A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out. I have run/played in such a campaign (it lasted near 20 years on and off) and it was very satisfying but the fact is for every game we started that ran ten full sessions we started five or six that didn't last beyond the second or third session. We played a lot of games and like to experiment.

My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions. If holds everyone's interest and people want to keep using their characters, you can keep it going. If not you can try something else.

If you're running a sandbox style game this isn't so much an issue but start out with something relatively small and contained if you are going to use a more narrative setting.

If you have a grand story in mind have an introductory period where you are facing off a lieutenant of the world-crushing Dark Lord and if people are into it you can escalate it into something bigger.

Also, don't be afraid to run a few one-off adventures, perhaps with premade characters, to find your stride before you get into something much larger; especially when playing with a new group of people where you don't know if everyone is going to commit to a more involved campaign.

The whole point of the hobby is for everyone to have a good time and that includes the GM. Don't make yourself crazy.

I really like running two ways now.

One level per mini-event.  You complete the current quest, you get a level.  I know that is a LOT faster than the XP progression of a lot of games, but I'm here to play, not grind out XP.

The other thing is to take on an idea that was core to one particular RPG, Legend of the Demon Lord.  In that OSR game (which has some interesting features for leveling up and classes) the premise is that by the time you reach level-10, the game's maximum, you are ready for The Big Bad.  The Demon Lord makes his appearance.  Also, the Demon Lord can be anything from a dragon, or a creepy child with no eyes, or a big minotaur with wings, whatever.  Then the endgame plays out and your final quest is to kill him.  Then roll up new characters are start over.

That game has a built in endgame scenario as part of its core design.

Good advice! 

I generally run mini campaigns strung together.  My maximum length of any individual campaign is 40 hours of play.  That doesn't mean the game is over.  Instead, I can then lead into another mini campaign that's essentially another episode in the same adventurers' lives.

I try to mix things up though.  I'll do a mystery/investigation mini campaign and then I'll so a wilderness mini campaign.  I really try to make things fresh and different.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I had a campaign that went for over a decade, but it was really just a series of adventures with a common setting and stable of characters rather than a story with an overarching plot.  More Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than Lord of the Rings.  That's probably what I'll continue to do, but I do see the appeal of a game with a overarching story.  Back when I was active on ENWorld, they had a Story Hour forum where people told the events of their game in narrative form.  Some of the games with a long plot were very entertaining to read and sounded like a lot of fun to be in.  If I were to do it I'd probably plot it out like a tv show.  I'd plan to have a story that wraps up in a season (about a year), with ideas about how to make that the first season part of a much longer story (decades).  That way you can get to the end of the season, finish the story in a satisfying way, then be ready to either move on to something else or continue with the next part of the larger story, whichever your group wants to do.

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 02:22:01 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

I don't recall seeing much of that here, and he's almost as new as you are.  My impression is that he has strong feelings on the subject and is still riled up from the last argument he had on it.  There are people that have had bad experiences with a DM forcing the players along his planned story no matter what they want to do, and they tend to think any story or plot in a game is bad.  IMO forcing a story is not fun for the players, but a disconnected series of events with no story connection is not super fun either.  For an RPG, you want to be somewhere in the middle

Quote from: Mishihari on February 17, 2024, 02:27:28 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 02:22:01 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

I don't recall seeing much of that here, and he's almost as new as you are.  My impression is that he has strong feelings on the subject and is still riled up from the last argument he had on it.  There are people that have had bad experiences with a DM forcing the players along his planned story no matter what they want to do, and they tend to think any story or plot in a game is bad.  IMO forcing a story is not fun for the players, but a disconnected series of events with no story connection is not super fun either.  For an RPG, you want to be somewhere in the middle

Fair enough.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 01:41:13 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

LOL. You don't know what are you talking about.

While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

For example, I'm planning running "Nights Dark Terror", which might take half a dozen sessions, not sure.

Of course, the PCs can "abandon the mission" at any point, but when you finish the module you can decide if you'll keep playing or not.

BTW:

Furthermore, there must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web which connects the evil and good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. This need not be evident at first, but as play continues, hints should be given to players, and their characters should become involved in the interaction and struggle between these vaster entities. Thus, characters begin as less than pawns, but as they progress in expertise, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly, piece in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose to their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.

1e DMG.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 03:33:13 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 01:41:13 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

LOL. You don't know what are you talking about.

Okay, you're a jackass; thanks for clarifying. Have fun elsewhere.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
Furthermore, there must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web which connects the evil and good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. This need not be evident at first, but as play continues, hints should be given to players, and their characters should become involved in the interaction and struggle between these vaster entities. Thus, characters begin as less than pawns, but as they progress in expertise, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly, piece in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose to their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.

1e DMG.

Good points. I like to start a new campaign in a very sandbox--do as you will fashion and then find something that interests the party and build a more narrative series of adventures based off that once I know they're into it. I'll run that then go back to sandbox style for a time, do a few this or that sessions, then maybe do another longer, multi-session adventure when it seems appropriate.  Flexibility is all important.