[yet another catch-up...]
Do you prefer campaigns to be limited-plot, with a definite ending, or open-ended, so that they can continue indefinitely? What about things like ìconvention campaignsî where people meet irregularly to pick up old characters and game together? What are the pros and cons of each sort of game? Which is more common in your gaming experience?
I prefer open-ended games. I like the ideas of having limited plots within the game setting - different adventures. But overall, the characters keep moving and growing. Eventually the characters may grow apart, or the situation may become untenable.
In our previous Sunday game (set in the fantasy world of Lou's and my design), our characters went only up to about 11th level. We were playing in 2nd edition, and by that time, Lou had beaten us over the head with "the end of the world is coming!" enough times that our characters were just sick of each other. Sick of banding together to save the world YET AGAIN from whatever evi thing was trying to destroy it. The players also got kinda sick of it.
Lou didn't necessarily *plan* for this to happen, but it did. In one scenario, our characters had all planned to take a month off and get various things done. But Lou, not thinking, dangled a plot in front of two of the PCs. Yet again, the world was going to be ending. And that meant we couldn't take any time off. Lou said that he hadn't intended for us to follow up on it, it was just there as something that we would deal with eventually. But it was presented in such a way that no good-minded party (which we were, heavily) could refuse to stop whatever they were doing and go and stop yet another apocalypse.
My husband does a very good job with apocalypses, don't get me wrong. But it was overdone in that game. Even he burned out on it.
The current game is set 20 years later in the same game world, and has mainly dealt with getting a rightful princess (one of the PCs) back on her throne and kicking out/killing the usurper. In the beginning, we didn't know she was even a *girl*, she was disguised.
The game started out in 2nd edition, moved into 3E, and our characters are now 18-19th level. And we show no signs of wanting to stop playing them. (My character is lower level than the rest because she had to leave for a time due to party conflicts, so I brought in the son of my old PC and an NPC from the first game, and played him for about a level.) In fact, Lou's had to revise the evil usurper a number of times because we keep advancing, and aren't going after him yet. Partially because we know we'll lose her as PC once we do that, and partially because there are other things we need to do. Like build an army to take her back, stop the evil Lich that killed a former PC, and figure out why my character was abandoned by her elven parents and raised by a human plains horse tribe.
In the meantime, we also ended a curse on an NPC, fought an ancient red dragon, journeyed to Sigil, and various other adventures.
Okay, that said, let's get back to the question at hand.
I like "convention campaigns" just fine. But I couldn't do it regularly. It's fun for a convention, getting together with old friends and pulling out the old character for some fun. But I think part of the fun is in the short time limit. I don't think I could play Calypso/Ingrid (my Multiple-Personality Disorder character) in a regular game again. She reached her end. But for a con game, sure I'd drag them out again, in a heartbeat. It's fun to visit in their heads for a brief time.
In my gaming experience, the open-ended is definitely more common. I ran an Amber game with a finite time limit, basically a throne war, just to see if I could (mainly the backstabbing issue). It lasted maybe a half-dozen sessions or so, and it was fun. But I couldn't do it regularly. I like continuity.