No worries, Mike. I posted with the appearance of not giving you the benefit of the doubt (just to clarify), but I figured you meant setting the stakes for the situation and not an actual roll. :) Thanks for clarifying!

@Ray: We run on a monthly cycle (too many campaigns, not enough time). Two of my campaigns currently only run for 6 months of the year (the players are more-or-less the same in both). I design the campaigns to minimise prep work, and have a whole heap of other tricks to free up time for doing things like writing for Campaign Mastery. In general, I find that 1 day a week is enough prep time to be thorough; I can get by on less. For over a year, I was running two campaigns back-to-back with no prep at all – thinking up the day’s scenario in the car en route to the game – but that’s unnecessarily stressful.

@Tyson: Players have come and gone and sometimes come back again, but the campaigns were designed with that in mind. One of the original players of the 16-year Champions campaign (named for the superhero team and not the Rules System) is still in 2 of my D&D games, the Warcry campaign (a spinoff from the main Zenith-3 campaign), and in the Pulp campaign that I co-referee, though. Which either means that my campaigns are very inbred or that I’m doing something right! I’ve actually blogged about campaign longevity here before: In it for the long haul, and it’s no doubt a topic I’ll return to in the future. I rarely plan for a campaign to last for less than 2 years, and 5-, 10-, and 15- year plans are more common. With play only happening once a month, those numbers are somewhat less impressive than a first glance might suggest – a “15 year campaign” is the equivalent of playing the same weekly campaign for about 3-and-a-half years. The coming and going of players and the changing cultural referances available and having multiple campaigns going on simultaniously all cut down on the boredom factor, but yes, it has happened from time to time. It rarely lasts for long though – a month or two and it’s off to the races again!

I would enjoy reading your tricks to keeping your campagin going. How do you keep it fresh and interesting for yourself? Do you get bored writing for the same campagin over and over throughout the years?
Tyson J. Hayes´s last blog ..Introducing a New Player: Provide Limited Character Options

Hmmm… I agree with most of the post, but I disagree with this, Mike (if I understand what you’re saying, that is). In my opinion, there should never be a “win the campaign” roll; failing a roll in a climactic scene shouldn’t spell doom for the party. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be tension, but there shouldn’t be a time at which everything can just stop because of random chance. A bad decision? For sure. A die roll? Well…

Of course, that’s all based on my reading, and the context of that section.
Rafe´s last blog ..Abstract Wealth

I’ve also had three long-term capaigns come to a premature end after five, seven, and twelve years, respectively, and had three that self-destructed after just a couple of weeks. Those don’t count 23 mini-campaigns that ran from start to planned finish after between 4 weeks and 6 months over a 2-year period.

I’ve also played in a number of campaigns, only a few of which ran from start to a planned finish, most of which also lasted for years.

Since I’m not in my 90s (!), it should be clear that many of these overlap, and I currently GM four campaigns, plus the 16-year Zenith-3 campaign, and co-GM a sixth.

That’s the secret to avoiding campaign shutdown from changing game types – multiple campaigns, of different styles, of deliberately different planned durations. Having campaign plans that make deliberate allowance for someone leaving is another essential, and one that I’ll post about some other time; I employ a number of tricks that I’ve learned from various TV shows & related books and making-of documentaries. As for real life interfering, that’s only ever fatal when it offers an excuse to people who are otherwise indifferent to the game. The rest of the time, you either play without the affected people or you miss a session – neither are life-threatening to a game that’s still sucking in oxygen.