It's A Marathon Rather Than A Sprint: Why I Will Always Champion The "Forever Campaign"

Trawling back through his archives recently, I found myself agreeing with the sage wisdom of Grognardia's James Maliszewski, in his pontifications on a subject near and dear to my heart: the desirability of long-running campaigns.

I've mentioned a number of times on this blog my personal white whale: my dream of an open-ended "forever campaign", which I have long-considered the definitive expression of our hobby (certainly where Dungeons & Dragons-style games are concerned).

Inspired by the early practitioners of our art (from Gary Gygax's Greyhawk via David Hargrave's Arduin to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor), I'd always felt this was how the game was meant to be played.

Characters should live, grow old, and die (either in battle or in the comfort of their own keep) during the run of a campaign, but the world always carries on. Characters have long and storied careers, then retire, raise castles and families, become legends, but the world always carries on. 

The world shouldn't 'end' when a particular adventure ends (unless, of course, it's an apocalyptic adventure such as I concocted for the Tuesday Knights in The Chronicles of Cidri).

Modern campaigns, to me, feel like they have a story to tell and once it's told, it's time to pack things up and move on to another game.

For instance, while I loved playing my human fighter Syr Edvard in Simon's Dungeons & Dragons 5e Curse of Strahd campaign, we knew from the moment we stumbled through the Mists into Ravenloft we were destined to ultimately confront the vampire lord Strahd and try to free the land from his grasp. 

Us and the thousands of other gamers who have - and will have in the future - played through this campaign book, all following roughly the same story.

The details may vary, both in the plot and how the character's react, but, ultimately we all have a single primary objective.

The current crop of campaigns from Wizards are designed to take characters from 1st to 20th level, in a compressed period of time (10 to 18 months of weekly games, I believe), and then those characters go away, and new characters are "designed" (not generated)  for the next book-length campaign.

Ultimately, we are telling the story that Wizards wants us to tell. And that's okay, if that's how you want to play Dungeons & Dragons. And a lot of people do, I get that.

These are blockbuster movies, whereas my gaming interest lies more in the direction of the on-going soap opera, a marathon rather than a sprint.

I look at Robert Wardhaugh's famous four-decade spanning campaign, and the original campaigns I mentioned above, and that's what I want a piece of.

I like the idea of a sprawling, living, setting where the characters create their own story, rather than characters being created for a story.

I, again, cite my own Chronicles of Cidri as a small example of what I have in mind: when I began that campaign (taking over the reins from Pete a few sessions in), I had no end goal in mind, there was no set objective for the characters. A string of events - all driven by the player-characters (knowingly or unknowingly) - led to the final apocalyptic battle and the destruction of the world.

If Clare's character hadn't fallen under a certain curse and then hadn't chosen to trust the untrustworthy Witch of The Woods the campaign - and the world - would have turned out a lot different.

James pulled out a brilliant quote from 'noisms' of Monsters and Manuals:

"We need long campaigns. We need to sit down with the same group of people on a regular basis over the course of years, telling the kind of stories which require concentration and thought and, above all, loyalty; stories which gain their own momentum through peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows, ups and downs and ins and outs; stories in which the events which happen matter because they have a context and a background and an unknown future waiting to be discovered. We don't need the inconsequential frippery of the one-shot; we need time."

However, 'noisms' also wraps up his own commentary on the need for long campaigns, thus:

"Almost everything worth doing, knowing, reading, hearing, feeling or saying in life has the character of being unobtainable via shortcuts except in a form which diminishes both you and it. Why would you expect RPGs to be any different?"

While I have been known to enjoy an odd one-shot as a palate-cleanser, a way to explore new and different rules ideas, I want my players' characters to become enmeshed in their game-world, there to live and breathe, rather than drive one single plot forward at breakneck speed.

In his article, James said:

"A multi-year campaign is, I think, the ideal form of most roleplaying games ... and by "ideal," I don't mean some unattainably lofty goal but rather the most desirable and satisfying version of this type of entertainment."

I realise my time on this Earth is finite, I'm heading towards my sixtieth birthday later this year, and I'm plagued with a host of health issues that fate has foisted upon me.

If I'm lucky I have the time - and energy - left in me for one last, massive, sprawling campaign in the manner I aspire to. 

This is why I remain staunchly zealous (almost certainly to an annoying degree at times) about protecting the Tuesday Knights' precious, monthly gaming slots.

I'm still quite adamant that while we are bound to "one RPG session a month" (meaning a maximum of 12 a year, and we rarely achieve that for sundry health, family, and work reasons) I want to play (or, more crucially, run) something with the potential to become this kind of open-ended "forever campaign".

I'd love to see characters invested in something other than an "overarching plot", putting something back into the game world, be it building a castle or a dam, seizing a crown and struggling with the mantle of rulership, getting married, growing their dynasties etc

There would still be the grand expeditions, the megadungeons to loot, the Big Bads to slay, but between all this the characters would have lives, dreams, aspirations, passions, and growth that might not be measured in experience points, but would certainly make their personal stories more rounded and interesting.

Of course, I realise if I'd just stuck to my guns when we launched the Tuesday Knights, back in 2008, and kept my initial Castles & Crusades campaign going, there's every possibility that I would be running such a "forever campaign" as I dream about. 

But there's no point having regrets over my stupidity back in the day. At least, it was a learning experience. Albeit rather late in life.

I'll let James have the final word on the subject of extended campaigns, quoting one of the founding fathers of our glorious, and occasionally frustrating, hobby:

"Indeed, I'd argue this is the way D&D at least was intended to be played, as Gary Gygax states in the foreword to OD&D: "it is the campaign for which these rules are designed."

"Second To The Right, And Straight On Till Morning"

I have long dreamed of a fantastical, island-hopping roleplaying game "project", akin to the beloved Ray Harryhausen sword-and-sorcery movies of my youth filtered through something akin to old school Dungeons & Dragons.

The exact flavour remains undecided, but I already have a campaign format in mind.

I want to emulate the very first campaign that Gublin and I played back in the late '70s: a picaresque nautical yarn in the style of Sinbad The Sailor, The Odyssey, Jason & The Argonauts or even Clark Ashton Smith's The Voyage of King Euvoran, with the player-characters as the crew of an exploratory ship sailing from mysterious island to mysterious island.

I've long said my campaigning Holy Grail is to run an open-ended 'forever campaign' that captures the spirit of the first generation of roleplaying campaigns (e.g. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, and my personal favourite: Dave Hargrave's Arduin).

Maybe this is the adventure that will steer me in that direction.

Introducing PROJECT 60

In the middle of 2024, I announced on Facebook - as much for myself as anyone else - that I was launching PROJECT 60.

The primary aim of this overarching idea was that by the time I hit 60 (in a few years' time) I will have assembled and researched an actual historical skirmish wargame... set in the age of the Border Reivers.

Superficially it's a Medieval (Tudor) "Wild West" on the border of Scotland & England (The Debatable Lands), with swords, horses, black powder weapons, lawlessness, family loyalty etc

Bizarrely, it was a random mention of this time on an episode of Antiques Roadshow that first piqued my interest.

I've since been circling this idea - as either a wargame or RPG setting - for several years now, but finally decided 2024 was the time to get stuck in.

For figures and rules I shall be concentrating on those produced by Flags of War, as those were the first I discovered for this little-known period.

While I have yet to fully grok the rules system (at first glance there's an air of Savage Worlds about it that I rather like), one of the joyous things about this game and its setting is that it's very much a skirmish game, for a handful of figures on each side.

So there's no need to invest in hundreds of minis, that would then bust the bank if I wanted them painted up nicely.

It actually turns out that several other manufacturers produce miniatures - and terrain - suitable for this period, but the Flags of War ones are my favourites by far, and so will be my primary focus.

My first batch of miniatures are currently with my figure painter, and I'll let you all know once they are done. 

I've organised the games room a bit, so the table is ready for the miniatures. At some point, I must try to drybrush the model church and graveyard, add some flocking and so on to make it look less plastic.

What's really surprised me, as I accumulated my library of historical tomes about the Border Reivers, is that while there are a handful of factual documentaries about them as far as I can tell there has never been a motion picture made about these characters.

I'm gobsmacked by this missed opportunity, as their stories are full of action and larger-than-life antiheroes, very much akin to the Western cinema that was the backbone of Hollywood in the "golden age" and still produces epic classics to this very day. 

Part of my research has also involved reading the late Robert Low's superlative trilogy of Border Reivers novels, which my old university chum, JJ, sent me when he heard I'd taken a fancy to this period of history.

On the roleplaying front, it has finally struck me (in the last couple of days actually) that the games I fiddle about about with, house rule, and generally rewrite aren't actually being designed for me to run!

What I'm actually doing (subconsciously until now) is creating rules systems and worlds (such as my defunct superhero setting Knight City) that I want to play in, that I want to create a player-character for and have the kind of adventures I've always fantasised as the ultimate manifestation of this marvellous hobby.

This is why I would often get frustrated when I ran a campaign (usually an aborted superhero one) because it wouldn't turn out how I imagined it should. It wasn't that I was railroading the Tuesday Knights towards specific outcomes or trying to dictate the emerging story, but that it wasn't emulating the genre as I perceived it.

Most recent batch of Tekralh booklets - a mix of new and updated material

If you know me on Facebook you will have (possibly) seen posts about my recent work on Tekralh (the name I'm sticking with for my Frankengame), as the RPG strand of my  PROJECT 60.

I've broken the mass of my writing down into smaller booklets, which - at a future date - makes them more cost-effective to edit and reprint.

The building blocks of my Tekralh house rules

And what got me excited about all this again?

Back in March, I ran a single session of Shadowdark for The Tuesday Knights. Everybody said they loved it, but there was something that didn't click for me.

It took me a moment to twig: it was a very good system... but it wasn't MY system. I'm certainly not knocking the multi-award-winning Shadowdark, but several of the things I liked about it were also things I liked about my own Frankengame.

Yes, my house rules are a lot crunchier than Shadowdark and maybe not as easy for people to instantly grok, but I kept coming back to the point that my Frankengame was my game... and, ultimately, if I only get one final shot at running an open-ended, mega-campaign, I'd really like it to be my own baby.

The original Arduin Trilogy - the biggest influence on my DIY RPG ideas

To try and explain what I'm going for with my bundle of house rules (that build off of Newt Newport's Crypts & Things and Matt Finch's Swords & Wizardry), I want to point you towards the main influences and inspirations for Tekralh:

• Dave Hargrave's Arduin - my very first 'postal purchase', from a small advert in the back of White Dwarf, paid for with postal orders (!!!). I have no recollection what drove me to buy this (had I already read the introductory article by Dave in Different Worlds magazine?). But I've never looked back since those original three little booklets arrived at my parents' house. Over the years I went on to buy all the original booklets... and quite a lot of the later material (there's even a new edition on the horizon), but it's the original trilogy I keep returning to for ideas.
• Dave Arneson's Blackmoor - another first for me. After I'd purchased my Holmes' Basic Dungeons & Dragons booklet, the first actual gaming supplement I remember picking up from the Dark Tower in Tunbridge Wells was, appropriately, Judges Guild's The First Fantasy Campaign, a delightfully rough and ready collection of notes from Arneson's ur-campaign, the foundation upon which ALL campaigns that followed were built.
• Gary Gygax's Greyhawk - I've always had an interest in this campaign, for similar reasons to my love of Blackmoor: it was a campaign formulated before the rest of the gaming world knew what "fantasy roleplaying campaigns" were. Sadly, while there are early editions of the rules books that grew out of this available, there isn't the random notes and unfiltered enthusiasm of my first two choices. And, the deepest sorrow is the lack of a true rendition of the legendary Castle Greyhawk. I've seen - and own replicas - of some material, largely courtesy of Gary's co-DM Robert Kuntz. 
• Robert A. Wardhaugh's The Game 

I'm not looking for replicate these games and settings, but I definitely aspire to emulate them... because I want to play in a version of them.

It explains why I've always found myself at a loss when it comes to dreaming up scenarios. I can picture odd set-pieces (which are MOMENTS I'd love to be a part of in a never-ending old school campaign), but creating an actual scenario whole cloth always leaves me at a loss.

And this is why: I can see how a story could start, but I want to be part of the group that discovers how events unfold from there. I ant to be an integral part of the developing story rather than the gamesmaster setting out all the pieces on the board for us to play with.

If you've made it this far you're probably wondering what this all means?

Honestly, I don't know. Even after a year away from blogging I'm still no closer to reaching any definitive conclusions on the gaming front.

I want to play in a game like the ones that have inspired me, like the one I've tried to create, but nothing on the Tuesday Knights docket comes to close to this "aspirational holy grail".