(this post consists of what I hope is gentle criticism of Critical Role Campaign 3, and if you don't want to read that, I encourage you not to do so. I am putting it in the tag because I think some people might find it interesting, and I'd be interested in discussing it further)
There's been a lot of hemming and hawing about what exactly went wrong with Critical Role's third campaign. Some people like it, of course, and more power to them, but I know I'm not alone in finding it disappointing. Poor match between campaign tone and character creation, too discontinuous a schedule for the players to remember what's going on, even somewhat unkind accusations that they're treating it more like a TV writing room than a campaign after their previous successful cartoon tie-ins - all common explanations. And while I don't think any of these is wholly untrue, I think there's a much simpler and more general explanation that gets most of the way there on its own. It's not one I've seen given voice before, either.
Let's call it 'Third Campaign Syndrome'.
You and your buddies start playing some sort of TTRPG - one of the ones that's built to go for a long time, though beyond that the game itself doesn't really matter here. You have a good time playing through the normal progression of the game, doing mostly the stuff the game explicitly expects of you. It's great! And then it ends, and you all say 'that was great, but now I have so many cool new ideas for the next time I do this!'. By this point, your players have achieved a greater level of system mastery, and they've done a lot of the really conventional stuff already.
That leads you to your second campaign. Your players have a good idea of what they like and want to try now, so their second character is a huge improvement on their first (in terms of table fun). This is the best campaign ever. The players (of which the GM is one) know how to do what the game wants them to do, and they have a lot of fun doing it.
And then that campaign too, comes to an end. Everyone has now spent multiple years doing the same sort of thing. They found the groove they enjoyed the most, and they played it! But because the pattern is now established, everyone decides that there must be a Campaign 3, and it must be in the same system and setting.
The GM in this situation finds themselves in a bit of a tricky spot. The first campaign was a 'normal one'. The second was a variant of a normal one, but better tuned in to your specific players. You can't repeat that trick. So what do you do? Go big! Change up the concept! You assume your players are down for anything now, so you make your perfect campaign. You try to build something you know they'll love, based on what they've shown you before.
However, there's a problem. Your players already zoned in on their mechanical and narrative niche, and their niche is what they did last time. That second character is already probably the best character they can make in this system, and most suited to their narrative interests. And now, their desire for variety is going to force them out of that niche and into a new one. They will try to specifically buck the expectations you, the GM, have of them.
The result is a discordant mess. The GM has a really specific idea of what the campaign should be, the players are trying to do something different - often playing against their natural inclinations and skills - and nobody is talking to each other about it because c'mon guys, it's been years, you know how to do this. The desire to shake up the formula to keep things fresh manifests differently in the GM and players, and they end up pulling in different directions.
You might be thinking 'Dr. Balls, this seems like a very specific sequence of events. Surely this can't be a general pattern'. But at least with the anecdata I have acquired over almost 15 years in this hobby, it is a general pattern - at least among groups who try to play the same game with the same DM and (largely) the same players three times in a row. I personally know several people who have either been in this situation or have seen it, both in front of and behind the screen, and I have personally been on the periphery of one such campaign.
It's easy to see why it happens. It's a natural consequence of repetition and the familiarity that comes with it. Nobody's really at fault, either. There's no ill will and nobody's behaving irrationally, though it could have been prevented with foresight and a well-timed DM or system change.
And that's my diagnosis of what happened with Critical Role Campaign 3. There's a lot of discussion now about whether they should change systems for a hypothetical Campaign 4, but I'm going to suggest they should already have done that before Campaign 3.
turnnoffyourmind
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jbbartram-illu
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