What’s a Campaign?

[Thanos]

It seems as everyone has a different idea about what a campaign is. I’d like to try to build a consensus as to what most people are talking about when they use the word campaign in relation to RPGs.

For me a campaign is a series of adventures with the same characters, using the same IMTU continuity. One adventure may have pirates, another the manipulations of the CEO of a mega corporation but they all take place in the same campaign.

 

[hdan]

It kind of depends. I see two major types of campaigns:

1) The Epic Story Arc - the campaign follows the backbone of a large, epic conflict in which the players become critical. Once the arc is resolved, the campaign is over. The big disadvantage to this type of campaign is the level of involvement of the GM, who must come up with and administer a huge adventure in an interesting way.

2) The Episodic Sandbox - pretty much what you describe, and the campaign ends when the players grow tired of it. The big advantage to this type of campaign is that players can swap out characters, goals, even whole locales, and the GM only has to be familiar with the setting (and willing to use some random tables).

I tend to favor the Epic Story Arc type of campaign because in my experience, people get tired of any campaign after a while, and arcs have an end.

Having said that, I always got the feeling that Traveller was meant to be played as a Sandbox game, with characters periodically dying and being replaced, tons of randomization and improvisation, etc. An ambitious GM could certainly prepare larger adventures for a treat, but having a handy store of stock location maps, personalities, contacts&rivals, and other tools makes the campaign almost run itself.

 

[Dragoner]

A Campaign typically is a series of battles fought by the same army; GDW and TSR, being wargamers before being rpg players, merely imported the historical terminology.

 

[rancke]

A Campaign typically is a series of battles fought by the same army; GDW and TSR, being wargamers before being rpg players, merely imported the historical terminology.

You're talking about a military campaign. A different kind of campaign than a role-playing campaign, albeit with some features in common. But mostly quite different.

Presumably Thanos was talking about the latter kind of campaign, not military campaigns. Or political campaigns. Or advertising campaigns...


Hans

 

[Thoth-Amon]

I prefer the episodic campaigns. I've never had players get bored with it. It's completely nonlinear and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. If, by chance, they do something great in the verse, then great; if not, oh well. It's entirely up to them where they want to go with it. Side note: I run my WFRP campaigns the same way.

 

[Dragoner]

You're talking about a military campaign. A different kind of campaign than a role-playing campaign, albeit with some features in common. But mostly quite different.

Presumably Thanos was talking about the latter kind of campaign, not military campaigns. Or political campaigns. Or advertising campaigns...


Hans

Yes, exactly as I explained it.

 

[BytePro]

A set of connected adventures.

 

[aramis]

In Publications
A series of connected adventures with the same cast of characters and an overall metaplot.

In play
A continuous series of adventures with continuity of characters, possibly with one or more metaplot threads.

 

[AndreaV]

My take is a campaign is a series of adventures with common protagonists.

Now they can be serial with all adventures part of an over all plot arc like Babylon 5, or episodic with adventures more or less independent like ST:TOS.

My own games are a mix of the two (three or four linked adventures as part of a plot arc and then move on).

 

[Whipsnade]

For me a campaign is a series of adventures with the same characters, using the same IMTU continuity.

That's the probably the best baseline description of a campaign. As the others have pointed out, the differences begin to appear when you "flesh out" a given campaign's "skeleton".

The campaign can be wholly episodic, contain a series of short story arcs, contain a single long story arc, or any mixture of the three. My old "Fixers" campaign is a good example of the last. In it, the players dealt with a long arc of perhaps six sessions interspersed throughout the campaign, several short arcs of two or more sessions, and many single session episodes some of which were "sequels" of others.

 

[Fovean]

I've always thought of a campaign as merely background that ties all the sessions together in a thematic sort of way. So you have a few locations that are established (scale is irrelevant - could be sectors, subsectors, planets, cities or even just bars/ships/buildings) and a few NPCs that are important (again, scale is irrelevant) and you tie it all together with the adventures your players get involved in.

You don't have to detail 11,000 worlds for this to happen. Just have a few anchor points that your players run up against every so often.

The key thing to me though is that PLAYER ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. So if your group makes the mob boss angry, that mob boss will pursue them (across the sector/subsector/planet/etc) until they feel they have been repaid for the PCs infraction. If the players' action have no consequences on the future gaming sessions, then you're just playing a series of one-off adventures and anything goes. The beauty (and difficulty) of a campaign is that when something happens in this Monday's game, everyone is wondering what it means for next Monday's game.

 

[Strummist]

campaign is the season, adventure is the episode. Session is each section of an episode separated by adbreaks.

 

[BytePro]

Just hope there are no Fox executives running your campaigns! o: