RE: Re: Hero Points

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:58:44 -0500

>From: "Mark Galeotti" <mark_at_...>

>How far do people play in and run campaigns which are at least *meant* to
>be long-term -- which I will arbitrarily say means over a year's play -- --
>or are they considered short-term campaigns, if that's not too much of a
>tautology?

Are you asking how long people intend to play when they start playing? And in terms of length, in-game time, or real time?

Lots of things to define here. I consider all of the play that occurs to be in the same world, which means that the events of one group of players impact with those of another to some extent. Basically one group of players will start out and typically play about 20 sessions or so playing once a week or so. Typically this all encompases one segment of time with no "saga" play in between, and often is as short as just a few days of game time - though sometimes many weeks of in-game time. Rate is quite variable there.

What'll happen, then is that some of the same characters may continue into another "phase" (the term that I've adopted) of play, often with the saga system being used to "advance" them with the intervening in-game passage of time. In some ways, you could see these each as huge "adventures." In other ways, they're each like entire games (I give out HP every session). Each phase ends when the characters come to a conclusion in the stories that are currently being told about them. Then the players decide if they want another story with the same character, or if they want new characters for the next phase.

As a whole this has been going on since Hero Wars. The individual phases have lasted anywhere from about 4 months to about a year of real time depending a lot on how consistently we get together to play. It also involves FTF, IRC, and PBEM play.

It seems pretty likely to me that this is probably not very typical. But one more data point for your survey. Given that HQ hasn't been out all that long yet, I think that it's going to be somewhat like asking how many marriages end up in divorce. Well, most of them are still going, so it's difficult to say. Many games are still ongoing, so it's hard to say how long they will last.

But as far as intention, it seems to me that most people assume the RPG standard for fantasy that they go on indefinitely. That is, people simply don't plan for most RPGs to end, and I don't think that HQ is very different in this.

I'm probably missing the point here somehow. But hopefully this is helpful somehow.

Mike

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