One Shots, Short Term, and Long Term

Well, I've been doing a lot more philosophizing then playing lately. I guess that's how it goes. So today, I'm thinking a bit more, cause we didn't get to play The Monsters today. Which really kinda pissed me off, cause I gave Po a great scenario. Just going off his original idea, it would be brutal. So looking forward to seeing how he would tweak it. So fun!

Anyway, that didn't happen. We were busy today. So I had some time to think.

There are three types of campaigns. The one shot, the short term, and the long term. It seems that our work long term campaigns don't seem to work. There's just too much that could happen. People are sick, or have a kid's religious ceremony, or we get busy.

Maybe. So I'm thinking we need to change some stuff. First though, some background.

One Shots; Or as I like to call them Ragmoffs. As in ragamuffin. I used to call them that because I'd drive around in my beat up Chevy Astro van and pick up as many of my buddies as I could and run something for a couple of hours. My friends got real good at rolling up a character in less then ten minutes. I think that some of them had characters already rolled up...

Short Term: These are campaigns that usually run only a few sessions. These typically happened because we started a long term campaign, and it fizzled out. There were a few that we actually designed to only last a short term. The Monsters is one of them, and the Dark Sun campaign is another. The beginning of a short term campaign usually has a preset goal and a definitive ending. Though they can be expanded to go to long term.

Long Term: I both love and hate these. The long term campaign is something that takes dedication. It does have a clear starting point, but doesn't necessarily have a set end. It could go from level 1 all the way to epic levels. These are the campaigns that shake the world, the campaigns that PCs talk about endlessly forever. At the end of the campaign, the campaign world is different. These are the types of campaigns that emulate novel series. A typical long term campaign will take a year or more of real time given a session a week.

See, the problem? We really can't do a long term campaign. There's always a chance that someone leaves. Or something comes up. Right now, I'm raking my brain trying to figure out how to make ragmoffs and short terms into a long term.

So I have a few ideas;

1. The Eternal Champion; The original concept was done by Michael Moorcock, it was one guy who kept coming back to life to champion blah, blah, blah. However, in a D&D multiverse, everyone takes a single class and alignment, and has to stick with it. So the character itself is the same, but equipment and the setting change. Even levels will change drastically between each scenario. So it would be like a series of short terms and one shots.
2. 30 Greatest; The thirty greatest adventures as decided by Dungeon magazine awhile back. Some are short single adventures, some are nearly fully campaign length. It might be a good back up.
3. World Tour: There's a lot more games then D&D. I would love to run different variations. Throw some Call of Cthulthu, Alternity, Star Wars d6, Werewolf; The Apocolypse, etc. Just some short stuff from each. Maybe a single adventure each.
4. Problem Solvers: I always wanted to run something like this. Each PC rolls up a bunch of characters. Then I start an adventure, and pick different PCs to take it on. Kind of like GI Joe. When there is a water mission, they sent Deep Six and Shipwreck. Only this would be slightly different. Same idea, but done in a role playing thing, maybe a group of the king's problem solvers. Or harpers, or whatever.

So I think I might put this to the players as a short term before we can get back to what we normally do.