How long are your campaigns?

Veeky Forums I've just wrapped up a game that took us four months of weekly sessions adding up to about sixteen Fridays of roleplaying. This is pretty long for our group.

It got me wondering: How long is an average campaign for you? How long was/is your longest campaign ever? What length of game do you prefer/have the best results with?

Bonus points if you have a cool synopsis of a memorable example.

3-4 weeks, it's really hard to get people to commit to sessions

Going over a year of nearly daily sessions.

Kinda sad it's wrapping up.

Recent lengths: 1 month, 10 months, 3 months.
Average: Probably 6 months over my whole life.
Longest: 3 years.

Holy shit anons

I've never been in a single campaign that long. Do you think there's a secret to keeping them fresh and exciting? What have you/your GMs done to keep something like that going? We're you playing other games at the same time?

First Campaign : Around six months
Second : A litte over a year, perhaps 14 months.
Third : "Short" campaign, originally intended for a month. Lasted for six.
Current Campaign : Around 17 months and barely halfway finished.

We generally play on weekends, single day. Ocasionally no game, ocasionally two days.

DM of these campaigns Honestly, I find there's no magical trick. I just try to write a lot of interesting points, see what my players are playing, fit in things that I think might interest their characters and, lastly, try to ocasionally change up the pace. Current campaign went -> Surviving in a barren wasteland > Looking for artifacts > Acting undercover in an anti-magic regime > Taking part in a war > Looking for HVTs.

I also recommend keeping combat interesting if it's going to be a main part of your campaign. Usually keep it hard, but fair. Don't make up bullshit, but don't just hand victories on a platter to your players (Unless they've already prepared for it or did something masterful before the encounter.)

I just finished a campaign last Wednesday that I started in August of 2013, so over two and a half years. There was hiatus that lasted about eight months, and we would meet up either every week or two weeks depending on schedules, and sometimes wouldn't for weeks. I started with four people, and only one ended up staying until the conclusion, though a person that joined at the second session stayed until it's completion too and the cast that joined after them stayed until the end, in addition to that every player was new to tabletop RPGs except for two of the nine players, and even they were novices.

Our games generally lasted for five hours to seven hours during the evening, and I prefer that, though you definitely have to allow for some break during that time or bring snacks to eat during the session.

It was overall a pretty great time with it's high and low moments from party members and sometimes actual players having serious disagreements to the party actually coming together over a greater threat.

5 years and counting.
Sooooooo slow!

>Do you think there's a secret to keeping them fresh and exciting?

No, I think it's a confluence of player interest, the player group gelling together nicely, luck, lack of other interesting games & gaming groups in the area and some skill on the part of the GM.

My 3 year game was during college when my players had a lot of extra time, a strong interest in Planescape and fewer options for tabletop and video games than they do now. Also far fewer family/work commitments. Once you get older the games tend to get sparser....or longer but very infrequent (like once every 2 months).

Average length is about 2-3 years, though we do occasionally play shorter things, specially when trying out new games. Not all of them have fully wrapped up, but we always try to at least give it a "season finale". The group's been together for more than 20 years, so that makes it easier to expect long campaign to hold together.

I planned our current Planescape campaign to last about 4-5 years. We're currently nearing the end of the 3rd, slightly behind schedule but not too much. Next session is in a few hours.

Longest campaign we've had was a 7th Sea one that began in late 2003 and ended in 2011. We weren't able to fully finish it due to one of the players leaving the group, but we sort of gave it closure. We've talked about revisiting it for a proper ending now that said player is back, but we're waiting for the 2e kickstarter books to arrive before deciding on whether to begin another 7th Sea game entirely.

I don't think there's really a magical recipe; I believe it has a lot to do with the group's preference.

For instance, I have a group of friends that occasionally invites me to play, sometimes as a DM, others as a PC. That group plays exclusively short campaign (10 sessions at the most with very few exceptions), mainly because they like to try out new games constantly (Dune and Robotech used to be the go-to games in that group years ago, but now it's constantly changing).

Our group prefers very long campaigns instead, primarily because we all enjoy open-ended sandboxing and having the opportunity for long-term planning. That's not to say we don't enjoy shorter and more precise stories sometime (we're going to start Curse of Strahd in late July), and we have played a lot of one-shots, but everyone feels more comfortable with stories that feel like they will last forever.

I do believe it is crucial for the DM to know when to shake things up in a very long campaign, though, particularly if the PCs have gone into their comfort zone (built up their castle, secured the realm, killed the initial BBEG and hailed as heroes, etc). I find great fun in letting them create something and then having them have to fight tooth and nail to preserve it. It essentially lets the PCs create the plot through their actions, and allows you to both keep things fresh and give you a bottomless well of material.

That's really amazing. We seem to have shorter, finite games and I've always wondered what it's like to play in those kinds of big campaigns.

My group does pretty short games most of the time. They usually run about 6-10 sessions for shorter games, with the longest ones ending around 13-18 sessions. At this point we can't even imagine playing those games that go on for over a year because we have a certain type of pacing that just works for us, plus we like to switch things up and do different systems and settings a lot.

The only campaign I have run and completed was a little over a year. Call it fourteen months, 6-10, pretty much once a week, every week. 60 sessions, I'd guess, not counting solo stuff or ancilliary runover.

My campaigns die on a monthly basis due to lack of progression with the plot, either due to them fucking up on quests and throwing the campaign into a completely different direction or me just being an idiot and forgetting which plot point goes where.

This latest one I made using Savage Worlds is probably the first one I'm going to "finish". They are climbing the corporate building and about 1 or 2 sessions away from killing their target.

Never completed a while campaign. Typically get 4 or 5 sessions in before it ends because of rl bullshit.

My last campaign was about four and a half years. I think there's a thread archive about it somewhere that talks about it: The Ark of Andrassia.

I've been on a little bit of a break while I write the next one, and I'm currently running Curse of Strahd for my group to tide them over.

We never play campaings, we play missions that last about 2-5 sessions.

On average, the campaigns I DM last one year each, starting from level one, and reaching level 15+, DMing as many times as possible in a week (on average 3/4 sessions per week)
I can't quite say how long is my longest campaign, but probably an year and half (more or less all the campaigns took the same amount of time).

My preference is to DM as many times as possible, with 3 hours of DMing per night: if I DM too little, I get rusty. I know it's not a thing for everyone, but for me it works. How long it takes to finish, it's up to the players in the end, and how they deal with the plotline I throw at them, and how much they go to do other stuff instead.


So far I completed 5 of such campaigns.
As player instead I rarely manage to get in any game that won't break apart at some point. The only campaign I ever concluded, was a solo campaign.

My best campaigns about six weeks. I try and keep them like TV mini series so I can focus on the things I want. then, if the players want another season, or to explore something else about the setting, I can run a game about that too.

I don't know, I've never been in a campaign that actually completed. A Ravenloft campaign I GMd came close and lasted a little over a year with weekly session. There were quite a few times we had to cancel, though, so call it maybe 40-ish sessions total.

My cousin's campaign in 2000's lasted for seven years.