Midnight's lair recorded a session at last years royalcon that was chocked full of good advice about long term campaigns. It's Sean Punch and Stephane Theriault so it is GURPS focused, but much of the advice is great for any game.

I think most of the folks around here go for long term campaigns...

FWIW, I actually went psycho trying to avoid being GURPS-specific. I've played about 50-60 RPGs over 28 years, and only one of those games was GURPS.

Its okay...really it is.

 You're known for GURPS.

 Nice to see you on here, Sean!


- Ed C.

It's good long term campaign advise, period.

It is.  Kromm has a very strong overlying theme, that you should allow the motivations, ideas and desires of the players ultimately drive how you flesh out your world.  This is excellent advice (though open to argument).  But beyond that there are tons of little hints and suggestions both from Kromm and Stéphane, his player.  There's a lot of advice packed in here. It's going to require at least another listen for me.

I've mostly run long-term campaigns; and for me a long term campaign can mean five or six years of weekly play.

A game that lasts six months is, for me, a "short term game".

I would say that in fact, there are two things that are absolutely key to running a successful long-term campaign:

1. Having a stable group.  A lot of times this might be ignored by people because its so basic, but it is absolutely essential of course. You need a group of people, of enough numbers (I'd say 4 is the absolute minimum number of players, though you can do it with 3 if they're really really dedicated), that you know will show up every time, week after week, and be reliable. If your players are the sort that show up sometimes and sometimes not, you'll lack the base stability that will allow the campaign to run long-term.

2. having a timeline for your campaign.  It doesn't mean that every adventure must be preplanned ahead of time from the very beginning but what you do need, what has always made the difference for me between a game that succeeds at being long-term and one that fails, is that the ones that succeed are games where I've figured out where in the history of the setting they begin, where they go, and where they end.
For a campaign to stay interesting in the long term, it has to move forward in the timeline of the setting; if you aren't aware of time in the setting, if everything is just happening in some vague timeless state, if nothing seems to move forward; things have to change and develop beyond the actions of the player characters themselves. That is to say, new things have to happen that do not directly have anything to do with their own actions, but that have an effect on the world around them. Otherwise everything stays two-dimensional, and becomes repetitive no matter how much you try.  The way to keep the setting fresh and interesting is for time to go by and things to happen. Long term campaigns almost always demand a "living" world, a world where things change and develop, people come into and go from the characters' lives.

RPGPundit

Quote from: walkerp(though open to argument)

Mais oui. Despite my innate tendency to proclaim holy writ when I should be having a friendly chat, nothing I said was meant to be undebatable. It's just my experience of (rather too many) years of running long-term campaigns almost exclusively.

My advice is: live in a small town where not much happens, and only play with people you hang with anyway. If you do this you'll find yourself reaching the ten-year mark before you know it.

Quote from: KrommMais oui. Despite my innate tendency to proclaim holy writ when I should be having a friendly chat, nothing I said was meant to be undebatable. It's just my experience of (rather too many) years of running long-term campaigns almost exclusively.

Welcome aboard, Kromm. I hope you stick around!

RPGPundit

Quote from: KrommMais oui. Despite my innate tendency to proclaim holy writ when I should be having a friendly chat, nothing I said was meant to be undebatable. It's just my experience of (rather too many) years of running long-term campaigns almost exclusively.

And I didn't think you spoke as if it were the one true way in the panel.  I don't have enough experience myself to say, but it does seem to be better for many reasons to let your players drive things generally.  I know Stéphane was following this technique in his campaign and he was explicit about it.  But what was cool as a player was that I was never really able to tell where he was picking up from suggestions and actions we had made and where he was just providing the material itself.  So I never felt cheated from the immersion of being in another world and was always surprised by stuff, even if later he would say, "oh well you guys said you had wanted to go to earth, so that's why the trail of clues led that way."

Quote from: droogMy advice is: live in a small town where not much happens, and only play with people you hang with anyway. If you do this you'll find yourself reaching the ten-year mark before you know it.

Especially good if you start relatively young and live within a mile of each other.