Over in Generations of Swine, Mike posted:

Quote from: mearlsYou can play a single RPG for decades. Most boardgames have a more limited shelf life, or you play them in small bursts. For instance, you might play Puerto Rico one night, and then next week play Carcossone. A couple weeks later, you break our Puerto Rico again. Alternatively, your boardgame night might be 3 or 4 different games.

Boardgames are a lot more casual than RPGs. At the end of the game, someone wins. The next game doesn't look back at the prior game to see what happened.

With RPGs, the real benefit they offer is that you can play the same PCs over and over again, and watch as the world and plot changes. If you played nothing but one shots, you'd miss out on one of the things that make RPGs more appealing to some people than boardgames or videogames.

Now I think long-running campaigns are great, and I agree with his assessment that they have strengths that are unique to them, not to be found in a short-run game.

I just don't think that makes them universally "better", or "more true to real RPGs" or anything like that.  Long-form RPGs are one type of RPGs, and they have unique strengths.  Short-form RPGs are another type of RPGs, and they have unique strengths.  They're both cool, in different ways, and the coolest thing of all is to have access to both ways and use whichever one suits your fancy.

That having been said:  this ain't the first time I've heard the argument that RPGs differ from boardgames because they must and should require a much larger commitment of time ... usually many, many consecutive (or close to consecutive) once-a-week sessions ... possibly an unspecified number, with the potential to stretch into years or decades.  It seems a fairly popular viewpoint.  Maybe there's something to that opinion that I haven't fully taken on board.  Anyone care to enlighten me?

I don't know of RPGs should be played in long term games, but it is an advantage that have over other game types. It's telling that in the OD&D boxed set, Gygax clearly intends the game for campaign play:

"While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events post or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed."

I think that, back in the misty days of 1973, the potential for a campaign was what made D&D more appealing than the Avalon Hill boardgames and various and sundry historical miniatures games of the day.

Now, that doesn't make short form games inferior, but I don't think you'd have RPGs as a game category without the appeal of the long-term campaign. That's where they separated themselves from other games.

There's a reason why people want to tell you about their characters, or why gaming groups build up these mythologies of their past and current campaigns. It's really cool to build a long-term, organic campaign. There isn't any other form of entertainment that has the same feel.

Gotcha.  I totally see the long-form impact in early marketing, and in the history of the hobby.  I see why long-form games became popular first, and retain much of that popularity.  They definitely have advantages not available elsewhere.

Personally, I'm also pretty stoked about the overlooked advantages of short-form games, particularly in broadening my pool of gaming-friends to include people who just don't want to commit that much time or energy, but who are great fun to sit down with for a few hours at a time.  But that's me.

I guess we were disagreeing less than it seemed.  Not to worry though ... I suspect someone will come along to disagree with one (or both) of us much more forcefully.  It's a specialty of the forum

Quote from: TonyLBOver in Generations of Swine, Mike posted:
Now I think long-running campaigns are great, and I agree with his assessment that they have strengths that are unique to them, not to be found in a short-run game.

I just don't think that makes them universally "better", or "more true to real RPGs" or anything like that.

MClaughlin: Wrongo! Long running campaigns are universally better!

Quote from: TonyLBIs there a minimum length for RPG play?

Yes.

OK, sorry for the snark, Tony.  Just the kind of mood I'm in today.

This is a very interesting question because, while both have strengths, they will appeal to very different groups of people.

What I think we're seeing now is the idea of RPG's as derived from boardgames as opposed to wargames (as in the "traditional" RPG model).  Wherein the latter were interested in taking this complex battle model and allowing people to play individual characters and then string these event driven sessions (the battle of waterloo) into an ongoing structure.

Contrast this with the former, which seems to be more about getting together with a group of friends to play games and incorporating Role Play as one of the ways to enjoy playing a game together (from Sett's idea, originally) - like charades highlights non-verbal communication and the sympatico of partners to understand each other is another way.

Neither is a compliment or derision.  It just seems to me that this is one of those divisions that can be identified.

I'm afraid I can't work up enough of a disagreement for a full-on argument, Tony, but I can say that after a little experimentation I still see long-form games as the "main course", with short-form as "snacks" that might be good for a warmup or change of pace, but not nearly as viable as long-form as the reason for a group of people getting together semi-regularly to game.

If short-form gaming is to be a "main course"--meaning you play a given game for a maximum of N sessions before resetting or switching to another game--I find it much more viable in the form of board games than RPGs.

The thing is that board games are easy to set up (no agonizing over game world prep or character backgrounds) and intensely focused. You can play an RPG with quickly-drawn character/background, but if it's short form you don't get much growth (develop-in-play)--and by that I mean real growth, not just superficial changes but actually "growing into" and valuing the character/campaign. So I think it feels superficial overall, plus the comparatively less rigid rules of RPGs make them less suited in my opinion for a "quick" exercise.

On top of this frankly the length of rules is a big factor. An RPG with very light rules might as well be a parlor game, and could be excellent under that paradigm. (I think the Shab al-Hiri Roach would fare well as such, with just a few tweaks.) But, parlor games are something you bring out occasionally for social occasions, not for a regular hobby group. Heavier rules have a much smaller payoff if you're going to be switching games frequently. Board wargames have--at least in the past--gotten away with this by, basically, having a very dedicated and fanatical fanbase and offering somewhat "deep" play, aka high replay value. And even then, wargame rulebooks over a few dozen pages have been pretty rare.

Another factor is that boardgames are more "high impact" in that you generally do more interaction with the rules per unit of time, than you do with RPGs, which are far more talky.

So basically if I'm going to invest a lot of time in prepping for a game--which includes learning and mastering the rules, creating characters, settings, and scenarios--it needs to have a high payoff either in terms of long term play or high-impact utility of the rules. Thus: campaign-style RPG, or boardgame.

If it doesn't have that payoff, it might be fun for a bit but it better not require too much investment. Furthermore for me there isn't a perfect tradeoff--it's not like low-investment, low-payoff can substitute universally for high-investment, high-payoff, at least partly because no matter how little time/resources you have to invest outside the game, you still have to spend time playing the game.

Quote from: TonyLBIs there a minimum length for rpg play?

Nope. Because if there is, well that would mean what I have been doing all this time was not really playing rpgs.

Regards,
David R

I'd say about 2 hours. Any less and I would feel cheated.

-clash

Quote from: David RNope. Because if there is, well that would mean what I have been doing all this time was not really playing rpgs.

How many sessions do you usually go, David? How do you plan--do you just sort of reckon that that the game won't go forever, or do you have a fixed number of sessions in mind, or a specific set of "issues" to resolve before stopping, or what?

It's a difficult question, and has a natural response, "is there a maximum length?"

Obviously, people are going to have more chance to really get into and care about their characters and the events of a campaign over several sessions than in just one session. But it doesn't follow that they'll care as much after (say) fifty sessions. People can get bored with things, after all.

Nobody's brought it up, but I think "number of sessions" is a better way to talk about campaign length rather than "hours put in." Four sessions of two focused hours each will see more done than one session of twelve meandering hours, and players will care more about their characters, and have time to think about what they'll do - I think sessions are like lessons in that you need some time to "digest" what you've seen to really understand it.

A while back I did a survey on rpg.net asking how long people's campaigns lasted. Most people had campaigns in the 16-25 session range. That was supposed to include ones which will stillborn, or fizzled after a few sessions, etc.  59 of 142 respondents had campaigns of less than 15 sessions, 19 of 142 had campaigns of 100+ sessions, or had never had a campaign end at all.

What we could see from the poll results was that while there are a significant number of Grand Epic Campaigns out there, there are also a significant number of relatively short ones, less than 15 sessions. The result is skewed a bit on the high side because of guys like this,

Quote from: Reverend KeithOn average campaign length for my group is in the 51-100 range, with a couple statistical abberations I've ignored for the above calculation due to very premature/stillborn campaign endings [...]

I'd specifically said that ones you intended to last but which didn't should count. After all, if you have a group which has games consistently fizzle out after X sessions, that tells you something about gaming, or at least about your group. I was basically interested, like the question of this thread, what sort of length of campaign people were able to stay interested in for.

Also there's a difference between campaigns which fizzle, and ones which you always intended to last so many sessions and then end, that is between open-ended and closed-ended campaigns. That's what I talked about at rpg.net in a related thread. This one had far fewer responses, but closed/open preferences seemed about evenly distributed - closed was a bit more popular, but my suspicion is that people engaged in Grand Epic Campaigns are less likely to chat on message boards - people in closed-ended campaigns have more to talk about.

2 hours.

Quote from: TonyLBThat having been said: this ain't the first time I've heard the argument that RPGs differ from boardgames because they must and should require a much larger commitment of time ... usually many, many consecutive (or close to consecutive) once-a-week sessions ... possibly an unspecified number, with the potential to stretch into years or decades. It seems a fairly popular viewpoint. Maybe there's something to that opinion that I haven't fully taken on board. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Almost every game has a start up "cost".  This is both financial (ie, spending money on buying rules and equipment) and time (learning the rules).  If the start up costs are too high compared to the reward of actually playing, then the the game will fizzle.
 
Given that RPGs will often have more complex rules than a typical board game, plus the upfront investment required for character generation and world building, then the reward needs to be longer in order to justify playing the game.  But if you can reduce the upfront costs of starting a new campaign, then you reduce the duration the campaign needs to run before people feel that their investment was worthwhile.  This can be achieved by using less complex systems, giving the players pre-gen characters, running commercial modules, or whatever.  It presumably works at conventions, so I don't see why it can't work for regular game groups.
 
The real advantage of RPGs is that they can potentially sustain both short term play, and extended play.  And this is something beyond the design of most board games.  So while I believe you can definitely run very short and yet very enjoyable RPG campaigns, you are not taking advantage of the full capabilities of the hobby by doing so.

Quote from: Elliot WilenHow many sessions do you usually go, David? How do you plan--do you just sort of reckon that that the game won't go forever, or do you have a fixed number of sessions in mind, or a specific set of "issues" to resolve before stopping, or what?

At the end of every month I run one shots. The most recent being Active Exploits. We play once a week. I normally run one campaign consistently for 3 months before switching to another (Think of each three month period as a season).

So currently I'm running OtE until the next month than I'm switching to my CP2020 campaign for the next three months. Sessions last for about 4-5 hours depending on the game. I do have a fixed number of sessions in mind (normally three "seasons")...but this is totally subordinate to what actually happens in the campaign - what the players do.

There are exceptions of course. My OtE campaign is inspired by the TV series 24 - hence there are 24 sessions in the campaign. Of course all this talk of lenght is pretty baffling to me. I mean, my one shots which last just "one adventure" are just as much an rpg as my "longer" games.

I have this little theory about "length", kinda of reinforced by obryn's "not 16 anymore" thread. I think when a lot of gamers were younger, they had a lot of time to spend on rpgs. So the thinking is, that "long" campaigns are the best way to go. Now that they are adults, the length issue is still there.

IMO there are of course advantages/disadvantages to long/short but I don't think there's a minimum length for rpg play only preference or time constraints.

Regards,
David R

Isn't it a given we're talking about preference? I'm sure not trying to define RPGs by length, and whatever speculation I made about viability above is just that--speculation and chewing the fat.

I guess for me the thing is, I don't even have a very consistent schedule for gaming with a specific group. If I had half a dozen gaming friends that I met up with weekly--so that the simple act of getting together to game became part of the social rhythm--then maybe I'd look at short-form games a little differently. With long-form games you have social continuity assumed by the form. If social continuity exists sort of independently, that alters the equation a bit in my mind.