"How Long is a Campaign?" Topic

Related to this poll, I am curious how long the campaigns that people are talking about are. So, how many games (of what length) in a campaign? Of course, you may have different answers for different genres.

Most historical (Medieval and 19th Century) campaigns for us are 4-8 half day games.

Sci fi campaigns usually have more games that are shorter, 10-12 2-3 hour games.

And some campaigns (modern hypothetical or gang war) don't have an end, just back and forth. In a gang war game, if gangs start to become removed, we are likely to have the "don" of the largest die off and that organization splinter into warring factions.

The campaigns in which I been involved, for the most part, were a series of linked battles in which the results of one battle would be carried over into the subsequent battles. Most were only 4 to 6 linked battles.

Here are report about a series of four ECW games we played back in 2004:
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Jim

At least 3, although a campaign might be won on the first battle.

Everything from a 1 day campaign to 6-12 months.

Our longest so far was 150 bounds, the next proably more so maybe 10 evenings.

About 5

My expectation is that a campaign must have at least three linked games, though all of the ones that I've participated in have been much greater in scope.

Our current Star Fleet Battles campaign has yielded 16 battles in 8 months of game time, taking 18 months to play so far. The earliest that it could end would probably involve about 3o total battles, but will likely run far beyond that.

My African imagi-nation campaign has been running for 10 years or so, and has yielded 27ish games played thus far. I expect that it will run for 3 to 4 times that many games.

TMP link

Several months player time-- a couple of days campaign time-- several sizeable battles.

A couple of Berthier- based campaigns (Russo- Japanese War and a fictional 1929 brigade operation in Sicily)ran for a number of weeks or months, each providing multiple significant engagements.

I prefer 4-6 games, starting small and building to a climax. The open ended ones I've participated in rarely finish as interest is lost when things start to go bad for one side.

"It's over when it's over!"

"And it ain't over until the fat lady sings!"

We played a Renaissance campaign that lasted for years and grew progressively bigger as our club expanded, we had armies from Indian to Britain, it was fun playing but fun as we all socialised as well

How long is a campaign?

How long is a piece of string?

Twice the distance from either end to the middle.

I agree with MajorB and Etotheipi.

Depends on the campaign. I ran an ancients campaign, traditional map movement and then get together for battles, that lasted about six months or so. I ran a sci-fi campaign via e-mail only where I did the battles that ran for four years.

I've run a half dozen Snappy Nappy 'Campaigns in a Day' -- multitable, multiplayer where the end of the world is not the end of the table. Most of those were written up in MWAN. I've played in a half dozen more up in The Portal game store in Manchester, CT (next to Hartford). They last an afternoon.

The last SN C-in-a-D I played was in spring 2018. The last one I helped umpire (Peter was the driving force behind the Peninsula campaign) was at Historicon 2018. That lasted from 10am to 4pm with 14 or 15 gamers across eight or nine tables.

Pardon the plug, but I'm running an 1814 SN C-in-a-D at the Portal in April. I put all the details in TMP -- Conventions and Wargame Shows board and elsewhere.

It's hard to get together consistently for a traditional map and then meet for battles, so if you want a campaign-style game or series of games, you have to get creative and look at alternatives.

I took part in a war of the roses campaign that lasted around 10 years real time and ran from 1455 – to the mid 1480s game time. It ran until the various claimants to the throne had been whittled down to one (Somerset if I recall correctly).

The game was more about the political maneuvering than the military and battles were abstracted using a variation of an SPI game mechanism from 'the conquerors'. I was playing the Talbot Earl's of Shrewsbury and didn't have any real hope of the throne my personal objective was elevation to a dukedom. I achieved that in the early 1470's but was ambushed and murdered on my way back from a minor field action. As my son and heir was a minor an uncle from the Butler side of the family came into play as his guardian but never really got any further forward so I spent a lot of the rest of the game protecting the Young Duke and trying for an advantageous marriage.