First, this is a personal observation stemming from my experiences playing Universalis and the Pool primarily. I was really curious as to other people's experiences.

It seems to me that the more general a RPG system is in terms of System and Setting the more difficult it becomes to engage in long term play using a single set of characters (a campaign). Universalis and the Pool are my primary examples here. Both have no specific world to explore and adding abilities/skills/stats/power is completely up to the players. There are no set charts or special abilities. Personally i've never gotten more than three sessions out of either system using the same characters in a "traditional campaign" style.

On the other hand the use of System/Setting specific games has tended to produce very long campaigns. D&D, which i would consider System-heavy, Setting-medium, has produced some incredibly long campaigns. And the local Hombrew which is System-medium, Setting-huge has produced some truly epic campaigns.

It seems to me that generalized systems tend toward shorter play experiences while specific systems tend toward longer play experiences. Now neither is better than the other, it's a matter of preference. Sometimes i just want a one-shot game, and Universalis and the Pool are perfect for that kind of thing. On the other hand, sometimes i want a 15 session campaign, and it seems that Universalis and the Pool don't facilitate that very well at all...


Has anyone had experiences counter to this?
What are the differences between long-term vs. short-term play?
If generalized systems tend to produce shorter-term play, why?



Thomas

I wonder how much this has to do with predominant mode of play (GNS wise). For example, how many people play those setting heavy games because they like to explore those settings (and their characters place within them too, I suppose)? I would think that particular focus would naturally tend towards campaign style play.

It's also possible that the system itself (in regards to rules and mechanics) promotes or inhibits extended play for certain people. Someone who likes to learn the ins and outs and all the nuances of a game system are not going to have to spend a long time with The Pool before that is accomplished. Coincidentally, setting heavy games tend to be more mechanic/rules heavy also.

Basically, I think there are several factors that weigh in to promote campaign style play and they're weighted in favor of setting and system heavy games.

-Chris

Considering that I do most of my gaming in a generalist system (and have done so for years) I'd say my experiences are counterintuitive. Now, depending on how you count these: what I play isn't at all much like Universalis or, really, The Pool.

And I consider Fantasy Hero (for example) to be "pretty general" if not "completely universal." So YMMV.

For any game there's got to be a setting--I prefer making my own (or exploring someone's) to a canned one a lot of the time (sometimes because I have a specific "story I want to tell"* there--which would tend to lead to a shorter game, yes--but also it has happened often IME that the story is multi-part and epic or the world is so rich that there is much to be done and seen before everyone is ready to go).

-Marco
* and I, of course, mean story in the sense of situation and shared/collaberative imagination with the players, not an imutable narrative.

C. Edwards wrote: Basically, I think there are several factors that weigh in to promote campaign style play and they're weighted in favor of setting and system heavy games.

Marco wrote: And I consider Fantasy Hero (for example) to be "pretty general" if not "completely universal." So YMMV.

Marco wrote: For any game there's got to be a setting--I prefer making my own (or exploring someone's) to a canned one a lot of the time

Well, Fantasy Hero is/was an extension of the Hero system geared for fantasy. Combined with Champions and Danger International (of the same era--there's a more recent edition of Fantasy Hero and such) it was part of a large, flexible generalist system that was pretty ... well ... universal.

There was no spell list. There was no world book (some came out). It was just: "here's how to do magic in the Hero system. Here are some adds and disads that are especially applicable. Here are a few other things (animals, IIRC)." If you sat down to play Fantasy Hero you knew were were playing "fantasy" and that was about it (before the group got specific).

And while it was "fantasy," we could (and did) do fantasy where our characters were avatars in a MMPORG played by cyberpunk characters who were "real." I think that qualifies into the Universal Realm (we considered using GURPS to do the "real guys"--it would've been cute--but we didn't.)

As for settings:

There are worlds that really catch my attention (Warhammer both fantasy and 40K are two of them. I'd like to do something in the Culture universe, I've liked a few of the GURPS world books a lot)--but mainly I've wound up going with my own (or doing a riff on someone else's world).

When I envision a world, I see it as sort of an algorithm: here is what's known about the starting conditions (it's modern day, with magic, the US is still composed of the original 13 colonies--and the zietgiest is similar to that around the time of the Great Debate).

And then I extrapolate from there: there are phones but no home computers (tech doesn't work so well) so maybe the 80's saw a lot of stock trading done via phone-in-systems with solid state or even mechanical switches. So you got *('star')-coms instead of "dot coms."

And so on.

I think this is the standard process anyone goes through when creating a world in literature. I might do some work on it (if there's a weird language that's important, I get a strange font to show the players when it comes up, and so on)--but I neihter consider this "on the fly" nor "completely specced out."

I would describe the process as "generally" Simulationist as if a player has a character go to a random street corner and ask "what's there?" my answer will be informed by what I deduce "probably would" be there (instead, generally, of what would be most interesting or whatever).

After looking into No Myth, I've considered that this mode of thought might serve me well there (my present way of looking at it does well by too, however) but an issue is that the players (in many cases) will not know the genre and I wouldn't want to be forced to cop to one--so the signposts are all internal to me (the players, at the begining, usually, will not know know what a solid genre expectation is in a lot of cases in my play).

Does that answer or would you like more detail.

-Marco

Hi there Thomas,

You might be making all of this a little harder than it is ...

I'll begin by agreeing with Marco, and with his examples. Fantasy Hero and many related games are very, very good for long-term play. They do not provide setting, or rather, the game itself is in many ways a set of components with which to build setting (and everything else).

Now for my point. When we turn to Universalis and The Pool, it's a question of application, not the games per se. In other words, nothing is stopping anyone from developing a rather specific, detailed, and conflict-ridden setting for these games. In fact, Universalis is eminently suited to creating such a thing through play itself, and The Pool is eminently suited to creating it before or mostly before play.

In either case, I don't see why play couldn't be as long-term using these games as with any other. Sure, long-term play requires more than a snap-shot setting, no matter how that setting is developed. But nothing about these two games makes them ineligible for that exact statement.

Which brings me back to Marco's point: as it happens, I think that Fantasy Hero and these other two games do share two things in common - a very reliable resolution system and a very reliable character change/improvement system. None of the three games provides a setting; the group/whoever is expected to construct it. Given that, making up setting is just something you do, to whatever extent, in order to play at all.

To put all of this another way entirely, I think your experiences with short-term play for these games arose out of your own needs, desires, and habits, and how those factored into your specific games. If you'd like to play longer-term with them, then you'll have to construct the groundwork to do so. As Marco says, for many, this is something they enjoy.

Best,
Ron

crossposted with Thomas, below - he is replying to Marco, above.

Thank you. I have a better understanding of what you're getting at. From what i'm reading it seems that you tend to take the role of GM. Do you feel that this gives you a different perspective on the world? Do you feel more invested and thus desire a campaign that will facilitate you fleshing the world out more?

Thomas

I would tend to think that there really isn't that strong a correlation between number of sessions and completeness of story.

Some games last a long time simply because the system is slow and it takes a while to get anywhere. Some games last a long time because there's alot of stuff in the setting and long extended parts of the game are played out as a sort of elaborate travelogue.

Some of the comments I've gotten on Universalis from people who use Uni in conjunction with a d20 game is that they get more "accomplished" in a single session of Uni then they do in several sessions of d20. The pool is the same way.

So to a great extent the shorter play (and games like Sorcerer I think are the same way) is in large part a result of the game simply moving forward at a faster pace.

There isn't alot of handling time in a game like Uni or the Pool to delay getting to the heart of the story right away. And Ron is absolutely right. There is nothing in Uni preventing a more "wander around and experience things" kind of approach. But the players actually have to want this enough to create it for each other.

IME for alot of players the "wander around and experience things" approach has for them been a one way "GM showing off his work and keeping us from moving on with things" experience and so given a game where this doesn't happen, many players just drive straight to the heart of things.

For those players who enjoy wandering around and experiencing someone elses creation, they may find a game like Uni requires a higher level of participation in that creation than they want; especially if they'd rather be along for the ride in those terms.

All things being equal, I prefer to play--and I have played a great amount in the mode I describe--so, no--I wouldn't say it's unique--I was just speaking from the mode of a GM because where world-creation is involved in traditional play it's usually, mostly, the GM's job.

I like playing in worlds with deep, meaty mysteries--and running the same. I like the Tim Powers modern-day realities. I like fantasy games with incredibly old, strange, inscrutable empires that vanished and we get to poke around their ruins, stuff like that.

I find fantasy better suited to long term play (For me) and modern-day better suited for short-term stories. That's not even "my preference" that's just my observation. I think Ron is on target about character advancement (although I have a whole rant on progression in most 'realistic'/simulationist popular universal systems--I think it's fraught with problems even in the 'good' cases: give someone a "vanillia" +4 sword in GURPS and see what happens--another instant kill brain shot!)

Anyway, because of lack of a GM, my play over the last two years has been limited to short, ultra-intense (2-4 day, non-stop play) games that did indeed tell a single story.

And we used universal systems for them (note: I'm playing in a 3rd Ed module right now tho--so that's not 100% accurate).

Because of the natures of these games (self contained world, some mysteries for the PC's at the start, very concrete character concepts but little by way of genre tropes outside of a very broad umbrella, and no "standard" mythology) I couldn't see using anything but a universal system of some sort.

-Marco

I guess my initial concern has been answered. I'll spend some time mulling over what this means for me. I guess the general concensus, which i'm coming to share, is that Setting needs to have some kind of "critical mass" of development to encourage long term play. You can have long term play without it, but having that critical mass greatly facilitates things.

I'm going to spend some time absorbing this and may eventually return to some of the other questions raised in this thread. I'd tell you to carry on the discussion, but it's really been more of an education session with me being the only student. Thanks for everyone's time and effort.

Thomas