I only play 1 shots online through Roll20, but I get players constantly asking if I will do longer campaigns. The main reason I do not do this is primarily because I read stories here and elsewhere about how campaigns fizzle out after a while due to scheduling conflicts, loss of interest, family matters, and so forth. The one time I did try to run a 10 hour one shot I had one player bail on me. We were still able to finish it, but that only reinforced my thinking about how most campaigns never get finished.
I know since I play online things are obviously different than face to face, but still curious to see how many you have been able to complete without any serious hiccups.
One that has actually finished that took about a year. In the middle of one that is almost certain to finish in the next month or two after two years. Then a number of other campaigns that have petered out due to scheduling difficulties, the onset of COVID, relationship drama, etc., some of which lasted for one-to-two years before falling apart.
That does not sound like a very high success rate, but I tend to play in campaigns that are designed to last for a year or more. Things falling apart of a very long campaign can be hard to avoid, particularly if you are playing a group at a school (where graduation or breaks can end a campaign) or as an adult (where scheduling difficulties are rampant). That said, I would still recommend you go for it. Sure, the story might remain unfinished, but the joy of playing an extended campaign is well worth it. From the DMing perspective, you have a lot more fun developing your world and causing your world to interact with your players and change based on circumstances within the campaign. From the player perspective, you get to intimately know your character and watch them grow as they react to the world.
Even if the campaign never reaches its climax, the journey has always been the most fun part of D&D. I'll take never finishing the story (or having the DM write up a "and here's how the story ended" when the campaign falls apart) over a series of one-shots any day.
The only campaigns I've finished were online. My in-person campaign started in 2018 and has been on hold for the last two years thanks to the pandemic. I've played through Tomb of Annihilation (we TPK'd just before the end, sadly, and decided to end it there) and Rime of the Frostmaiden, which took about 6-9 months each. I'm in a homebrew campaign that started back in September or October and has been going strong. I've also been running my own weekly campaign for 18 months, and that should wrap up by late spring or early summer if my players don't blow up the world or each other first.
Online campaigns can work if you are discerning with who you select as players, I've found. It may take a while to stabilize a group, but if you find some reliable, invested players, a longer-term story is definitely feasible. I say give it a shot; maybe you'll hit the jackpot and find a good group of people to stick with you for a while.
Yo, I've done Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder online with friends. They were both fine but SKT became a very long campaign due to tangents and side stories, took 2+ years of playing Monthly.
I've only been able to complete 2 campaigns (well, one and a half cuz the 2nd one was a continuation of the same setting). The best advice I can give: expect the worst, hope for the greatest
I've never had campaigns finish but I've had sets of characters reach natural endpoints so we've stopped playing them but the campaigns keep going with a new cast. I DM mostly face to face with three groups - one gets together every couple of months for a weekend, the others are more or less weekly, usually with breaks over the summer to allow people to have holidays.
Each of the three groups had a lot of player churn (about 50% drop out rate) at first until we got to the people that liked playing together and people have come and gone over the years. My oldest group has just celebrated our 20th anniversary - I've had marriages that didn't last as long.
So my lesson would be... keep playing, keep recruiting and eventually you'll get a stable group of people together. There will always be player churn (real life is a *****) so don't expect to keep the same set of players forever but eventually you'll end up with a group of good friends that'll stick together whatever. You may have to modify how you play but you can generally keep things going.
Three full campaigns, all with friends, and of course a lot of one-shots, dropped pilots, LGS pickups, and whatnot, along with a campaign or two in non-D&D RPGs. Two of the campaigns lasted around 10 sessions and were in-person: the other one, with my less roleplay-heavy friends, lasted over 30, and was mostly online, though we played in person when we could. I guess the best advice I can give is try to get friends to play before recruiting randoms: you’re guaranteed to have fun, and often some of them will surprise you with their interest!
Three full campaigns, all with friends, and of course a lot of one-shots, dropped pilots, LGS pickups, and whatnot, along with a campaign or two in non-D&D RPGs. Two of the campaigns lasted around 10 sessions and were in-person: the other one, with my less roleplay-heavy friends, lasted over 30, and was mostly online, though we played in person when we could. I guess the best advice I can give is try to get friends to play before recruiting randoms: you’re guaranteed to have fun, and often some of them will surprise you with their interest!
Is 10 sessions really a campaign, or just an extended length adventure?
In the campaigns I've played, we've had a 3-4 hour game session every week, and the campaigns usually last for at least a year (so 45-50 sessions).
I've finished a 33 Session Curse of Strahd Campaign, a 42 session Eberron campaign, and currently am working through a 37 Session and running Descent into Avernus campaign.
Online campaigns are easier, you as the DM has to recruit. If your party hits 5 players, recruit back up to 6, but do it slow to get a good fit. If you hit 4 members, then be less choosey and get some bodies in the seat. I normally get a core of 3-4 players for an online campaign and I normally cycle through the next 5-6 player due to scheduling or just not being what they wanted. There are a lot of people who won't do a campaign, have mental issues (I've seen that more in the last two years) or work comes into play. I do a 9-5 job so I play on the weekend afternoons and it works out well.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong (or just differently), but I'm about a year and a half into a weekly run Rime of the Frostmaiden with one of my groups, and we're not even halfway through it yet.
To answer the OP question though, I've never finished a campaign before. My homebrew game I sort of.. put on permanent hiatus.. and the three Rime games I run feel like they've got at least another year in each. I'm hoping they will finish, however!
So I always homebrew, my campaigns, in the past when I was at uni I would run multi year campaigns and most of them ran from level 1-20 and completed.
Since then life tends to get in the way of things so I have learnt not to plan out long complicated campaigns in my worlds, instead I run from tier to tier. So levels 1-5, 6-10, 10-13 13-15, 15-18 and 18-20.
This means that I can make smaller contained stories so if it feels like a couple of players lives are going to pull them away we can talk through getting to the end of this part of the story so they have a sense of completion.
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I only play 1 shots online through Roll20, but I get players constantly asking if I will do longer campaigns. The main reason I do not do this is primarily because I read stories here and elsewhere about how campaigns fizzle out after a while due to scheduling conflicts, loss of interest, family matters, and so forth. The one time I did try to run a 10 hour one shot I had one player bail on me. We were still able to finish it, but that only reinforced my thinking about how most campaigns never get finished.
I know since I play online things are obviously different than face to face, but still curious to see how many you have been able to complete without any serious hiccups.
1 shot dungeon master
One that has actually finished that took about a year. In the middle of one that is almost certain to finish in the next month or two after two years. Then a number of other campaigns that have petered out due to scheduling difficulties, the onset of COVID, relationship drama, etc., some of which lasted for one-to-two years before falling apart.
That does not sound like a very high success rate, but I tend to play in campaigns that are designed to last for a year or more. Things falling apart of a very long campaign can be hard to avoid, particularly if you are playing a group at a school (where graduation or breaks can end a campaign) or as an adult (where scheduling difficulties are rampant). That said, I would still recommend you go for it. Sure, the story might remain unfinished, but the joy of playing an extended campaign is well worth it. From the DMing perspective, you have a lot more fun developing your world and causing your world to interact with your players and change based on circumstances within the campaign. From the player perspective, you get to intimately know your character and watch them grow as they react to the world.
Even if the campaign never reaches its climax, the journey has always been the most fun part of D&D. I'll take never finishing the story (or having the DM write up a "and here's how the story ended" when the campaign falls apart) over a series of one-shots any day.
The only campaigns I've finished were online. My in-person campaign started in 2018 and has been on hold for the last two years thanks to the pandemic. I've played through Tomb of Annihilation (we TPK'd just before the end, sadly, and decided to end it there) and Rime of the Frostmaiden, which took about 6-9 months each. I'm in a homebrew campaign that started back in September or October and has been going strong. I've also been running my own weekly campaign for 18 months, and that should wrap up by late spring or early summer if my players don't blow up the world or each other first.
Online campaigns can work if you are discerning with who you select as players, I've found. It may take a while to stabilize a group, but if you find some reliable, invested players, a longer-term story is definitely feasible. I say give it a shot; maybe you'll hit the jackpot and find a good group of people to stick with you for a while.
Yo, I've done Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder online with friends. They were both fine but SKT became a very long campaign due to tangents and side stories, took 2+ years of playing Monthly.
I've only been able to complete 2 campaigns (well, one and a half cuz the 2nd one was a continuation of the same setting). The best advice I can give: expect the worst, hope for the greatest
I've never had campaigns finish but I've had sets of characters reach natural endpoints so we've stopped playing them but the campaigns keep going with a new cast. I DM mostly face to face with three groups - one gets together every couple of months for a weekend, the others are more or less weekly, usually with breaks over the summer to allow people to have holidays.
Each of the three groups had a lot of player churn (about 50% drop out rate) at first until we got to the people that liked playing together and people have come and gone over the years. My oldest group has just celebrated our 20th anniversary - I've had marriages that didn't last as long.
So my lesson would be... keep playing, keep recruiting and eventually you'll get a stable group of people together. There will always be player churn (real life is a *****) so don't expect to keep the same set of players forever but eventually you'll end up with a group of good friends that'll stick together whatever. You may have to modify how you play but you can generally keep things going.
Three full campaigns, all with friends, and of course a lot of one-shots, dropped pilots, LGS pickups, and whatnot, along with a campaign or two in non-D&D RPGs. Two of the campaigns lasted around 10 sessions and were in-person: the other one, with my less roleplay-heavy friends, lasted over 30, and was mostly online, though we played in person when we could. I guess the best advice I can give is try to get friends to play before recruiting randoms: you’re guaranteed to have fun, and often some of them will surprise you with their interest!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Is 10 sessions really a campaign, or just an extended length adventure?
In the campaigns I've played, we've had a 3-4 hour game session every week, and the campaigns usually last for at least a year (so 45-50 sessions).
I've finished a 33 Session Curse of Strahd Campaign, a 42 session Eberron campaign, and currently am working through a 37 Session and running Descent into Avernus campaign.
Online campaigns are easier, you as the DM has to recruit. If your party hits 5 players, recruit back up to 6, but do it slow to get a good fit. If you hit 4 members, then be less choosey and get some bodies in the seat. I normally get a core of 3-4 players for an online campaign and I normally cycle through the next 5-6 player due to scheduling or just not being what they wanted. There are a lot of people who won't do a campaign, have mental issues (I've seen that more in the last two years) or work comes into play. I do a 9-5 job so I play on the weekend afternoons and it works out well.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong (or just differently), but I'm about a year and a half into a weekly run Rime of the Frostmaiden with one of my groups, and we're not even halfway through it yet.
To answer the OP question though, I've never finished a campaign before. My homebrew game I sort of.. put on permanent hiatus.. and the three Rime games I run feel like they've got at least another year in each. I'm hoping they will finish, however!
So I always homebrew, my campaigns, in the past when I was at uni I would run multi year campaigns and most of them ran from level 1-20 and completed.
Since then life tends to get in the way of things so I have learnt not to plan out long complicated campaigns in my worlds, instead I run from tier to tier. So levels 1-5, 6-10, 10-13 13-15, 15-18 and 18-20.
This means that I can make smaller contained stories so if it feels like a couple of players lives are going to pull them away we can talk through getting to the end of this part of the story so they have a sense of completion.