How many sessions to a campaign

My apologies if this has been asked before:

I'm starting up my first Apocalypse World campaign (Eeeee! Excited!) and I was wondering how many sessions I should expect it to last. I'm not a very experienced GM, especially not with this kind of game mastering and I don't really know how to pace an AW campaign and when/how to end it.

My assumption is that play will reach a point where the story is over - or is that something I need to work to make happen?

Also - any good advice for a newbie MC?

As long as your players and yourself enjoy themselves I guess. But really if you don't last at least five-six sessions you might be doing it wrong. After that, things get huge - like cosmic-scale huge - and it's a shame to miss that part of the game.

My first and foremost advice is play by the book. Try to forget you have played other RPGs before and read the book as you would read any other rulebook for any other game, and when in doubt, refer to the rulebook. I know it sounds a recipe for disaster but that's not your daddy's Rolemaster. The rules are easy and sound.

For example, when I first MC'd a AW game, I didn't care much for MC moves. I thought "well, that's what I'd do anyway in any other game" but no. You get to do one move, maybe two when they snowball, but then it's their turn, and you have to wait for an opportunity to make your next move when the game allows you to, i.e. somebody misses a roll, a PC move tells you to or everybody's looking at you to say something. And that changes everything. Because it lets the players breathe and react without you piling up on them unwillingly. And it's not that restrictive, because the MC's moves aren't really about what you're saying but more why you're saying it in the context of fiction. I mean I could fill books with different ways of announcing future badness or inflicting harm.

Really, the more I MC that game, the more I stick to the rules, and the more my players enjoy the game. When something's off during the game, go back to the book and read that rule again. Often you'll find you were just doing it wrong. It's that well done.

Also, don't bother about fronts and countdowns and shit. Just follow the first session sheet, make the life of the players interesting - just by letting them do their stuff and hit with a move when they miss a roll or wait for you to come up with something - and take fucktons of notes. It's really all there is to it: barf forth your apocalyptica, ask questions like crazy, find non control zones and push there, name everyone and make everyone human.... Follow the list, the players will take care of the rest.

Also, Vincent really doesn't fuck around when he tells you not to pre-plan your storylines. Play to find what happens. That's what the game's made for. Try to push your storylines upon your players and you'll feel like trying to make chess a coop game.

Hope that helps.

It depends on how you define a campaign.

Traditionally, a campaign was defined as a series of linked adventures.  Usually these adventures shared a common thread or goal.  A set of characters could expect to play in multiple campaigns over the course of their career.

Currently, many gamemasters and players are defining a campaign and character career as one and the same.  Characters play in one epic length campaign and when it is over then those characters are retired and new ones created.

It is also important to note that the concept of a campaign implies a planned out storyline.  The AW rules are going to create an organic story that grows from the origins at the campaign setup.  In that situation, iIndividual story-arcs and campaigns would only be visible after the fact.

I would suggest adding the question to those you ask the players during the first session.  "What do you consider a campaign and how long do you expect it to last?" 

Hope that helps.

Thanks a bunch, both of you.

Gregpopor, that thing about MC moves is really an eye-opener. I'd probably have missed that on my own.


Irungames - that was probably the language barrier hitting me over the head. The word "campaign" obviously has a lot more meaning to you than it does to me, and now I've learned stuff. I saw "campaign" as meaning more or less "the sessions we will be playing" - that is, I assumed that a group playing AW would rech a point where the story seemed done at which point they would stop playing.

I'm playing with a group of people who have a lot of thing to do with their spare time and who are curious to try playing AW and will want to play the game to its conclusion but probably won't be playing it forever. We'll be looking for the point when it feels done and then we'll most likely be moving on to other games (or other activities).

I'm playing with a group of people who have a lot of thing to do with their spare time and who are curious to try playing AW and will want to play the game to its conclusion but probably won't be playing it forever. We'll be looking for the point when it feels done and then we'll most likely be moving on to other games (or other activities).

It's up to everyone's taste, but I'd say "enough sessions so that PCs start getting those unforeseen future advancements and using them." There's the meat. When they do start advancing basic moves, changing playbooks and such, I think they're past their development stage and are slowly heading toward the end of their arc.

I'm more or less there - one or two PCs will be getting unforeseen advancements next session - and it feels like a) the players and I know what their characters are about, b) they've grown so much that pretty much anything they do has big repercussions and c) we can figure out where they're going toward, drama-wise. It took us 6 sessions to get there, and I may be mistaken but I don't see the game going much longer than 6 sessions more.

Of course, if the players want to go on, it'll be easy to just make them take the "get another character" and then "get retired" advancements to shift the campaign spolight from the original PCs to fresh new ones, but I think we might be more interested in exploring another apocalypse, and starting a new game - world and all - from scratch.

I look at a AW game pretty much like a TV series with a format akin to The Wire or new BSG. Episodes are about a thing - a thread, an issue, whatever - but the series is about character development and their impact on the world. Less than 6 sessions and it feels like Firefly - too short. More than 30? You may end up with Lost. Of course YMMV.

Great thread!

I´m thinking about this:

Also, don't bother about fronts and countdowns and shit. Just follow the first session sheet, make the life of the players interesting - just by letting them do their stuff and hit with a move when they miss a roll or wait for you to come up with something - and take fucktons of notes. It's really all there is to it: barf forth your apocalyptica, ask questions like crazy, find non control zones and push there, name everyone and make everyone human.... Follow the list, the players will take care of the rest.

I have played 5-6 shorter campaigns and it´s almost always the same problem. First session rocks and then it´s not that much fun. Second session is always kinda boring. I don´t know why. In first session I, as MC, am feeling free and full of inspiration. In second session I´m sitting with a bunch of impulses and threat-moves and I feel overwhelmed.

And the players have lost their motivation to do stuff. Don´t know what I´m doing wrong- but it could be problems related to

Play to find out what happens

and what u wrote about doing one move at a time.

Thanks again for making me think about these stuff and maybe improving my MC-skills! :)

/ Nils

First session rocks and then it´s not that much fun. Second session is always kinda boring.

Not my experience at all.  If it were, in fact, I'd say Apocalypse World was a system for one-shots.  But it certainly isn't: our campaign (http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=608.30) didn't really get rolling from a long-term narrative perspective until session 3 or 4 (though it was fun for different reasons up until that point).

The reason? We hadn't made enough moves to know what our characters were like.  In Apocalypse World, you are what you do, and we clearly hadn't done enough to figure out who we were.

I mean, I'm still running it as a one-shot at Origins, but that doesn't mean it's going to be as satisfying as seeing those characters over the course of weeks, months and years of hard decisions.

I didn´t mean that the game is a one-shot. I just said I´m having a hard time MC-ing it the right way.

And I was exaggerating, I have played fun second and third and fourth sessions. But it´s harder after first session, so I really wanna hear what people do different in second session, than in first session, to learn a little.

My sense is that the game really starts getting good around session 3-4, when the players have bought enough advances that they have made strong choices about who their characters are and they know enough about their environment to have plans and aspirations.  Then, once they buy the expanded basic moves and switch to another playbook (around session 6-8, depending on how fast they're piling up XP), things change tone again and the campaign builds to a climax.  Finally, as people take on second characters and some characters retire to safety, die, or change fundamentally, the campaign either wraps up sometime between session 9-12 or things can continue on, ramping up again with a new set of characters.

That's been roughly the arc in the 3 campaigns I've been involved in so far.  So I'd suggest playing at least 6 sessions and figuring it will take around 10 or so to get to the end of a "cycle" of play.  But I'd be interested to hear if that matches the experiences of other folks who've played it through multiple times.

Thing is, in Apocalypse World, the MC doesn't have to plan for a particular length. It really depends on the players and how soon they accomplish or get out of the game what they want.  Players can retire their characters to safety pretty early on if they want or do everything they want to do.  Really, the MC is there to support the players in playing as long as the game is engaging and exciting (for the MC too!) and you should wrap things up when it feels done.

But it´s harder after first session, so I really wanna hear what people do different in second session, than in first session, to learn a little.

I hear you

It's sort of the moment when things transfer from premise creation session (which any television scriptwriter will tell you is their favorite part) to character investment.  Basically, now that the characters are established as people we're supposed to care about, it's time to tease out what makes them interesting.

Ask questions like crazy.

Session 2 is all about figuring out where the threats meet the characters. Think of yourself as the psychoanalyst, and the characters as patients. Use the early stages of the countdowns as tools to tease out what about THESE threats bugs the shit out of them.  If they don't really at all, move away from them to focus on the threats that seem to matter.  Create an early crisis that mobilizes them into action, but which is actually cover for a larger, much more sinister crisis waiting down the road.  Think of ways in which that crisis could really challenge their characters' assumptions about the world and themselves.

Other peoples' session 2 experiences?

Other peoples' session 2 experiences?

In my current AW campaign (finished the tenth session about an hour ago) things are now becoming *scary* good... PCs are powerful, can put big plans in motion, and can shake the world.

That said, at the start of the campaign, the Hardholder, who's holding was the base/focus of the early game, failed his Wealth roll THREE sessions in a row; the very first roll of the game was a failure... and SO MANY things have snowballed from that, I can't even imagine what the game would be like if he'd actually made them.

All the trouble and scarcity forced the PCs to make a lot of hard choices, and their actions, and inactions, really revealed the PCs in interesting way.