As much as I hate to say it, it looks like my Runelords campaign has fizzled out. After taking two months off, I had been planning to start "Fortress of the Stone Giants" in September, but it looks like half of my players have decided not to continue.
I had one player resign at the end of June ("This campaign just isn't doing it for me. It's kind of becoming a chore.") Another just let me know that his schedule isn't going to allow gaming on any night that the rest of us could play. I had invited a former player (who quit about halfway through "Skinsaw Murders") to re-join, but he said that he can't commit to playing more than once or twice a month.
I think I need to pull the plug. While I'm kind of bummed about it, we have been playing this campaign for more than two years already, and we're only a bit more than halfway through it. I had gotten a bit burned out from GMing, although I was looking forward to getting back into it after taking July and August off.
We got through "Hook Mountain Massacre," and also ran through my own Book 4, "Seven Swords of Sin." I was gearing up to start running "Fortress of the Stone Giants" in September, but it looks like my group of players has disbanded.
How far have other groups gotten? Is this a point where a lot of groups fizzle out?
It depends really. I've run into a scheduling problem with my two groups as one of my gamers recently got a part-time job... for weekend afternoons and evenings. Hopefully we might be able to pull off Saturday nights. But yeah, real-life can intrude on games. And the longer a break, the more you lose that momentum.
PbP games can be even worse off. One game here never got to the first goblin fight!
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I was very lucky in choosing a core group of three close friends who've been very stable; one party member nearly moved to Georgia (we're in California), but decided against it.
So we're just moving into Book 5 after an unexpectedly-long detour into a custom campaign. The side quest really revitalized the AP for us; for books 1-4 I had no problem threading all the plots together so the players WANTED to continue (they all really enjoy playing good-aligned characters, so putting towns in danger is all I need to motivate them). The beginning of Book 5 is basically, "Oh, by the way, at some point in your lives you might want to investigate this ancient ruin." Not exactly motivating. So I put in a multi-month (real time) side quest to Absalom, and now they're itching to get back on track.
Ask me in another 6 months whether we make it all the way through.
EDIT: On the other hand, my Curse of the Crimson Throne game died at the end of Book 5 because I started GM'ing three other campaigns and didn't have the time, and my Kingmaker campaign died just before the end of Book 1 because I hated GM'ing it, had too many players, and had one player I just can't GM for.
We've already started discussing doing a RotRL/Crimson Throne crossover just to finish that thread off, but we'd end up with 9 PCs including 3 GMNPCs, which is a little much for me to manage...
I've killed several campaigns because they were not fun for me.
The first time I was running Night Below, I had a problem player who after a long time of being disruptive finally tried to kill my GMPC. This turned some of the other players against her and I said "eff it!" and refused to let her in the group ever again (which resulted in a third of the group leaving - she went on to run her own campaign in which she kept trying to screw over the players and kept getting pissed when one of them kept outsmarting her).
Several homemade campaigns died at various points (and the last campaign I had that died was because a divorce between players) but often it's because it's no longer fun for me. I'll admit that Runelords and RoW are... different so far. There is something about them that makes them fun to play. I've not gotten too many other games (2/3rds of Jade Regent) so I'm not sure if this is the case with most of the APs... but I half-suspect it is from what I've heard.
After three years and about a dozen deaths, my players and I packed it in midway through book 5. The party was TPK'd in The Festering Maze chapter, and after that we were all kinda fed up with this AP. Its a tough grind, so we decided to start fresh with something else. But to be honest I welcomed the change. I was never feeling it with Runelords. I've run Age of Worms, Legacy of Fire and currently have another group in Crimson Throne and love all of them, but Runelords never took off.
My group just got into Runeforge (last stage of part 5) today. It's been 21 months since we started.
I found myself frustrated in the first half because the party had less agency than I like - the narrative takes its sweet time getting going. (Or rather, there's a lot of slightly-related events occurring and it's a while before the party unravels enough threads to see what's happening.)
This may have bugged me more than it bugged my players - fortunately they stuck with it - but maybe check with yours and see how their understanding of the story is. If they don't have much clue, and are frustrated because of it, I wouldn't be too surprised.
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i game with my wife and kids, even then its hard scheduling, especially in the summer when they all just want to stay outside playing in the yard:) which really isn't a problem i guess:) at least they aren't inside zoning out on video games:)
i game with my wife and kids, even then its hard scheduling, especially in the summer when they all just want to stay outside playing in the yard:) which really isn't a problem i guess:) at least they aren't inside zoning out on video games:)
Yep; my "dead" Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign was a wife-and-kids group. Incredibly fun until in-family scheduling issues kind of killed it off. But the kids want to start it up again, so I figure a RotRL/CotCT crossover is inevitable. Should be a blast.
With us its jade regent should pick up when the weather turns and they're stuck inside with nothing to do mwahahaha!
I've been playing RotR with 3 close friends (one works from home, the other collects unemployment, and the third works with me so we have the same schedule) and it's been very easy to get together once or sometimes twice a week. We've only been playing for maybe 4 months and in our last session we cleared out the courtyard of Fort Rannick in book 3. One of the players is unfortunately moving to a different city and will make it hard to role play on a regular basis.
In my 10 years of GMing experience, I've found that the more frequently I can run games, the longer they go. Its easier to be more invested in a campaign when you're playing 3-4 times a month than when its just once a month or skipping months all together. My second group is a once a month type of group and it's often disorganized and we spend a lot of time recapping and don't advance very far during a session so the campaigns with them generally fizzle out around levels 3-5.
We game weekly, or at least try to. However, our sessions were scheduled to run 7:30 to 11:00, but often don't get started until 8:30, so we often only get 90 min - 2 hours of gaming in on a given session. We've had some larger combat encounters that take three sessions to complete.
We also had two members of the group move out of town, and have been connecting via Skype and VTT (MapTool). This has also slowed down gameplay, as we often end up having to repeat ourselves several times to make ourselves understood.
Two of my players want to forge on. I'm contemplating whether to try to recruit two new players to either play the existing PCs or to bring in new 12th-level characters; or to just call it quits.
None of my friends have set schedules, and my bf is a merciless gm whose games I carry four character sheets to because I die. Constantly. And people keep bringing the characters back.
Things are so frelling difficult and the players so distractable that it took us a year to get through the first book of S and S.
Pbp... who knows? Unless you have an insanely committed group, it's hard to get anywhere. Usually, it just fizzles out due to irl changes.
I have never been able to finish a campaign before in my life.
I probably never will.
I had one game that actually ran for about six continuous years. That was my longest campaign. Some of my others have run as short as two sessions, or as long as about six to seven months, playing weekly. All of these have been homebrew campaigns, not adventure paths/modules.
Hmm, I've got one that looks to be collapsing. We've had a few issues going in though. One of the co-GM's needs to either get his act together or flat out communicate that he isn't going to show up. The other co-GM (who owns the book) wants to play more than the GMing he's been forced to. Finally, one of the other players is currently lost to work at the Renaissance Festival for at least the next month or so.
Haladir: Consider having them (and you!) look into decent microphones. I'm hard of hearing. But I don't have a problem with hearing my players on Skype; with one exception, and everyone had a problem with her. Finally I insisted she get a new mike, and after she did the problem cleared up.
Of my groups, one is completely done over Skype (while one player is local, even if she's over my place for the game, we play from separate rooms so she has room to roll dice and all that) and the second has one Skype player.
completed this AP
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You might also want to think of the purpose for getting together. For us it's a social occasion. Gaming is the excuse. What's your group's motivation?
This 100%. My group has been playing together for 13 years. We are are all 45+ and for us it's a social occasion. When we started in early 2001 a bunch of were friends who happened to work together. Only two of us had kids and one of us was married.
Now only two of us do not have children all of us have been married. One divorce and one widowing. We also booted a disruptive player.
Our schedule is friday every two weeks. Our wives know this and respect it as our guy's night. I mean would you rather your husband is at the bar or drinking beer and rolling dice with his friends.
We keep the momentum by some RP, shopping and crafting in between by email. Generally we want to hang out with each other and have fun.
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We got through a combo Rise of the Runelords/CoTCT mix.
Only two people with the same character from start to finish who also playing in all but one or two sesssions.
One person had the same character, but missed several levels due to scheduling.
One person moved away, 2 people kind of faded out of the group, and two people were there at the end but inconsistent in the middle.
Over 3 or 4 years...not bad. :)
So we're just moving into Book 5 after an unexpectedly-long detour into a custom campaign. The side quest really revitalized the AP for us; for books 1-4 I had no problem threading all the plots together so the players WANTED to continue (they all really enjoy playing good-aligned characters, so putting towns in danger is all I need to motivate them). The beginning of Book 5 is basically, "Oh, by the way, at some point in your lives you might want to investigate this ancient ruin." Not exactly motivating. So I put in a multi-month (real time) side quest to Absalom, and now they're itching to get back on track.
Huzzah! Glad to hear your campaign's still going, NobodysHome. I'm interested in hearing how your party handles book 5.
For my own campaign, I put it on hiatus at the beginning of book 6. RotRL has been my first long-running foray into GMing, and the high-level play was wearing me down. After a couple of months of being frustrated with Pathfinder, I think I've reconciled my differences enough to start back up again, so - once I get back from travelling all next month - I'm looking at condensing book 6 into one long, epic session and finishing the campaign on a high note.
Finished the skinsaw murders then asked one of the players if he could run a module (he chose Tomb of Horrors). After finishing the module I realized how burnt out I was and how much of a chore it turned into. Taking an extended break from RotRL, playing in Age of Worms right now and having much more fun. Will probably go back to RotRL some day though.
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Huzzah! Glad to hear your campaign's still going, NobodysHome. I'm interested in hearing how your party handles book 5.
Oh, as I posted, "real" life started interfering back in June, and while things have stabilized, I'm fully three writeups behind. Hoping to catch up a bit now that the kids are in school, but I'm also prepping RotRL and doing the Leilani journal on the Second Darkness thread (yeah, in theory it's supposed to be ALL the players, but she seems to be posting all alone at the moment), so they're coming slowly but surely.
We're back to one game a week, mostly on Fridays, but some Saturdays.