I had a discussion with a friend last Friday about gaming. He DM's the Heavy Metal D&D campaign that I played in from level 1 to 10. That campaign is still going strong. I mentioned to him that I was feeling pretty blah about RPGs. Kris responded that I should stick to one shots. Why? I'm in the zone when I'm passionate about my games or a certain aspect of it, and it really shows. When filler takes place, I'll just coast through it and play it out almost like taking care of formalities. Couple that with my extreme frustration with plot if player attendance isn't regular, it makes the thought of a long campaign seem like an ideal. The idea of doing one shots or campaigns that are done within three sessions do indeed make sense. I get to play out fresh ideas quickly. Cycle through player rosters and no one has to feel like they're giving up every other Saturday or whatever for an unknown amount of time. But the trade off... you don't get to build that level of character bond and backstory where it almost feels like you just got dumped by an ex when the DM kills your character.
Today, I go to my friends' place for brunch and we'll create characters for Mouse Guard while watching Buffy. We'll see how long we play this for and I have no clue what the scheduling for sessions will be like as only two of us have Monday to Friday work weeks. Regardless, I'm excited to get this going.
I totally get the issues with trading off longevity for immediate fun. Some of the best games I've ever had were one shots. I've often wished that the DM would pick up where we left off, and I'm not totally convinced that there's a happy medium between the two, unless you're playing something like PARANOIA, where everyone's pretty much guaranteed a gruesome death six times over.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how it goes man - Mouse Guard rocks!
Will do Brennan. I'll have both Matt and Ian Bowes at the table. Gonna be interesting GMing them as they're both like starting shenanigans.
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