The chicken or the egg?

[darwin]

[Hobert Roward]

[adgboss]

Well in some ways it harkens back to the Novel vs. Short Story concept. In the short Story you have to learn the crucial elements and have closure in a relatively short amount of time. It is a totally different writing style. Some folks are better at one medium or the other. I think though that this theme is very pertinent to RPG play today.

1. People have shorter attention spans and despite advances in tech, less free time in many cases. So a short campaign may work better.

2. The old long deep campaign was the old Way in many cases and I think it is inevitable that evolution will take us towards shorter campaign games.

Remember too, Poker, Monopoly, and such games are the same game every time even though its always a new game. Giving players a plethora of choices is what will ensure replayability.

Sean

[darwin]

Unlike poker or monopoly a game tends to be non-adversarial. It is the adversarial nature of the games that makes them replayable.

In an RPG if you want to pit players against each other they have to have a common goal or they'll scatter to the four winds and you'll be running separate adventures eating into your set time.

Problem is, with a common goal it makes for the same game each time.

The challenge seems to be to create a broad set of parameters within which there is scope for different rping experiences but there is also an immutable fact for all of them which is restricting the time eg. the world will end.

[Doug Ruff]

If it helps, an endgame mechanic doesn't have to specify a single ending. It only has to specify that there will be an ending.

One of the best examples I can think of to illustrate this is My Life With Master. If you're not familiar with it, it's a game about being the servants of a 'villain' type character.

The game is different each time, because the players create the NPC Master between them. However, there is a mechanic that says: under [these specified circumstances] the Master will die. There's also a different set of rules to determine what type of fate befalls each of the PC minions. The exact details of that fate are still determine by the players, and are unique.

This help any?

[darwin]

Indeed looking at it like that makes sense but then the time constraint has no actual game effect it is just an artificial "times up" end.

It does give me some more avenues to investigate though for which I am grateful.

[Doug Ruff]

Here's another tack, if you're interested. Ever heard of the boardgame Chainsaw Warrior?

players have 60 minutes to save New York from an interdimensional Big Bad called Darkness. In the boardgame, the "minutes" are actually turns, but what if they were real minutes?