Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM
Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

I think it depends upon how dogmatically you stick to the storyline. Then again if you are planning political things they should probably happen if the players get involved or not. Eventually the players might take notice or feel the need to leave the area. Either way the setting feels alive and the players have agency.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 18, 2024, 05:33:34 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
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.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

A1-4 Slave Lords
T1-4 Hommlet to Temple of Elemental Evil
G1-3, D1-3, Q1, Against the Giants, Descent to the depth of the Earth/Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, Vault of the Drow, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
U1-3, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, The Final Enemy
X4,X5,X10, Master of the Desert Nomads, Temple of Death, Red Arrow Black Shield

All of these module series have a starting scenario and end goal, all also have elements of exploration in the wilderness (except Slave Lords).

All of the above will play out differently each time you run them.  You can have pre planned stuff and still have a non story game.

I love those X series modules, good times. You actually can kill the Master in X5 too so Red Arrow Black Sheild doesnt happen (which makes sense, when they made an actual Mystara timeline RABS was said to take place 100 years in the future cause it was basically replaced by test of the warlords.)

Quote from: yosemitemike on February 18, 2024, 05:46:47 AM
This is exactly the sort of dogmatic OneTrueWayism that made me avoid the entire OSR scene for years.

This is my least favorite part of the OSR.

But trust me, 5e fans are not too different.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
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.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

It seems you completely missed my point. Check the rest of my post of other posts mentioning classic modules.

Assuming an end in 10-12 sessions can happens for a number of reasons, including scheduling, since everyone also has a real life to take care of.

But I'm not even suggesting that. What I'm suggesting is that you can run a published module - almost ALL of them have a pre-planned goal - and calculate how many sessions it could take.

I've mentioned "Nights Dark Terror" that looks like 10-12 sessions to me, but I cannot be sure (haven't finished reading it).

You probably won't get an exact number (unless, again, real life stops you for some reason), but you can have an educated guess.

And the players can obviously give up on pursuing the slave lords or whatever, or drop out for a number of reasons.

Quote from: Ruprecht on February 18, 2024, 10:48:22 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM
Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

I think it depends upon how dogmatically you stick to the storyline. Then again if you are planning political things they should probably happen if the players get involved or not. Eventually the players might take notice or feel the need to leave the area. Either way the setting feels alive and the players have agency.

Yep. In the end, the DM decides what happens. A good DM, IMO, allows for player agency and doesn't enforce a scripted set of events.
But somebody's gotta come up with the content, and judge how that content plays out in response to the character's actions. The DM is the person with that responsibility, and the one who makes a decision as to how big a dungeon is, or how deep a conspiracy goes. Unless the adventure is purely RND table encounters, with no narrative to connect them to the camapaign setting.

These days; 5 good sessions in a row, is a Winner.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2024, 01:58:24 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 10:25:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 17, 2024, 06:06:07 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 05:07:49 PM
I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

I feel like there's something going wrong here. Why aren't the players developing their own goals? That's what sandboxing is all about.

I've given this a fair chunk of thought, and I reckon there's a few common factors.
...

Good thoughts!
Only 2-3 self motivated players is completely normal - you only really need 1 if they're at every game, but there's a big risk of them developing 'main character syndrome' so 2-3 is ideal IME. An entire group of self motivated self starters can be too much to handle, and tends to be highly fissile as competing agendas develop.
Decision paralysis - a sandbox without plenty of cool hooks is a litter box. Players only need a couple options, but the GM also needs to let things go in unexpected directions. For my 5e Basic game I have a rumour table, PCs can have 1 roll/week if they spend a gp carousing. I may do the same
with the new Cyberpunk game. I totally agree that a sandbox should be limited scale - the core area in my 5e Basic game is the town of Threshold and an 8x8 mile wilderness valley. In my Cyberpunk game it's South Night City, which IMC only has a population of something over 100,000 or so.
Not picking up on plans/communication - yes this is an issue. Maybe a player has a cool to them idea  but doesn't really express it well. Maybe the GM doesn't like it, it doesn't fit the game theme or doesn't seem to go anywhere. Looking at stuff from a different angle can really help there.
Time - I mostly disagree in that I find short frequent sessions are better suited to following one PC's agenda, then can wrap it and do a different one next time. Some games like 4e D&D just hate sandboxing though. But a huge battle can be fine if it's infrequent. Eg the massive shootout with the Dirty Cops kicking off my Cyberpunk game I think worked well, but I wouldn't want every game to be like that.
I agree re city sandbox, or neighbourhood within a large city. Give them a sandbox of limited scope they can easily grasp; it can always be expanded later.

I'm stuck with both short and relatively infrequent sessions (biweekly), which may explain some of the different experience. If most of the players have to sit around while one of them does their thing, and that's all the roleplaying they get to do for two weeks, they might be more disappointed.

It's probably worth noting that when I'm talking about a sandbox in this context, I mean a procedural sandbox: a hexcrawl, pointcrawl, megadungeon, etc. Something where most of the content is intended to be laid out in advance, and then players choose which way to go and the DM responds by reading the notes or rolling on a table. That's easy to contrast with something like a Pathfinder adventure path or one of the longer WFRP campaigns, where there's a pre-determined endpoint and a presumed sequence of beats the players are going to hit on the way there. For the record, I do think you can run the latter style in a way that provides for plenty of player choice, but for the sake of argument let's call that a railroad.

Thing is, neither of those are how most games are run IME. What I think most people do you could more properly call "a railroad where you lay the tracks down in front of you as you go". Most DMs come into each session with a rough idea of what's going to happen that night. That's what they prep for, and there's an implicit understanding that the players will go roughly in the direction the DM lays out. And then based on the events of each session, the DM goes off between games and works out what would happen next. That's how we always ran games growing up, and part of me suspects it's still the superior method. I've largely moved away from it since I went to VTT, because of the expectation in that environment of having assets prepared for everything, but I've been thinking I'd rather get back to it in future.

I'm definitely not generally in favour of GM creating everything in advance, though I do run a lot of megadungeons these days. If homebrewing I find it's much better to develop a bare frame first, then by player interest. I wouldn't have detailed South Night City Precinct Station #14 if there wasn't a Lawman PC.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out.

Because they fall for this trolling that 1:1 time must be used for near everything. Or actually everything as some of these fucks extol.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2024, 06:17:47 PM
I'm definitely not generally in favour of GM creating everything in advance, though I do run a lot of megadungeons these days. If homebrewing I find it's much better to develop a bare frame first, then by player interest. I wouldn't have detailed South Night City Precinct Station #14 if there wasn't a Lawman PC.

Fully agree. A have basic overview of a lot of things and add detail once you know what the part is interested in pursuing. Save yourself a lot of time and frustration that way.

Wrong topic. Deleted.

My general experience is that players take several sessions to "get into character" for any given campaign. Some experienced roleplayers can do that much faster and a few slower learners take longer.

At the same time, after about twenty sessions, about one session in five to one in ten turns into a dud which feels weaker than the rest. This is generally because your original character Macguffins are either getting satisfied and the PCs have to shuffle to find new ones or they aren't making any progress and their life goals are going on the backburner. Neither of those feel great. After about thirty sessions, you may as well start a new campaign with new characters because the core motivations have either rotated out or fossilized. The Ship of Theseus paradox means that if the campaign is working well, you are already all playing new characters.

This leads me to my conclusion that the best campaigns tend to be between ten sessions and twenty sessions long. That is long enough that players can break their characters in, get a feel for the world, get major character goals done, get friendships with each other, and wrap up a world-changing threat, but it is not so long that you leave much time for faffing about and wind up with several meh sessions. And this is before we start talking about game mechanics, which tend to sputter and fail after fifty sessions.

I won't say there's anything inherently wrong with ultra-long term play, but that long campaigns should be the exception and not the norm. People look at them like they're something special, and as someone who has been in a few....they often wind up being monuments to mediocrity.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 19, 2024, 06:05:11 PM
My general experience is that players take several sessions to "get into character" for any given campaign. Some experienced roleplayers can do that much faster and a few slower learners take longer.

At the same time, after about twenty sessions, about one session in five to one in ten turns into a dud which feels weaker than the rest. This is generally because your original character Macguffins are either getting satisfied and the PCs have to shuffle to find new ones or they aren't making any progress and their life goals are going on the backburner. Neither of those feel great. After about thirty sessions, you may as well start a new campaign with new characters because the core motivations have either rotated out or fossilized. The Ship of Theseus paradox means that if the campaign is working well, you are already all playing new characters.

This leads me to my conclusion that the best campaigns tend to be between ten sessions and twenty sessions long. That is long enough that players can break their characters in, get a feel for the world, get major character goals done, get friendships with each other, and wrap up a world-changing threat, but it is not so long that you leave much time for faffing about and wind up with several meh sessions. And this is before we start talking about game mechanics, which tend to sputter and fail after fifty sessions.

I won't say there's anything inherently wrong with ultra-long term play, but that long campaigns should be the exception and not the norm. People look at them like they're something special, and as someone who has been in a few....they often wind up being monuments to mediocrity.

You need the right group for it to work and taking breaks from it is key.

We have 2-3 DM's  who rotate around as befitting the story points, 10+ players, and play every other weekend at the same time for the last 20+ years. Our campaigns last 2-3years at minimum with capping out at level 12-15. I've had a core group that has been with me for the entire time and many come and go.  It's upto me to be the Cruise Director to make sure who will be attending and the date we will be playing on.  We have moved and canceled dates when Real Life comes up and since it's twice a month people SHOULD be able to plan around that same time. 

We heavily involve the players with an overarching framework of a plot tied to their backstory with a broad set of guardrails to make sure they reach the finish line of the end story.   How they get there is upto them and the plot changes and shifts like the sands of the desert and we adapt with the choices they make.  75% is homegrown with 25% being heavily modified content.

I'd love nothing more than to run a Mega-Dungeon and have multiple parties coming in and out of it with lots of changes as the plot unfolds.  I have 2 players who would love that to death, old school folks, the rest would be bored out of their skulls and they want to feel like they are playing in a more dynamic and engaging story where their choices can and do matter.

I had to learn to read my players and to blend what I enjoy running with the stories that they come up with which are far far wilder than anything my imagination can dream up. That buy in is critical to not having a campaign drag out into eternity and to avoid the crash-and-burn which is all too common in RPG campaigns.

These days I prefer one-shots and short story arcs.  I might not live long enough for a decades long campaign.  :-)