Chasing the endless campaign

I had a fun conversation last night with my Friday RPG group about campaign length. I’ve been chasing what I think of as the platonic ideal for campaigns for almost 40 years: the ongoing game that doesn’t end, or at least runs for a good long time. I’ve never even come close. If memory serves, my record is 3 years. And yet to this day, when I start a campaign, 90% of the time it’s structured in such a way that I could run it forever. …So why am I still trying achieve this thus-far-unachievable dream? Edmund Hillary’s famous quote is widely misunderstood, BTW Partly because I just want to keep trying. I’m a stubborn person. Sheer cussedness is definitely a component of this choice. But it’s largely because when I came up, this was The Way, enshrined in the anecdotal teaching of How to Play. Even though I don’t think anyone in my groups had ever pulled it off. It’s not that I only want to play one RPG. I’ve played 200+ different RPGs; I love variety. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy…