Quote from: Elliot WilenIsn't it a given we're talking about preference?

Sure, but sometimes I can't tell from the the tone of some (not yours) posts

QuoteIf social continuity exists sort of independently, that alters the equation a bit in my mind.

Interesting.

Regards,
David R

I'll offer that there are two subtly different elements here:  There's how long you actually play, and then there's the size of the chunks that are (as Mr. Funk puts it) sufficient to reward the investment in starting them up.

With the same group, I've done two different things:

• A campaign geared to run for 6 sessions, which we committed to and ran from start to finish without interruption.
• A game that ran (including character creation and prep-time) from start to finish in one evening ... followed by five more games of the same type, using the same characters and each building on the story of the one before.

Both games ran six sessions with a continuing (and building) story.  They didn't feel the same socially, though.

The first one felt very comforting:  I felt that I could count on people to see the whole thing through.  On the other hand, it took a fair degree of effort to get people committed and organized in the first place.

The second one felt less certain, but it was dead easy to start up and keep going.  "You wanna play another session tonight?"  "Sure, sounds good."

Anyway, 3 months of weekly gaming is about 13 sessions. I'm not sure if I'd call that short-form. At any rate it's at the upper end of "short". Probably the longest campaigns I was ever involved in were in the 30-60 session range. They generally weren't planned as "closed ended" nor did they end with any sort of closure. (One exception did have a pretty clear closure...after I'd stopped playing...and an implicitly closed-ended structure because it was a world-spanning quest.)

I suspect implicitly open (or implicitly long-form as in dozens of sessions) games tend to have a different feel to them even compared to short-form even if they fizzle after just a handful of sessions. I really like the "torn manuscript" feel that lingers between and after an open-form game, the sense that the narrative is only a small part of a larger world, while "closed-form" by virtue of being self-contained loses that "allusive" feel.

Quote from: Abyssal MawLong running campaigns are universally better!

Unless they suck. Which I have seen more than a few do.

Quote from: TonyLBI'll offer that there are two subtly different elements here:  There's how long you actually play, and then there's the size of the chunks that are (as Mr. Funk puts it) sufficient to reward the investment in starting them up.

I don't know about that but your example is interesting in another way: I'd be more excited about the second game, and I suspect it's because of the open-ended nature. Basically the original "campaign" concept was just that: adding interest to more or less self-contained adventures by stringing them together into a continuity.

Quote from: Elliot WilenAnyway, 3 months of weekly gaming is about 13 sessions. I'm not sure if I'd call that short-form. At any rate it's at the upper end of "short".

I don't know if this is directed at me but...you've got to add the other months the campaign continues in, hence you've got a longer campaign (I'd say about 40 sessions) and a deeper narrative.

QuoteI really like the "torn manuscript" feel that lingers between and after an open-form game, the sense that the narrative is only a small part of a larger world, while "closed-form" by virtue of being self-contained loses that "allusive" feel.

I suspect that this only applies to "epic" type games. When the campaign revolves around "characters" as opposed to world shattering events, there is a sense that the setting "lives" on long after the characters have played their part...IMO .

Regards,
David R

Oh, I didn't realize you continued the game after rotating it out for a while. Sounds more long-form then, with occasional one-offs.

But, nope, I'm not really very into epic games; one of the long campaigns (the one that was closed in principle) did focus on world-shattering events, another focused more on a local conflict (never fully resolved, though things were going in our favor), while others were more in the episodic/wandering style. I think you're pointing in roughly the right direction but it's not an epic-vs.-character-focused issue.

Those who only know and think RPGs (hammer) want to use them for every nail that exists.

Quote from: Elliot WilenOh, I didn't realize you continued the game after rotating it out for a while. Sounds more long-form then, with occasional one-offs.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the closed-ended campaign where there is at least an option to go back and play the next phase.  Whether you play as the same characters, or different characters in the same environment, or different characters in a different part of the game world.
 
It doesn't really matter the duration in between each phase of the campaign... it could be a single session or it could be months.  The key is that each time, the next phase is optional.  A bit like James Bond movies... each one stands alone, but together they form a loose series.  If reviews for the latest Bond movie are bad, you are not obliged to watch it.  You can always wait until the next installment.
 
Similarly, if you play a 12 week campaign, and some of the players don't enjoy it (or their availability becomes sketchy), you can play with a slightly different group composition next time.