This is, alas, one of those late-night post things. I apologize for that, but life has been busy of late.

Here's the deal:

There's been all this talk about "indie games" and "traditional games" and whether some are better suited to long-term play than others. Has anyone played 30 sessions of Game X? Is it possible? Would it break?

Personally, I don't really see the difference. If playing D&D is fun for one session, we can extend it to several. If playing New Game Y is fun, why not extend that further as well? If I find a game I really dig, and I have a group of people willing to commit to a long run, I'll try it. That is: I'll try it if I _want_ to explore some setting or concept in great depth. But I can't really see myself making a decision based on how "traditional" the system is or is not. But that's just me.

Now, a lot of newer games try to push, prod, and help the players get to the "cool stuff" faster, so perhaps it's natural that people can play shorter games and get the same satisfaction--you don't need to put in sessions and sessions hoping to get to the good stuff. But that's just a hypothesis.

What suddenly got me thinking was: D&D is the mostest of the mostest when it comes to traditional RPGs. People love to play long, extended campaigns in D&D. However, D&D is uniquely well-suited to short adventures. The design pretty much says: "You're heroes. Go into a dungeon and see if you can make it out alive." That's pretty front-loaded. That's pretty focused. And it's pretty hard to stretch that out into something longer--eventually the heroes are bound to get too wounded, too hungry, too thirsty, too claustrophobic to continue.

So, how did we get to this whole idea that old-school RPGs are synonymous with long-term games? Yes, many indie games are set up for the short, fun adventure. But so is D&D--it provides a great structure for a short, fun adventure. (The most recent versions make it so hard to make a character that the time investment and effort might be argued as an incentive against short-term play, but I'm talking about all D&D, from birth to present, so let's ignore this, OK?)

Then I started reading a thread over on "The Collective Endeavour" about how the key to a proper long campaign is pacing--stretching things out enough to keep people interested.

And D&D does this in an interesting way. It doesn't say, "Ooh! Keep playing, there are lots of neat plot twists coming up, and you never know how your character's personality and relationships might change!" That's what soap operas do, and it works. But D&D doesn't, really. It says something more like, "Here's a whole bunch of cool powers and abilities. But you don't get them right away. You have to work hard for a long time, and be lucky, in order to get them."

The experience system creates a sort of drawn-out pacing by itself, suggesting a long-term campaign before you've even started playing. If there are 20 levels available, then, gosh, it just makes sense that you HAVE to play through all 20, right? And the system guarantees that you can't do it too quickly.

So, players are promised cool stuff, and then told they can't have it right away. Is this, on its own, sufficient to create the idea that the best way to play the game is an insanely long campaign, tracing a hero's path from humble beginnings to their ultimate fate? (On top of that, chances are pretty good you could snuff it along the way, meaning you probably have to start all over...)

Does this structure lay out a certain implied duration or scope for the game? Call of Cthulhu, in contrast, suggests the one-shot or short-term game--character death is expected, and it marks the end of the game. My Life with Master also sets an expectation for how long your game will be--it just doesn't make sense to stop before you've reached Endgame. That's like watching the first half of a movie. In The Shadow of Yesterday, the implication is that you will play until your character Transcends--but it also spells out (although not too directly) that you get to choose when you're ready.

[continued]

One game that I've never understood this about is Primetime Adventures.

In the book it says that a 'season' is 6-9 episodes. I've played a PTA game that went the 'US standard' of 22 episodes for one season, and it worked just fine - in fact, I think we got a lot more out of it (a Heroes-level depth of plot threads) by playing out a longer game.

But I can see the opposite side of the coin: With the panopoly of games at your disposal and their relatively short learning curves, why not switch up flavors every few weeks, just for the heck of it?

I should note that since D&D3, the "I want to play a higher-level character with more powers NOW!" desire is actually directly supported, both in the main text and in the support materials.

Correct - but if the motivation is "withholding" the spiffy powers/abilities, D&D3 does not withhold to the level that previous editions did, you can start with as many as you like.

I should note that Star Wars SAGA has rules for progressing more or less quickly through levels, and that is considered a testing ground for D&D4, so I consider it likely we will not only see "starting at high levels" in D&D4, but also "getting to high levels fast" options.

Posted By: Paul T.So, how did we get to this whole idea that old-school RPGs are synonymous with long-term games?

Well, the concept of the long-form campaign being the default mode of play was hammered home by Gygax in the 1e DMG. I'm guessing this had a formative effect on design in general, given it was the most popular RPG, ever. The next most popular RPGs, Runequest/BRP and Champions, featured pretty slow advancement.

On top of all this, all of the games above, and probably most trad games, feature pretty involved chargen. E.g., you do not want to run a D&D one-shot for which player make PCs at the table; not at any level above 1st, at least. That, right there, means you're probably going to want to get some return on your investment and play more than one session.

And there's the whole carrot/stick/advancement thing in D&D.

Still, part of it is just a mindset. There's nothing about, say, HERO that demands one play for years one end, but that's what my old HERO group did consistently.

D&D changes over time... there's this sense of investment.

The problem for me is that it changes in its own way, but it becomes less and less of the game I like.

But the sense of advancement is a nice carrot.

I'd be curious what games people had long-term experiences with where they felt the game grew with them over time.

I smell some of the same rhetoric that was part of the Immersion Wars . . .

Anyway, I actually mapped this process out for a client (with a chart and everything!) a few months ago when we were talking about how to release/expand an IP over time. I explained it in terms of linear and othogonal axes. Games that support extended play expand material for participation along both.

The linear axis is really familiar to us; it's about levelling up, getting "more powerful" (though this is actually a illusion in games where challenges scale to character abilities). The orthogonal axis is something that is not inherent to the character, but is revealed/added through time in play. This includes things like money, trinkets, setting secrets and so on.

We can build ties between the two (like designing a game so that you quest for immortality at Xth level or you learn the ingredients to the Secret Cookies when you become an Arch-Baker). A major nexus for these affects the pacing of a game, like throwing a switch that lights up new possibilities.

Speaking in very general terms, most setting material is orthogonal stuff that can be introduced when the GM/play group sees fit. I think it's important to provide guidance on when/how to do this, though the degree to which it actually educates rather than just sends propaganda to grongards is debateable. I know from experience how easy it is to make something seem cool by simply instructing the reader that it's cool (and that includes you, the hypothetical guy who is reading this now and thinking you'd ever do that -- loudly self-identified freethinkers are the *easiest* targets for this) but nowadays I avoid it.

In mainstream games, Scion (which I don't have anything to do with) is a good example of this process, in that it attaches linear progression to a new slate of setting/play topics. In Demigod, you learn about hidden parts of the world. Mentzer D&D is the classic example of this integrated method. In the WoD games, much of the exploration is othogonal. There are lots of secrets and relationships, but they aren't contingent on character power. In D&D3, you have the opposite, where linear progression is the center and the DM is responsible for providing another context.

Metaplot and setting expansion add a temporal axis, but experience has shown that it's only effective when it's tightly integrated into everything else, despite the common wisdom that this is a bad idea. For instance, Heavy Gear had the perfect internet-grongard metaplot: modular, presented as a side element and portioned off in its own books. I can buy these books for real cheap now, since they ever really sold and the bits in the foreground of other books didn't interest anybody. Meanwhile, three years after the line's demise, people are still playing the chronicle I wrote to end Mage, despite it having a storyline that's inspired death threats from morons.

I've run many short term games over the years, from three sessions over a weekend when friends are in town (that middles session always becomes a bull session and that's part of the fun) to single sessions for new players, or cons, or for playtests. I've also used a lot of systems for this, even D&D/D20, though it's definitely not a favorite.

What I've discovered is that the key isn't system for the most part, it's what you reward the players with. In a long campaign the rewards are stuff and things (technical, i know). The player earns advancements, cool items, and even allies in their quest to achieve goals. In a successful short game the rewards are the goals themselves.

So instead of achieving several level and a cool-ass sword(another technical term) to defeat many adversaries and side quests and become, say, king. The shorter game is altered to involve the "money moment" (yup, just made that up). That critical time when our intrepid adventurer has choices and actions that will or won't make him king.

I'm in love with this kind of short game. There's so much drama involved in these exciting times of pass/fail.

Now that's not to say that some of these games haven't spawned longer stories. These things happen.

D&D's magical target #'s (chart goes to 20th) has a "well, we must be in this for the long haul, mustn't we?" effect in my view. The "one off" is the "deviation" not the norm. It might be interesting to see if the "level" form of advancement has this psychological effect compared to other forms of advancement. It is suited to gamist play.

I've had to train (retrain) myself as a DM running a D&D campaign not to "pace story and reward" to levels the way treasure etc. is supposed to be paced. I've realized (running very long running campaigns, essentially about a decade @, nearing end of 2nd) that I was rationing story along with treasure. A player would come up with a cool thread of plot and I would ponder it and think "that really will need to be settled at 16th+ level to be believable", that being 9 levels away (several years of real time) rather than thinking "how can I make that believably settled in play, or at least brought into play big time, within a few months real time". The level system has that effect of "making certain sorts of conflicts logically belong to people of X level and thus not suitable for play now".

That said, I'm pretty successful (I have people go to considerable contortions to keep playing), I think because there are multiple overlapping things going on so even though I've "made people wait", while they're waiting for one thing, other things are happening.

What the players like about long running game is the re-incorporation of elements encountered in the past, and the simultationist sense of realism this brings. They live mostly in a city where they won a contest about 8 levels (several years game and real time) ago and are recognized as heroes for it, we recently had someone script a trip to the family tomb of another PC's family and everyone immediately was smiling and saying "ah a trip to the Khoransanjani family crypt, that's always exciting" (the last one maybe 4 levels ago having seen assassination attempts). Players kicked themselves at one point (level 14 or so) for not recognizing a symbol on map they had seen branded in the foreheads of some zombies (around level 6) [this being a real player memory issue though PC skill checks would have helped too]. A session a few weeks ago "topped off" a plot that had been going on for several years that had involved dreams and letters and warnings over that period and then "the truth finally being revealed". One of the players remarked afterwards, "that's the kind of cool thing you can only get in a long running campaign".

If I said, "A bald Sonjon [human racial type] male in archaic wizard robes, with a jovial expression and friendly demeanour, walks around the corner", every PC would be running for their lives even though it's been over 10 years since Mazarath was last "on stage".

The other they like is indeed seeing how the level progression works and what technically their characters are capable of doing etc.

All of that said, as a DM, I find my interest flags in the long campaign. Players get to see new stuff, but after a few levels, I've "seen who that character is", and since I find D&D characters played as "fixed points" (they are what that background story written at first level said about them and they're forever that), the Players aren't really showing me anything very new (of course, that's these players, perhaps someone else would show more change in personality and development etc.). That's pretty much the reason I've told them the next campaign will be capped at 10-12 levels (along with the fact that like Ryan above, I don't like the feel of D&D as it moves into high magic at the upper levels).

Posted By: Paul T.Lots of interesting comments. In particular, I like the comment that a GM's interest in a campaign can diminish because the characters are no longer developing or revealing new information about themselves.

Would a system like TSoY (that encourages character change) fix this for you, do you think?..

A system that ties in-game (in-play) events to changes in character could very well address this for me and I like those sorts of systems generally. The way DitV fallout or Key buy-off in TSoY or the intended 'challenge/evolution' of Beliefs in Burnwing Wheel sees changes to character but puts the player in the position of deciding the particular ones (unlike say SAN loss in Cthulhu). My players are all pretty much fixed on continuing to play D&D, willing to shift to its next edition but not to a different system (I know, really, some systems are no bigger a shift really than a different edition of D&D but they're pretty set on this, I talk up other games, let them borrow copies to read etc. to not much avail).

I'm trying to pitch experimental hacks to d20 to address this (things I've also suggested in gleemax etc. fora) such as re-interpreting feats (the thing characters gain that is not class-determined/pre-determined) by requiring they have a character descriptive element added and then giving some benefit when that is played. It's not Weapon Focus Longsword, it's "My Grandfather's Longsword" etc. Thus character descriptions grow over time. This is essentially taking the "mechanistically described" D&D feat into the "character/narrative described" DitV trait or SotC/Fate aspect. Don't tell me you're specialized, tell me you're a student of the White Mountain Master. Don't tell me you've developed Iron Will, tell me you've become jaded and distrustful. Don't tell me you've taken some feat that helps sneak attack, tell me you've realized how much you love to twist the knife.

To your questions, all I can offer is that I think any system with rewards (see that thread) that take some accumulating to be used encourages longer duration play (e.g., Burning Wheel, ain't nobody getting Epiphany in a couple of sessions). Something good about BW's approach to that is that you don't have to spend the resource you save for this use only on that, if you want shorter term payoffs you can use it that way, so the system isn't "giving you stuff you can only use in long term play". Savage Worlds where you spend your bennies or don't and maybe get more experience for them (though I don't like that particular wrinkle so much, would give the XP on the rolls indicated when spending bennies in play, not when not spending them, bennies are to be spent to make play more cool etc).

I always like explicit statements from the game designer about how they think the structure and development of a campaign might work. Even Nobilis, with the supposedly-opaque rules, discusses the structure of campaigns in some detail, including the likelihood that over time the PC's will grow out of the setting.

These statements may be completely incorrect, but at least it's nice to know what people think.

Vincent's forthcoming In A Wicked Age does something interesting. All you do is play one-shots, but, after four or five, you look back and go, "Oh... that story was all about the wandering Demon guy. Huh."

It creates long term play (and story continuity) from a bunch of linked chapters, without deciding ahead of time who the protagonists are. This method is really floating my boat lately.

Posted By: herrmess2 - "Getting in character" (as in "getting attached to the character" or "getting to FEEL this is *my guy*"). This is something that can presumably be done only after a certain period of play.

I could argue against the first, but couldn't say much against the second.

I can, and it's about assumptions. I used to be one of those "I need like five sessions before I really feel my character" players. There was absolutely no way around it. For one character I even wrote something like a 20 page background. I was still no more connected than another character I gave a random name to.

And then I started playing games like Sorcerer and HeroQuest and such, where everything in character creation told you something about the character, and what was important to the character, and often times what the other PCs meant to the character (if anything). Instead of building a character based on what he can do, it was based on who he was. That's not to say I never had to adjust or find the flow anymore, but when systems make what a character is about from the beginning (that is, creation) then I know that character as we sit down to play, and attachment isn't a question of time spent, but if I like what the character is about (and exploring that is the fun of play).