I have been playing campaigns for many years, in several systems. Many of my players stay on the groups for as long as possible and I tend to design my campaigns to run for multiple years, with the longest running campaign surviving 3 revisions of a magicians of the shore game, or 7 years.
- At what level does PCs start?
Depending on the starting scale I always aim to start at lvl 1. Slaying those rats and burning the skellies always is a hit. On some occasions I like to start off with a little more development; when the PCs are supposed to be more professional and capable.
- How fast do they level / how much XP do they get on an average night? (this Q is of particular interest, as I know from other threads most do not use the RAW on XP)
I find that the leveling rate depends on the level they are at. The higher the level, the longer it generally takes. Nowadays I have a sort of an achievement vs level schema: I lay down an adventure and when they solve it, they get another level. Sometimes they don't succeed or they stray from the path and I lay down a similar goal.
- How do you handle XP and characters which are on different levels? If you have a level 5 PC and a level 10 PC, do they get the same amount of XP, given that their accomplishments/roleplaying/ideas are the same?
It seems rather unfair to have such a huge level difference in a single campaign. Unless there is some sort of Roleplaying reason for the level difference, I'd say its out of order.
I see how, when the XP per session is (reasonably) equal for each player, the system makes the level difference go away slowly, since the XP cost per level is increasing, but that is only when the difference isn't a glaring 5 levels.
The unfairness is apparent mostly in the XP rewards for actions: the higher lvl character is getting in more E crit rewards and also makes those higher difficulty maneuvers more easily, raking in much more XP than the lower levels.
- Does the campaign have an "epic goal"? If yes, how hard is it usually to achieve? If achieved how many sessions/years - or what ever - does it take to reach the goal? If achieved, then what?
All my campaigns have an epic goal; even when the players don't think it does. I tend to plan out stories for the group and most players individually. Although I run a "rail road" campaign, there are plenty of detours and off rail sessions to disguise that fact. It is VERY rewarding to see your plans come to fruition after carefully constructing the road to the campaign's end and hear the players suddenly realize that all those "rail road" sessions actually connect.
We're playing once every 2 weeks a 12 hour session and my longest campaign ran for close to 7 years, but it never even reached the end phase. One campaign which did was also great fun AND a great matter of pride amongst my players who recount the many tales to the newer players. This campaign ran for 2 years and I rail roaded it very much, by giving very clear hints at the end of each adventure (goal) where to go next, such as maps on adventure bosses, fleeing enemies or tales by wizened old crones. The absolute crux of the campaign was that I wanted them to fight a Terrasque: the most terrible monster of a rival RPG. So I leveled the players up and in the meantime I arranged for them to find, create, or buy the tools they needed. When the Terrasque surfaced they were in utter horror and they nearly failed (even though they had read its stats PLENTY of times), but their damage capacity in the end prevailed. Afterwards we thought up another campaign which ended in party wipe in just under 10 sessions... C'est la mort!
RPG on!
