I know that clash bowley has run a D&D game for twenty years, and I've run RQ/HQ for almost as long. This thread is for people who've run a game for, say, over a decade, and our experiences.

For myself, until fairly recently I never had a plan for ending games. Every game I started was potentially infinite in scope. If they made it past the magic number they were always in play. clash, does that describe your plan?

Pretty much. I can't really plan endings per se at all, since I have no clue where the game's going to go, but over the last five years or so I've begin designing in end conditions for games more. Still, I don't always. Sometimes games end where they end, unplanned, sometimes games get suspended and we return to them or not, and sometimes the end conditions are met. The original 20 year D&D game I ran had nothing at all in that manner - no end at all. I eventually stopped it and broke up the group because I was tired of it - completely burned out on D&D - not because we reached an end.

-clash

With that game, did you have a continuity of characters the whole way?

Quote from: droogWith that game, did you have a continuity of characters the whole way?

Heck no! The 20 years out-of-game covered about 200 years in-game. Besides, I didn't even have any of the original players when it ended. The longest anyone stayed aboard was 18 years - one of the guys at the end had joined up around year two.

How about you?

-clash

Quite different in my case. We played once a week for twelve years and about once a month for another three or four years. In that time we covered about fifteen game-years, though not always at a constant rate.

There's one original character left, and one who came in the second year. But two players have died now including the player of the original chr, so I don't think the game is likely to go on. Until recently it was always theoretically open and awaiting my return to Perth.

It's an interesting difference of time-scale. RQ runs on a game-week cycle for exp rolls, so maybe that made us zoom in more. Also, combat takes forever--our biggest fighty scenario took over forty hours to finish.

Sounds very different! I also had *hordes* of players at once, running for several years with 13-15 players showing up every week - and averaging 8 or so over all. We also tended to play things at a tight level, like you, but we'd gloss over years or even decades in between segments. Every segment was tied together into the greater whole. As we went forward in time, some characters began being generational, with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren etc. of the original group - like Pendragon. Others were new additions completely. Players would often play descendants of other players' characters, too, not just their own characters'.

-clash

I can see the length of these (I've got campaign worlds that are around 10 years old.. but multiple campaigns occuring on these worlds), but what's the frequency of play at that scale? My longest campaign is around 16 months of weekly gaming. Which is around 80 sessions.

Is it weekly? monthly? etc?

Quote from: Abyssal MawI can see the length of these (I've got campaign worlds that are around 10 years old.. but multiple campaigns occuring on these worlds), but what's the frequency of play at that scale? My longest campaign is around 16 months of weekly gaming. Which is around 80 sessions.

Is it weekly? monthly? etc?

Mine was weekly.

-clash

Well, like I said, we played weekly (on the average--some weeks we played several sessions in the early years) for about twelve years. After that it was irregular but at least monthly for another few years (we played other stuff as well). I'd say we would have to have played over 300, maybe 400, sessions; bearing in mind that a lot of those sessions were 10 or 12 hours long.

Quote from: flyingmiceMine was weekly.

-clash

To both you guys: Whoa. We kidna felt like "these characters are done with their stories" at that 60-80 sessions point..

I have two more questions:

What was character turnover like, and was it generational? (ie, were new characters introduced as relatives of old characters?)

In my example: (this is my 80 session campaigns-) we generally had one or two characters turned over at about midway. We never had anything generational. However, I was a player (not a GM) in a campaign in college that apparently was on it's 7th year, and nearly all the characters were generational relatives of the very first characters they had ever played in the campaign. My ex-girlfriend in that campaign in fact-- never played a non generational character, no matter what the system or setting was.

This included characters from AD&D to Torg to Amber and even a centaur in Rifts. All of them somehow related to her great progenitor characters in that first AD&D game.

QuoteWhat was character turnover like, and was it generational? (ie, were new characters introduced as relatives of old characters?)

We had the classic unconnected adventurers meeting in somewhat contrived ways. There were three core characters that survived, but only one was a survivor from the very first session. He was pretty much the centre of the game by then.

Some people went through multiple characters, like Simon, who likes to try new stuff. After his first chr died he never settled down to any one chr.

With various different people who dropped in and out, and replacements for dead chrs, I suppose we had about thirty chrs all up. Some of them died, some of them just got left by the wayside. I can't remember one that was introduced as a relative--it was always more like, I want to play a troll, how can we work him in?

Never did the generational thing in this game, because the game-time passed too slowly. I did that later in Pendragon.

Quote from: Abyssal MawTo both you guys: Whoa. We kidna felt like "these characters are done with their stories" at that 60-80 sessions point..

I have two more questions:

What was character turnover like, and was it generational? (ie, were new characters introduced as relatives of old characters?)

In my example: (this is my 80 session campaigns-) we generally had one or two characters turned over at about midway. We never had anything generational. However, I was a player (not a GM) in a campaign in college that apparently was on it's 7th year, and nearly all the characters were generational relatives of the very first characters they had ever played in the campaign. My ex-girlfriend in that campaign in fact-- never played a non generational character, no matter what the system or setting was.

This included characters from AD&D to Torg to Amber and even a centaur in Rifts. All of them somehow related to her great progenitor characters in that first AD&D game.

AW - my post just above your first one in this thread answered these questions:

QuoteSounds very different! I also had *hordes* of players at once, running for several years with 13-15 players showing up every week - and averaging 8 or so over all. We also tended to play things at a tight level, like you, but we'd gloss over years or even decades in between segments. Every segment was tied together into the greater whole. As we went forward in time, some characters began being generational, with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren etc. of the original group - like Pendragon. Others were new additions completely. Players would often play descendants of other players' characters, too, not just their own characters'.

-clash

Quote from: droogWe had the classic unconnected adventurers meeting in somewhat contrived ways.

Me too, except we also had the classic unconnected published modules strung together with Pierce's own in entirely contrived ways. I ran an eight or nine-year (I forget) D&D Greyhawk/Lankhmar homebrewfest campaign. Style was more like clash from the sound of it, except totally unorganized. Certainly no generational play, much less overarching theme. No godlevel either, highest level was about 10th.

Sessions were *always* 12+ hours because even then play was mostly biweekly and sometimes monthly (too much other shit going on).

Still using the same campaign world/setting from 1979 and stringing together different groups of player actions tomake history.  Never ran much more of a 6 year stretch with any one group, junior high/high schoolgroup, then college group, then grad school grooup, break for career, then mid-life crisis/recapture lost youth group.

Nothing like chiming in 3 months after the thread!

Guys, I salute you!

My longest campaign was D&D, first edition, that started when I was in High School in 1984.

We played a solid twice-weekly campaign until I left for college.  One of the players of the original group lived two floors up from me, and another player was about 1/2 hour dirve away at her college.  

We continued with the core two and added some players from my dorm.  Before long, about 6 months or so of every-other-day-playing, we had my history professor, his girlfriend, and about 5 or so others.  We outgrew my dorm room and moved to Dr. Grag's lecture room.  From there all Hell broke loose, and we continued that same campaign until December 31st 1997.

A that time, we we bi-weekly, and Lyndy drove in from out-of-state, Dr. GReg and his by-then wife hosted, and I drove about an hour to get there.  Our final session reunited another of the orignal crew from the 80's, and the final session lasted for about 60 hours.

It was 3 years before I ran another D&D campaign...that one only lasted for about 3 years.