Wolven Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Hey all, I was talking with a friend of mine who plays in the same Champions game as I and we were wondering what the average length of a campaign was. How long do your game last on average? Do they go one year and then you start with new characters in a new world, does it go 2 years and then you start new characters in the same campaign world, etc. We were just curious. The game I am in has been going on in the same campaign world for about 15 years, but the characters have been started over more or less about 6 times. I have been gaming with the group for about 2 or so years now. Some of the players seem to be loosing a wee bit of interest in the game. I mentioned to the GM about rebooting and he said he doesnt want to reboot again. He said he kinda feels like he has done it alot already. So I said I would post on the forums here and try to get an idea of what the average is. So what is it for you all? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Mhoram Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Re: Campaign length My wife's Champions campaign ran about 13 years. My champions game ran about 10 (and it died more because everyone moved than it ending). My Fantasy Hero game ran 6 years. Champions game I played in last ran 12 years. Yes some of these ran concurrantly. We have had a number of aborted campaigns, but the rule seems to be that if the game runs for more than a few months, it lasts for a decade or more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike W Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Re: Campaign length Most campaigns I've been in have generally run about two years. Those that ran longer got "rebooted" about every two years as well. If nothing else, we just end up wanting to go a different direction after a while. Champs is fun but occasionally we get a desire to play Star Wars or D&D or whatever. So we take a break to do something different. After all, most of us enjoy fantasy novels, sci fi movies and the like in addition to comics. So we occasionally want to play in a different setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Re: Campaign length Most campaigns I had been in went for years. Sometimes a new campaign was started in the same game world. Current campaign (zornwil's), I've been involved with my current character since January 27th, 2001 though tomorrow may be my last. The campaign started October 2000, but is a previous game world. Some of the characters started in college were still in games fifteen years later... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebuchet Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Re: Campaign length We're still running the same Champions campaign I started in 1992; although only two of the original 5 players (Myself and Mentor) are still in it. We now have eight players (3 of whom are GMs in regular rotation and two others who GM as the fancy strikes) and a waiting list to get in. Life is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
concord Posted April 9, 2005 Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Re: Campaign length The older I get the shorter the campaigns seem to be getting. When I was young whipper-snapper who lived to game, I had a Traveller campaign run for about ten years and a Champions campaign run for about six. The more recent Champions campaigns, the Wardens/Foundation Chronicles, use the same game world. The first edition lasted about 2 years. The second edition lasted only a few months until real world considerations got in the way. The third edition ran a little over two years. The Warders offshoot, that followed the third edition, lasted all of one session. The fourth edition of the campaign is about to start and if form holds true it should last about 2 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost who Walks Posted April 11, 2005 Report Share Posted April 11, 2005 Re: Campaign length Twelve years, same world. Rebooted once, where a new team was created on the East Coast. Working on the second reboot right now, where the same characters will be moved forward 10 years in the campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length Most campaigns I had been in went for years. Sometimes a new campaign was started in the same game world. Current campaign (zornwil's), I've been involved with my current character since January 27th, 2001 though tomorrow may be my last. The campaign started October 2000, but is a previous game world. Some of the characters started in college were still in games fifteen years later... As lemming said re the current supers campaign. My prior supers campaign, when I lived in South Carolina, went for about 4 years, then we moved. This one is currently languishing a bit as I want to try out other projects. It sucks, because it's hard for our group to get together too often, so basically by doing other things it puts off JS for a month at a time. We've done 1 M&M game set in the same world as the one lemming mentions but over in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, we've also done a couple modern occult games (that campaign is named Disavowed after the comic book even if I hated the ending of that one), and have done "one and a half" (first was just a brief session after considerable discussion/character creation) sessions of Cyber Ninja Pirates (swashbuckling sci-fi space opera weirdness). Oh, and we've done a couple super-villain games also set in the same X-Champions supers world that lemming mentioned as well; those are fun to do. PS - and lemming, it won't be your last, sometime I'm sure you'll be off Saturdays or we'll work it out; also, I've been thinking about PBEMing X-Champs while we do other stuff F2F, at least for a bit, although I just don't have time as of now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaras Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length The campaign iam in now has been running (iam told, have only been with it 3 years) 15 years. That said the story line takes five years to get through so its in its third repeat; things tend to happen differently every time so the campaigns arent really all that alike despite ahving the same general setting. My experience of other champions/herosystem campaigns is non-existant but 15 year sound like a LONG time, come to think of it so does three years playing once a week not including pbem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchdog Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length My champions campaign started about 9 years ago, but in our gaming group, we typically play one game for 3-6 months, then someone else takes over as GM for a different campaign. We currently alternate between Champions, Shadowrun, D&D, and Star Wars, though we've also done stints of Star Trek, CoC, and a little GURPS here and there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh bunneh Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length One year. Sometimes we'll go back and play in the same world with different characters, usually in a different time-frame (10 years later, 100 years before, something like that). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roy_The_Ruthles Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length Never had a reboot, we'd rather play a new game than new players in the old word. The longest game i've been in is 2 years and winding down Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinanju Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Re: Campaign length The longest running campaign I've played in has been running continuously since 1978 (twenty-seven years!), though I moved away in 1991 so I was only there for the first 13 years. And the early years were nearly non-stop, gaming all evening (or all day on weekends) four or more days/nights a year. How we got thru college I'll never--oh yeah, I remember now. My grade point average clearly indicates how. Poorly. The gaming group I joined when I got to Portland was at the other extreme. Campaign started, ran for anywhere from a single session to a year or two at most, with most running 2-6 months. Lots more variety, and we've all got notebooks full of character sheets, many of which characters were created but never actually played because they were generated at the merest HINT of an idea for a campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmenace Posted June 18, 2005 Report Share Posted June 18, 2005 Re: Campaign length Recent campaigns have gone roughly 3-4 years. The only real difference from the early games being that we usually have multiple campaigns set in the same game world and the campaigns usually come to a definite prewritten ending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRavenIs Posted June 18, 2005 Report Share Posted June 18, 2005 Re: Campaign length The longest running Campaign I was in started in 1980 and ran without a reboot till 1992. It started out as a standard four-color hero world and as it evolved it became extremely varied. We had young heroes, mutants, mages, giant robots and all around weirdness. All these happened in the same world with crossovers happening all the time. We were able to do this by having different people take over the overall world and GMing. I found that it worked, but as all things end this one did. We rebooted a few times after, using different gaming systems from Marvel to DC, but we always come back to Champions. I have found that, all in all, a game will last as long as you can keep it fun and evolving. Sometimes it works better and sometimes not, but as long as it’s fun it can last. Currently we have a common game world with two GM's, and 5 different teams, ranging from 30 active point powers to 60-70 active point powers. This world has been running for right at 3 years. The different teams have a different feel to them. This allows us to game in a common world and still game different styles in that common world. Soon we will be starting a new world based on the old one, if anyone remembers the old Earth 1 and Earth 2 in DC; it will be in a parallel world but set ~25 yrs in the past. We will be using common idea’s, house rules, etc.. I have learned that this works as it allows people to play in a game world with enough in common with the one currently active and keep both active. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fry Daddy Posted June 18, 2005 Report Share Posted June 18, 2005 Re: Campaign length My longest so far has been two years --- I'm on hiatus right now to recharge my batteries, and one of my players is running a sci-fi/horro game for a little while, then we will resume my game again; I plan on this campaign running for a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhamin Posted June 18, 2005 Report Share Posted June 18, 2005 Re: Campaign length My current game has been running for about 14 years. I did run a "secret crisis" style game when we switched to 5th, but as the main characters didn't change I don't really count that as a reboot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted June 18, 2005 Report Share Posted June 18, 2005 Re: Campaign length It's not how long you make it, it's how you make it long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chromatic Posted June 21, 2005 Report Share Posted June 21, 2005 Re: Campaign length It's not how long you make it' date=' it's how you make it long.[/quote'] Gads! now the spam is on the hero boards! will it never cease? Zornwil, you've gone too far! this attempt to regain your rank as top posting machine has to stop! Resorting to spam, indeed. Someone call Dan and have Zornwil banned or something! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted June 21, 2005 Report Share Posted June 21, 2005 Re: Campaign length Gads! now the spam is on the hero boards! will it never cease? Zornwil, you've gone too far! this attempt to regain your rank as top posting machine has to stop! Resorting to spam, indeed. Someone call Dan and have Zornwil banned or something! Wait - did you just post spam? (I'll stop here if you will! Well, I will even if you won't. ) (PS - still giggling over your response - I considered a mock post in kind but figured people might not get it) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vondy Posted June 21, 2005 Report Share Posted June 21, 2005 Re: Campaign length My champions game ran 13 years. The average story arc within the campaign lasted 3-5 months. Most characters had a long career, averaging 4-5 years. One of the originals, however, is still going strong, and most of the originals are now npcs (they started as characters I built and wrote backgrounds for as a one off to introduce my group to champions). It lasted a bit longer than one session... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troll Posted June 21, 2005 Report Share Posted June 21, 2005 Re: Campaign length Before I was married my longest running game was a 4 1/2 Fantasy Hero game. Now most games last about 1 year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted June 21, 2005 Report Share Posted June 21, 2005 Re: Campaign length It's changed and gotten bigger but the campaign originally started back in 1981 is still running. It's still fun to be player and even more fun to be GM. Of course, there's not as much gaming now: growing up does that to you. Still, my group can generally squeeze in 3-4 games a month.. until the holidays hit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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