Do you want to go the long haul with your gaming session? I’m not talking weeks or months, but years with the same characters in the same world? Michael Surbrook joins us to help you realize that dream with advice on how to plan out long campaigns, how to avoid over-prepping, how to push through the quagmire, and more.
Note: This episode was recorded on December 23, 2014. Yes, over a year ago.
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Our Guest
Michael Surbrook
Larger Than Life: Folklore Legends of America (Hero System)
Larger Than Life: Folklore Legends of America (Savage Worlds)
(Note: At the time of recording, Larger Than Life was in the Kickstarter stage of publishing. The Kickstarter was successful and it is out now!)
What We’ve Been Playing
Five Nights at Freddie’s (Darryl)
Pathfinder (Darryl)
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (Ross)
Birthright (Ross)
Grand Theft Auto 5 (Ross)
Star Trek Online (Ross)
Shaintar (Ross)
Savage Worlds (Ross)
Borderlands (Michael)
Ironclaw (Michael)
Fantasy Craft (Michael)
Long Term Campaigns
Gamer’s Tavern Superhero Games
Day in the Life: Gaming the Downtime
Dungeons & Dragons Adventure League
2 thoughts on “Episode 54: Long-Term Campaigns, or I Think I Drowned a Bear”
You asked about systems geared to long-term campaigns. The old Pendragon expected you to finish the campaign playing the grandchild of the PC you started the campaign with.
Long-term enough?
🙂
Almost every game I have ever run has been a long-term game. I do one-shots or short games to take breaks between as a way to keep things fresh of course. Still, my longest running game ran 3 full years. The very first game I ran was 4 hours a day, 6 days a week for two years. I don’t have that kind of time any more, but still.
I have a home-brew setting that initially was made for 3.0 and eventually transitioned to Pathfinder. It was the one that ran with the same set of players (and mostly the same characters) for the 3 years. After that massive story arch finished, the setting was revisited several times an in-game generation later by two of the same players in the original group, along with new players. While those revisiting sessions didn’t extend for as long, it was only due to players being unable to continue thanks to conflicts of time from outside the game.
I actually have a hard time understanding why people wouldn’t always want larger games. It is fun to explore new settings, but hard to get invested in a character you’ll only play for 3 to 6 sessions. Especially in settings where character generation can take an hour or more.