Remembrances of Campaigns Past

[Vaxalon]

Remember those campaigns of our youth, back when we were teenagers, that seemed to have gone on forever?

You know how now that we're getting older, that they just don't seem to last as long anymore?

It's not the games, dudes.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jmkenney/

Its us.

As we get older, our perception of time speeds up.  The days seem to speed by, even though we're doing just as much as we ever were.  A campaign that took eight sessions to play when we were kids seemed like a long time; now, it seems woefully short.

[ffilz]

Good point, though in my case, back in college, I played (almost) every week for 8-12 hours, now I play (almost) every week for 4 hours. In the past I have managed some campaigns lasting more than a year (though I'm not sure if my longest running high school campaign reached 2 years). In the past 10 years or so, the longest I've managed is 10 months.

College was definitely my highest density gaming with at least three yearish (or maybe even year and a halfish) campaigns over a period of 8 years. One in high school (over the 4 years - hmm, I'm guessing the high school campaign managed to be a year and a half, starting sometime in my junior year and ending in the summer after my senior year [I know it wasn't just during my senior year because I know it was running when I had surgery in my junior year]). Three since college over 16 years (ok, there might be a fourth, but I don't think it actually lasted all that long), with two of those being in the last three and a half years (but those two have been seven and ten months respectively). Lots of false starts all the way through, definitely more in college, though plenty in high school, definitely fewer these days (no "hey, let's try this neat cool system as a break from our current campaign or in addition to our current campaign).

Of course I've got definite different interests and RPGs are not my sole interest anymore. My gaming went down considerably when I started being active in church.

I don't think I have that much of a sense that my current campaigns are short breezes in the wind compared to previous campaigns though. But I think that's because I've been thinking carefully about just how long that high school campaign really was all along, and realizing that a year is a pretty long campaign for me. I bet my opinion was a lot more skewed in college though, when I definitely didn't manage a year and a half campaign including either of my first two years, I think my first long college campaign started my junior year, but maybe my senior year.

Now where this idea may actually apply more is the shorter games (like the 8 session example). I'm thinking a lot of my early campaigns actually only lasted a few sessions, though I want to think they lasted longer. I didn't include my longest running Traveller campaign in the college long campaign count because I suspect due to its infrequency it really was 10 sessions or fewer.

Frank

[WalkingDead]

I never actually ran a long campaign until I was out of school and working. My D&D Greyhawk campaign began with the launch of D&D 3E and ended when I finally ran out of steam (and interest) in June. There was a year's hiatus in the middle of it, but we came back to it -- and it's the longest campaign I've ever run. When I was in high school and college, I had a lot of false starts. For games that actually got off the ground, they probably only lasted a matter of months before the next idea for a campaign popped into my head (or I bought a new game) -- and then that was that; I was off running with the new and shiny campaign.

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Fred, unless you post about actual play of some kind, then this thread has to close.

Best,
Ron