The Ongoing Campaign

Role Playing Games as an Endurance Event

I was reading some interesting articles on substack, blogs, and such the last week that reminded me that among RPG players born in years that start with a 2 the term “campaign” seems to have a different meaning than it did (and still does for grognards). Instead of meaning ‘a module or story arc’ originally ‘campaign’ meant “everything that happens in your game world”. The AD&D 1e DMG nails it on page 227 when it says a campaign is ‘referring to one DM’s adventures as a whole’.

If you’ve read my post on Psychotronic Play Concepts you’ll see that my DMing style, based upon how I was taught and what I have learned, is pretty far removed from ‘every player has one character and you play them as a tight group involved in a storytelling exercise with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution to conclude the plot’. I am pretty diametrically opposed to those things, actually. In my games what are the player characters doing next? The players tell me which of their multiple characters is doing what and I react to their decisions, not them following my arcs.

This has profound implications for why and how a ‘traditional’ campaign looks like and how it evolves. Win-win and lose-lose scenarios are fairly common; there cannot be a “victory condition” but likewise there cannot be a “defeat condition”; within the campaign as a whole a TPK is at most a minor inconvenience; while wargaming is an inherent part of traditional Fantasy Action Role Playing games wargame sessions are just one of many types; NPCs become much more important; and (the main point of this article) there is no defined campaign end.

Let me put this another way. When I started playing in 1977 the base assumption was not ‘once we defeat the evil wizard the campaign is over’ nor was it ‘once we all reach 16th level the campaign is over’ it was that if Bob was running OD&D and you played in his campaign that campaign would continue until Bob stopped running OD&D or people stopped showing up. By 1979 when AD&D 1e finished rolling out that grew until ‘the campaign will run as long as Bob or other DMs that are part of it are DMing some version of D&D in the same setting’.

Blackmoor? No planned end. Same with Greyhawk. Nor the other campaigns I knew and played in ranging from Landia (a friend’s game from the 1980’s) to Tonilda (Lew Pulsipher’s campaign) to my own Seaward. All designed to keep going until abandoned, if ever. People still use the Greyhawk setting to run their own campaigns and my children know where all of my notes are and assure me that after I am dead Seaward will keep going so dead is no barrier to a campaign continuing.

But this simple difference in outlook between ‘campaigns are inherently limited’ and ‘campaigns are inherently definite’ leads to massive differences in design and play, a few of which I detailed earlier, above. But one of the differences most overlooked is a sort of patience born out of a long view. Not too many years back i had someone talk to me about joining Seaward as a player and I mentioned I preferred everyone to start with no less than two characters rolled up and ready to go because the default is always multiple characters per player and he was obviously concerned.
“But if I am playing multiple characters they will all level up more slowly! I might never get to domain level!”
That struck me as an ‘outside looking in’ view born of the belief that campaigns have limit. When the campaign is designed to last forever then that fear of running out of time largely vanishes. The fear of missing out on epic battles or destroying infamous villains? Gone. There are always more battles, always more villains, always new challenges because unlike pre-planned, limited campaigns traditional campaigns have no limits on heroism.

Another radical change is how player characters plan for the distant future. In a limited campaign there is an end and everyone knows it so every player is playing towards the “meta-game’ resolution and that can be very nonsensical within the internal logic of the game world. If having your character reach 20th level is the ‘win condition’ that ends the entire faux universe than leaving massive issues unaddressed, major villains unopposed, and allied abandoned to their death has no repercussions as long as you hit the magic Two Oh and “win”. In a traditional campaign all of that will come back to haunt you so player characters are much more involved in the campaign world and more ‘realistically’ involved.

As time marches on in the real world and within the campaign world this becomes more and more obvious and instinctive to the players. In Seaward the first PC to have an in-universe child become an adventurer was way back in 1984 when Kazare’s son Zearak become a st level fighter 9some aging from planar travel was involved) and ever since there is a knowledge of generational dynasties existing within the campaign. It is very hard to truly quantify how big this changes emotional engagement in the campaign, but I assure you the difference is huge.

I also have virtually no players asking to start above first level. There is no need, if they keep playing eventually they will be a high-level mover and shaker in the campaign. Players are also not really interested in what I call ‘destructive play’ where they, oh, burn down a peasant village for the XP and lulz. The persistent campaign is rather unforgiving of actions like that, not rewarding.

So if you are a player of Role Playing Games I encourage you to view a campaign not as a story arc, nor as a ‘winnable scenario’ but rather a hopefully-permanent milieu for play. Not a sprint to the finish line, but a way of life.