Do you prefer your adventures to be episodic or contiguous?

[TheSword]

Pretty straightforward question. Episodic meaning that the action opens up at a point decided by the DM and closes at a point decided by the DM with indeterminate gaps in between. While contiguous means that the end of the previous session butts up against the start of following session in a continuous stream. At most in an episodic campaign the intervening space might be narrated - what have you been doing in the last three months? - but it certainly wouldn’t be played out. In a contiguous campaign some elements might be glossed over but players largely get to decide what they are doing on a continuous basis.

I like the idea of episodic campaigns but I always seem to slip into a continuous stream. Don’t mean to, it just seems to naturally fall that way.

 

[aco175]

I kind of do both. I have a series of contiguous adventures that follow an arc for a few levels and then move onto something else. This way I can stay focused and plot some things that will happen based on what the players want and not get that far ahead. This also leaves room for each PC to have a quest for them that the others go along with.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For standard campaigns, I like contiguous. For monster of the week, episodic

 

[JEB]

My two AD&D 2e campaigns were contiguous, but my Mutants & Masterminds campaign was episodic. Our D&D 5e campaign was episodic, but me and some other DMs were regretting that after a few years, because it made it harder to invest players in the campaign as an ongoing story (especially when combined with a changing lineup of players for each adventure). Next campaign, I'm more likely to do contiguous again.

 

[Tonguez]

Episodic, especially when I doing seasonal downtimes

 

[Ath'kethin]

I like an episodic campaign that has a thread of continuity to it. I run a string of modules, largely unrelated to each other, but I like to carry certain characters and developments through them all to give the world a sense of continuity.

 

[sevenbastard]

Continues.

But I've had fun with episodic adventures. Especially for something like Shadowrun.

 

[Deset Gled]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer style.

Mostly episodic. With occasional contiguous runs that pop up with some degree of regularity, allowing for fun at individual sessions but with occasional deeper plotlines that allow for character development. And every once in a while something/someone pops up from a couple years ago that you completely forgot about.

 

[MNblockhead]

I've done both. I ran a year long campaign where we would play a one to two sessions adventure. The next adventure would start with the players at the next level. In world some time had passed and we would start the adventure with each player explaining what their character had been up to between adventures. Then I would do the call to action, "once again, the party is called upon to ..." The idea was twenty adventures, twenty levels. It was fun.

But most of my adventures are contiguous and I think I like it this way better. I still like to work in downtime but the characters are generally together as a group for the entire campaign and downtime is generally measured in weeks, maybe months, not years.

 

[Clint_L]

Mine tend to be driven by player choices, so there are long running threads that tie into their backstories, and then specific games happen in reaction to whatever wacky choices they've recently made, not to mention their run of luck.

I love seeding potential stories to see what the players do with it - a lot of them go nowhere, but some turn into totally unexpected little story arcs. For example, in the last game I planted a (possibly bogus) treasure map in a curio shop and one of the player characters decided to buy it, so now we'll see where that goes, at least once they are done finding a cure for a magically afflicted party member.