Running a long campaign

Hi,  this  post has me a bit worried about potential unwieldiness of running a large campaign and wanted to get some idea of the limits of a game in Roll20.  What is the best guess as to the boundaries lines that one shouldn't cross in terms of number of assets, maps, handouts, notes, NPCs, etc.  Or more generally, how big can a game be before it becomes a problem.   Also, general advice on when/how to break up a campaign into multiple games.  Thank you in advance.

I think the only guidance you're going to get on this is anecdotal, since there are so many variables. What one person calls 20 maps could be an order of magnitude different from what another player calls 20 maps. Same with characters. Cross that against the specs of their hardware, what their connection speed is and that of their players, complexity of the chosen sheet, and you'll run into different bottlenecks for different users. Anecdotally, I try to run at <20 maps and <120 characters at any given time. But that works for my set up and average map and character size. In general, Roll20 recommends that a module be used to run a single campaign. Addon adventures can be added to most existing games without issue. Pro users are encouraged to use the Transmogrifier to keep asset count low. Plus users are more likely to use the Character Vault. They don't have as many options, but it's also easier for them to set up or duplicate a new game, since there's less prep when API scripts are not involved (they don't copy easily). Free users are more limited, but my take on this is that they are less likely to be fully invested in elaborate game setups. In general, the smaller you keep your game the easier it is to manage. 

I ran a 3.5e game for ~4 years (levels 1-18). For the most part there wasn't a problem although the bigger the game got the longer it took to load, especially for players with slower connections. Mostly this was attributed to attribute bloat from a veritable monster manual of character sheets. To mitigate this I used the transmogrifier to move monsters that weren't needed into a Bestiary game, I later started to keep maps in an Atlas game to reduce lag even further. I would say that the first 2-3 years were relatively problem free but as things grew and features like Advanced Fog of War and liberal use of APIs that added system heavy fx caused me to take more drastic load reduction steps. At it's zenith (including archived) the game held ~75-100 pages with dynamic lighting, ~250 character/npcs (I never used the 3.5e NPC sheet, basic PC stats did everything I needed with my powercard macro setup), countless handouts. With access to the transmogrifier I would definitely encourage breaking a game into 'chapters' to help prevent bloat. That would generally depend on the scope of your games but you could probably get away with levels 1-10 as one game and 11-20 as a second (using DnD 20 level system as a broad example). To hedge bets 1-7, 8-14, 15+ should easily keep you in the goldilocks zone of gaming. TL/DR - Character sheets are the biggest known killer due to attribute bloat, only keep in game what you need ;)

Thanks, keithcurtis.   Anecdotally, I try to run at <20 maps and <120 characters at any given time. This seem quite limiting for me.  My campaign has a lot of overland travel and thus maps for various towns they may visti/revisit.  That alone takes a significant chunk of that 20 maps limit, not to mention dungeon maps/random battle maps etc. One question, if I archive maps after they have been used (and don't foresee immediate reuse), would that help alleviate the game load? In general, Roll20 recommends that a module be used to run a single campaign. Addon adventures can be added to most existing games without issue. For this particular campaign, I am not using a purchased module (nor addon).  So I don't think this applies (but good to know if I ever run CoS which I was gifted recently by my wonderful players). Plus users are more likely to use the Character Vault. They don't have as many options, but it's also easier for them to set up or duplicate a new game, since there's less prep when API scripts are not involved (they don't copy easily). I have duplicated games before, so I'm confident I can split the campaign into multiple games if necessary, without much trouble. I'm just a bit at a loss as to when I should be splitting into new game.  One thing I may try is to create a game with the CoS module I have access to and just examine it to get an idea of how much assets and such is included in the module - and use that as a guideline of sorts.

Thank you Ziechael for all of the tips. Ziechael said: TL/DR - Character sheets are the biggest known killer due to attribute bloat, only keep in game what you need ;) This tip seems especially useful.  Thank you!  I will keep this in mind and clear monster character sheet after their immediate use is up - namely those that are easy for me to reproduce (i.e., those in the MM compendium). 

aisforanagrams said: Thanks, keithcurtis.   Anecdotally, I try to run at <20 maps and <120 characters at any given time. This seem quite limiting for me.  My campaign has a lot of overland travel and thus maps for various towns they may visti/revisit.  That alone takes a significant chunk of that 20 maps limit, not to mention dungeon maps/random battle maps etc.' I agree, it is limiting. If I were not using the Transmogrifier, I couldn't run nearly so lean. It also helps that our campaigns are not particularly sandboxy, so it's easier to anticipate what will be needed. One question, if I archive maps after they have been used (and don't foresee immediate reuse), would that help alleviate the game load? Unfortunately not. Archive characters and pages is a purely cosmetic action. They still load into the game at run time. Extra maps mean extra loading time, but do not usually contribute to performance lag. The active map is the key ingredient. Extra characters however mean extra loading time and a performance hit. Characters necessarily need to be referenced by the internal "database", regardless of whether they have tokens on the board or not. This means everything goes into memory (as I understand the situation).

aisforanagrams said: One question, if I archive maps after they have been used (and don't foresee immediate reuse), would that help alleviate the game load? Archiving makes no difference at all to load. It's just for visual convenience.

I have added each of the first 5 adventures of War of the Burning Sky into 1 game over the past year (as addons). As I finish a chapter, I delete it and its contents from my game. Everything has gone pretty well so far.