If you follow my coverage, you know that I love campaign games. But who do I play a campaign game? From things like Sleeping Gods which is very free flowing. A game like Tainted Grail with a dark and gritty world and tons of exploration. Gloomhaven is an epic adventure the directs you more. Sword & Sorcery where you chuck dice to attack and go through a story. Or Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game where you play as detectives trying to solve a series of cases that tell a full story.

Needless to say, that’s a lot of different ones. And that doesn’t even include games like My City, Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2, Risk Legacy, Charterstone, and I’m pretty sure I’m missing one or two. But why play a campaign game? Why play a game that has a story that when you’re done you can’t really play again?

The Case Against A Campaign Game

1. A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once
2. It Takes A Long Time To Play
3. They Are Hard to Get A Group For

A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once

Once you’ve played a campaign game you can’t play it again? You might be marking up a board or you might not be, tearing up cards, but you might not be. In either case, though, you play the story once and you know the story of the campaign, is there really that much difference? And why would I want a game that limits my game plays?

It Takes A Long Time To Play

You want to play the same game over and over again? What happens if you have a break and need to pick it up again, will you remember where you left the story? Do you leave the game set-up so that you aren’t doing the set-up and teardown every time?

They Are Hard To Get A Group For

And with that play time, how do you find a group who is up for that. What sort of plan do you come up to play with? We all have lives, so how do you get it to the table consistently?

The Campaign Game Rebuttal

A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once

This is not fully true. For some games it is a bit more and very much so for Legacy games. Though with a Legacy game often, Risk Legacy, My City, and Charterstone, they can be played after. But even in the case with a legacy game if you can’t, it is still a great experience. It is a story that can’t be told in a normal game.

And this is true for all campaign games. It tells a story that might not exist anywhere else. If you do only play it once, you still get an experience that is different than most games. Even your favorite games you might play five times a year, or maybe that’s just games that you like pretty well. So if you do get through a whole campaign, you end up getting your money’s worth from it.

Finally, not all campaign games can’t be replayed. While I am not sure I could go back and play Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game again, at least not without everyone else being new. There is still plenty in that game that I never saw. Gloomhaven has more scenarios and classes that I never played. Tainted Grail has tons of story and plot lines that I never went down. So yes, you can replay them, you just might know some.

It Times A Long Time To Play

Yes, this is true, but that is also part of the experience of an unfolding narrative in a game. In a shorter game, there might be a narrative that emerges, but by nature of the shorter experience and desire to be replayable, it’ll be less impactful.

So if you want to experience a whole narrative, campaign games are a great way to go. And while some can have one person running the game, most, as compared to an RPG which also matches up with a lot of these criteria, are fully cooperative. That means that everyone is playing the same game and doing the same things.

They Are Hard To Get A Group For

It is not much harder than getting a game group together. I play campaigns with two different groups, both offshoots of my game group. But expectations do need to be set when it comes to a campaign. I had one group fall apart because of life reasons, but still am maintaining the other two.

Start with letting them know the commitment. A campaign game is a commitments and they should know that. Also discuss frequency of play. A lot of times groups will fall apart because they are not frequent enough or too frequent. If they aren’t frequent enough, people forget how to play. Too frequent and it becomes a burden to play it. Know what schedule works for your group and try and stick to it.

Why Play A Campaign Game?

So we’ve looked at some reasons why you might or might not want to. And I do think that game group can be a valid reason if no one is interested in playing a campaign game. However, I think more people are than a lot of gamers might think. But why do I play them?

1. The Narrative Experience
2. Consistent Gaming
3. The Epic Scope
4. Digging Into A Game

The Narrative Experience

I talk about this a lot. I love games that give you story that you can explore. You’ve seen me play Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, some and Sleeping Gods. Even Pandemic Legacy Season 1 gave story to delve into. And I love when a game gives you story like that.

It is interesting, because the ones that I really love give me flexibility in that story. Gloomhaven more so in how you build and play your character. But Tainted Grail and Sleeping Gods allow you to branch out into the world and see more of what is happening. And they don’t tell you how you need to play it, yes, there are targets you go for, but there is always more to explore.

Compare that to regular Pandemic, or a lot of other one off games, they don’t offer the same story. Now, there is story that emerges in those games from the choices that you make as a player. Which is the same for a campaign game. But the players need to bring a lot more of the narrative to the game.

Consistent Gaming

This is also kind of a rebuttal to it being long and finding a group. For myself and other gamers, consistently gaming is amazing. So often it is hard to set aside time to play games, but with a campaign game, it forces you to do so. Like I said, it’s about that developing that rhythm. And a good campaign game will draw you in with the story it provides so you want to keep coming back to it.

It is a knock, actually, that I have against Gloomhaven. The story is less compelling than the game play. I love the mechanics, but the story could and should be better. But the game play kept me coming back over and over again. That cycle of playing cards and figuring out the strategy for a scenario is amazing. But a campaign game helps hook you to come back for consistent gaming.

The Epic Scope

A campaign game also can have much more epic scope to it. I own other games that have epic scope, The Reckoners or Atlantis Rising are two examples. Pandemic, even, with trying to save the world from diseases. But while you play, those games, that scope is just smaller than what you can get in a campaign game.

Tainted Grail, yes, you are trying to save Avalon, how is that different than Pandemic and saving the world? Well, it is different because what you need to do builds and changes as the game progresses. It might be finding the grail, but now you need to complete a ritual or more in the game. It just keeps building and building until you reach an epic finale to the game.

Digging Into A Game

And now, this is one that is very much for Gloomhaven, but it allows you to dig further and further into the game. And with that, you get to explore and understand the mechanics of the game and the character(s) that you are playing so well.

In Gloomhaven it is that card loop of playing two cards to do the top action on one and the bottom on the other. It just makes for a fascinating puzzle that then you can augment and optimize with items and figure out what is going to work best for you.

Final Thoughts on a Campaign Game

The scope and epic nature of the experience really pull me in. And they are some of the best stories I’ve found in a game. Now, the experience won’t be for everyone. And I think the biggest reason is that sometimes they are just harder to get to the table. If you’ve watched Malts and Meeples, you know I like to play them there. But without a gaming table, I have one now, it is a lot of work to set-up and tear down every time for one to two hours of gaming.

But if you can find a group, I believe that they are worth checking out. And there are so many themes out there. I look at what I have coming in, Frosthaven another game in the Gloomhaven world. Then HEL: The Last Saga a fantastical Viking mythological game. ISS Vanguard is an epic space exploration adventure. Rogue Angels when that comes out is going to be a more boots on the ground dungeon crawl space game. So there is likely a theme for everyone out there, including lighter fantasy like Adventure Tactics or Cora Quest for the whole family.

What is your favorite campaign game?

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