"Mini Monday: Campaigns, We love them but" Topic

Mini Monday: Campaigns! We all love them but…

They seem to be a rare event that only pops up
here and there and rarely here. Usually you find yourself
reading about a great campaign that was played in someones
garage 20 years ago or is currently going on in some town a 2000 miles away.

So why are campaigns so rare when everyone and I mean everyone wants to be in one?
Plenty of gamers but so few Gamemasters?
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The problem with every campaign I have been involved in has been that once one player suffers a big setback they quit and the campaign is over.

Yep. That happened in our Napoleonic campaigns twice. Both times the player who bid the highest to play the French turned out to be a poor tabletop commander

My attention span isn't long enough to sustain a campaign, new shiny kicks in.

Campaigns are the life blood of a gaming group in my opinion! I've run successful Plains War, Boxer Rebellion, and American Revolution. We have had a couple DOA campaigns too. The wonderful memories from those campaigns will never fade.

Player drops might require NPC type rules until a replacement occurs. Team campaigns are less susceptible than multi faction.

Sometimes the GM has to step in.

Sometimes the campaign (like any game) can be decided on the first turn if the results are decisive. Declare a victory and start over. Or offer to switch roles mid game if the "defeated" player is resenting being hamstrung when he might actually have a fighting chance. It might be a lot of fun to prove him wrong by snatching a victoryif he is a real whiner about how bad his situation is.

Random events can always give a break to the disadvantaged and contribute to the campaign narrative.

If it's a map campaign with players coming together to fight a tabletop battle, it can be tough to schedule the players together after the first battle or two.