this situation, 'cause they can be exploited in so many ways.

Another useful pacing tool is the side-quest. They can be a pain in the butt, but if you need time to plan where the next part of the mission is going they can be a very useful stopgap measure. If a sidequest takes more than a session or two to complete, then it's pretty pointless. However it's always best (despite what computer games might think) to try and tie those side quests to either on of the player characters' backgrounds (a good way of making a thus far neglected player feel loved) or the activities of the antagonists. "Help! The Mighty Lord of Tentacular Pugnatiousness has stolen by baby for nefarious reasons of his own!" - "Noooo! tMLoT did the same to my baby brother when I was ten! I shall save your child!"

And the beauty of the side-quest is that it's so easy to slip one in under the radar, by paying attention to what the players want to do and devising some convoluted means that they might go about it. "We build a spaceship from junk to escape the planet!" - "Ok, but you're going to need warp core components, and the only place they make those is in the warp core component factory in Manchester." - "Let's steal some components! Yay!"

That's about all the advice I have on the subject right now though. Pace yourself, introduce aspects of the main plot slowly, intersperse the big story action with the occasional chill-out session and side-quest, and address the player characters' backgrounds from time to time, as this helps them stay interested in playing those characters over and over again. And don't stint on the XP! A few gamers I know play long campaigns purely because it's the only way they can build the combat Gawd they have been dreaming of. A plotline that requires the PC's to become uber-hard to defeat Mr Invincible is a common device, although somewhat overused.

Ash

Yeah, CONSTANT plot twists :) If you're not having a major battle with the antagonist, a side-quest, or a chill-out session, put another kink in the plot. Keep things interesting, and don't be afraid to slow things down for a while if you've been having too much action recently. Allow the player characters room to breath, interact socially, and expand mentally.

Ash

Argh! And one last thing! Never underestimate the power of the recurring thing, whether that means a villain who just will not stay dead, a widget that gets lost, stolen, handed around, or just a running gag. People like to come across something or someone they recognise now and again, especially if you can show how the intervening time between their meetings has changed them. Vary their tactics and personalities to keep them fresh, or you'll end up with STARRRRRRS!!! syndrome. For example, players battle bad guy and defeat him, leaving him for dead. Bad guy turns up a few sessions later with a cybernetic arm and, rather than fighting them, kidnaps Princess Tastypiece in the night from under their very noses. A few sessions later he reappears again alongside Uber-Villain du joure, not looking very happy about something. And a few sessions later than THAT, he arrives at the heroes' camp to explain how he has fallen in love with Princess Tastypiece, hates Uber-Villain du Joure for calling him all those mean names every time he failed to kill the players, and now wants to help them rescue his beloved! Huzzah!

In short, real people, places and things change. Make that happen. Continuity is the main advantage of the extended campaign, but can lead to stagnation if the characters and situations don't move on and change gradually as they play.

Ash

Briefly, in my experience Campaign Play requires most of the players to love their characters in a way that short-form gaming doesn't require.

It is possible to play through a series of characters in a campaign, but the majority of the group probably has to be invested in a main character. It's those people that will drive the campaign with the GM trying to satisfy them.

Shorter gaming also doesn't deliver as big a pay-off as the conclusion of a long well-run campaign. The resolution of a slow-burning feud can be far larger than any shorter story. (It can also be a bigger disappointment too...)

Pacing, as Ash notes, is crucial. I feel that GMs have to provide immediate points of interest (story now) while having longer term arcs underneath. The longer arcs don't have to be planned well in advance, but they do have to be explored and resolved on a longer time-scale for them to be most rewarding.

I am going to try and answer the last part of andrew's post here.

I would say the majority of indie games tend to be 'issue' based and focus on a very turbulent time or situation in the character's lives. As such once they have dealt with their issue there is not a lot of legs in the game.

For instance 'Contenders' focuses on a very short period of time in the lives of the boxers portrayed, a period of time that will determine how the rest of their lives play out.

Taking another example 'Covenant' fouses on the characters as their beliefs collapse around them and the outcome of that.

Once these issues have been handled in both games, you could keep telling the stories of these people but the 'game' has done the job it set out to do.

Games like 'burning wheel', 'primetime adventures' and, dare I say it, 'Mob Justice' are focused on longer term play as they are not as 'issue' based and are more 'story' based. By story based I mean that they focus on the long term story of the characters and what effect they have on the world around them. They try to create a place for the characters in the world and are not as concerned with a 'snapshot' of a turbulent period in the character's lives.

The deadlands campaign I am going to run I intend to do as small series of sessions in a longer overarching campaign. The problem with this longer campaigns is getting people together I find, which is where indie games are stronger.

Any other thoughts?

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

The reason I wanted a regular group was to play long term games. I get one shots at friends houses when roaming the country or conventions, but the beauty of a regular campaign is hard to get.

You have a character that grows and evolves, the other characters bond too, you get a shared history. Everyone is more invested in their characters. You might play a one-off where you're told you hate Boxing promoter X. So you go about hating his ass. If that promoter has stitched you up half a dozen times and pretended to be a pal, then shived you in the back twice over the last ten weeks of play, you as a player are going to really hate that promoter and your character will too. It promotes the suspension of disbelief and buys your players into the game with emotional investment, their own developed desires and aspirations (not just ones you tell people they have at a convention game) and a collective story you all build over time.

One of the reasons I don't think Cthulhu and the like doesn't work as a campaign game (but is ace as a one off) is that players simply can't be horrified and scared all the time, week in, week out. You need some relative normality, peaks and troughs to make the peaks seem thrilling and exciting, with respite in between. If you try and play every hour of every game as the crisis point, is becomes the norm and loses its effectiveness. As your mum says about your coat indoors, you won't feel the benefit when you go out...

In a campaign environment, there's also more scope for players wandering off plot and doing what they want, with a week or two break in between, a half decent GM can modify the back story to accommodate what's going on, or flesh out new areas as appropriate. There's more scope for the players to flesh out the game with their actions and the consequences thereof.

Short games: Great one night stands, but after a while ultimately dissatisfying
Long games: Deep meaningful relationship that can gets stale, but just needs pepping up with massage oil every now and then.

Word

Gaz

For a long term game you need an iron clad social contract, a talented GM to be worshipped as a god and a decent helping of brain damage. ;)

For the 15 years I have been role-playing the vast majority of games I've played in were sold as long term and on the whole they were shit. Oh the anecdotes I could regale you with...

The stories never went anywhere, characters got more powerful but seldom developed in a meaningful way - the games usually fell apart and the fun to time ratio was very poor.

I am currently playing in two long term campaigns which are pretty good (one has been going for 8 years or so) theses games work because of a very talented GM who has invested weeks of real time in building the world, a strong social contract and the fact that we only play once in a blue moon. They're both Rolemaster for Christ's sake - a truly awful system. Also the games are very simulationist, it's about exploring the world, which can feel like there's a plot but the players aren't invited.

Despite this I've cared more about characters in one shots (and got more satisfying immersion) than my RM PC, though if he dies it will be a real pain to gen another one.

Iain - I don't think appropriating 'story' for simulationism is going to make things any clearer!

Short form games can have mechanics built in to ensure you get story and that there is some sort of satisfying end to the tale. Unlike the epic campaigns of old which rattle on like a rusty Cortina until the doors fall off.

If you're lucky enough to play in a long term campaign you enjoy then thank your fellow players and your GM, you have something special going on in your social contract.

I personally don't think there's any point in designing long term games as they are house-ruled massively and run on GM fiat. Now a GMless long term game would be an interesting proposal...

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

That's a fair point. I should have hooked into the fact that I was talking about simulationism. Doh!

Long term GMless game, that is an interesting idea. I will have to think on that one.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Suffice to say that the basic crux was Fun=Good, Unfun=Bad, long or short is irrelevant

-Matt

Realms Publishing

After years of playing one shots at cons, and a series of short unsatifying campaigns which either fizzled out or exploded, I've been running a campaign since Feb.

Its worked marvelously, because I was upfront that I wanted it to have a begining, a middle and an end rather than a game that just goes on and on. Its important to note this is not a 'time-limited' campaign, although I did state I didn't see it going on further than a year at the begining which we a close to. We'll play until we've finished the story,

The players already know the structure of the campaign and contributed much of the plot and setting ideas, since we have a strong commitment to running a very cooperative game. I deliberatly chose a part of the setting (Black Horse County in Glorantha) which has minimal write up so we have lots of scope for creation as a group.

Since players have a stake in the creation of the setting this allows them to invest more in their characters and I've made it very clear that although I've got a outline for the game (beggining/middle/end) its all about their characters and any thing can happen!

So in short

Campaign with definate begining, middle and end.

Framework for the campaign set up in full sight, input and agreement of players.

Campaign centred/focused on PCs.

Cooperative play and creation of setting.

If any of this looks familiar, its because its completely nicked from Burning Wheel/Burning Empires and various comments Luke Crane has made via podcasts (mainly the excellent Sons of Kyross).

Its making a very memorable game for everybody out of a setting and system that I was begining to get a bit jaded of.

Its also worth mentioning we have had the occasional break for people being away, mainly me on Paternity leave, and also to have one shots adventures using other systems. Because we have the focus of the campaign structure, getting back to the game is aways easy. It also means that we can always have a break when the campaign is getting a bit heavy, which it does from time to time.

Also the big benefit for me of us making the setting up cooperatively as we go along, is unlike other Gloranthan campaigns I've run, I hardly have to do any prep between sessions!!

Regards

;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company

By Long Game I was thinking 6 - 8 months max. Maybe a year at the outside. If you're playing the same game longer than that, you need to do some shopping...

But Newt mentioned something I was going to say about beginning, middle and end. You can't let your campaign ramble on with no direction and dissinterested players, you need goals to acheive (whoever drives them).

Its kewl to have 6-8 week story arcs in your longer campaign, so the players have got (self generated or otherrwise), small, acheivable goals. A sense of accomplishment and growth. Fighting Orcs every week isn't getting you anywhere, nor is the recurring villain that never, ever dies.

I like lots of shorter blocks within an overall framework of the world you're playing in, with some threads of continuity that exists throught the whole.

Andrew, what did I say exactly?

Was it my Kid in a candyshop comment?

More seriously though, I have a pretty straightforward approach to this stuff. I ran 50 Fathoms last year and it took all year. I only have time for one session per week, so that meant that I played pretty much fuck all else during 2006 except Con games. This year I decided that, much that 50 Fathoms game was fun and all, it just wasn't scratching all the itches I felt. So I've been running a lot of shortform games the way they are meant to be played: we've played two different PtA games, (ran for 5 weeks each) some Agon (a few one and two week stints), some DRYH (for 3 weeks iirc), some basic D&D (played until the characters died, which took about an hour), a few other things. I had an ulterior motive too, which is that I wanted to playtest Umlaut with that group, so I wanted to be able to drop something like that into the mix weekly. Once Dragonmeet is out of the way, we'll move forward with our planned Burning Empires game, which will probably take a few weeks to cover the first phase and then we'll decide if that continues into Usurption or not.

Next year I'm expecting to be working on Urban Mythos some more, and I'll probably want to be playtesting that some, meaning that I'll probably be looking to run a longish game of that alongside another longish game. Currently it's looking like that'll be a Savage Worlds game set in Freeport, but maybe not.

Do I really crave the long campaign games? Not really. Do I have time for one? Fuck, no. Can I get more bang for my buck with 10 intense, 3 session games than with a single 30 session one? Probably, but it'll also be more work (because it means getting to grips with maybe 10 systems) so it's all swings and roundabouts.

It's worth pointing out that I used to run one campaign per year. they used to start mid Jan and end towards the end of November. Last year was Savage Worlds, the year before that it was Aberrant, and 2004 was a Shadowrun game. 2003 was a turbulent year and I didn't get much gaming done. 2002 I was running a massive, sprawling WoD game which started in the Crusades and then lead up to the modern day. Although that actually ended in early 2003 and changed a lot of players over it's course due to scheduling mainly.

Oh, it was your comment about Claire wanting to play a character more long-term.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons we're looking at Burning Empires. That won't be starting until next year though by the looks of it. One of the players is out of the country for the rest of November and trying to plan anything in December is a fool errand...

I'm not sure how much of that is Claire's experiences. That is, her first gaming experiences were that 50 Fathoms game which lasted nearly a year. I think that set her expectations.

Expectation is a big part of it. The fact that for nigh on thirty years the platonic ideal of gaming for many people has been the endless campaign (or 1st to 20th), is a very hard expectation to break out of.

I also think long-term play design isn't handled very well by many games (bolt on D&D style experience or hand-waved GM system seems to be the norm, with Ars Magica, Pendragon and Burning X being notable exceptions). I think it could be the next area to take some seriously cool design, but the playtest cycles would be enormous.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Surely not!

Most games I have played in or run in the last decade have been around 5 years long, and I have loved them all. Sure sometimes they get stale (and stop sooner), and sometimes they end slightly inconclusively, but generally everyone enjoys themselves and doesn't want them to stop even when they should.

I don't see the value in switching games just for the sake of it. If something is working great, you love the story, you love your characters, you love the system, then why mess with it?

Solipsist RPG, on its way ... eventually

Most games I have played in or run in the last decade have been around 5 years long

Sadly, Forge theory has proved that any game of this length is dysfunctional and not fun.

Graham

???

Not being a regular at the Forge, I have no idea whether you're being sarcastic or not, but this statement sounds pre-tty dubious to my ears.

Ash

...just being stupid. Ignore me.

Graham

I've heard much the same thing, and it upsets me.

I feel sometimes that some roleplayers have gotten so far from their characters that they have forgotten what it is like to be *really* involved with one. They seem to feel you can get the same level of immersion and involvement from 30 minutes of power gaming as you can from 4 years of living your character's every nuance

Unsurprisingly I disagree :)

With long campaigns, you get deeply involved in your character. With short sessions (I think it's unfair to call it power gaming, probably), you have more freedom to take risks: you're more likely to throw your character into a hail of bullets if you don't mind losing them so much. Different advantages.

Graham

I knew that "power gaming" was a bad choice of words, but I was thinking like "power bar" or "power walking", you know concentrated roleplaying :)

The point is to Have Fun and if that's what you're doing, I'm not going to tell you to change it.

I would advise playing mwar games though. There are many more games out there than I'm ever going to play. I would have thought in the dynamic environment of cutting edge design going on round here, most patrons would be keen to try new things? A good, solid six months with one campaign gives you loads back and a story that has its rollercoaster ride, maybe with an End too. Doing that gives someone 10 memorable stories and chatacters (notably different ones) to the one you'll have from a solitary game over five years. But if that works for you, knock yourself out.

I like Guinness. Feel free to buy me a pint at conventions. I've not drunk it exclusively for five years though. I've had some drinks that I'll not bother with again and would rather have had a Guinness (I'm looking at you treacley over-priced Leffe), but then I've had the joys of a variety of other booze.

I Savage Worlds, but I wouldn't play just that exclusively for five years in the same campaign. I want to try other things, I've played about 20 different SW games in the last couple of years alone (even if we just count that one system).

Crucially, even if you ignore system, setting and everything in fact, except charater, I wouldn't want to play the same character for five years. Let alone different games, I want to play different characters.

I'm not going to send the gaming police round to get you. In the last couple of decades you've played four campaigns then? I've played dozens, with a cornucopia of characters, myriad settings and systems. Some I've gone back to, and played more than one campaign of, exploring it from different angles. But, if you're Having Fun, I'm not going to send the gaming police round to get you. ;)

When I was younger I was discussing what I did and didn't like in art with someone and was fairly dismissive of modern stuff, showing disinterest in the Tate etc. He talked about his discussion with another fella at a dinner party. This bloke loved mince and onions and had it every night for his tea. My arty acquaintance was pleased that this bloke was happy, but at the same time a little sad that there was so much more out there that would go untried - a new favourite meal waiting to be tasted.

Keep having Fun. If its not Fun, don't do it.

Gaz

This discussion has triggered some interesting thoughts. This is coming purely from the POV of a designer, the gamer in me is taking a back seat for this post.

I cannot see any reason to write a game for long term play.

Lets take 3 groups of gamers:

Group one is like Dave, they play the same campaign for 5 years and they're happy as Larry.

Group two is like Gaz, and they play a game for 6 months, then move on to something else.

Group three is like me. They tend to play a game for 2 - 5 weeks, then move on to the next thing.

People in group one start a new game every 5 years. People in group 2 start a new game 10 times in 5 years. People in Group three start a new game about 60 - 80 times in 50 years.

Who's more likely to play any given game? Mr 2-5 weeks is 80 times more likely than Mr 5 years to play anything you design.

Food for thought, possibly?

Its probably just worth highlighting that there's a difference between Play and Buy of course (which you lot no doubt all realise, but lets say it out loud).

From a small press production point of view though, I was surprised that someone in this board play only one game for 5 years (I only went to University for 4), given the nature of the beast with most of the CE releases Iv'e seen as a whole, and in a broader sense too with DitV etc. I would imagine Dave has bought some more games within that time though?

Ultimately though, yes, if someone's playing a different game every few weeks, they're much more likely to buy yours.

If you're designing a game for the long-haul market, would would assume you'll be releasing a series of supplements to go with it and make the venture worthwhile that way. Most small press games I've seen, aren't going for this market and demonstrate a leaning towards one theme, a certain idea and/or funky mechanics applicable in a certain game, but not universally applicable.

Gaz

PS To clarify The Gaz position - 6 months is my idea of a long campaign, although I've played in some up to a year or so. Most games last 2-3 months, with maybe two running alternate weeks. I'm going for longer with the most recent run. Additionally I buy a lot of stuff that's ultimately going to look pretty on my shelf and maybe get read if its lucky, because I'm a games ho. I'm not sure how to go designing a game that I'd not buy if the price point is right.