What's the farthest you have gone in d20 tabletop roleplaying? Either in continuous level range, or in campaign completion? (It doesn't have to be Pathfinder necessarily, but should remain within the traditional d20 systems, for shared context.)
In over thirty years of roleplaying, I've only ever completed two full campaigns: 1st Edition's Skull and Shackles as a GM (covering levels 1-15) over the course of 5 long years, and 2nd Edition's Agents of Edgewatch as a player (champion, levels 1-20) for approximately 3 years.
Everything else was incomplete (typically 2-3 modules in for Paizo's adventure paths, or a year for homebrew campaigns), a one-off or stand-along adventure (most of which we completed), or Pathfinder Society Scenarios (my highest level PFS character is 8th).
What do you attribute to your success or failures?
For me, it was the play group. Played with the same group of friends for 28 years and never seemed to get anywhere due to lack of focus, scheduling conflicts, failing interest, and not enough respect for the GM (talking over the GM, playing handheld games under the table, arguing over rulings, and the like).
The last few years though? Got an online group together with people who genuinely desire to roleplay, respect each other's time and chosen roles, and have enough scratch to incentivize the GM to make it fun until the end.
It was a struggle, but the furthest I've ever gotten in any of my groups is completing all of Carrion Crown using 2e rules (although technically we started during the playtest, so it wasn't until the beginning of book 3 that the final version of the 2e rules published). In terms of level range, I extended things just a bit to level 17. Prior to that, we'd only ever made it to book 2 of any published AP.
It took 3 years, and by the end only like 2 original players made it to the end without having dropped out (although I did gain 2 players, and one of the dropouts managed to return with her character for the final dungeon). I attribute sheer stubbornness in the face of numerous delays and hiatuses. Also perhaps pushing myself to keep going a little harder than is safe for avoiding burnout, but that wasn't mostly the game's fault itself. Finally, most of the last book ended up being played in text games since I temporarily lost my Tuesday time slot, so I just posted screencaps of the Roll20 maps and wrote up turn-by-turn combat summaries after DMing everyone.
Before that the longest running game was a homebrew in 3.5e that went from 1-11 and broke down when the GM ran out of stock quest ideas (like finding the elemental orbs). That we can almost definitely attribute to being teenagers willing to play until 3am every weekend. Aside from that, a play though of Tomb of Annihilation made it to I think level 8 before collapsing from GM burnout (incidentally this game ran concurrently to my Carrion game, with almost all the same players but a different GM).
More recently the only d20 games I've played in have been 2e and 5e one-shots, which has actually been a really refreshing change and a chance to play more different character concepts, although I do kind of with that one 5e game hadn't fizzled at level 3. (also I really wish somebody else would start a 2e game so I could be a player in this fine system for a change).
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Completed Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Extinction Curse, Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, and several homebrew campaigns. Got 5/6 through Second Darkness and the group decided to quit because it's terrible (frankly we should have done that a couple of books earlier but book 5 was the breaking point). Had some other groups fizzle out over time as well, as these things go, but my completion rate is pretty good.
In progress on Shattered Star, Kingmaker, and Strength of Thousands right now (along with a second Ruby Phoenix I GM).
The key is a fixed schedule. Games that meet "every Sunday at 6:30" have a WAY higher success rate than games that "meet once a month if we can find a time that works." People can't plan around that and you get constant scheduling conflicts, problems, and general lack of commitment.
You need people that actually want to play, and can be available to play on a regular basis so everyone knows when to be free. Anything else is just an exercise in frustration.
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1e: We "finished" Jade Regent, if by finished you mean mostly TPK'd at the beginning of Book 6 with my character surviving and pulling Ameiko out of the carnage, and Ameiko deciding maybe she *didn't* want to be Empress, so we lived happily ever after somewhere else. Seems like we were around L15.
I'm currently running a group through Legendary Planet. They're halfway through book 3 (of 7) and just hit L9, Mythic Tier 2.
My highest PFS character was 11 or 12 (whatever the "ready to play Eyes of Ten level was") and I had 2 of them.
2e: I have a L18 character that is halfway through Book 6 of Strength of Thousand; we will be finishing soon.
I've got a L14 character most of the way through Shadows at Sundown (1-shot 12-14; character created for the adventure)
My highest PFS character is level 10.
Plenty of other stuff that broke up at lower levels.
Our rule is we play if 1 person can't make it and skip if 2 or more can't.The best advice I can give is schedule weekly games and play even if not everyone can make it.
Same, unless its a plot critical session, then we'll try to get everyone even if it means waiting a week.
We regularly complete two 1-20 campaigns a year. The main factors are consistent schedule (once a week, same time), rotating GMs, and simultaneous campaigns.
Simultaneous campaigns is huge as it allows 2 different GMs more time to prep between sessions and the ability to fill in if one isn't ready. This also helps keeps the schedule consistent, so we don't skip many sessions.
I GM's four campaigns from levels 1 - 20 (three homebrewn campaigns in D&D 3.5 and, ugh, Wrath of the Righteous) and about ten other AP's from start to finish. Starting on Abomination Vaults right now as my first 2E campaign and the plan is to continue with Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, so the next 1 - 20 campaign is penciled in. After we get done with Strange Aeons (where I am a player now, yay), we'll do a 2E conversion of Return of the Runelords for another 1 - 20 campaign.
[b]What's the farthest you have gone in d20 tabletop roleplaying?
I've never really played APs, mostly global campaigns. I manage to get a level 15 Bard and level 14 Fighter in Living Greyhawk, which had a much slower progression, so it was respectively 80 and 100 adventures to get there.
I had a few mid level characters in PFS1, the highest one being my level 13 Paladin, and reached level 12 with my Starfinder Mystic and nearly finished Dead Suns but PF2 ended the campaign just at the final level.
All Paizo adventure paths that I have run continued to the end, except of course for the one I am currently running. But that means I have not run very many adventure paths, only four complete ones, because finishing one takes years. We play for only 3 hours per week.
I began in 2011 by taking over my wife's Rise of the Runelords campaign when she had to quit as GM due to health problem in the middle of Hook Mountain Massacre. After the adventure path ended at 17th level, I continued the campaign with The Witchwar Legacy and then continued with homebrew material in order to play one mission at 20th level. However, only one character, the rogue Tierdh run by Greg Moe, remained in the party from 1st level to 20th level. Some players dropped out, some players switched characters, and my wife and I swapped the GM role. We played at a game store and could recruit new players after other players dropped out.
The next adventure path, Jade Regent, I ran from 1st level to its natural end with the characters awarded 17th level at the conclusion. Once again, some players dropped out and we recruited new ones at the game store.
In December 2015 I retired and we moved to share a house with old friends near Ithaca in upstate New York. We four--me, my wife, and our two housemates--began Iron Gods with me as GM and the other three as players. At 2nd level we recruited a local friend as a newbie fourth player. We ran Iron Gods to the 16th-level end.
We played Doomsday Dawn in the Pathfinder 2nd Edition playtest, but the playtest ended when we were only halfway through, so we did not finish that.
Once PF2 was published in 2019, I started a PF2 campaign. But Age of Ashes was not to my player's taste, so instead I converted Ironfang Invasion to PF2. I recruited an additional player, a bright high-school student from my church, as a fourth player. In March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to stop meeting in person and switched to playing online via Roll20. My elder daughter in Seattle, Washington, took that opportunity to join our game. Later my younger daughter and an online friend from Elder Scrolls Online (my wife and housemate are very active in ESO guilds) also joined, bringing us up to seven players. Ordinarily, Ironfang Invasion runs to only 17th level, but my players added several side quests and gained an extra level and a half. I decided to add more myself so that the converted Ironfang Invasion ran to 20th level. The end had a tight deadline, because the week after the last session in August 2023 the high-school student left for college.
We played the Free RPG day Pathfinder modules A Fistful of Flowers and A Few Flowers More to relax with a a mini-campaign before choosing our next long campaign. We liked the leshy characters so much that I homebrewed two more chapters based on The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Seven Samurai.
Next we tried out Starfinder with a series for four Free RPG Day modules Skitter Shot, Skitter Crash, Skitter Home, and Skitter Warp.
And currently we are playing Strength of Thousands. We began in April 2024. A new player is another online ESO friend in British Columbia, Canada.
I had hoped to join the Starfinder 2nd Edition playtest this summer, but my health and energy were not up to running a parallel game, and my players wanted more science in their science fiction than Starfinder modules offer.
In contrast, as a player the highest level my character reached was 15th level.
For scheduling conflicts, we mostly follow pH unbalanced's rules. One missing PC we could pretend the character was nearby somewhere, but two missing PCs usually led to a cancellation. If we played with a PC missing, the PC still earned full XP to keep everyone at the same level. Once my players cancelled the game session because I was sick yet foolishly wanted to run the game anyways.
The games at the game store in Maryland had some players leave mostly due to outside-of-game circumstances, such as moving to another state. The at-home games in New Yurk were mostly among housemates, so we stuck together. We did have two friend players who were in the first month of Ironfang Invasion drop out, one because she retired and moved away, and the other came down with brain cancer and died. In contrast, my younger daughter moved to another state during our online Ironfang Invasion campaign but stayed in the campaign because distance no longer mattered.
I try to run even if someone can't make it, but I'm not very good at it, either because there is a scene coming up that I know the particular missing person would like to be part of, or because I'm not confident in my ability to adjust combats down to account for three or fewer players. That second problem is something I should get over, though; 2E is pretty easy to adjust as needed.
I just have another PC run that character. It's pretty hard to explain why someone is suddenly not there halfway through a dungeon, especially if its someone key to the group's success.
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The furthest I've gotten GMing is where I'm at right now - we're about two sessions away from finishing Iron Gods at level 17. That campaign's been taking a looooong time, due to life getting in the way but also because in the beginning I meandered the plot a whole lot. There's a fair bit in the base AP that I was so-so on and wanted to change or elaborate. At some point the campaign had basically stalled, and we decided to pick it back up again but this time stick to the core of it and speed things up. And that's helped.
The furthest I've gotten as a player is going the whole 1-20 on Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch. The same GM for both of them, and I learned a lot about running a campaign a bit more in "getting things done" mode. Ashes we played every (other?) monday evening online, taking advantage of Roll20 and later Foundry automations to speed things up. Edgewatch was scheduled a lot more haphazardly.
I think a key driver for the success of those two campaigns and for the revival of my Iron Gods campaign is a focus on "what do I want to do this session". Trying to get a satisfying chunk of plot done in a session, keeping up momentum.
For Iron Gods, book 6 is basically one huge dungeon (starship) consisting of multiple decks. Each deck has a ton of fights in it. What has worked really well is aiming to clear one deck per session taking one in game day. We've agreed on the convenient fiction that as long as the party clears the deck in one go, we don't worry about the enemy being able to mobilize effective reinforcements from elsewhere.
So how do you clear a deck with as many 14 encounters in one game session (5 hours)? You abbreviate. I picked out two easier and two harder encounters to actually play out in full. I don't want to only do the hard encounters, to keep the palate balanced.
Then the remaining 10 encounters were ones where I thought the flavor was interesting, but it was just too much to do all of them in full. So I just described the situation to the players ("these enemies, like that, in a room like this..") and asked each of them what their main way of solving it would be, and to roll for it. So one player might be using a railgun to dissect the crowd, another one would be using stealth to sneak up on the leader and shank him, and so on. Add up all four results, and compare to the encounter's CR x 10. If the result is equal or higher, fine, the PCs wipe the encounter easily. If there's a difference, that's what everyone takes as damage. So if the players get 42+28+35+29=134 vs a CR 17 encounter, everyone takes 36 damage.
It's totally inaccurate of course. Laughably so. But it only takes five minutes to resolve, it keeps the flavor of the encounter and lets people come up with some creative tactics. Some resources are expended as well, but it's not completely routine and predictable. The damage taken per encounter has varied from 0 to 53. So this has worked really well for us.
When I first started playing the Satanic Panic was in full swing and when you spoke to others you had to talk in code like you were part of some secret organization.
Wish I had known better. I met with an elderly grandfather at a library once to discuss his bully grandson and his compensating me for the destruction of my property. (His grandson threw my D&D books off the top of the bleachers, repeatedly, until they had all fallen to pieces.) It was a pleasant enough conversation and he was most apologetic about his grandson's behavior...until he found out they were D&D books. He then went on a loud, public tyrade about how he would NEVER put a cent towards Satan's works and that his grandson was merely trying to save my soul from the fires of hell.
A couple years later, a local church burned my entire roleplaying book collection to ash.
The year after I graduated my high-school had a formal D&D club.
Crazy times.
Wow. What a question. Game has changed so much over the years. What have I finished?
When younger I played with different groups, as I hit my 20s I played with the same group that stuck out gaming, though a few have shifted in and out and now all these years later people have moved around, dropped out, and even sadly died.
Modules used to not be long-term, but piecemeal. I'll try to toss in what I can recall of the past.
1st and 2nd edition D and D:
1. Fate of Istus: This is I think Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st edition. We finished that. It was first to 15 or something. Level 15 in that edition wasn't easy.
2. Temple of Elemental Evil: We played this a ton. Not sure we finished it as it was so long. But we played it a ton to various levels from starters to level 12 to 15.
3. Undermountain: This was a lot like Temple of Elemental Evil. Giant dungeon we played multiple times as it had endless adventuring potential.
4. Against the Giants and Tomb of Horrors: Did this combination more than a few times. Gets you from about level 8 or 9 to 14 or so. You usually play lots of different modules to reach that level.
5. Finished lots of modules like Saltmarsh series, Vault of the Drow series, Slavelords Series, Isle of Dread, Ravenloft, and some low level series involving The Dalelands. Sword of Dawn or something. Three modules saving Randall Morn.
3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1: This is when we started APs.
1. Kingmaker: Finished Kingmaker. Everyone loved this module. Played it all the way to the end.
2. Runelords to book 4, maybe 5. Great AP.
3. Carrion Crown: Up to Book 5.
4. Did some homebrew demon campaign to level 17 when we all died because the DM created an overpowered encounter and didn't care when he wiped us out. This happened with this DM more than a few times. He burned out on prep and wanted to put the powergamers in their place at some point during every campaign.
5. Giantslayer: Finished Giantslayer. Super fun campaign. End was awesome. I wish they would redo Giantslayer for 2E. I think it would be way more fun fighting giants in 2E than when you became so powerful you crushed them in 1E. Giants are lot scarier in 2E.
We messed around with other APs, but those are the main ones we went deep into.
Pathfinder 2:
1. Age of Ashes: Book 5 and level 17. Didn't quite finish it.
2. Agents of Edgewatch: Finished it. Good fun. Unique AP.
3. Kingmaker: On book 5 right now on third attempt running it. First two crashed in Book 4 and Book 2. We'll probably finish this one.
4. Extinction Curse: Reached book 5 and level 17.
5. Abom Vaults: Book 3. Did not quite finish. Pretty fun though.
PF2 is easier to run.
Why did we crash over the years?
1. Interpersonal conflict: Just strange feuds as some players get along better than others.
2. Life Changes: Marriage, kids, less time, having to move for a job or school, job schedule changes, etc.
3. DM lost interest: DM would lose interest due to lost momentum or long breaks between sessions. So would decide to crash the campaign and move to something else.
4. Video games: Group took some long breaks when Everquest and World of Warcraft first came out and were at their peak. The allure of the amazing virtual worlds that brought these games we played to life in a living, breathing digital world really sucked us all in.
5. Negative Habits: Not going to discuss them too much as most people can imagine what these might be. A few people fell into some bad places.
That's how it's gone over the years. Surprised I'm still gaming after all these decades. Forty plus years or gaming.
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Oh, I was just talking Pathfinder.
For AD&D I ran the Giant modules, Drow modules, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits in high school/summer breaks in college.
I've run the AD&D Dragonlance series twice -- once for friends, and once for my children. Both times it broke up in DL9 (when you switch back to Tanis' group, who are lower level than what you've been playing). It's a shame, because the last few look *crazy*, with the mass combat battles mixed in.
(And yes -- I made my kids learn AD&D. They can THACO and complain about the bizarre arbitrary design. I also firmly believe that Tasslehoff Burrfoot is the best possible character to hand to an 8 year old.)
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Done a lot of full length APs and AP length homebrew. In the younger years of having a lot of free time as a group we were doing an 8+hr weekly session where we'd just hang out all day playing.
The longest campaign I ran was The Drow War which was a 3x campaign meant to use epic rules to go to 30. We weren't really enjoying the Epic side of things so brought forward a lot of the endgame stuff and wrapped it at 25.
In over 45 years of gaming, I've finished more than I can count. I started at age 9 with the basic rules. I think the highest level I ever made it too was 27 in 1st ed D and D in the Realms. So far in 2E pathfinder I've completed Age of Ashes, Abomination Vaults, and we are just finishing up Strength of Thousands.
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I am surprised that no has mentioned The Emerald Spire. I did that, played every level, claimed every hex of land and became a Baron at Level 14. With a Fire Kineticist.
One of the players uninterested in claiming the land asked me how I was going to deal with aggressive neighbors; the Spire is in the River Kingdoms after all. My answer is that I would fly by at 450' & burn a few of my neighbor's fields, as required. Which would result in my neighbors vying to push one of their daughters on me instead!
Somehow, I actually managed to finish one of the PF1 campaigns I ran in college, but that was a group starting at level 20 and going from tier 1 to 10 mythic. I ran another PF1 campaign from 6-20 with a most of the group members being traded out at one point or another.
More recently I have been playing with the same group for about 6 years (the same group I finished the PF1 campaign with) and we have done 1 full campaign in PF2 from 1-20 and are 2/3rds of the way through another.
I would say that my success comes largely from having a group that is actually there to play the game. Too many of the people I played with in college were just there because it was what their friends were doing on Friday night and they weren't actually interested in the game.
As a player I got to max level on a Kingmaker campaign, can't remember if it was 17 or higher. That one was very interesting. We started it using 4Es rules, then changed to 4E Essentials classes and finally we used PF1 rules to end the campaign. Took like 6 years to complete.
Aside from that, I have played some one-shots and PFS games but never got far in levels.
As a GM I have DM'ed several campaigns, most of them to the maximum level allowed:
- Savage Tide with D&D 3.5, I stopped the game at module 3 I believe due to personal circumstances.
- finished Red Hand of Doom converted to 4E, then continued with the higher level official Wizards modules up to lvl 21 epic tier I think. Didn't finish the campaign due to burnout.
- finished Age of Worms AP converted to PF1 rules, lvl 20.
- finished Rise of the Runelords PF1, lvl 18.
- finished Wrath of the Righteous PF1, lvl 20/Mythic Tier 10.
- finished Dead Suns Starfinder 1E, lvl 13 o 14 I believe.
- finished Age of Ashes PF2E, lvl 20.
- DMing Blood Lords, lvl 5 at the moment but I plan to finish it at lvl 20n with some mythic lvls added.
Success is mainly because of consistency and my particular method to run campaigns. I seek players interested in a long time game commitment and I explain to them why so we know we are on the same page. Basically if they come to the game, I promise them to deliver the full campaign experience customized for the characters' backstories.
We play once every week on Sundays. I have 5 players and if at least three of them can make the game, we usually play. I always have some NPCs that are built into the story and fill the missing slot to support the group. Since I do weekly recaps by email after every session, the missing players can keep up with what is happening in game, and also reference those texts to remember names, places, important plot points, etc.
I had the same group up to Wrath of the Righteous, then after some abrupt changes in my life I formed another one for Dead Suns onwards. Very happy right now in that regard.
What's the farthest you have gone in d20 tabletop roleplaying? Either in continuous level range, or in campaign completion? (It doesn't have to be Pathfinder necessarily, but should remain within the traditional d20 systems, for shared context.)
What do you attribute to your success or failures?
Despite 30 years of gaming in d20 systems, I’ve only fully completed campaigns in the past eight years. The Emerald Spire was the first, finishing at 14th level if I’m remembering correctly. The success of that was due to most of the players also being GMs, so each of us committed to GMing two or three levels of the super dungeon. Each level was played in one session, so it was easy to rationalize when PCs missed a session that they had just stayed back in town. I missed more gaming sessions than I would have liked, but it was fun overall and the folks who missed would just level up alongside the others using Pathfinder Society open play rules.
The campaign that really made me realize full campaigns were possible as busy adults was a 1e Kingmaker campaign (I’ll follow up with a later post about how that parsed into our current group). We had a group of 8, with one consistent GM who organized the game. Sessions were semi-regular with 1-2 occurring each month if at least 3-4 people could make it. The absences of missing PCs was usually hand waved with some loose tie in to the ongoing plot if possible. That was pretty easy to do in a sandbox campaign. We ended at 17th level with an epic battle using 3D terrain that expanded the final encounter. Lasting five years, including a switch to online during the pandemic, Kingmaker made me rethink why some of my past campaigns had ended early and led me to try again as a GM with a long-term game.
Wow, some impressive track records in this thread. I've been playing since about 3.0 D&D, so, not quite grognard level, but I've been playing for a while. I've been playing with largely the same core group of 3 players since then, though a few have come and gone. I never quite got to level 20 in 3.0/.5, PF1, or 5e (we skipped 4e), but I did finish a homebrew campaign at level 15 in 3.5. It had a lot of stops and starts at the end due to stress and burnout, but I have fond memories of it.
Otherwise, while I've ran and played games throughout that time until now on and off, I only recently finished my first 1-20 level homebrew campaign in PF2 (I actually posted about it here). I am now in my second 1-20 spanning homebrew campaign (that's the plan, at least), with the players about to hit level 10.
I think a good portion of what led to more persistent campaigns was actually my GMing style. I started learning how to structure plots better, how to run mysteries in more engaging ways, and in general keep things a bit more cohesive. I've been fortunate enough to have a very consistent and dedicated core group of players as well.
As a player, I've completed both Extinction Curse (1-20) and Outlaws of Alkenstar (1-10). As a GM, I'm currently running Abomination Vaults (1-10), and given the group has been stable for well over a decade, I have no reason to believe we won't finish it.
It just takes a long time. We game every second Wednesday, for three hours.
Wow, some impressive track records in this thread. I've been playing since about 3.0 D&D, so, not quite grognard level, but I've been playing for a while.
As an aside, what does it take to get to "Grognard Level?"
I've been playing since ye'old D&D 2e days. Am I a grognard yet? :P
In 1st Ed D&D I GMed a campaign that hit mid 30th level. I also in played in one that reached that level too.
In 3rd I played on game that went to Epic Levels (I think we hit high 20s).
In HERO System (Champions) which doesn't have levels per se, I GMed or played in 3 different games that each lasted over a decade (some concurrently).
Our group like long running games.
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I've been playing since ye'old D&D 2e days. Am I a grognard yet? :P
I'd say that qualifies.
I started with Holmes basic, then switched to 1st Ed AD&D when the hardcovers came out.
Wow, some impressive track records in this thread. I've been playing since about 3.0 D&D, so, not quite grognard level, but I've been playing for a while.As an aside, what does it take to get to "Grognard Level?"
I've been playing since ye'old D&D 2e days. Am I a grognard yet? :P
Based on the original meaning of the word (applied to TTRPGs), yes.
Some folks instead use it as a mindset thing and that's a whole other kettle of fish.
I've got an AD&D 2e PHB Mouse pad, so I qualify. ;)
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Wow, some impressive track records in this thread. I've been playing since about 3.0 D&D, so, not quite grognard level, but I've been playing for a while.As an aside, what does it take to get to "Grognard Level?"
I've been playing since ye'old D&D 2e days. Am I a grognard yet? :P
Only if you want to be.
It was my understanding that a grognard was a roleplayer who refused to move on from an older system in favor of newer ones.
It was my understanding that a grognard was a roleplayer who refused to move on from an older system in favor of newer ones.
I heard that term the most during the 4E backlash. I guess maybe WotC should have listened to the grognards a little more as maybe it wasn't them being unwilling to switch to a new system.
But hey, it's all to our benefit as we got PF due to them covering their ears and letting the young'uns call us all grognards.
We're all happier for it...except maybe Hasbro.
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It was my understanding that a grognard was a roleplayer who refused to move on from an older system in favor of newer ones.
It's exact meaning shifts. I remember when it referred to the old guard of wargamers who didn't like it when the kids started adding roleplaying fluff to their games.
The only constant is that grognards are old, experienced, and often grumpy.
LOL. Reminds me of this from way back.
... The only constant is that grognards are old, experienced, and often grumpy.
Hear, hear! You have just described me perfectly.
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Based on my experiences with the two groups, the key is to play with people who want to play regularly and are prepared to consistently set aside time on a fixed schedule to do so; you need everyone in the group to have the attitude that (for example) Thursdays from 7 pm to 11 pm is game night and that takes priority over every competing social commitment bar emergencies and major holidays.
This is the key to my recent success with an Extinction Curse campaign that is about four years in as we are just starting the fifth book. Taking lessons from the successful campaigns I mentioned above, and a number of failures over the years, I decided that I was going to finish this AP come the Nine Hells or high water. We started during the pandemic so it’s always been an online game.
Despite only two original players in the six person PC team, with only one original character remaining, we’ve maintained the game over the years and are on track to finish. I’ve maintained this momentum by emphasizing Tsubutai’s comments to all prospective new players. We’ve had at least eight players drop from the campaign for a variety of reasons, but the current group is going strong.
In D&D 5e we had campaign that was run over like 4-5 years ish (it was filled in with taking breaks for other people to take over GMing to run other campaigns to help the long campaign GM avoid burnout) where we got all the way to level 20. Though we got speed ran past the last 5 levels because the GM was eager to wrap the story up and conclude it since we were all feeling burnt out and the GM especially didn't want to GM for D&D anymore lol. That's the only game I can say was completed.
For Pathfinder 1e, I've gone up to level 17-ish in a super busted, third party galore, living world for aroundabout 2-3 years or so before I quit due to frustrations. Honestly it was a horrible experience and I would not recommend a Living World server to anyone except to socialise to find some folk they might like to spirit away to home games. Do nooot invest yourself too deep into them xD
I ran a full 30-level D&D 4E homebrew campaign over the course of 6 years, out of an FLGS. Kept mostly the same players the whole time. Loved every minute of it. My big trick was graduating freedom. First ten levels they were on a ship under a geas, and a scary as hell enemy put them there. Next ten levels they lost the geas and gained control of the ship, with total freedom but knowledge they'd need to search for upgrades to make their ship capable of flight and gating around, a "planejammer", if they wanted revenge and to stop the nefarious plot to create a permanent eclipse across all worlds.
I leaned heavily on Venture Bros as inspiration for that mix of absurdity and heartfelt seriousness. I also removed the railroad tracks once they hit level 10. A lot of mental effort to keep up, but I got those hooks set very, very deeply. Helped that my NPCs mostly treated them with respect and gratitude, even when they had power over them, including some enemies. Having their bosses rooting for them really seemed to help with investment.