Campaign Length

Considering how little free time I now have for games, I find myself more and more concerned with how much of a time commitment I ask from players in any game I run. The length of a session usually depends on the venue and the travel arrangements, although I find my weekly real world game has much longer sessions than my online Roll20 game (5 hours versus 2-3 hours). Maybe the players want to get more from a session when some travel was required. The convenience of online play means we're not concerned with how long we play for?

So, I thought the Same Page Tool was a great resource, but it doesn't mention the length of the campaign. My ideas for this so far are:

1. Fixed number of sessions, so a once off, 5 sessions, 10 sessions etc.
2. Fixed real world time, maybe one year, two months, or until Christmas.
3. A certain amount of in game time passes, e.g. one season, or one year.
4. Until a game world event happens, e.g. until the great dragon is slain.
5. Indefinite.

I think my preference now is for a fixed number of sessions, probably six. I'd ask players to create characters and collaborate with world building based on the knowledge that we'll play for just that number of sessions, probably weekly.

If that goes well, then we can think about the next campaign we want to play. If we look back over the previous year and think about the eight or nine campaigns we have played, we can choose to return to one of them. Presumably some players would want to keep the same characters, or maybe they'd like to return to the world a generation later. That's something else I've thought about, which could be called campaign episodes, chapters, or seasons.