"Nate, where's all the stuff you've promised to write up for us?"
.... OK, so no one's asking that. But that would be nice. I do have a Mortal Kombat review in mind (not that anyone cares), so for those of you who do care hold on, I'm enjoying playing the game. Yes, it's a good game and deserves your money. But that's not what I wanted to write about today.
One of the concerns of running an RPG (yes, paper and pencil) with levels is "what level are you trying to play to?" For most players of 4th edition, the answer is usually the big 3-0: level 30. It's sort of a holy grail for 4th edition players to get as far as level 30, nevermind epic tier.*Most people dream of playing from levels 1-30, and yet always peter out around level 10, for a very simple reason: That's five months of gameplay on one story. That's a pretty long time to visit the same story week-in, week-out, and most people in our ADD-esque culture are to be commended for even thinking about the same thing that amount of time. The solution?
It's not very original, nor is it groundbreaking: take a break.
Yeah, you heard me. Start a new campaign, with someone else DM'ing if possible. Save the character sheets, and do this "other campaign" for awhile, perhaps six months. If the characters are "supposed" to go to 30th level and if you like the characters that much then the story will continue. My old highschool group ran very similar characters for five years, sometimes not even bothering to switch the names around. We constantly did variations on this one character, so much so that we actually nicknamed each other for that particular character (my name was Xenith for quite a while). If we'd actually thought about it we would have just shelved the characters and come back whenever we felt like it, which was about once a every year for a half year. Besides, most people only ever make one to three truly different characters (in my 7 year experience, anyway), so why not capitalize on it?
*While I have very little experience with games that have no levels (such as World of Darkness), I'd imagine that the same holds true for those types of games: every five to six months the players will need a re-set of some sort.
In games like World of Darkness, you don't generally reset. by that time. You generally finish. ;) Seriously, there's only a portion of RPGs where the players invest in a long-term epic game. Others are just more focused on telling a single narrative.
ReplyDeleteI feel at this point that it's obligatory to mention the Great Pendragon Campaign, which covers dynasties of knights over an 81-year in-game timeline. You heard me right: 81 years. It does this by giving the knights one big adventure per year, followed by a "winter session", and the winter sessions can be played out between the DM and one or two players at a time, everyone doesn't have to be together.
So, doing the math, that's still 81 sessions. You meet once per week, that's TWENTY months of gameplay.
D&D just got pwned with style. B-)
I kinda figured that was the case with World of Darkness but without any real experience on the matter I thought I'd put in a footnote, just in case.
ReplyDeleteBut what if you don't want to cover an 81 year in-game timeline? Not saying that covering 81 years isn't a cool idea and all (it totally is), but D&D's pretty good at the short term, and is built with one adventurer in mind. Although my interest in Pendragon is (always) piqued by any and all mentions of it.
Well, Great Pendragon is just one campaign for the system that takes the players through the timeline of the King Arthur mythos. You have the option of doing a shorter-term game, although the expectation is still that you'll probably play a dynastic game (retiring knights and playing their heirs).
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting. One of these days I'll have to pick it up and play it. Darn it, Andy! My RPG section of my private library is already pretty heavy...
ReplyDeleteHehehe.
ReplyDeleteNo, this isn't funny! I have this very precious resource called money, and it's supposed to be spent on things like school books and meds and cars and dates for women and instead I'll be spending it on...RPG books.
ReplyDeleteOh well. At least they're useable with the girlfriend. I doubt she'll mind.