Longevity of a campaign inquiry

#1

Hello all, old school gamer (responsible for Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets) and I had a few players looking into a long term campaign that could last for years. Or maybe many months. I have the ICRPG 2e core, Magic and Worlds and I’m curious about using this system towards this end. Basically, in my head, the kobolds, spiders and skeletons that the players kill early on will have ties throughout the game to eventual challenges by an ancient red dragon, the Spider God and Orcus with many monsters, cultists and rivals in between. Can I take a break from D&D games and try to pull this off?

#2

You can, and you should.

I just ran a 17+ week campaign, documented on the Roll for Effort channel on YouTube. I generally alternated between stat points, milestones, and epic loot every session. However, for a longer campaign, you might make those gains every other session (or maybe every few sessions at higher levels). You can easily keep a campaign going for a long time with this system.

#3

Thank you for the prompt reply, I do appreciate the information too. I’m looking forward to the campaign and trying something a little more fast and loose. I’m hoping to journal the game in some form as it unfolds.

#4

ICRPG has a few features to it that make it easy to run long campaigns, perhaps even easier than some other systems:

Non-Linear Progression
As the GM you have the choice to run the game by having most player progression in the form of LOOT, an amulet, a better sword etc. These items can be won and lost by players. So players are not just getting more and more powerful over time. As the GM you can really control how much progression they are allowed to keep.

Low Health System
You can run the game with the player characters having low hit points for a very long time. I would suggest no more than 2 or 3 hearts ever. This keeps every encounter exciting and potentially very deadly.

Easy to Create Challenges
Because of the lack of a formal levelling system, you can easily whip up challenging monsters or NPCs for your encounters. A couple of milestones, a few spells and some epic loot and you have a quick mid level enemy created.

There are some challenges, as well, to this system:

No Prewritten Campaigns
Because of the DIY heartbeat of the system, there aren’t any off-the-shelf campaigns you can buy. This can make a little more work on the part of the GM, especially if you are like me and don’t have a huge back knowledge of information to mine. You tend to find that ICRPG attracts that kind of GM though.

Players can Surprise You
As progression hasn’t been mathematically constructed or ‘balanced’ over decades, some very interesting combinations of items and milestones can quickly spin up. This is awesome for the players and GM as our makes for interesting and fun games, but also just something to be aware of.

#5

I wrote about using fronts and co-creating house rules as a way to promote longevity on this site a little while ago. Fronts may help with your kobold/spider/dragon idea.

#6

My best suggestion is to litter your early games with many many potential hooks (the spiders, skeletons, and kobolds sound fantastic) and to not have an end goal predecided in your mind. Some other really great advice that floats around this forum often is to just prep your game one session at a time. It keeps your villains reacting to your players decisions in a real way which doesn’t tie you down to a particular idea, making your BBEG more flexible and able to do cool stuff. Prepping one session at a time also gives the players more agency in the outcomes of their encounters. It lets them feel like their decisions actually affect the plot (because their decisions actually DO affect the plot) and can totally change how the world works. I can tell ya from experience that long term games work awesome run this way. I ended a campaign a couple months ago that ran for over a year and a half set in a home brew spelljammer styled space opera universe and my players loved it. part of the reason why, was that their crazy shenanigans actually affected how stuff works in the galaxy. They took down a criminal organization run from a floating casino in space. Sure I had other plot threads available, but that is was they gravitated towards (pun intended). Prepping one night at a time really let me think… how would the last sessions exploits make my mafia boss want to react? In conclusion, TLDR; sounds like you have a great starting idea, I’m sure you will have a very long running and very fun campaign!

#7

Firstly, thank you all for taking the time to reply, I really do appreciate this and it has settled my mind on running with the ICRPG for this endeavor, which I think everyone will enjoy as they have been keen on everything from DCC to CoC to T&T and WFRP. I really like the fast and loose and open approach and I will take ALL advice into consideration.
@TheWunderLich I really like this advice and while I have Orcus as the final confrontation, I do run very sandbox games and I totally understand what you are saying, things can change. I was hoping to weave the threats as a thread as basically my only plot with the players filling in the rest. They are very good at piecing things together and totally awesome at running with red herrings. I was hoping they would follow the red herrings until the realization hits that the kobolds lead to the dragon, the orcs and goblins to the beholder, the spiders to the Spider God, hmmm, and all of those undead, that could lead to…
@TheyCallMeDeans thank you very much for the link, delving in now.
@Kreeba thank you very much for the breakdown, you answered a few questions that I had and forgot to type, much appreciated!

#8

ICRPG definitely holds up for long term campaigns. I played in the game with Alex and I’m currently running one that’s just entering session 5 tomorrow night (this game is also on Roll For Effort).
Sounds like you’re going to have a blast, man. Love me some kobolds.

#10

@JD Stirling thank you for the encouragement, I hope to dive in very soon.

edit: I deleted my previous post because it didn’t tag you and this one isn’t either. Mysterious!

#11

@bat orcus is totally cool and would make for an epic boss monster. Having your final evil who has been pulling the strings already chosen is totally awesome because it can aid in giving a theme to the campaign, even having an encounter or two already in mind is fine, that can be included in your “whole truth”, or the underlying cause to why the heros are called to action in the first place. That whole truth is your North Star so to speak. It gives you direction, which is fantastic, but not much else, which is actually a boon. Seeing the way but not the path laid out is fundamental for a great game in my opinion. What’s the fun in playing a game if all the outcomes and situations are decided already right? At that point I might as well be reading a book. I know it is a personal opinion and a style of play not everyone is down with so I hope I don’t come off as pushing the “my way is the only way to game”, it is just what I find to be beautiful about this game system. I guess my point is that you shouldn’t worry about having important things already decided, but maybe don’t worry too much about preparing every detail. The mystery is also fun to behold on the DMs side :slight_smile:

#12

@TheWunderLich I absolutely heartily agree. I usually just toss out the sandbox and let the cats roam free. This time I’m going to run things fast and loose with a theme only I know, seemingly usual dungeon and wilderness encounters meandering along, I want to see the point of realization where a player says, “You know, we killed a LOT of undead too.”

#13

Hey bat,

Just ran across this post and wanted to say THANK YOU for the years of amazing content on your blog. One of the landmarks in the churning sea of OSR gaming and an inspirational font of continuous creativity. I absolutely love the recurring characters of Koram, Vistis, et al. I even dropped a crystal sword into my current campaign as a shout out (and yes, the “astral raiders” are still looking for it).

Keep rollin, broski.

Metalbrau

#14

Metalbrau!
Thank you for the kind words, it is very humbling. I am glad you like the blog. It is being edited and illustrated right now to be published as a book and there will be some more surprises coming too.

Best!
b

#15

Sheepish ETA: I didn’t realize till after that this was a very old thread resurrected for a side conversation. All the below is still my opinion, lol, but I see now the question has long since been answered. :grimacing:

I must admit I often wonder what the question behind this question is. Is there some implicit assumption I missed that rules wear out if they are simple and elegant, but they don’t if there’s an option to keep buying more books for ever more granular and clunky rules? Is there some idea floating around that somehow the kind of story you can create at a table depends more on the rules/book than it does the GM and PCs? Is it from limited experience with systems other than D&D/PF so they think level progression is the whole point of playing, and they suspect Loot Leveling won’t work over the long run? I just see variations of that question a lot and I’m always intrigued to find out what nest of assumptions spawned it.

For me, the first year I returned to regularly playing (Ie running) RPGs, I ran a year long series of connected campaigns and one shots with ICRPG. (Didn’t finish updating that log For the last few sessions because Life got crazy, but the campaign ended in a huge crazy finale and everyone was chomping at the bit for more.)

Mostly I tried to stick to campaign arcs of 6-8 sessions not because of the rules or the system, but because of my and the other players’ attention spans. Some were new, and the veterans hadn’t played in a long time. So we were all in a place of “what else can we play?” Meaning “what other genres And old school games can we riff on?” Hankerin and the community continuing to put out great supplement content kept the energy up for all of us to run a complete story, and then move on.

And this worked out well.the newbies got to experience a lot of cool stuff and find their footing trying many different characters and types. The veterans got to play a lot of games similar to their oldschool gamecrushes, but without the tedium of rules lookups every five seconds and tons of dead, unfun time at the table.

I have no doubt ICRPG as a system can support a longer campaign, (like I plan the one I recently kicked off) to be, so long as the GM can support big enough changes in the tone and variety of arcs over time, and can manage PC power progression in a way that satisfies players need for Dopamine hits from getting new character bling on the regular but also escalates the Threat levels and Risks/Costs of Failure in a way that sustains a sense of Danger.

#16

@Lon thank you for the reply, it is much appreciated.
To answer your inquiry of the ‘question behind the question’ I admit that I bought a lot of rpgs in a span of about two or three years. A LOT of rpgs. ICRPG caught my eye and at that time I was being paid to run games in a bar/restaurant and I was looking for a game that is easy to teach, run and still would go the distance as a couple of players that wanted a long term game instead of a few short games. Also a miniature collector, I wanted to use a bunch of miniatures in a long connected arc just to see when the players caught on.

Things have changed since my initial inquiry of course. I also no longer run games in that particular place, where I am restrictions are eased and I do run in a bar, I just prefer to not be paid to run games in public.

#17

Makes total sense! I hope you get to play the way you want, and safely, soon. Year has gone bananas. And the worst is still to come, at least in America, alas.