My buddy and webmaster expressed it in the following way,
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Originally Posted by Tyberious Funk
Roleplayers tend to be clannish sorts. We stick together in isolated groups and rarely venture beyond our immediate circle of friends. Until, of course, we find ourselves without other people to roleplay with, at which point we might venture into the unknown. If you're like me, loyalty to your group means you sometimes end up playing, or even running, games you don't particularly enjoy.
Blerch!
This site aims to help you break the pattern. Here, GMs can get pitch ideas to potential players -- the sorts of games they want to run -- and players can pick and choose to play in the games that suit them. Think of it like your immediate gaming group, only larger. That's where the term game circle comes from.
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It's time to explain why I did a poll, and asked a question - "how long do your campaigns last?" and "do you have closed or open-ended campaigns?"
This came from a response to John Kim in the thread,
How long do your campaigns last?.
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Originally Posted by jhkim
Several people sound like they reported on ongoing campaigns, but doesn't that skew it short?
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Yes. But several people also said something like, "well, apart from that campaign that went for three sessions and then fizzled, the last three..." When I talk to people individually, I find there are a lot of fizzled games and "I went to check this group out, but they were dorks, so I didn't go again," and "we were all set for a long campaign but then the GM got a new job across town." So there are a lot of 1-5 session non-events that aren't being counted. This'd more than balance the ongoing campaigns that are counted only up to the current session.
In any case, we all know that an ongoing campaign, one we expected to last for another year, can just suddenly die. I'm interested in what people have done, not what they
hope to do.
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Originally Posted by jhkim
I think it makes some sense to distinguish between one-session games like conventions games and intentionally short campaigns (i.e. something intended for 3 sessions).
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Absolutely. It's why I said that a three-session con game wouldn't count as "a campaign", but a weekly meeting with a group that happened twice, where you planned to have a long campaign, and then the group broke up - that's a "campaign."
Now, a regular group having a 3 session campaign is a different thing to having a 3 session adventure at a con. That's because in a con, no matter how much fun everyone had, it's going to end. But in a regular group, if everyone really loved it they could decide to keep going.
The point is that in a regular group, in theory there's no limit to how many sessions a campaign could go for. Now, the reasoning behind my doing this poll was that when you talk to gamers, it's quite plain that many have the old dream D&D sold us - of the grand epic long campaign, the same players with the same GM and the same characters for
years. What I wanted to know was, "is anyone getting this?"
My theory was that they weren't getting it, and that the average "campaign" was 6-10 sessions. I thought that what we'd see is that people would drift from group to group for a session or two each, looking for a good game, and that many groups would switch from one setting or ruleset to another.
Of course, some campaigns are
deliberately short, as you said. But that's another question, which I asked in the
Closed or Open? thread, about whether people preferred closed or open-ended campaigns. I didn't make that a poll because I'm certain the results would be indistinct: there'd be "closed" campaigns which by popular demand went longer than expected, and "open" campaigns which all agreed should end.
So for this poll, it was enough to ask how long their campaigns lasted; whether they ended deliberately or fizzled or with drama was unimportant.
The reason for these polls and questions
My group's hoping to expand into what William Stoddard calls a "gaming circle." (What follows is my analogy, not his... it's his method, but he expresses things better). It's sort of like a gaming club, but without a clubhouse. Traditionally, gamers form a group, and then choose a game to play. This is different to other hobbies, like social sports, where a team captain chooses the sport they'll play, and then finds a team. Gamers normally find other gamers and match a game to their preferences; but it's possible to find a game, and then go looking for gamers to match it, just as sports clubs do.
Now, carrying the sports analogy further, notice that sports have
seasons, and that some people don't come back after a season or two. They change to another team, give up sports, or change to another sport. People do this because their life circumstances change, how much time and when they're willing to spend on sports in general. Their tastes change, too: last year they enjoyed football, this year they prefer basketball. They get tired of the same people on the same team, and want to meet new ones.
So, what if we ran our gaming circle like people run social sports clubs? The team captains (GMs) put up notices wanting players for their sport - volleyball, football, basketball (D&D, Fudge, Exalted) - and the players indicate their interest. They play for a season (campaign) and then they stop. They might go for another season (campaign) of that game, or they might change to another, or stop entirely.
That's why I did these polls. Because if it turns out that everyone is involved in 100+ session campaigns, completely open-ended, then a game circle's not going to work at all. But if everyone is
already having short campaigns, and if many of them are closed-ended, then they won't mind a gaming circle, which will give them short, closed-ended campaigns.
Maybe gamers all dream of the grand epic years=long campaigns, but if they're usually not getting them, instead getting short closed-ended campaigns, why not plan for it? Why not organise our gaming around the way things are, rather than the way we dream of things? Why not make the best of it? A social sports club is good because it lets people try a variety of sports and meet a variety of players; a gaming circle would be good because it'd let people try a variety of games, of play styles, and meet a variety of players.
For me, the appeal of the gaming circle is not only giving that variety, but also as an alternative to the gaming club, which often fizzles when you try to form one. A gaming club often fizzles because people go to the club when they don't have a game group. At the club, they get a group, and then stop coming to the club. So numbers drop, then when new people come they say, "man, this place is dead." University gaming clubs do well because they've got a constant influx of new people, and because many of the members are poor and living in shared flats, so they don't have any other physical place to game.
So, how to solve the problem of clubs fizzling, of people finding groups and then moving on? Well, the gaming circle again - if people join up expecting to move from group to group from time to time, it keeps it going.
Well, that's the theory anyway, and that's why I posted that poll and that question, it's why it mattered to me if people had long or short campaigns, open or closed-ended.
Stoddard's Way
Incidentally, Stoddard does it simply by knowing about 20 gamers. He pitches ten campaigns to them, and gives them 20 points to assign to them - 0 to 5. They also note who they insist on playing with out of the rest of the circle, and who they refuse to play with, and when they can game. Going on their preferences, he assigns them to groups. So from his 20 gamers he might get four groups - one group meets once a week on Tuesdays, another once a fortnight on Sundays, another two once a month, and one guy misses out because all the campaigns he was interested in, someone blacklisted him, and another guy misses out because the ones he was interested in, no-one else was - he can join another group if he likes. They call it "Stoddard's Gaming Circle."
As I understand, he came up with this method simply because he had more players than he could fit into one group. So he decided to run a few groups at different times, and this was the way he came up with to deal with it. His way just kind of evolved out of having too many players and not wanting to turn anyone away.
Our Game Circle
I'm thinking of a more deliberate method. In my regular gaming group, I have just myself and four players, I'm no charisma man as Stoddard obviously is. But between us all, we know, directly or indirectly, about four other groups in our town, with a total of about 20 regular members. Sure, plenty of them won't be interested, but each gamer knows other groups, so if we just bring on one or two from each, it can spread.
Plenty of people with regular groups are quite happy in them, and don't want any more gaming. But plenty are happy with that group, and want more gaming, or they're unhappy and want something different. And many more have no group at all.
I say, let's bring 'em together into a Game Circle, where we play for seasons, and then many of us move on to new games and groups. In our case, this group would be based in Melbourne, Australia.
Thoughts?
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Linear Mode
