I've seen a few references here and elsewhere to "the average RPG campaign lasts X sessions."
Is this a hypothesis, an observation, a wild ass guess, or did somebody actually do some data collection? Because if it's actual science, I'd like to know more.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;884803I've seen a few references here and elsewhere to "the average RPG campaign lasts X sessions."
Is this a hypothesis, an observation, a wild ass guess, or did somebody actually do some data collection? Because if it's actual science, I'd like to know more.
The only people who actually would have done any collection other than in a sample size too small to count, would have been 2e Era TSR, WotC or Paizo.
The common definition of a defined campaign these days seems to be create and sell something to give a GM enough adventures to get players from starting level to ending level in 10-20 adventures so people who play one or two times a month can finish in a year or less.
The market survey I know of that is available online is by Wizards of the Coast released in 2000.
https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html
Quote from: ptingler;884817The market survey I know of that is available online is by Wizards of the Coast released in 2000.
https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html
The problem with any survey is "who are you surveying"? You could make a survey as comprehensive as possible along cultural, geographic, ethnic, economic, gender, linguistic, whatever lines, but it still comes down to "people who play WotC games". There's a couple out there that don't.
Quote from: CRKrueger;884819The problem with any survey is "who are you surveying"? You could make a survey as comprehensive as possible along cultural, geographic, ethnic, economic, gender, linguistic, whatever lines, but it still comes down to "people who play WotC games". There's a couple out there that don't.
It wasn't just for WotC/D&D, it was an industry market survey that they did.
From the info:
For the purpose of the 1999 study, the following methodology was employed:
A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card
games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the
general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this
document, this group is referred to as "the marketplace" or "the market", or
"the consumers".
Information from more than 65,000 people was gathered from a questionnaire
sent to more than 20,000 households via a post card survey. This survey was
used as a "screener" to create a general profile of the game playing
population in the target age range, for the purposes of extrapolating trends
to the general population.
This "screener" accurately represents the US population as a whole; it is a
snapshot of the entire nation and is used to extrapolate trends from more
focused surveys to the larger market.
Quote from: ptingler;884817The market survey I know of that is available online is by Wizards of the Coast released in 2000.
https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html
Yep. According to WoTC in 2000 the typical campaign duration fitted into an academic year, which seems short to me. My own experience in the post-2000/3e D&D era is that a 'successful' campaign is one that runs around 35 sessions over a bit less than 2 years, but that quite a few end at around half that, 18-20 sessions. Of my campaigns currently running, one is 94 sessions so far over 5 years, another online one 66 sessions over just a year, and I have a weekly campaign that's probably at around 45 sessions now, but more typically one that ended last year was 34 sessions over 21 months. From what I've seen at the London D&D Meetup that last one looks pretty typical.
Never trust market surveys.
To answer Gronan's question though.
Mearls and I think Crawford believe this. Despite evidence to the contrary. Ive heard other designers claim that too back in the 90s. Theres never been any proof that these claims are valid outside a small slice of the gaming community.
Campaigns last as long as they last. That could be one day, week, month, year, decade, century, whatever. Considering the probable number of bad DMs or bad players killing sessions, of course some are going to end abruptly.
I've been a player in a campaign that fell apart about 4 sessions in when the DM and a player started fighting. And I am currently still in a Spelljammer campaign thats been running since 2008. Thats right. Its been going 8 years running now. And the last Star Frontiers campaign I DMed ran about 2 years.
Quote from: ptingler;884822It wasn't just for WotC/D&D, it was an industry market survey that they did.
From the info:
For the purpose of the 1999 study, the following methodology was employed:
A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card
games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the
general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this
document, this group is referred to as "the marketplace" or "the market", or
"the consumers".
Information from more than 65,000 people was gathered from a questionnaire
sent to more than 20,000 households via a post card survey. This survey was
used as a "screener" to create a general profile of the game playing
population in the target age range, for the purposes of extrapolating trends
to the general population.
This "screener" accurately represents the US population as a whole; it is a
snapshot of the entire nation and is used to extrapolate trends from more
focused surveys to the larger market.
Well, how did they get the addresses to send? Did they ask White Wolf, Pinnacle, I.C.E., SJG, GW, GDW, for some form of subscriber list? Where did they get their gamers from?
What the general consensus definition of a 'campaign'? Extended series of games featuring the same setting and characters and some sort of overarching goal?
A lot of the face-to-face games I've played in that weren't one-shots have just gone on and on, usually till some RL thing interfered and the Players changed... or some new game came out and it just gets dropped. Until then they tend to just putter around aimlessly. Few of them had extended goals or most saw the original PCs shift out of game for whatever reason.
Contrasting with that, all the online campaigns I've been in have been of relatively short duration, ~6months or so, with much more focus on a particular goal. Probably because there's a lot more churn among the Players.
Quote from: CRKrueger;884836Well, how did they get the addresses to send? Did they ask White Wolf, Pinnacle, I.C.E., SJG, GW, GDW, for some form of subscriber list? Where did they get their gamers from?
Read the link. See if it answers your questions. If it doesn't ask Ryan Dancey.
Quote from: Omega;884824Mearls and I think Crawford believe this. Despite evidence to the contrary.
Please say more about this. Where do they say they believe it? What is the evidence to the contrary other than anecdote?
During and right after NEXT's playtesting I believe it was Mearls made some posts about the expected game length. Which was expected to be just about a school year.
Heres part of one commentary. Mores scattered all over the place.
QuoteI believe that's what's really happening to tabletop roleplaying, is that it used to be a hobby of not playing the game you want to play. And there are so many games now that you can play to fill all those hours of gaming, you can actually game now, and that what's happening is that RPGs needed that time, we, a GM or DM needed that time to create the adventure or create a campaign, a player needed that time to create a character, allocate skill ranks and come up with a background, and come up, you know, write out your three-page essay on who your character was before the campaign. That time is getting devoured, that time essentially I think is gone, that you could play stuff that lets you then eventually play a game or you can just play a game. And people are just playing games now.
And what we're really doing with D&D Next is we're really looking at thriving and surviving in that type of market. If you've playtested the game, you see we've run much simpler with the mechanics, things move much faster when you play... one of our very early things was was to say, look, I was playing Mass Effect 1 or 2 at the time. I can complete a mission in Mass Effect in about an hour and a half. So why can't I complete an adventure in D&D in that time? Why does it take me 4, 8, 12 hours just to get from page one of the adventure to the end? I mean, yeah, you can have huge epic adventures but I can't do it in less than four hours.
Evidence contrary is any given recounting of campaigns lasting years and years.
Holy fuck, is that his writing? If that's speech transliterated that's OK, but anybody over the age of 12 who writes that incoherently should be whacked with a ruler.
If I had to guess I'd say that the massive number of still-born campaigns that last less than three months drag down the averages.
Right off the top, I'm not impressed with the methodology of a survey that apparently ignored gamers over the age of 35. This was far less of an attempt to discern how gamers played and what they thought than to find those things out about D&D players who were members of the demographic to which WotC wanted to market.
I've seen some forum polls over the years (and that's not real data, but its kinda data) and most campaigns didn't last very long (6 months / 20 sessions or less) before it petered out.
I'll post a poll here. See what we crazy kids think.
The only "science" would be the number of sessions needed to play a TSR module back in the day, relative to a groups main campaign. Now that players can just phone-in their turns, and they still count it as role-playing, "campaign" can mean any duration these days.
Quote from: Ravenswing;884904Right off the top, I'm not impressed with the methodology of a survey that apparently ignored gamers over the age of 35. This was far less of an attempt to discern how gamers played and what they thought than to find those things out about D&D players who were members of the demographic to which WotC wanted to market.
Assuming an age of say 12-14 when D&D was first being played then by 2000 those players would have been in their mid to late 30s. It seems to exclude anyone older who might run longer campaigns than a bunch of kids?
Quote from: S'mon;884823Yep. According to WoTC in 2000 the typical campaign duration fitted into an academic year, which seems short to me.
Seems very plausible to me, given how many people (myself among them) look back on college as the last time that it was easy to find players and have an ongoing weekly game where everyone is likely to show up consistently. Start your campaign in the fall, play through the academic year, wrap it up in the spring before everyone leaves for wherever "back home" might be. Even if you play with the same people again the following year, the summer break will have been long enough that you're more likely to start a new campaign than try to continue one that's been dormant for three months.
It's unrealistic to ask for a scientific answer to a question that's fundamentally not scientific. Even if there were adequate data, it would in no way indicate whether or not play patterns may differ in the future. Second problem is one of distribution. I remember one time rolling up some shadow run characters for a campaign that ended up not happening. I guess it lasted 0 sessions. So the next week we rolled up some L5R characters. That lasted about 2 sessions before we were rolling up some 3E characters. That campaign ended up lasting a few months. Previously, this same GM had a 2nd Ed campaign that lasted 3 years.
How do you use data of that kind to arrive at a norm? Campaign lengths do not, will not, and cannot fit any kind of normal bell curve distribution. For the same reason a plane can be delayed minutes, hours, or even days. But a plane will never be days early. The shortest a campaign can go is 0 sessions, but there's no limit to how long they can go.
The third problem is when you go to actually use this data. Suppose you arrive at the conclusion that 1 year is the average campaign length and then go and design RPGs that "max out" after the 1 year mark. Well, maybe under those conditions my friend would have never had that 3 year campaign. If the next generation of game design truncates the next generation of campaign lengths, the research will show the average lengths getting shorter and shorter, calling for RPGs that give you teh max power ever sooner.
Quote from: Lunamancer;884938The third problem is when you go to actually use this data. Suppose you arrive at the conclusion that 1 year is the average campaign length and then go and design RPGs that "max out" after the 1 year mark. Well, maybe under those conditions my friend would have never had that 3 year campaign. If the next generation of game design truncates the next generation of campaign lengths, the research will show the average lengths getting shorter and shorter, calling for RPGs that give you teh max power ever sooner.
Yes, thus what we have seen from WOTC D&D versions. A game designed so that players can get to max level and play with all the high level toys within a year of play time.
This played into the marketing of 3E & 4E with the treadmill of splatbooks to keep players supplied with new official options for their next characters.
5E broke from that a bit and instead focused on putting out long adventure paths instead of tons of mechanical widgets.
Either way the fast rate of advancement drives the consumerist rather than the hobbyist nature of the target audience.
Quote from: nDervish;884930Seems very plausible to me, given how many people (myself among them) look back on college as the last time that it was easy to find players and have an ongoing weekly game where everyone is likely to show up consistently. Start your campaign in the fall, play through the academic year, wrap it up in the spring before everyone leaves for wherever "back home" might be. Even if you play with the same people again the following year, the summer break will have been long enough that you're more likely to start a new campaign than try to continue one that's been dormant for three months.
OK... doesn't seem to work that way with my student-age players; they don't generally leave London for three months over the summer.
Quote from: S'mon;884987OK... doesn't seem to work that way with my student-age players; they don't generally leave London for three months over the summer.
Good point. I can easily see that as a US vs. Europe cultural difference.
My game campaigns range from one shots to planned 10-20 game arcs to year long campaigns to multi-year epics, with a 12 year currently running IRC StarCluster game and a 20 year long defunct (A)D&D game. For many years now, I have been running three games a week, and my long form games tend to be over IRC, with my shorter games face to face. I wouldn't even know how to start averaging them!
-clash
It really depends. Can be anything from 6 sessions to 1 year, to ongoing over many.
So the upshot of all this is that no, there is no real data behind this, other than what Mearls may or may not have seen to base his opinion on but did not disclose.
Campaign length should be as long as the players and GM retain interest. I've ran a ten year Earthdawn Barsaive campaign, but its an aberration comparatively. My last Earthdawn Cathay campaign went three years before ending. Ted had an Earthdawn Kratas campaign that lasted four years.
Shaintar: Rangers Riding Out the Storm that I ran was 41 sessions. My players told me it felt a bit short. But then again, they were enjoying their characters but I wasn't feeling the game towards the end. I was bored even though the players were engaged. The big bad at the end of the game died in two rounds (despite 5 wound levels). The players by that point had munchkin'd me into ennui. I could challenge them if I designed my own NPCs but the ones in the book seemed woeful in comparison to the heroes. Ended at 120 XP or so.
Deadlands: The Flood took 56 sessions, and it felt really long on the player side towards the end due to the tag a mcguffin quest. Ted had a lot of fun running the game but pacing wise it felt a bit long. Ended at 150 xp
50 Fathoms went around 50 sessions. I know Ted was a bit annoyed because the players kept extending the end of the game versus the Sea Hags with personal quests. Ended at 120 Xp or so.
I'm running Necessary Evil now and my goal is around 40 sessions above 80 Xp at the end so all PCs are Legendary rank. At an average of 2 Xp, most ranks take about 10 sessions to get through at 20 xp per rank. After 11 sessions, I know most of my players are at 27 xp, but I tend to give out 3 xp more often and never 1 xp. (5 xp is an advance, it takes 10 xp at legendary).
To me I think 40 is about the perfect Savage Worlds campaign length.
Well, whatever it is, I'm sure I skew the fucking curve. My dark Albion game has run for over six years of fortnightly play, so while I didn't keep exact track, that would make it somewhere over 150 sessions of about 9 hours each, so at least 1350 hours.
My newer DCC campaign has thus far run for almost four years now, and I do have the exact number for it because of how I've been keeping track in my notes. It's been, as of this last weekend, 72 sessions of about 8 hours each, so 576 hours.
Neither of these are the longest campaign I've run, or even (quite yet) the longest I've run within the last decade.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884915The only "science" would be the number of sessions needed to play a TSR module back in the day, relative to a groups main campaign. Now that players can just phone-in their turns, and they still count it as role-playing, "campaign" can mean any duration these days.
...Man you are bitter.
Personally, my current one is about 2.5 years, once per week for about 8-10 hours. We missed a few days, I couldn't tell you how many hours. Frankly, I don't care. If you play regularly for a year, once a week, I consider it a campaign.
Quote from: David Johansen;884897If I had to guess I'd say that the massive number of still-born campaigns that last less than three months drag down the averages.
Yes. But on the other hand, the 1,000 weekly sessions of that rare 20 year campaign bring it up.
Ages ago I did a poll on rpg.net asking people the length of their last campaign. I do remember that the "fizzle" sessions - you start character generation etc but never do anything past that first intro session - were a big confounding factor. I said, don't count the fizzles, but people did. But mostly it was 8-18 sessions. The years-long campaigns were fairly rare, I think it was less than 5% of all respondents.
Most campaigns didn't
end as such, they didn't rescue the princess and become heroes, job well done, let's give someone else a chance to run a game now. Mostly it was that key people - the regular and active players - left the group, or the group found the game boring and someone said to the GM, "let's try something else, um just for a little bit, a break you know?" and the offending campaign was left aside and quietly forgotten.
It's not a bell curve, it's an asymptotic declining curve, a classic example of the power law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law). That is, there are stacks and stacks of 1-3 session fizzles, quite a few 4-8 session short adventures, a few 8-18 longer ones, very few 18-50 session ones, and very very few 50+ session 12+ month ones. It's like radioactive decay or something.