Quote from: flyingmice;396844Hi Malcolm!

The Aubrey-Maturin books have been favorites of mine since I tripped over Master and Commander in the Boston Public Library back in the seventies. I literally grew up with Forester's Hornblower and Marryat's novels - along with Science Fiction - as my favorite books. My love of the genre is why I wrote In Harm's Way in the first place - there was nothing out there to play in the genre, and it's a perfect genre for roleplaying! Now, of course, not only has Beat to Quarters come out - have you read it? It's excellent, though a bit story oriented for me - but Privateers and Gentlemen has been re-released, so there are many more options for people, which is always a good thing.

The campaign is very definitely ongoing. We play a series of sessions every year, and it's pure awesome every time.

-clash

Oh yes, I'm very familiar with Beat to Quarters! That would be my system of choice for a Napoleonic campaign (which absolutely does not mean that In Harms War isn't great - just different strokes for different folks). A campaign in the style of 'The Mauritius Command' is something that I'd certainly like to see. In fact, I believe that Neil is working on a BtQ campaign pack of some kind at the moment. Certainly, it's the kind of thing that we've been discussing for various games.

I love the notion of a series of sessions per year, keeping the campaign rolling for a long time. That's something I've never actually done. Anyhow, long may your adventures continue!

Cheers
Malcolm

5 years ago, Deadlands Classic: a mix of Western and detective pulpiness set in over-the-top, post-war Louisiana. It was my first conscious attempt at a sandboxy campaign. I just set up mysteries and conspiracies, and let my players run wild. They had such inspired and brilliantly weird characters that it was always hilarious even when they spent a stretch of sessions accomplishing nothing. Best moments include the huckster engulfing an entire town in an earthquake after drawing a straight flush.

The best game I ever played in was 9 years ago. It was a D&D 3e game set in Arthurian Britain. The system didn't matter. The DM did a great job capturing dark, pulpy fantasy and the odd couple party (2 knights, a pagan cleric and a Viking barbarian scouting the isles for future invasion) spent many-a-session just arguing in brilliantly entertaining fashion.

Quote from: Malcolm Craig;396875Oh yes, I'm very familiar with Beat to Quarters! That would be my system of choice for a Napoleonic campaign (which absolutely does not mean that In Harms War isn't great - just different strokes for different folks). A campaign in the style of 'The Mauritius Command' is something that I'd certainly like to see. In fact, I believe that Neil is working on a BtQ campaign pack of some kind at the moment. Certainly, it's the kind of thing that we've been discussing for various games.

If I hadn't written IHW, I would have been playing Beat to Quarters, and I figured it would suit you very well. As it is, my projected Napoleonic Military game Scum of the Earth has been dropped since Niel's Duty & Honor came out - no more need for it.

QuoteI love the notion of a series of sessions per year, keeping the campaign rolling for a long time. That's something I've never actually done. Anyhow, long may your adventures continue!

Cheers
Malcolm

As a designer, I'm continually playtesting new games, kitbashing old games for new settings, and generally playing with ideas, so play time generally gets cluttered up. By doing a series every year, the game gets the feel of a long-running campaign, with development over years of time, without the investment of playtime needed for a traditional campaign. It's the best compromise I could think of, and the players never get bored...

-clash

30+ years later, they still improve.

My Igbarians take the cake for most story-worthy.  Currently in real-time year nine, but the first 5.5 were the Grey Legion campagn, with a near TPK that unleashed an ancient Vampyre Lord...since then, the storyline has shifted to the New Legion, led by the maimed survivor of the Grey Legion, trying to stem the power of the Vampyre.
They just finished 'book 1' of that, ending the power of the Vampyre's agents in the town of Igbar..took almost 4 years of play time...We get better as we get older.

My best campaign that I've ever ran was all based around a random encounter.  It was supposed to be a one off night because our regular DM needed a break because of exams, and so I decided to break out the DMG and do a random dungeon.

It was a hoot.  From one of the characters dipping their head into a pool of acid(He had fallen through an illusionary floor tile into a spiked pit trap.  He spied the next illusion and said "Ah-ha!  I've got this figured out!" And he stuck his face right in there to see how deep and long the trap was.  This one was just filled with acid.  A quick 10d6 damage later and he was screaming, blowing blood bubbles while the cleric and company tried to hold him down so they could heal him.)  ahem.  Anyways, they discovered a vampire was the big boss in the dungeon, and managed to defeat him, but couldn't locate his secret coffin to destroy him.  They fled to the morning sun before he could regenerate, and went running for their lives, forgetting that the fighter had exchanged his mundane shield for a magical one taken from a creature's hoard.  The device on the shield gave the vampire a clue to their identities and he became the big bad for the campaign.

The gang had a good time that night, so I put something together for the next evening, in which they came upon a kingdom in need. 'The Phoenix Scroll,'  a magical heirloom of the royal family that had been stolen, and they had been promised riches beyond their wildest dreams to get it back.  When asked what help the King would give them, he thought for a while, snapped his fingers, and gave them his seventh son, Detrimis, to help them.  

It lasted a couple of months, with Detrimis betraying them after a career as the worst henchmen ever, the growth and evolution of each character coming into their own with each saving the party from certain doom on a number of occasions, and came to a climax where the bad guy fighter had Detrimis at sword point to read the Phoneix Scroll to resurrect his Dragon God.  The poor noble bastard was sweating bullets and the invisible thief, who was there watching, intent on assassinating Detrimis before he could complete the rites discovered that Detrimis had been bluffing everyone the entire time!  (The Pcs knew he was useless, the bad guy NPCs did not.)  

It was an epic battle, where we discovered the true horror of Evard's Black Tentacles (One PC earning the nickname Tentaclese in the process) with friendly fire claiming two of the five PCs before they finally won the day, stopping the rise of an evil dragon and recovering the scroll for their king.

In the epilogue sitting, they returned home, rich and powerful, only to find that when they landed, one of their Henchmen being very distressed.  One of the PC's fathers had cornered him on their ship and 'Tried to make out with me! So I killed him!" (He was based off of Francais from Stripes)  Everyone immediately knew what had happened, and that stretched the epilogue into another sitting where they tried to set things straight by finishing off the vampire lord.

Fun times.  That was 13 years ago, and thanks to being grownups working in the service industry now, it's next to impossible to get everyone together on a regular basis.

Exalted 2e, which I ran over the course of 3 summers.

Absolutely in spite of the system and the larger setting elements.  Most of the fun came from hanging out with my best friends during a summers off from university, with the ability to have day-games (when people were off from work) and then go out and do other social things at night.  

It really worked well for us.  Lots of jokes, bullshitting, and just having fun.

Oh, the campaign ended suddenly, but it was one of those free-wheeling, sandbox type ones, so we weren't following any sort of meta-plot.

Not so much time anymore for really long campaigns, though.

My best campaign where everything seemed to come together almostly was my recent GURPS:TRAVELLER campaign. That campaign has been nicknamed the adventures of the Mggie's Marauders because the players were the crew of an Empress Marava-class freighter called the I.M.S. Margaret Thatcher. We played that freom April of 2004 to mid-summer of 2008. Heck, we might still be playing except for work schedules changing and one of the players having a pregnancy and baby. (Both husband and wife played in that campaign)
There was recently talk that we might start up once a month gaming...potential return sessions of that campaign - maybe.

Before that my best campaign was the saga of The Magig Bus a.k.a as the "Metro Team" of adventurers. (Cincinnati's commuter Bus company is called Cincinnati Metro) Those sessions ran once a month from December of 1990 through June of 1991.  The gist of the campaign was that the player characters were all riding a bus in the middle of july of 1986 that suddenly got zapped by strange blue lightning and all the passengers wind up on the bus, on another planet.

Have you seen the "DOCTOR WHO" special "Planet of the Dead" with the double decker bus?
 Yeah, my old players from that ggroup saw that special and said it seemed like the first two sessions of that campaign.


- Ed C.

Mine was a 3.0 early era (books were still 20 a pop) Dragonlance campaign.

Setup: Just after War of the Lance, taking place in the same region as "In Search of Dragons" did so I could swipe that hex map.

PCs are part of a Solamnic Knight Freelance Reserve unit I came up with.  Basically troubleshooters sent to deal with minor problems or local threats as the Knights had much bigger problems most of the time.

They get sent to investigate a beached ship.  (I used a ship map from the 2e Dragonlance box set.)  They find information on some bad magic items.  They fight a zombie minotaur.

That was it.

But they enjoyed it and nobody had to work the next day (or were willing to not sleep like a crazyperson..) so I came up with some local Draconians who were after the little bad magic item which I decided was part of a set, the "Tears of Takhisis".  They get owned by the Draconians and one PC gets captured.  He pulls a doublecross on the main Drac who manages to escape and becomes my main baddie because it seems like a good idea.

It then goes on from there with the Tears being bad magic objects that will bring the Big T to Ansalon and cause mass hysteria and such.  They escape from a zombie infested town, fight off a goblin force, find links to the Draconian's allies who just happen to be Deep Ones in a little island settlement called Innsmouth which the nearly weekly 6 month campaign ends with them fighting off Dagon with the help of an NPC who was really playing everyone against each other.

(See the NPC was a D&D character I ran in a badly DMed game where the DM was railroady and terrible and I didn't like the thought of the PC dying so stupidly.  I just jumped him a world over, kept his motivation at trying to save his dead halfling village via making a deal with Asmodeus to stop Takhsis which he did by polymorphing to a Draconian to work with the campaign's villain and being his "Security Specialist" Ninja Halfling self with the PCs who absolutely loved the guy, not realizing he was playing both sides to save the souls of his village.)

They also fought "Comet Monsters" which were Warhammer 40K Tyranids which involved escaping a sewer system under a town the monsters had infested all Aliens like and getting on a boat and fighting a cyborg shark that was trying to eat the boat after it let off the Tyranids to fight the PCs topside.  (Spacebugs can jump and all.  Hormogaunts used to do that in 2001.)

They also met Astinius of Palanthas and Raistlin, and sadly wussed out of using a Deck of Many Things because they weren't as dumb as I hoped for.

Sadly it ended with Dagon's defeat and the Draconian baddie escaping his Deep One allies getting owned by the PCs and the Knights of Solamnia.

We were going to switch over to D20 Star Wars for a while after the break but this was killed via the usual I ONLY PLAY D&D cocksuckers refusing to try it, and the host who always thought everyone was to play at his house whenever he wanted as he had a kid.  (Because a dumbass who got his wife pregnant around her senior prom is someone we should all accomodate given the fact the guy changed days off roughly every 6 months..)

He decided to change game days for his convenience and that was that.  The good news is both the DMs they started new campaigns with were pretty much SHITE and they constantly talked about how good my game was.

We tried continuing it once later on (again, because he switched days and expected everyone to follow him, which pretty much ended up killing a group that had 9 people playing in it at one point!) but weekday mornings are a really stupid time to game, especially if you sleep days to begin with.

It was going to have the Draconian with his Tears' enhanced powers of making undead fighting the Tyranids and the PCs in the middle.  Who would finally meet up for their ultimate confrontation with said Drac.  And my NPC would backstab them, causing them to get sent to a dark cyberpunk future where the Draconian had won but didn't have all 5 Tear pieces yet and they would have powered armor and magic enhanced equipment to try to not only stop him, but get back to the past and prevent his victory from happening at all.

As far as I am concerned with my personal D&D universe canon since it ended because they couldn't keep it together and play at a decent time acceptable to everyone, and not just a dumbass who didn't believe in birth control (they have since added 3 more kids) or respecting that other people may have schedules and families as well, the PCs failed and Krynn is under the control of the Aurak Draconian Galthik who still hasn't bothered to collect all 5 Tears for his dark queen.

2nd edition ad&d. Straight up fantasy. Playing with my best friends. Started when we were 14 (1989), kept on, on and off, most weekends for 10 years. Still playing with 2 of them. Still having a blast (though we're playing b/x now). Friggin love this hobby.

(First post here - hey everyone!)

How many sessions of the same thing do you need to play before you can call it a campaign?

I don't recall ever running anything that was long enough that it could be called a "campaign".  In 23 years of gaming I don't think I've GMed for the same set of characters in the same setting for more than 3~4 times in a row.

I have run a lifetime of one-shots and two-shots.  My brain just naturally thinks about gaming in terms of one-shots.  I don't think long term.

I've had so many that were great.

2E AD&D game that started at Zero level, but barely made it to Third, I made sure it was epic. They faced undead, searched for the Xerxes Codex, and continued to face evil across the world, forged their own magical weapons and saw a glimpse what holding the Xerxes Codex might do to the mage if he coveted its power. I used a"shell" on 2e AD&D that changed the feel. In that a mage knew only a couple of rune-spells but how he used them varied. The Rune for Freedom could burst locks, free an arrow to fly as a lethal missile, or free one from earth bound nature to levitate. The subdivisions were still suitable to D&D spells, but it was very shaped to limited spell types, but flexible in form.

The game challenged the player's perceptions of what AD&D could do and be in the right hands.


High Valor I had an ongoing campaign pre-release where the heroes began as two groups that met together, the heroes fought many dangers in and around the  valley that they lived in for most of the campaign. They faced off tax-stealing shapeshifters, a cockatrice, and several dragons, but none so powerful as Malevolence the mother of all dragons. Most of the heroes gave up their lives to guard her quartered heart, to keep it from merging again and awakening her once more to ravage the land. They left behind two characters--one as duke to rule the valley, and one to serve as his man-at-arms.

Quote from: Enlightened;397122How many sessions of the same thing do you need to play before you can call it a campaign?

I don't recall ever running anything that was long enough that it could be called a "campaign".  In 23 years of gaming I don't think I've GMed for the same set of characters in the same setting for more than 3~4 times in a row.

I have run a lifetime of one-shots and two-shots.  My brain just naturally thinks about gaming in terms of one-shots.  I don't think long term.

You're my good twin, seperated at birth.
34 years later, 99% long term campaigns.  current setting, started 1983.  Newest group up to 43 sessions.
Not good or bad...I just had to change my rules to stretch stuff out.

My best campaign ever is probably my Legion campaign, which is still running. So I guess I'm still in my prime.

RPGPundit

Quote from: LordVreeg;397163You're my good twin, seperated at birth.
34 years later, 99% long term campaigns.  current setting, started 1983.  Newest group up to 43 sessions.
Not good or bad...I just had to change my rules to stretch stuff out.

My GURPS:TRAVELLER campaign got up to at least 66 sessions.
Thats according to the numbering on the audiotapes.  We didn't game weekly, but twice a month, usuallly taking the month of July off and only gaming one session in June and August. Some years we only gamed one time in March because of Holidays.


- Ed C.

Quote from: kOLTAR

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegYou're my good twin, seperated at birth.
34 years later, 99% long term campaigns. current setting, started 1983. Newest group up to 43 sessions.
Not good or bad...I just had to change my rules to stretch stuff out.

My GURPS:TRAVELLER campaign got up to at least 66 sessions.
Thats according to the numbering on the audiotapes. We didn't game weekly, but twice a month, usuallly taking the month of July off and only gaming one session in June and August. Some years we only gamed one time in March because of Holidays.

43 is my newest group, Steel Isle Online.
Igbar has 121 session reports
Miston is the highest(I have 159 session reports, in 16 years).

Igbar is one every three weeks, Miston is once a month, though we have added sessions in and subtracted quite a few.  Miston is interesting because the story line and Base of Ops has remained, and ther are actually 2 very original characters in the group, played for all 159 sessions.

This is how I like to work.  But the more I read, the more I see that I am more of an outlier than I thought.  Not good, not bad.  Just a little more long term.