I fall somewhere between you and brcarl: I’ve tossed campaigns early for good reasons (and bad ones), but my group is also getting older and therefore changing the way we play. It’s a tough balance to strike, but I can definitely see where you’re coming from.

On the flipside, have you ever chucked a game after an hour and regretted it? I’ve found that with campaigns, first impressions aren’t always accurate.

I think these tips are great, for game creators & DMs in general. I, like many, have put weeks of effort into games that flopped within days.

One thing I recommend is keeping a portfolio on hand. NPC/Organizational/Political concepts that are easily portable between worlds, as well as rulesets or concepts.

This relates to the point of not overinvesting – if you’re the type to create a hundred NPCs, leaving details open means that if your campaign flops like a pancake, you can draw from those NPCs in the future.

Suffer enough flops & wasted effort, and you learn to keep your effort portable. If the High Fantasy campaign flops on session 3, then maybe you can make some changes and turn the thieves guild into space pirates for your next campaign.

The 4 stages of a RPG team’s development: Storming

Now I will grant that there may be occaisional reasons to keep playing an unfun game. Perhaps the social atmosphere is worth it. Or perhaps you feel obligated to stick it out until the current module or story arc is completed. But mostly, if you keep playing past those first few sessions of unfun (campaigns can also be steaming along just fine, and then something happens and the game becomes unfun), you’re really just cheating yourself.

Sometimes an unfunc campaign can be salvaged. If it’s just unfun for one or two players, a change of character may be all that is required. Or perhaps a chat with the GM (or even the whole group). Sometimes a player who is not having fun just has to drop out. Sometimes you have to kick out that one unfun player. But these situations are easily differentiated from a completely unfun campaign.

And James definitely has the right of it, look at body language. Look at energy level. Look at how often players are distracted by out of game conversations, TVs, video games, books, etc.

Frank

When I’ve run social-focused encounters they pick at it like a kid with brussel sprouts, but when I serve tactical encounters they wolf it down and ask for more! Several of the players have built combat juggernauts with Charisma and Wisdom as their dump stats. Problem is I stink at tactics (or they are really good).

When my current adventure is over in a few sessions, the players will rate this game higher than I would. I’m thinking of using this to my advantage and running a war-based game next.

I know that not every campaign idea I pitch at my players is going to be a home run, and I’m OK with that

I used to also feel this way. I’d rather put up with crappy (from my perspective) play, then not actually play at all.

I believed that until I realized the low quality of the games made we wonder each night: “Why am I here?”

It was also adversely affecting my relationship with friends. At that point, I knew I had to withdraw. Either the way were playing had to change or what were playing had to change. They were unwilling to do either. So, to be fair to them and myself, I decided to stop.

It’s been a very long time I have been to a regular “game night.” I’m extremely picky about how and who I throw dice with. But I think my time is valuable and it should be spent in the best possible way. YMMV.

I hate senseless, arbitrary mission-mode games. I hate it when the DM/GM/whatever tries to ignore player flags. I especially get nervous when I see the 15,000 word character backgrounds.

So, when I sense a game is not going to live up to better expectations, I won’t hesitate to back out or shut it down. This includes games that I’ve promoted and run. After 1 session I can sense if the players are “into it”.

Words be damned, too. I look at their body language and their energy level. Are they buzzing for more? Are they leaning forward, all cranked up on the possibilities? Are they still hooting and hollering, and licking their knives? Or are they merely satisfied that they weren’t at home that night? If they want to be out of the house, they can go bowling. Me, I want more.

Aim high, amigos.

I know a lot of the readers here are much more hard-core and dedicated than our group, so for folks like that I can see the advantage of making a fish-or-cut-bait decision early.

For my group of middle-aged, married-with-kids dads, the game is just as much of an excuse to get away as it is a chance to do some fun RPGing. I’ve just considered the thought, but I would venture that our wives would be somehow less likely to condone our bi-weekly sessions if we were “just playing cards.”

The real clincher for us, though, is the lack of DMing availability. Only a couple of us have both the time and desire to set up and run campaigns. Most of the guys just want to show up and have fun for a few hours. Oddly they’re all very good and demanding role-players, but outside of the session there’s just not much there. I guess it’s because of our busy lives In The Real World.

Otherwise, I think this article makes many good points. Over and over I see encouragement to “keep prep low/small” so as not to waste effort. As a corollary, if you have the time and drive to design a bunch of stuff that might not get used in your current campaign, try to keep from making it so specific that you can’t retool it for another campaign down the road.

Even though I do a lot of improvised GMing now (or maybe because of it) I find it easier to break campaigns down into related blocks of sessions. So I will plan the basic plot out by writing a one page set of notes like the ones below.

Sessions 1-3: Zombies Attack
1 – Initial attack. Players should learn how the zombies fight, weaknesses, and any other zombie rules.
2 – Players learn that the whole city is overrun with zombies. Learn of the military’s barricade at the edge of town.
3 – Players need to reach the barricade and find a way across. Hints (premonitions if PCs have psychic abilities) of the city being leveled by some sort of bomb.

Now I know where the story is going for that block of three sessions. Based on what the players do in the actual game I can tweak it as needed. When those three sessions are up I can asess what the focus of the next block of sessions will be based on what the players had an interest in.