Run a mid-campaign check-in

Campaigns can be huge games which last years. The campaign I’m currently running has been going for more than a year already, we’ve gone through some big story arcs in that time, and a few months ago I found myself wondering if the game I was running was still the game the players wanted to play.

I had no reason to suspect this—nobody had expressed any discontent—but sometimes it’s hard to say you’re not having fun when everyone else is.

So I sent around a little survey:

The game’s been running for a while now, and we’ve just hit a milestone, so I thought this is a good time to check in on how you’re all finding things. So, how’s it going?

Here are some prompts for thought:

• What have you liked the most?
• What have you liked the least?
• Are you still happy with your character?
• Have there been any times when the mechanics felt wonky or unhelpful?
• Is the schedule still good?
• How about the session length?
• Is there anything you think we / I should change?

I’d not done this before, I’m sure I saw the idea somewhere but I can’t remember where now.

And it sparked some good discussion. Everyone was happy with the game and how it was going but, even though we didn’t change anything, it was useful to confirm that everyone was still on the same page.

Then the other GM in the group asked the same questions about their game a week later, which sparked a discussion about character advancement and how I was a little dissatisfied with some aspects of how we’d been handling it. One day I’ll write my thoughts on that up as a post.

Are you running a long game? Check in with your players to see if your expectations are still aligned. A year or more is a long time since that initial session 0 discussion.