The Two-Game Curse: How Can You Break It?

My games die after two sessions, give or take one session.

Character creation usually happens, then we get together to play. Within a couple of sessions, we can’t get everyone to the table, and everything falls apart.

Our Curse of Strahd campaign fell apart. Our Game of Thrones campaign fell apart. Our Torchbearer campaign fell apart. My Star Wars online game fell apart. Now, our Star Trek campaign threatens to fall apart as we keep pushing off game night due to busy schedules.

So, what is happening here?

I think that players tend to be very invested in the first few sessions, as am I. We make sure to show up, I make sure to do a ton of prep, they really begin to feel out their characters… And then interest begins to wane a bit. I end up working late, and didn’t prep as well as I could have, so I cancel, because I’m too exhausted to run it on the fly. The other players drop out or can’t make it that week because they aren’t fully familiar with the rules, so they’re intimidated and would rather go back to a system they’re more familiar with. If we we’re missing 2 our of our 4 PCs, people don’t want to play. I find myself offering to play board games instead more often than not.

So: How to fix this? Let’s look at some options:

…

Wait.

I have no idea.

How do you fix that 2 game slump? How do you get your players (and sometimes yourself) reinvested and keep a game going?

Do I just abandon the idea of running campaign games and instead focus on one-shot games from a variety of different game systems? Maybe something will stick there? I don’t know, but I can use your help.

I’d love some comments below telling me what one could do to break the slump. Also, I’ll be sharing this over on Twitter seeking advice under the hashtag #TwoGameCurse. You can share your advice there, and I’ll post up the best ones here coming soon.