Short Campaigns

Lately, I've been wanting to expand the horizons of my RPG experience, to try some new systems and new settings in my familiar D&D5e. I set out to look for some short term groups to join (around 2-3 months at most), but I haven't been able to find very many at all in the group listings or forums. This surprised me, as I would have thought shorter campaigns would work much better on roll20 than long ones. Internet people are notoriously unreliable, expecting people to commit to year+ or indefinitely long groups up front seems like it should be the exception, but those seem to be the groups that most people are forming. More often than not GMs don't even include the expected campaign length in their posts, but when asked the answer is usually along the lines of "as long as I can run it". One-shot groups do seem to pop up some, but even those are much less common than I would have thought.  Is there some reason that short campaigns are less common that I'm thinking they should be? Do people not like running or playing them for some reason? Am I looking in the wrong places, the wrong systems? Is there a better way to try out new systems and broaden my experience?

I guess people are just optimistic. Also, speaking as a Pathfinder player and GM, long campaigns are the most hyped ones that people get the most excited to play! In my experience, if you want to try something, run it. There are demo rules or adventurers for so many systems out there, you don't even have to buy anything if you just want to dip your toe in the water. I have run several modules (length of 1 to 10 sessions) on here and there was always overwhelming interest in it. I'm sure you can find a group for almost anything you wish to run!

Hmm, I guess that's what I was afraid of. I have been running a 5e game for nearly a year now, and I agree that long campaigns are worth being excited about. Had hoped there would be enough people also excited about shorter games. I guess my experimenting will have to wait until I can wind my current campaign down. It would be too much for me to try and run another game at the same time. Running a new system cold is an intimidating prospect as well. I had a few months as a player before starting my own D&D group. Any advice on prepping for and running a system you've never seen before?

Don't get me wrong, people do get excited about short running games or one-shots. The long campaigns just seem to be the ones that generate more buzz on the interwebz and thus people are hyped more for them.  My advice to break into a new system would be to look for a published adventure for the lowest possible level and just dive right into it. Like I said, a lot of systems offer demo material for that exact purpose. Do you have any particular system in mind? Depending on the popularity, I am sure you can find helpful people here or on other messageboards to help you get started.

Also, if you can find some live play streams on Twitch or YouTube, that can be a big help with getting a feel for how the rules play.

I start with a short campaign, run about 3 sessions, and the better players get invited to a longer campaign that uses the short campaign as a "jump off point".

Games stabilize with time, eventually you have been contacted by all of the flakes on the internet. I run three games. My ported in D&D game has been running for 24 years, three on Roll 20. My D&D game started here has been stable for quite a while now, been running 2 1/2 years. My SWN game is just reaching stability at just over a year. But like the princess, there are a lot of toads to kiss out there, pucker up and go for it, your next game could run for decades.

Dark Heresy is the thing I'm most interested in at the moment, but there are a handful of others as well. Shadowrun, Dungeon World, some variety of World of Darkness, Eclipse Phase, probably Pathfinder or 3.5 as well. Would also like to see what can be done with 5e beyond the Sword Coast FR that I've been running. Finding recorded sessions is a good idea. I've certainly done plenty of that for 5e. I didn't really feel like I 'got' how D&D worked from watching it, needed to play it first. I think that might work better for a second+ system now that I have something to compare it to.