To me, one of the main things that differentiates Mainstream RPGs from "storygames" is that Mainstream RPGs are usually designed to allow for very long campaigns, whereas storygames are almost always designed to be ideally played for only a few sessions at most, if not for one-shots.

To me, long-term campaigns are one of the defining features of RPGs, where you really maximize the utility of RPGs.  A game doesn't come into its own until you've gotten to run the same character over the course of months, watching him grow and change, and ultimately develop a life of his own.

Do you agree?
How long do your games usually last?
Do you find longer-terms campaign more fulfilling, if they're run well?

RPGPundit

This is something that I've thought about often. I like both formats. I like having a story with a beginning, middle and end. But I also like long term campaigns where characters grow from insignificant to very powerful.

The previous game I ran was Changeling, which ran about a year (and there were probably 12-14 sessions overall cuz we were rotating my game with a Shadowrun game). There was a definite story, although it was very organic and sort of grew from seeds I germinated, along with background the players wrote for their characters. It went in some very unanticipated directions. But when it ended, it was very satisifying for everyone.

The current game I'm running is Ptolus. It too is a pretty organic game. I hardly plan anything. Almost the entire campaign so far has been impromptu, with encounters and events sprouting from whatever happened in the previous sessions, or inspired by the characters' backgrounds. But all my players want this to be a long lasting campaign, so I anticipate lots of character growth compared to the Changeling chronicle. I also plan on some major and drastic events happening in the city. It won't be a static setting for very long.

Hmm... overall, I think I find both formats satisfying.

Well, I'm not too sure what the boundary between "mainstream" and "storygame" is.  I'm guessing at the moment that a "storygame" is defined by an extremely narrow focus.

IMX, long term games are a wild exception, not the rule.  Any game lasting more than 2 or 3 months (weekly gatherings, 4 to 6 hours each) is not a normal example of RPGs.  It's sort of an ideal which is not often reached.  Calling long term play common is kind of like saying that all high school football players are just as good as SuperBowl champions.

Now, in the terms of background and development and overall investment, I only get any real fulfillment out of long term games.  After you've played in such a game, going back to square one and playing a throwaway game is just empty.

I'm in one long-term game right now (depending on how you define it) that goes every week and has run for ... maybe a year? I'm and am playing part 4 of a game that has run over several years.

I prefer to run one-shot, shorter games (4-8 sessions of maybe 3-5 hrs each).

I think these are differently fufilling. I love finishing up games--a big finish with everyone high-fiving all around is awesome. I like the slowly developing multi-layered story-lines that long-term games bring.

I find it more stressful to run a long term game.

-Marco

I'm the opposite of Marco - I prefer playing short term games and GMing long term ones. That may be why we are frequently playing in each other's games...

-clash

My preference, both as a player and as a GM, is for long term play. Usually games that last a couple of years or more. Unfortunately, many of the people I play with prefer to run short games so I have adapted to that style out of necessity.

I find I simply don't get attached to a character who is only going to be around a couple of months, no matter how fast paced the action or drastic the changes. The characters I remember and love are the ones that took years to develop.

At the moment, my Roman Campaign has been going on for well over a year now (closing on 18 months), and while my other 3 campaigns are all relatively young (about six months for WFRP, three or so months for Legion, and about a month for the Three Kingdoms), all four games are planned to run for years.

Sometimes the best laid plans and all that... but here's hoping.

The Roman campaign is getting to that awesome stage when players are realizing that something going on now in the game is tied in with something that had gone on like, 40 game years ago...

RPGPundit

I usually "waste" a lot of time with useless side-quests and NPC discussions. The players seem to have fun, but the plot doesn't neccesarily move along very quickly. That's why most of my stuff takes years. We just put a break in our longest-running campaign -- which evolved out of a beer&pretzels dungeon crawl. I think we started that in 2002 or 2003, so even minus the six months I spent in Ireland, that's been quite a time... And I think most DM's could've managed to get to the same result within a few months. While things just started to get really crazy (elves invading Greyhawk), we decided to try something new for a while.

So we just started another campaign (in/beneath the frickin' Realms for Bob's sake...) and re-started the Witchfire trilogy in the Iron Kingdoms. The latter might be finished pretty quickly, but the Drow stuff will probably run quite a while.

My players don't particularly like learning about new backgrounds and systems, so we agreed to stick to some stuff. Short games almost always have some particular reason, e.g. when a player goes missing for a while or we want to introduce two new players while avoiding messing up the current long-running campaign.

I like big campaigns and I can not lie...

I like long campaigns, myself, though I've been in precious few that I'd categorize as such.

Hopefully our Traveller game (which has finally started after 2-and-a-half months of delays and re-scheduling the start date) will be one.  It's shaping up nicely, and I've picked up a lot of new GMing tips by watching the DM of the local AD&D group in action.

I love long campaigns. The payoff from a well-developed campaign that runs for a good long time is amazing and nothing else compares to it.

That said, the middle ground for me is that I play in some living Greyhawk and Xendrik Expeditions RPGA slots. These have persistent characters and a highly scripted 'campaign arc', so even if they play like one-shots, (and I  only play at gamedays at cons) I still get to keep and develop my character in between games. SO those are cool.

Finally, there is one kind of short-run game I like, and thats the highly competitive tournament game you only play at a convention.

Most of the campaigns I've played in over the years have lasted about 8 months - the length of the school year, or 2-4 months, the length of the summer. However, most of those campaigns have been different PCs within the same world and using the same system (D&D 3.5). Now that I'm out of university, the expectation is for year-round play, with campaigns lasting as long as they need to develop the story.

As for long vs. short, I find I don't have a preference. One-shots and short campaigns can be a lot of fun, especially if you do have very strongly developed characters.