Campaign vs. Mini-Series (CFH)

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Though you can take any of the above campaign ideas and make it into a formal campaign, one which is supposed to continue episode after episode until the DM and players grow tired of it, you can also run any of them as a mini-series, a campaign which is deliberately run only for enough episodes to complete one full-length story. In a sense, the regular campaign is like a TV series, while the mini-series is like a novel or movie.
==Campaigns==
The campaign goes on over a long period of time and encompasses many smaller stories and goals; it sometimes goes through cast changes as the principal heroes die, leave, or retire.
The bright promise of the campaign is that, so long as the DM and players remain together and interested, it can go on for a long, long time; the characters can participate in adventure after adventure, story after story. The campaign can chronicle generations of the adventurers' families, as the original adventurers sire children who themselves grow up to be the player-characters.
In a campaign, PCs are designed to be played practically forever. You figure on the character growing and developing slowly, over time, and so PCs are almost always created at low level, usually 1st level.
As the PCs develop, their players sometimes become very attached to them, so much so that when a character dies (in such a fashion that he cannot be raised, it is very upsetting to the player.
==Mini-Series==
The mini-series, on the other hand, typically covers one extended story—the acquisition of one treasure, the defeat of one specific master villain, the exploration of a newly-discovered island, the resolution of a war between nations. It may be played in a single session or go on for a dozen, but the DM and players know that it's supposed to be limited in scope.
Its characters are rolled up and can be played quite differently. Since they are "temporary" characters, they can be created at a level best suited to the plot of the story. If the scenario is supposed to involve a crack squad of cavalrymen on a special mission, everyone could be created at 5th level. If it's to be powerful, experienced knights on a quest, everyone could be created at 9th level. If it's to be legendary heroes transported from the past at the peak of their powers, they could be created at 20th level or higher.
In some regular campaigns, PCs die regularly. If the DM of such a campaign runs a mini-series, the players can expect the same, but probably won't mind so much because the characters were "temporary" anyway.
In some regular campaigns, the DM tends to protect the PCs a little bit, covering over for little errors which could be fatal, especially when they take place in incidents which are not important to the campaign or current storyline. In a mini-series, on the other hand, the DM is likely to be more deadly (because no one is quite so involved with his character), meaning that the setting and situation are more dangerous; the players will have a greater sense of the danger to their characters in this type of setting.
One last option with the mini-series: Though it is a very limited campaign, deliberately created so that it will soon end, the DM can always run mini-series "sequels." In the sequel, the survivors of the original mini-series can band together again to meet a new challenge, joined by new heroes (replacements for those who fell in the last story). The DM can fiddle with experience levels as he chooses, running one mini-series (for example) at fifth level, the sequel at ninth level, the second sequel at 13th, and so on.
==Switching Between Them==
Because campaigns and mini-series are very different but equally compelling, DMs should think about switching between them from time to time.
For most people, the campaign is the most satisfying format. But, also for most people, the campaign gets a bit tiresome after a while, and the group breaks from it for a time. In that time, it's very appropriate to run a short-term mini-series (or several), allowing the DM and players to explore new settings and characters until they're ready to pick up the regular campaign again.
This is the ideal forum for you to try out some of the more unusual or outrageous campaign ideas described earlier in this chapter.