Run Shorter Games
Long games are iconic in TTRPGs. Growing up, I always knew of a few tables with long running games, and I always heard tales of tables playing together for 10 or more years. Achieving this can be very enticing, especially when you run games. But longer games, or games you intend to have go long term, can have certain downsides to them. Therefore, running shorter games can be a better experience.
Greenwood Cemetery Mausoleum
The Trap of Longer Games
When I started out playing, I always wanted to run a super long game. Everyone I knew always seemed to know someone who had a game that had run for years. It was the goal we all worked to achieve. When I finally got the chance to run games, that was my goal. Have a game that goes on forever, regularly meeting and slowly progressing through the world. I structured my games always aiming to create a never-ending story out of each table encounter. While my games were fun, they did suffer.
Longer story arcs.
When running a longer game, you will want to have longer story arcs. There will certainly be adventures or encounters that summarize within a few sessions, but you will want to have long running arcs that take long periods of time to develop. The seeds can be planted as early as the start of the game and take a long time to grow. My game of Curse of Strahd has been running for almost two years now. In that time we have had a lot come into the table, and a lot of the character elements at play. But there have been some big elements that only recently got discovered, and there are still a lot of events that need to come out. If you are a newer GM, it's difficult to maintain that slow burn. It’s easy to want to throw things in early that will cause an arc to finish up prematurely, and as time goes on, it can become easy for some of them to fall by the wayside. Especially when you are new, dripping out these story elements can prove difficult.
Power Creep
If you have read my post on resource management in 5e, you know my thoughts on power creep. To summarize, over the course of a game, player will accumulate resources that can slowly build up, influencing how the game plays out. Hoarded items, boons, and other elements of the game can slowly accumulate, creating unforeseen advantages for the party. While that is not always a disaster, it can hinder some normal gameplay, giving the players more power than the CR calculations would suggest. I try to play as close to the recommended loot from the Dungeon Masters Guide, but from time to time I like to end up offering extra items to my party. To me, home-brewing is part of the DMing experience I really like. But sometimes even the simplest items can build up. If the party hordes magical items, they can have an unexpected side effect down the road. The longer the game runs, the bigger this snowball effect can be as the party accumulates “stuff”.
Not Completing
Even if you have a solid scheduling process with a great cancellation policy, it’s difficult to keep playing regularly. Life happens, and impede gameplay. Sometimes a player will not show up for a few sessions. While this won’t inherently kill a game, it can impede the momentum of your game. Add to the mix that players leave and you can see how tricky it is to keep a consistent schedule. Last-minute cancellations are truly the BBEG of most cancellations.
This risk increases as your game goes on longer and longer. With my current campaign, we have had many life events over its runtime. Players have changed jobs, had children, and added on additional schooling. This can affect availability, especially when juggling the rest that life offers. Since those longer games usually have more at stake, it can be even tougher if a player has to walk away after putting so much time into things. It can also result in the entire game ending, if enough events impede gameplay. It can leave a story feeling unfinished, like you returned a library book with just a few chapters left.
The Solution
My solution to these problems is to run shorter games. Whether it finishes in a few sessions or a few months, reducing the playtime of a game can mitigate a lot of the inherent issues that can arise in TTRPGs. You will find a few additional benefits when you run multiple quick games in the time you would run a single, long-term campaign.
Reduced Power Creep
Players love to accumulate magical items. I often see what I call the “Final Boss Effect”, where players will withhold using a magic item because they feel it would be much more useful in the last encounter. This can be a challenge in longer campaigns, as there are more opportunities to arise. With a shorter campaign, that is not the case. While this might not stop your players from accumulating items, it puts a time limit on how much they can accumulate. When the party knows the encounter will conclude in a session or two, they will be less likely to hold on to that item. If they do, it will be easier to track how much could accumulate as well. This reduction helps avoid any spikes in power the party might receive.
Variety
Whenever I have time to play in a game, I try to do something new. I want to get a more rounded experience in the game. I find it fun to check off things on my D&D bingo board and have some time in each of the classes to better understand them. Playing a shorter game helps you get that variety. In traditional games, you may stick with the same character for months or even years, creeping through the levels as you progress. You will get a better understanding of the level progression, but your experience will focus on one character. Shorter games do not have that problem. You can have time to run through many more character variations at the same time. It makes it easier if you find a class or mechanic you do not enjoy, since you are no longer locked into one choice for a while.
You can try out different stories as well. As a DM, I accumulate piles of character concepts as I run games. They usually have a variety of backgrounds and stories that could come into play. Getting to jump around in unique characters can be both educational and enjoyable. Sometimes you can play the edgy rogue, but other times you can play the happy parent who just works to provide for their family. A long running game might not have the space to explore these options, but with a shorter game, that is not the case. This proves true for both sides of the screen as well. As a GM, you might feel tied down to specific elements with a longer campaign. Getting to create multiple, shorter campaigns means you get a chance to explore all of those story hooks you come up with when prepping for games (I know I have an entire sheet of them).
Easier to Complete
In my time as both GM and player, I have played in a lot of campaigns. However, I can count on one hand the amount of times I have completed a campaign, even less if I remove the ones that got shortened to move to something else. It is very common for games to fizzle out. It is just the nature of some TTRPG tables. The longer the game you have, the more likely it is you will not finish it. The idea of running from 1 to 20 might entice, but you may never hit the end of that game. Shorter games can avoid that.
Having a game that you intend to only last a few sessions is much easier to finish up, and it feels so much better to read the final chapter instead of tossing the book near the end. When you have a game that only lasts a few sessions, player cancellations become less of a hassle. If someone cannot attend for a few nights, they just sit out on the adventure. Your game can move on, and you can even add them back in if things end up benefiting them. When you can measure your game length in sessions instead of years (or even months) it becomes much easier to reach that finish line.
How?
So you are convinced, or at least curious, about what I have talked about. You want to run a shorter game, but you are not sure how. Most of the official 5e material takes a while to run through, and you have only known the long-running campaign. So how do you go about doing it? Well, there are a few options.
Published
While most of the material from Wizards of the Coast is not suited for shorter runs, there are options available. One of the easiest options is to pick up an Adventure League module and run that. If you are not familiar, this is Wizard’s way to make a 5e session that players can jump into with little to no prep. This drop in, drop out system makes the games easy to prep and quick to run. You can run them individually or as a group as well, chaining them together and getting a story out of the AL Season. There are adventure groups like Tales from the Yawning Portal and Radiant Citadel that are collections of shorter adventures. You can easily pick what you want to run, cutting the adventure up into a shorter grouping.
The community has a ton of options for shorter encounters. Many wonderful TTRPG creators work on creating adventures that are built to be dropped into an existing campaign or run by themselves. You can easily find a lot of these on sites like DMs Guild. If you are in the mood for horror, for example, you will want to keep an eye out this fall for Nocturnes and Nightmares. This horror collaboration provides everything you need to run some horrific encounters in 5e, including some already built adventures you can run. These will take a few sessions tops and provide excellent tools for expanding.
Create Your Own
If you still want to create your own encounters, you can simply just try to build shorter ones yourself. It can take some adjusting to get used to, but I have found that if you try to encapsulate everything in the adventure itself, it lends itself to making a shorter, contained story. Make sure that you wrap up most questions in the encounter, otherwise the ending will feel incomplete. That means most (but not all) questions should be answered, and most of the big villains should be thwarted or defeated. Something to remember is that unless you plan on continuing a story, the villain escaping at the last encounter can feel lackluster.
Another useful tool when doing this is to state your intended duration ahead of time. It can help create accountability for the end of the adventure and communicate to the players that the game will only last a certain amount of time. It can be as specific as “This encounter should run 2-3 sessions” or as general as “Once you have solved the mystery of the missing sword, I will conclude the encounter”. It depends on your table, but it can be useful to state early on.
Final Thoughts
If you find yourself in a shorter game and really want to continue, or want to have a taste of jumping around through unique characters, you can always take a hybrid approach to this shorter campaign. Simply create a framing narrative to encompass your brief adventures. Perhaps this is a village just getting started, with different characters pitching in, or a mercenary company that takes on everything. This way you can have the joys of a larger campaign, with certain longer term elements, with the flexibility of a shorter game. This can also be an excellent way to world build together. As you play through, you and your players can flesh out the specifics of the world around you, leading to a bigger story.
Conclusion
While longer games can be very enticing, they have their downsides. Long story arcs, both campaign and player specific, can take a while to pay off. That slow burn can be difficult to maintain when you measure time in months or years. As you progress through the game, player powers and items can accumulate, skewing the game mechanics in a way that makes it hard to create challenging encounters. Life can (and often will) get in the way as availability changes, making it hard to complete the entire game with the same group. That is why running shorter games makes sense. You can create a variety of characters for an assortment of adventures. You also get to complete games a bit more, since the games themselves run a lot shorter. If you decide to run these games, there are a ton of resources available. While few, between the Adventure Leagues and some of the published modules, you can find official games intended to be run in shorter durations. The TTRPG Community also provides a ton of wonderful resources as well. Finally, you can choose to write your own, focusing on making stories that wrap themselves up, mostly.
Do you run shorter games? What do you think about them? What is your favorite adventure? I would love to know below!
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