Comments on: Warstories: The imploding campaign

By: James

James — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:28:58 +0000

First off, Thank you NEWBIEDM. All of your work is greatly appreciated. I’ve been fortunate enough in my 20+ years of gaming. None of my campaigns have ever fizzled out. I think the key to success is to listen to your players and design the adventures around their character backgrounds. I’ve also introduced old school items into every new edition of the game. In my 4E FR campaign, the 15th level sorcerer with Wild magic is loving his Wand of Wonder. I’ve also been lucky enough to have the same players throughout the years. Cheers!

By: American Nerd

American Nerd — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:44:13 +0000

I have 7 players in a bi-weekly 4E game that has been going on for over a year and a half now…and they are only 7th level! I needed a break, so my great group of players stepped up and are running short adventures that relate to something personal for another PC. Father issues, past indiscretions, old enemies from back stories, etc. I get to play the character of whoever is DM’ing, so now I finally get to play 4E! After the “side quests” (as the players call them) are complete, I may step back in and we’ll go back into the main storyline…or I just may start Gamma World when it comes out…we’ll see!

By: Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2010-02-12

Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2010-02-12 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:51:57 +0000

[...] Warstories: The imploding campaign NewbieDM poses some great questions and thoughts about what causes campaigns to implode and self destruct. He has lots of great points in his post, and I suggest all DMs and players read his post in an effort to keep their current campaign from imploding… or detecting that it’s about to and it’s time to walk away from the game and start a new one. I know that I’d rather lose a current campaign over losing my current gaming group. The self destruction of a campaign can quickly lead to the same thing happening for a group. [...]

By: Hans

Hans — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:51:46 +0000

I had a game implode over the disposition of a defeated medusa. One player wanted to just off her and be done with it (Monsters are fer killin’) and another wanted to blindfold her and march her back to the Brotherhood of Redemption (an organization in Ptolus that tries to “reform” monsters). They ended up fighting each other. The sad part is, this wasn’t part of the campaigns meta-plot; it was a one-shot detour they took because they took an insignificant article in a gossip rag printed in Ptolus and made an adventure out of it (that’ll learn me to spend time writing fake articles for verisimilitude).

We switched to 4E after that. That campaign died after about 6 sessions due to attendance issues (family matter timing issues, not because they were down on 4E or my game). I gamed two sessions since then, then hung up the dice bag until my life settles down (since hanging up the dice bag, I’ve moved, my father died, and I got re-married).

And if you bring the Rules Cyclopedia to Gen Con this year and run a game, I’ll play in it. That’s the version of D&D *I* learned on!

By: Lancar

Lancar — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:28:29 +0000

I had a group implosion about a year ago. My best player, the actor/popular/funny guy, finally decided he just didn’t have enough time to keep coming. This affected the group quite a bit, lost energy and lost the group’s combat effectiveness. The worst thing that can happen to a group/player is for the game to become a chore: predictable, something that has to be done because you have a responsibility… Pretty sure that’s what happened to this guy.
In the year since he’s left, I’ve stepped it up a notch. I put more care into world-building, getting everyone’s input, stealing awesome hooks from blogs and DnDi. Most importantly, this is the hardest part, I got new players who actually wanted to play. To be quite honest, I think I just got lucky that I have players that want to play as much as I do.

By: Totte Alm

Totte Alm — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:46:41 +0000

I’ve gone through several different types of events that have caused games to end. When we played every sunday (back in the school/after school days, before family), I got so burnt out I didn’t DM for several years. When you got a call 9 AM in the morning after a tough saturday night saying “Hey, where are you? We’re gonna start early today!”, you get that.

Then, many years later, I GM:ed a Swedish RPG because as my son was to young to understand all the English back them. That campaign died because the game really suffered from the lack of 3rd party stuff, and that it took a full day to create a good encounter for a little higher level party, so I mailed everyone “The war is won, you all find yourself happy in the city you just have helped to save….”, I just didn’t have the time to drive the story forward.

By: Combining Employee Motivation Programs and Health Insurance Plans | Health Insurance

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:44:39 +0000

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By: by_the_sword

by_the_sword — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:02:14 +0000

Every campaign I ever ran or played in fizzled due to real life constraints. Very sad.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:40:26 +0000

I had a major implosion a few years back when I was first starting out GMing.

I was running a psionic themed GURPS campaign and the psionic characters were warned over and over to be subtle because there is an organization hunting psions. Well, one of the player’s idea of discretion was riding a telekinetic lifted desk over New York City. After several such incidents the organization found them. The blatant player complained about being discovered, complained about the power level of the enemy and complained about every rules call in the fight. Eventually I just got up in the middle and walked out of the room. I think it took them a good 20 minutes to realize I wasn’t coming back. I’m not proud of it, but it happened.

By: esspkay

esspkay — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:56:11 +0000

I’m running two bi-weekly games at the moment – one face to face and one on skype/maptools. I ran my face to face game weekly last year, and it’s only now that I realise just how much work I -was- putting into it. The skype game took some prep initially, but I can see it getting easier as time goes on – this means that those weeks will kind of be my ‘break’.

I would -love- it if I got to be a player in one of my games; probably the face to face one. Everytime I go through the character creation process with new players, I think of dozens of characters I’d love to play myself… *le-sigh*.