How's your current campaign going?

How's your current campaign going?

It doesn't matter what system or setting. Tell me the ongoing story and how things seem to be going from your perspective as a player or Game Master.

I've got a good campaign going, but we're only able to play once a week, for a couple hours. I prepared WAY too much material, and now I've essentially got a campaign that can last years, at this rate. (They've been playing for 6 sessions now, and they've only covered 3 pages of material. I have almost 400 pages. So I'm set for a lifetime.) We'll probably get tired of it waaaay before the campaign ends.)

inb4
>campaign

I don't understand. What are you saying?

>How's your current campaign going?
Well a few sessions ago my group sat down and we decided just to take 20 minutes to discuss things we liked and disliked about the game, things we'd like to see in the future, that sort of thing. We came to a general consensus on what sort of campaign we wanted it to be (I'd been sensing some tension in this regard, hence the talk) and the few sessions since then have been a noticeable improvement.

Jesus I wish my group would do this. I ask for feedback and I get "it's fine" "it's cool" "everything's good". It's infuriating because I know I can do better but I don't want to be forced to be Miss Fucking Cleo.

Somewhat downhill as of late, the DM keeps letting the dickass thief and That Girl have 'muh plot' solo adventures that take up 80% of our available time each week

I think he refers to the fact that there's a lot of people on Veeky Forums who are not, currently, in a campaign. And these people like to respond to these threads for some reason.

One game kinda broke apart because one of the players dislikes pen and paper games. He stuck with us for a while, but we decided to play tabletop stuff instead, which everybody can enjoy.
>Like monopoly

Anyways, I've recently fired up another group with a dnd 5e semi-grim adventure. (High challenge encounters, environment is dangerous, world underwent several major disasters such as invasions and an epidemic). They enjoy it so far, but one of the players is super blase and unimaginative. She mostly does combat and ICly complains when the rest of the party spends too long investigating something etc.

These sound awful. I'm glad I'm not having any issues like this with my current group, though I've definitely dealt with my share of crap in the past.

Right now, my biggest issue is that one of the players isn't very patient about receiving his reward for a recent quest, but it's not something that can just be given to him like a bag of gold.

Fine. Not going in the planned direction but I'm always pretty flexible as a GM (read : I don't bother to prepare material until I'm absolutely sure it'll be used, the rest can be improvised).
They had an almost-TPK recently (only one managed to flee), but it was, frankly, their fault for waltzing in a dangerous place unprepared, where they already were almost killed in the exact same way before.

To give an idea : campaign main idea was "An overlord is conquering everything, try and make your tribe survive". They've joined the overlord, so now they're conquering stuff for her. Since they've almost all rerolled, they've recreated lieutenants of the overlord.
They're going to have a few sessions of one-shot missions (like "capture this village", "convince this giant to join us", "get this artifact") to prepare for war, and then the army starts marching, hopefully under their command. Or maybe they'll find a way to disgrace themselves and we'll go back to survival, I don't know.

>Right now, my biggest issue is that one of the players isn't very patient about receiving his reward for a recent quest, but it's not something that can just be given to him like a bag of gold.
Sadly Blizzard and Valve haven't ensnared all of the shittiest trashboy loot whores yet. I commend their effort though.

It's going alright. We've got a first time DM who thinks that being DM means she gets to stop us doing dumb stuff. When our characters lie, she asks the player what they're doing, when they try and destroy a forest that's a major part of her plot plans, she just has a dragon swoop in and kill the character immediately without fights or rolls. She forced one player into multiclassing after relenting on killing them (after they'd tried to betray an allied DMPC and been curbstomped with magic no one could do anything about).

That's the bad side. The good side is that the players get along well enough and the sessions are generally actually fun in their own way. There's enough to do in the world and the plot hasn't fallen off the end or anything.

Honestly, I'd rather be playing than GMing, but what can I do.

It's been a while since the last campaign and people have been itching for a new one. I'm in preparations for it right now, using a new system, new game world, with several new players as well.

Fortunately, I have acquired a very well designed module that helps to alleviate much of the prep work, and my players are very reasonable.

Savage Worlds here. It's a long, long story, but to summarize we're playing around in the Rifts setting and fighting the human-supremacist Coalition. Overall things are going pretty well; even if the campaign is well on its way to just outright turning into an anime, the players and the GM are all pretty chill about it and it's still fun.

We just arrived at an inn built into a large tree and where herb-based degeneracy ensues.

We're a mostly Evil/Neutral party. Murderhobo is the name of the game.

It's going pretty good. We have a goal and we're making our way there.

I DM 2 campaigns, play 3 and am in the process of starting another 2 (one as a DM one as a player). All in ass I have 3 sessions a week and all of them are advancing fairly good.

Are you a neet or just retired?

Running two groups through SKT and they're both having scheduling issues. The first one's online, so with time zones and peoples jobs we're lucky to get 4+ hour sessions. The other one just has too many fucking players. We ended up with 8 in total and they bitch and moan if a session is planned that they can't come to.

Other than that, planning the games and actually playing is great. Having a base adventure already written means I can spend my time expanding on the characters backstories and whatever bullshit they want to involve themselves in.

IC'ly? Good. We're about to enter a final battle with a big bad, who has been a good distraction for all the IC conflict that pops up between a group of Lawful paladins and evil pirates who somehow ended up in a group with each other.

OOCly? Shit. We've all been playing the game for well over a year now and still nobody likes each other. We do absolutely nothing with each other out of game.

I work 40h a week, but I don't spend too much time preparing my games.

The king died in a horrible accident that burned down his palace. The party is about to be sent to the ruins to try to recover what they can to gain the favour of the new king, and maybe pick out some choice items for themselves, if they're feeling corrupt enough.

What advice can you give to speed up the process since you seem to have it figured out.

I DM Shadowrun, so take that as you will
>use existing floorplans of real buildings, saves a lot of time
>use a worldmap you can put notes on
>collect a small folder of floorplans for offices, convention centers, horpitals, apartment buildings, etc...
>always use interesting and cunning enemies that would attempt to flee enemies rather than hordes of mobs
>have always a handful of archetypal statblocks prepared
>since you have locations and mobs, you can roll with the punches whatever should the players want to do
Really it's not that hard. Most of the time I have some wide plot ready for the world going on, and that's it. Plus, if playing Shadowrun, use Chummer at all times.

Not that guy, but just...learn to improv.
Say "Yes", or "Yes, and..."
Pick up on the players' suspicions that they voice that are leagues ahead of whatever you've planned and play off of that.
Work smart, not hard.
Be adaptable

It died

Like most stories I make, they never tend to last longer than a few sessions.

I'm 24 with school and a job. Most of the players range from 20-26 years of age. They also have a life outside of D&D.

The shame is that while no one wants to stop, we all have to find time to play it. After all no one has the same schedule.

So most if not all campaigns I play or host die within four to six sessions or so. None have ever reached in an End.

Slowly.
We let some new players in and they've been a massive derail.
Instead of going out and doing anything of use, they spend hours gathering Intel (not bad to be informed, but for fucks sake, 3 hours of bribes, spying and solo chicanery every games session is a huge waste) and then another hour having a panicked attack that the enemy may harm or kill them. Then the last hour try to convince everyone else to play king maker and murder viziers when everyone would really rather just be actively opposing the evil rather than trying to play politicks.

So, in short, stalled.
I'll be having another chat with the new guy before next game. The other players are too polite/worried he won't like them to voice their own concerns.

So it's very important to have a session zero and talk about player expectations (as well as GM expectations), so everyone knows what the tone and theme of the game is, how combat heavy it will be, how roleplay heavy it will be, and in general how the games will go.

It's rare that everyone will be on the exact same page, but either a compromise can be reached or if any player is a bad fit they can find a game that's more suited to their style of play.

So I've kinda got two. One I'm playing in and one I'm dming.
>the one I'm playing
Is going okay. I'm not really invested in the plot though.
>one I'm dming
Haven't started yet because my group is small and one player(1/3 of the group) has been kind of having his life implode and we haven't been able to play.