Ultimate Madness

Something that's been on my mind lately (largely unrelated to this month's informal theme) is the idea of an 'Ultimate Campaign' as defined in this post by James Maliszewski on his blog GROGNARDIA. 

I highly recommend reading James' post as it was clearly thought provoking enough for me to be considering its contents roughly two weeks later. With that said, I will summarize the key components for the context of this post.

James has been running an Empire of the Petal Throne campaign for the last 8 years entitled 'House of Worms' with no end in sight. James notes in his post that should his campaign end, should he finally come to a satisfying conclusion for House of Worms, " "I'm fairly certain that I will have so thoroughly scratched my EPT (and Tékumel) itch that I would find little point in ever returning to it for another campaign. That is, I'll have done everything I'll likely ever want to do with the game and its setting. The conclusion of House of Worms will be – for me anyway – the end of Tékumel as an active RPG setting." "

James would identify this accomplishment as an Ultimate Campaign. By this he means, " ""Ultimate" in this case is simply shorthand for what I already stated above: achieving everything I'll likely ever want to achieve with a given game or game setting. " "

This idea...the very thought of it...has haunted me since I read the post more than 14 days ago. James sees this as a positive and I can understand that from his perspective. It would indeed be a sign of having run the Ultimate Campaign if one felt they had done everything that could be done with a given game and there were simply no more tales to tell in that space.

Unfortunately, my brain works differently and I find the very concept terrifying.

I'm never at a loss for ideas. I don't experience creative block in the way some do. I may feel uninspired or have a lack of enthusiasm for running a given game but the plots, characters, locations, obstacles, opponents...they just keep coming. It can be downright annoying sometimes; suddenly a wave of Four Color Superheroes ideas come rushing in while I am hip deep into running a Traveller or Ars Magica campaign. It can be incredibly frustrating when a plethora of Star Wars ideas come into my head but the only available group I have aren't big Star Wars fans. 

At the same time, I would rather experience these issues a hundred, no a thousand fold than run out of ideas. By extension, if I ran a campaign that was so good and so thorough that I not only had explored all the imaginings I had about it and no new ideas came in that warranted further investigation...I mean...I can't convey how horrible that sounds to me. It sounds like creative death. Like I've failed or am a failure somehow. Like running out of purpose or a reason to keep gaming. I know that's not what it is but the sound of it in my mind honestly frightens me so...I am not certain I can put it into words. 

Two situations immediately came to mind as I considered this particular dynamic.

I've been running a bi-weekly game (minus the occasional postponement) of Star Trek for 7 years now. Entitled 'Star Trek: Prosperity', the campaign initially used the Last Unicorn Games Icon System Star Trek RPG and after a few months we took a break to try other games. Returning to Prosperity, I converted everything over to the newly released (at the time) Star Trek Adventures RPG by Modiphius. Here we are 7 years later and we're still having a blast. 

Moreover, after 7 years I'm not out of ideas. I have no clue how long this campaign will last but I'm sure it could easily go on and on. At the same time, I've been running Star Trek campaigns for about 40 years now since I started with FASA back in 1982. Again, still haven't exhausted all my concepts for Trek adventures and material. 

Should Prosperity come to a close, the long journey through the Final Frontier finally reaching a climax...what would I do then? James seems to be saying he'd move on, never feeling the need or urge to run the setting again. He would be content - and perhaps rightly so - with what he'd accomplished. Me? Within a few weeks I'd want to run Star Trek again. Sure, it'd likely be in a different period in its fictional history but I never, ever want to run out of ideas for Star Trek. Ever. If I did, I'd probably just give up gaming as a hobby and I can't imagine that either.

The other situation I thought of (and mentioned in the Comments on James' blog) was the Boot Hill Homebrew I ran when I was around 12 or 13. It was indeed so good, so perfect in all respects that I've never run another Western campaign since. I've done one-shots and even one-shots with reoccurring characters from previous outings but never again a full on campaign. I just don't think I can top the original and if I can't do a better one, why bother?

But,,,do I ever get ideas for Westerns? Yes I do. All the damn time. And thank goodness, else I fear I'd go mad. 

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