Haven't played in years. Looking to start again. But I do remember starting much the same way. Running campaigns that lasted the entire school year or more. Then later in life much the same meet once a month for long sessions and the campaign seemed to go on for ever slowly advancing up through the levels. One such campaign actually took us high enough to start down the old "immortals" line
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A friend of mine met me out a month ago and we were chatting about the olden days. How back in our 20's-30's we'd make up an epic character, get joined by other players and game on for like a year and a half on the same guy. We waxed nostalgic about making upwards of 15th level, getting followers, and really creating a portion of the gameworld that truly belonged to us.
Over the past few weeks I've been reviewing my own games of late. I've been running homebrew campaigns for the past 7 years. In total over that time I've begun 5 different campaigns; none has made it past 6th level.
I'm wondering if my experience is unique or common here in the forums. If this inspires the telling of epic tales of your campaign, go for it.
I was thinking about this last night. Our campaign "The Ragged and the Raw" will have its two year anniversary this week. The team has logged in just over 320 hours of in-game time, not to mention the countless hours driving, setting up, eating, socializing that surround any ongoing campaign.
Personally I'm really proud of them, our core 4 players stuck with it even when half the team had to move 110 miles away for a great job around month 6. From day one everyone has jumped in to host alternatively and make it work.
Because we are older gamers and have crazy schedules we tend to play less often but play rather long sessions when we do. Usually we play 2 sessions 15-18 hours in length two Saturdays in a row every few months. While I would love to play every week or two I also appreciate how these long sessions close together mean that everyone is up to speed and invested.
We have been lucky enough to have several couples join the campaign for a few sessions now and then to give the core 4 a couple extra hands. And we have only just signed on two new players after they joined the team for the last 36 hours.
The players are all 11th, with one 12th lev at this point and I'm thrilled to be able to let an old campaign of my youth, 20's, 30's, 40's and many previous systems unfold in a unhurried fashion.
I don't know if it would have been possible without the Pathfinder system and it's massive catalog of classes, races, feats, archtypes, etc... When I decided to dust off and resurrect my old chronicle and give in one last hurrah with a brand spanking new group I was amazed at how well the Pathfinder systems could be used to bind all the old D&D, 2nd D&D, oriental adventures, stormbringer, larp, and Earthdawn quests and that had been created for it over the years.
It took about 9 months to convert everything to Pathfinder, and for a brief moment I worried that maybe I should have gone with D&D 5e but after making the choice i never looked back. Pathfinder is so bloody flexible.
So starting our third year I'll run out some numbers and thanks to Garrett Shadowborn the day-born prince, Amra the high priestess of the Dawnflower, Madagasgar Rosewood the brilliant Wyrwood investigator and Deus the deadly Arcane Archer.
324 Hours of play
786 Foes slain
29 Foes defeated
3 lost realms rediscovered
7 Very dangerous enemies made
4 deaths (only going to get worse, high level = boom boom)
63 snapped bow strings
3500 miles driven
200+ red bulls consumed
5,000 laughs
300 Bad puns
Thanks guys!
My first Pathfinder campaign started as a v.3.5 Freeport game that we converted halfway through. We played about 2 years in v.3.5, took a year hiatus due to jobs relocating (during which we converted things over to PF), and then played another 2 years in PF. The party was 6th level when we converted, and reached 9th by the time we wrapped.
We could have kept going with Freeport, but we all wanted to get started on my new "Time of the Tarrasque" game, which has been going since January of this year. We haven't been able to meet as often as we'd like (only about once a month), so the PCs are only up to 3rd level.
I had about 30 years of playing and running campaigns in various editions of D&D, plus GURPS, BESM, and other systems, before I got into PF. The length of those campaigns varied greatly. My longest campaign has been the solo BESM game I've run for my wife for the past 10 years, but for group play, the longer campaigns manage to keep going about 2-3 years. This last Freeport campaign--my third in the setting--has been the longest group game I've run to date. (My 3-year GURPS fantasy campaign was the previous record holder.)
For d20 games that start at 1st-2nd level, I seem to able to keep them going to around 7th-9th. I haven't run much stuff at higher levels than that, except for a year-long v.3.5 campaign that went from 9th up to 12th or 13th. In that respect, my "Time of the Tarrasque" campaign is the most ambitious game I've ever run: we're hoping to keep it going to 20th level, and I may introduce the mythic rules at some point, too.
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the most ambitious game I've ever run: we're hoping to keep it going to 20th level, and I may introduce the mythic rules at some point, too.
Nice! the campaign I have my group running has a lot of it's history in the old EarthDawn game. ED had a mechanic called Karma that I needed to reproduce in Pathfinder. I hadn't read Mythic adventures when I was doing all the conversions because I thought it was only for LV 20 end-game content. So I went ahead and cracked it on my own, only to find out later when I read mythic that there were some very handy things I could have used, or even the UC hero points for that matter... Hilarious!
Well my mighty players are getting together this weeked to start on the next 300+ hours of game play and I can't wait.
Good gaming folks!
Nice! the campaign I have my group running has a lot of it's history in the old EarthDawn game.
My wife has run a couple of short Earthdawn campaigns for us when we've needed a break from the group's primary campaign. She backed the Kickstarter for the new 4th edition of the game, so we'll be converting to that whenever she feels ready to run some more Earthdawn. (She recently dug out the books to read a lot more of the new rules, so I'm hoping that will be sooner rather than later. I miss playing my obsidiman warrior!)
I run only homebrew games, but my current one has lasted 3 years. I did run one that lasted 9 years before.
The current one is about an average of 17th level with 7 or 8 Mythic Tiers.
We're running S&S now, but no telling how far that will go.
That fizzled out at 9th level. Playing in a homebree/AP hybrid right now, and we are 5th level after 13 months and 13 sessions. One more session and then we will "temporarily" play Starfinder. We will see how temporary it is.
We're at 17/M5 in a homebrew PF campaign that's been going on for several years now (scheduling plus time zone differences--we play online using Minecraft and Skype). Still going strong, though it sounds like we're getting close to wrapping up the overarching plot arc. I'm starting to not really care what the next level is going to, though, as I feel like my character is good enough at what they do to not need anything else, but not enough levels remain to do much else of relevance. Eh, maybe I should take a level of bard or something. With 9 Charisma. And an inability to read. Bahahahaha.
Concurrently, I'm in a CotCT group that's hit 6th level after a few weeks; we expect to make it to 17 by end of path. Fast progression and a somewhat stricter schedule help this one, well, progress faster.
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Most campaigns last less than 5 sessions, unfortunately. After that, I see most lasting a year or about two dozen sessions. If you get lucky, a group just gells and go for years. The group playing tonight at LGS is over the first hump and bearing down on a year of weekly games, but have changed GMs and had only 2 of the original people, though some were not there.
It is real important to create the group that works well. Alas, the universe conspires against us.
In the "modern" era (since we've been adults out of college), our group has not turned over too much.
My first real campaign out of college that I ran lasted about a year and a half playing once a week until it was concluded. It was a totally homebrew world using the Temple of Elemental Evil as a basis for the campaign.
Once a week became too much for our schedules, so we switched to every other week around the time I started my Undermountain homebrew campaign (Forgotten Realms). That campaign ran for over 5 years before we concluded it.
Then I passed the reins to a buddy who ran a homebrew campaign that lasted for 2-3 years iirc before we completed it.
Another friend tried his hand but the homebrew campaign only lasted about 6 months before he had to call it quits. That campaign was our first use of Pathfinder (Beta rules, CRB wasn't out yet).
Then I ran another homebrew campaign set in Golarion using Pathfinder rules. That lasted for about a year and a half before I decided I needed a time out (we were about halfway done with the campaign and have talked about revisiting it at some point).
Another friend wanted to run Carrion Crown, so we played that for about 4 years and even extended it up to 20 using Paladin in Hell.
Now I'm running a 5e version of Giantslayer. We've been playing for a year and a half are almost halfway done with it.
Our group tends to make cool characters and stick with them. We don't have much in the way of character turnover. Generally, the ones that start out on the adventure are the ones that complete it.
Giantslayer about 20 months. Our 3rd player travels for long periods occasionally, which drags things out. We're into book 5, and should be done with it in 4 or 5 more sessions. Book 6 looks to push us into November assuming we play most weeks.
Mummy's Mask made it 14 months. We were near the end of book 4, and then life happened in ways that prevented the full group from continuing. It was sad that we had to drop it, but fortunately, there's no reason we can't pick it back up in the future (no loss of friendships or death, just life circumstance).
Hell's Rebels just started after 18 months of failed attempts to get off the ground. I'm stoked.
Emerald Spire Superdungeon will act as a filler while the above mentioned player is absent. It'll be just 3 of us, so we'll beef up the PCs a bit more than usual, but we like dungeons.
Fight of the Week, aka There's Something Rotten in Riddleport. Ongoing since Pathfinder existed, currently suspended while we play through as many APs as we can manage. The GM for that is one of my players now, and he's enjoying not worrying about the GM side of the house.
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In my experience it varies wildly, but it's not uncommon for games to burn out fast. The problem with collaborative gaming like this is that everyone has to be on the same page. The more similar the players various lives and schedules are, the more likely the game is to last. When one player has kids, another player works swing shift, a third just got a new dog, and a fourth is just a flake it's really hard to keep a game going. The longest running game I had was on deployment. We were all stuck in the desert and weren't going anywhere, so it wasn't hard to play consistently. The worst is when you have a flaky DM. If a player flakes out, it's annoying, but you can muddle on, the DM is essential. I've also had poor luck with PBP games. It seems like one person always ghosts early on, and when that happens it's not long before other people do too.
Also, I've noticed that the older I get, the harder it is to keep going (this seems to tie into the fact that you tend to have more responsibilities and demands on your time as you get older).
Ouch. Well, I was 47 when I started my first true campaign, so I don't have perspective of a 20-something group of buds that grew out of it due to life.
I was a player in a 12 year long DC Heroes campaign. Best gaming experience from a player point of view I ever had, and that includes my first experiences as a player in the 1e days.