You bring up a great point. Before I started this campaign, I was playing campaigns that went a year or less, allowing me to try a fair number of games. One of the hardest parts of running the Long Campaign, was that I had to shelve a number of other games. I have a short stack of games that I am dying to run, as this campaign concludes.

It has taken a great deal of willpower to stay committed to this campaign, and not switch to some of the other games that keep haunting me. I am talking to you Burning Empires!

@ BRCARL
So how do you take an epic campaign and scale it back to episodic?

This one I think is tough. In order to do it you need to close out the epic event. So either you can Fast Forward to the event and let the players play out the event, or you can engage in some kind of narriative play, where you collaborate with the players (outside of the normal mechanics of the game) to resolve the event. In either case, after you close the epic event, you can then move to a more episodic play style.

@LesInk
I have been very lucky to have the players I have had. Two of the three, have been in our playing group for 10+ years, so I knew they were rock solid. The other was a newcomer (>5 years) in the group, but I knew this would be his type of game.

Without sugar coating it, there was a lot of work on my part, on the back-end, between sessions, to keep players engage, diffuse arguments, etc. That is the hardest part of the epic game, because you have to keep the players together, because they are so integrated into the storyline (as you said).

@Karizma
As for knowledge of the rules, when we started Iron Heroes, I was the only one who had read the full rules. The rest of the group were proficient in d20, but no one else knew Iron Heroes. We started the party at 5th level, and we grew into the system. I did very little house rules, but that is me in general. I did make it a point, each year to re-read the rulebook to see what things we were doing wrong, etc.

@John
I tip my hat to you on the completion of your Epic^2 campaign.

@Kurt
How much did you “railroad” the players?

I was very careful about this, because railroading is a sensitive issue for me. I will talk about this in a future article, but what I did was lay out a few major goals for the players: finding some needed artifacts, finding a “home base”, making allies, etc, as thing that the heroes would need to accomplish to be able to confront the Demon King. Then I let the players decide the order of what they wanted to accomplished, and often would let them tell me how they wanted to accomplish it. From that info, I would then construct the story arcs and run them.

If I did it properly, and I think I did, my players would tell you that I did not railroad the game, and that they drove a good part of how the game evolved.

As for family commitments and the epic game. In the course of this game we have weathered:

–The birth of both of my kids
–The birth of one of my players children
–One of my players getting married
–Several career changes among the players

So it can be done. Its not easy, but it can be done. The trick was that when we needed to we took a few weeks off from the game, and kept the game alive by email discussions.

Thanks for the comments, and I am glad you enjoyed the article.

I’m envious of the GMs who have the circumstances and intestinal fortitude to properly execute this type of epic campaign. I’d love to do so, but family commitments pretty much guarantee that I’ll run low-prep, episodic stuff from here out (well, at least until the kids start college).

I’ve found that a “meandering” campaign can stumble onto an epic-style climax, as well. No, those early “clearing the bandits” missions weren’t directly related to the BBEG, but they were necessary to cut your teeth, as it were.

Questions: How much did you “railroad” the players? Was it necessary in hindsight? Did the buy-in help out? Did you give them free reign to come up with solutions to the problems, or did you already have the solutions pre-figured?

@BRCARL – I think epic campaigns need to have less-than-epic plot points to them. Yes, they’re going to save the world in the end, but clearly that’s not a 1st level character’s job. Have things that are important to the story but not as dangerous. Assembling implements required for a ritual gives you multiple MacGuffins to drive adventures. Likewise, the location of XYZ thing/person/information may only be known by so-and-so, who needs to be rescued / needs to have a favor done / needs to be tortured into doing whatever.

Small, bite-sized adventures can still feed the epic storyline, while giving tangible rewards and a more manageable scope for the players to get their arms around. I’d definitely keep the same characters. If the Big Bad was time-sensitive in some way, come up with a reason why it’s delayed. “So and so omen/portent was mis-interpreted” or “He’s been defeated! YAY! Rejoice” only to be followed, six months later, with “OH NOES he survived!!”

@KARIZMA – I think you’ve got a personal taste issue there, but speaking for myself I’d definitely teach the rules during the epic game. Nothing helps simulate the know-nothing-farm-folk-who-grow-up-to-save-the-world better than players who are learning as much as their characters are. On the flip side, I’d definitely “play with the safeties on” and go a little easy on the hostilities while they get their feet under them.

~ John

First, a break from time to time is usually needed by the GM for epic campaigns. This is normal. Usually, when I’ve got one of these running, I have a problem where I’ve run out of “day to day” scenes, but still have this huge overarching plot line going. Getting the overarching theme to jive with the smaller elements sometimes requires a bit of recharging of the creativity juices.

With that said, don’t take large breaks if you can because getting the players back into the same mindset can be hard — sometimes to the point of losing players, changing minds, or just a general inability to get back into the swing of it.

Second, when doing an epic campaign, the characters are usually far more integrated into the story. Loss of a character (or corresponding player) can be a massive blow to the story and cause the GM to have to spend considerable time (and sessions) seeking alternative events and resolving consequences. If Frodo died would Sam have taken the ring onward? If Sam died, would Frodo have made it to Mount Doom solo? You get the picture. Unexpected outcomes can lead to a different story that may require extreme acts of energy and creativity to handle. And with the nature of RPG games (player involvement) — something always goes unplanned — probably once per gaming session.

@DNAPHIL: I’m actually a bit envious of your players. Having 3 strong dedicated players is not to be taken lightly. Right now I have a group of 7 players with a variety of levels of dedication. On some nights, I feel like I’m herding cats and having a hard time keeping every player fully involved. This makes me wonder if there is limit on the number of player characters in a good epic.

That campaign is currently on hiatus while another DM in the group finishes up his epic campaign. Even if the group does make it back around to me in the DM chair, having nodded my head at so many things you wrote, I think I’ll push for a more episodic campaign. My energy/creativity is too low, sessions are too infrequent, not all of the players consistently show up, there’s no interest in between-session work to keep the story and characters alive and fresh… too many things working against a cohesive, long-term “epic campaign.”

So how do you take an epic campaign and scale it back to episodic? Should you let the players keep their PCs, or let them swap out if they want? Should you try to finish off the prior plot so sate their curiosity, or just hand-wave it and move to the new stuff? Hmm…

One thing I know I would do is try to sprinkle in some of the more noteworthy places and NPCs from the aborted campaign. I’ve done that once already; I loved everyone’s reaction when they realized that the elven archer they were competing against in the city fair contest was an old PC that I ran when someone else was DMing. (I made sure he didn’t win. )