So I just finished running my campaign using SCRPG. It started as a Mutants & Masterminds game that I converted to SCRPG. I used the SCRPG rules since about May of last year all the way through the completion of the campaign about 3 weeks ago.
I was not using the default setting for my game. Mine was a custom setting that merged DC, Marvel, and several other universes under the idea of it being a universe born from comic book retcons. The players really enjoyed the game and all of them have since used SCRPG to run their own games.
For the record I was running the game using Foundry online and all the players were gamers I have know for a couple of decades now.
This got me wondering about the average length of an SCRPG campaign. What seems to be the norm?
Campaign length is maybe better discussed in terms of sessions or play time than calendar dates. May to July means very different things if you were playing in weekly two-three hour blocks or monthly six-hour games.
That said, my longest continuous campaign’s ongoing at about 33-ish roughly weekly sessions of 2-5 hours each, which puts the PCs at 4-5 accumulated collections. That’s with a theoretical six regular players, of which we usually have four-five show up. Frequently get a “guest star” player or two jump in as well - visiting friends, the occasional game store rando who just wants to test the system, and a couple of folks who just couldn’t commit to even once a month but really wanted to play. Typical cat-herding IME.
I’m playing in another game that’s been running for about twenty session, which seems to be pretty stable over a half-year or so. Five players, GM and a part-time co-GM. We’re getting to the point where collections are really starting to have regular impact on play, which usually kicks in around the 3-4 collection mark.
Also been dipping in and out of one-shots (often with some recurring characters) since the game came out, usually as demos for interested people.
I’m strictly tabletop since COVID lockdown ended, and did a little PBEM while it was running. Most of the folks I’ve played SCRPG with have been relatively new acquaintances (under five years, some only since the game came out) but some date back to the early 1980s and old V&V or Champions campaigns. Strictly homebrew settings, never actually played in the GTG universe despite being pretty familiar with it - played the card game since it hit stores and I think I’ve heard every podcast.
All RPG campaigns tend to have an endpoint somewhere, but If there’s a specific factor that dictates an end (or at least a mass reboot) to an SCRPG games it’s probably collection accumulation. By the time you have ~six of them the GM is starting to need to adjust difficulty to keep scenes challenging, and the couple of games I’ve done where we experimented with just giving everyone more (8 and 10, respectively) we were feeling really godlike and the encounter budget rules were clearly struggling. That changes a lot if you habitually play longer sessions - your collections go farther when there are only two-three major scenes in an issue rather than four-six - but it still kicks in eventually. I’ve heard people talk about campaigns that have hit collection counts in the teens and the GMs are either putting limits on collections/scene or upping the difficult a lot or otherwise homebrewing patches.
So I suspect the game’s sweet spot is somewhere in the single-digit collection count, and reboot/new game time is somewhere above that if you want to play RAW.
Well, my reason for not responding is that I suspect I’m an outlier; although I suppose I might as well answer anyways.
Unfortunately, I’ve only managed to run the Conspiracy of Clones one-shot from the core-book, plus a few mini-arcs of only 2-3 issues. (And I’ve never played as a PC.) I’d certainly say that it’s tougher getting a group together for a system that’s so unknown to most folks, compared to say, D&D or GURPS.
I think people weren’t commenting because they didn’t think their answers would offer much insight. That’s how I felt at least, but if it helps in any way:
Our “campaign” hasn’t finished yet, so I can’t really comment on the average length of SCRPG campaigns. We played the Starter Kit and are currently 9 sessions into our own content (plus one “Off the Rails” session because I really wanted to run that one). We don’t even have an overarching plot yet, although there’s been some stuff going on in the background that might become a bigger thing later. It might also just… not. I don’t think any one has made any specific plans for that to happen at this point.
Gotta say though, I am very surprised to learn that you only ran so few games, @fjur - your creative output definitely seems to suggest otherwise!
Heh, yeah. I suppose I’m what you might call “an armchair SCRPG GM.” I’m very familiar with the rules and lore of the game, and I definitely have lots of ideas for stuff (villains, environments, heroes, adventures, etc.), but thus far I’ve been unable to get an ongoing campaign going. My old gaming group pretty much exclusively played D&D,* and I moved to a new city this year, and so have yet to find a group here. I’m planning on starting a group sometime in the next few months, though, so we’ll see how that goes. : )
But yeah, part of the reason I post SCRPG creations on here is because I’ve not be able to use my ideas in actual play.
*Which I don’t resent at all. D&D and the SCRPG are both relatively equally fun in my mind, and I’m happy to be playing either of them.
My new campaign is using SCRPG as the foundation for some homebrew. I am using it to run the Pathfinder 1e AP Reign of Winter. I adjusted character creation and added a few other things for the conversion. Its gotten really positive feedback so far from my players.
My estimate for this campaign is that it will run 26 to 30 sessions before ending. Maybe as many as 40 if the players do any side questing.
I am also working on a complete fantasy setting for default SCRPG rules for my home brew campaign setting.
I have ideas on using SCRPG for a couple of other conversions as well. RIFTS is one of the ones I have really thought about.
One of the most interesting take aways from it that my players and I have come to is that the system has a lot of not so obvious depth to it.
Part of this is possibly from how I run games. I let the players look at the enemies abilities since I tend to have several synergies between the minions/lieutenants/bosses that they should be aware of during the fight.
Sorry, this went a bit off topic from my original post.
Cool! I myself have thought about modding the system for use in fantasy settings, so I’m certainly interested in seeing what you’ve done in that vein—if you’re comfortable sharing, of course. I’d completely understand if you’d rather not.
Yeah, I’m still running my first campaign, and even if not for months-long hiatuses, we wouldn’t be done. I don’t exactly have a stopping point in mind, after all.
That can be areal problem, yeah. Takes a while to even find the local gaming community sometimes, much less work out what parts of it you really want to engage with. I’m kind of fortunate (maybe, sort of) in being fairly settled at this point, and in an area I grew up near so some of my old school friends are still within reach.
Nothing wrong with that, or with prepping way more that you actually need. It’ll keep for a rainy day, and you can share it with others and boost for the game that way. I’m probably a pretty active GM and player, but I don’t think I’ve used even 20% of the stuff on my blog at the table yet.
Interesting. What’s that come out to, 12 to 15 sessions or so altogether at this point? I can’t say as any of the games I’ve been involved in have had much of an overall arc, at least not anything that lasted more than four or five sessions. If we were creating real modern-day comics editorial would have fired us ages ago for not producing neat packages of stories that fit a trade softcover. Thankfully, this is an RPG, and short story arcs and one-shots are as fine as they were in the Silver Age.
That sounds like an interesting idea. Not familiar with that AP, but it sounds like you’ve planned it out pretty thoroughly. How much conversion work did you have to put into modding the SCRPG to fit the path’s setting/story arc?
There’s a superhero webcomic called Giant Girl (which is pretty much just what it says on the tin) that took its size-changing hero into a long fantasy story arc (which is currently getting remastered art page by page) in an obviously D&D-like setting, after a fair number of more traditional supers shenanigans. Might be worth a look for inspiration - I know it had me thinking about ports for dragging my own group into a fantasy setting for a while.
Yeah, I’ve never played or run one yet that I actually planned to end. Been a couple that got abruptly truncated by COVID concerns and the aftermath, and two more that just fell apart from the difficulty of herding the cats. Part of teh reason I’m always so keen to play one-offs or informal short arcs with rotating casts if/when someone shows an interest.
If we only want to talk campaigns that have ended more or less permanently and voluntarily, I played in one that went just under twenty sessions IIRC, wrapping with three of six PCs undergoing major changes and the rest helping with the aftermath, and a couple of team nemesis types decisively beaten. There have been a couple of others that were essentially system test drives that got to the low teens before the group decided to try something else - new and shiny syndrome and all that. I’ve run a couple of definitely-finished campaign that got to mid-teen session counts, both of which had scheduled end points because players were leaving for school or to graduate. They didn’t really wrap up with a big ending or anything, though.
Can’t be positive, but I think I’ve spent more sessions in one-shots and under-six-session short arc games than all the campaigns I’ve been involved with put together. The short stuff seems to be a pretty popular format for this game.
IME TTRPG systems with relatively simple character generation seem to see more “short run” games than ones where you have to spend more time and effort making each PC. I’m assuming it’s due lower “player investment” in each PC, but it might also have something to do with the personalities of people who are attracted to high-crunch games.
Don’t if that helps with the original question or not.
Well the idea of a fantasy SCRPG game has been rolling around in my head for a while now. First I replaced the list of Powers and Qualities with ones based on the other games rules. Then I made a single ability for each of the core classes to sorta define the class. Then the characters get two starting green powers which I thematically edited to make them fit the setting.
I handled leveling up next. I made a chart for how many powers I wanted players to have and at what level. I am using milestone leveling to replace exp. Characters get a collection every three milestones. Fortunately the adventure path tells you what level the character is supposed to be for each chapter.
I added another type of scene that is a variation of a montage scene to handle dungeon exploration. And I broke out combat by dividing maps into sections where you are only in melee range for enemies who are in the same section your character is. I let players move one section in addition to their normal actions during a turn. Not quite as tactical as it was originally but it works well.
I think overall the system would work fine for a straight fantasy setting if you adjusted the names of some stuff. Since I am using it for a specific game system conversion though it required a bit more work than that.
For my SCRPG fantasy setting though, I am going a lot closer to the original rules, with most stuff just being name changes. I plan for it to use the second version of character creation when I am done with it.
This isn’t the first time I have turned a super hero rpg into a fantasy game though. I did the same thing with Mutants & Masterminds, Marvel Universe, and a couple other ones. I generally find that most super hero rpgs work really well for other genres and often handle other games issues better than the original games rule sets do.
As I mentioned, I am toying around with a Rifts conversion, and I have thought a bit about a Chronicles of Darkness conversion as well. I really like SCRPG’s ruleset and I find it seems like it would be a good fit for a lot of games.
Agreed. It’s not as deliberately versatile as some systems (Champions/Hero System is really a do-anything engine at this point, for ex) but the basic framework is very easy to tinker with.
Sounds like an interesting approach to a class/level system port. Will the players start (at level one) with just two Green abilities and earn Yellows and Reds as they pass milestones, or will they have a smattering of GYRO abilities as normal - maybe gaining a few as they grow?
They started with a total of 4 green abilities. I had them make one up for their Heritage/race and I had them create a custom Overcome one since I threw out the principles and replaced them with (Law/Neutral/Chaos) and (Good Morality/Neutral Morality/Evil Morality) principles. They will get access to Yellow Abilities around the point the characters would hit level 5 in the AP. Red will happen around level 10. They also started with a lot less HP and as they level they are gaining a point of health at each level. The ap ends around level 15 so most of the characters at that point will have just over 30 health and several yellow and red abilities.
Also magic items can give you a new power/quality at a certain die range, a new ability, or any combination of them. Potions and other single use items give you an ability temporarily or a power/quality temporarily that is lost after you use it. Magic weapons/armor bonus can give you a permanent bonus or penalty that is only exclusive to it’s own source type (ie: No stacking multiple bonuses on the same item).
An example is a minor health potion that gives a character the Recover action for D4 health. Once it is used it is gone and the ability is lost.
Thankfully, this is an RPG, and short story arcs and one-shots are as fine as they were in the Silver Age.