Yesterday was a marker: we played the 15th session of our fantasy RP campaign set in the magical realm of Mystara, down in the mountains and forests of Karameikos. The six-player table, while always in flux due to the vagaries of life, has been running bi-weekly and consistently for more than six months.

In my experience, over the past 45 years or more, there is typically a low chance for an RP game to go longer than six sessions. Partly, this is due to the long-held belief that one-shots and short-shot games are the only viable and desirable approach to play in a busy world where people find it hard to commit their time. Getting to 12 sessions has been an extreme rarity.

Only one of my past campaigns has made it to 25+ sessions in the past 10 years: Mystamyr. We played bi-weekly for a little over a year but it collapsed when I lost faith in my ability to sustain the Otherworld. Honestly, while most of the players were great and highly supportive, at that time it only took the criticism of one to undermine my confidence. This was 2022 and I was recovering from deep anxiety.

Now, as I prep for Karameikos, I no longer feel the same intense anxiety and self-doubt that I did 4 years ago. Certainly, I always feel the discomforting sense that I have to perform. Yet, nowadays I have a framework – an architecture for play – that sustains me. I can circumscribe the circle of play and the Otherworld, I can scout it out and explore it alongside the players in-session, and I can wear the masks I need to sojourn as NPCs.

The real boon, of course, lies in the players who form the table. These guys are all committed and they are wanting to play in-character, as-character. They bring their player characters to life and they inhabit the Otherworld more and more deeply as time passes. We have become a little closer, I think, as acquaintances and friends too. But as the GM, there is nothing quite so motivating as preparing for people who want to explore the game for the reasons you do.

The marker isn’t just the time spent and the number of sessions completed. It’s the sense that this game has become one of the most significant of my gaming career – which is to say, of my life – simply by dint of showing up consistently. It helps that prep is not onerous. There is benefit in playing a system that supports the play we want with ease. Yet the best of it lies in the fact that I want to see those guys and run the game for them in particular.

I fear that this post might, in some strange cosmic irony, jinx and curse the campaign because I dared to reflect on the success of something so fragile as an RP campaign. Yet I can see the likelihood of 10 more sessions as being far higher than I would have predicted when we began. It’s a simple and somewhat classic fantasy Otherworld, plucked from the 1980s and brought to life through the engine of GURPS. I think it’s the grounded and respectful approach we’ve all taken that makes it work.

Here’s to the desired 25 session marker that we started out aiming towards. Here’s to breaking through that milestone and keeping the game alive for as long as interest remains and the players turn up. I’ve always wanted to play long-form in an Otherworld that interests me enough to care about it. Karameikos is that kind of game. Thanks to all the chaps who make it as reality when we gather.

Game on!