Whats the best way to end a campain?

Bandito · Jan 25, 2002

One word....Cliffhanger.

There's nothing like not giving any closure to a situation to become the ultimate evil in DMing. I mean really, players would rather their characters died instead of you just leaving them having wondering 'what if'.

Letting them get close enough to want it so bad they can taste it and then saying, "Well guys, let's wrap it up there. Great campaign. Hope we can do it again sometime."

It's cruel, I know.

Cheers!

Thaumaturge · Jan 25, 2002

Killing the whole party may bring some visceral enjoyment to the DM, but I think retireing the party gives the DM many long term benefits. If a group of 4 decent level adventurers retire they are going to settle down, probably have enough for some nice land, and become fully fleshed out NPCs that can at the very least serve as background peices for future campaigns. I had a retired character befriend a newly formed group and slowly twisted the trusted friend into a force of evil. The players never even saw her coming.

Thaumaturge.

RangerWickett · Jan 25, 2002

I voted for them to win and then live in peace, but that's not quite right. They'll usually win, and then live in peace for a while, but they do have to deal with the aftermath of their victory from time to time.

However, that's just the ideal. In my latest game . . . *sigh* . . . we got to the 2nd to last encounter, and then half the players left to go see Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. It was the day before I had to go back to college for the Fall, so we never got to finish the game. And one of the players claimed I'd been "conspiring" with another player, trying to cheat them. God, the idiots. It was for the sake of drama that I had to let one of the other players in on a secret, but they have to take the ****ing game like it's all about 'not just winning, but not looking bad or losing in any way.'

ing

s.

I'm sorry, but if anyone out there has ever done anything like that and ruined the climax of a three-year game, I hope you get a joint of your pinky chopped off.

. . . *sigh* Forgive me Lord, for I have wished ill upon others. But maybe if by just expressing myself thus, I might be able to convince others to never ruin a story in this way. It has left a bad taste in my mouth for months, and is perhaps the only thing in life I am truly bitter about.

Donatello · Jan 25, 2002

There's an option you didn't list:

The end of the world (or end of their corner of it).

I ended a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign with one methuselah feeling so threatened by the resurgeance of her arch-enemy, that she duped the players into launching nuclear weapons out of the derelict submarine she used as a haven.

The players were shocked, but all loved the ending, slapping themselves in the foreheads for not seeing it coming.

You can always pull some gut-wrenching, world-threatening plotline out and make the players deal with it... and because you know it's your last hurrah, you don't have to pull any punches as a DM. If they fail and the world ends, so be it!

barsoomcore · Jan 25, 2002

Thaumaturge said:
If a group of 4 decent level adventurers retire they are going to settle down, probably have enough for some nice land, and become fully fleshed out NPCs that can at the very least serve as background peices for future campaigns.

Now see, here's where you and I have very different ideas of what the word "campaign" means. To me, if you're running something in the same world, then it's the same campaign, even if the characters and the plot and all that are different.

I create my worlds for just one story. Sometimes that story takes years and years to tell, but once it's told, I don't really want to poke around in that world anymore. THAT story is done. Time to tell a new one, and a new story needs a new setting.

See what I mean? So for my campaigns, you might as well kill them all because you're NEVER going to see them again anyways. And good stories always end with HUGE body counts.

The Sunderer · Jan 25, 2002

My group prfers the "sepia ending" such as is seen at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Sialia · Jan 25, 2002

No. No. No.

The very best, mind you, I said VERY best, end to a campaign I was ever in gave all of our charcters the opportunity to ascend and become the primal gods of a New Universe.

I kid you not.

One character became the physical body of the New Universe. Another became the Goddess of Nature. Another the God of Magic (and Law). Another became Chance itself, and gave the goddessing up to her twin children (she was pregnant at the time we ascended). Two chose to become wanderers across the new world. One became the Lady of Dream, and the stuff of the dream realm itself.

We invented races and religions. We built cities, landscapes, ecosystems and creatures and plants. We devised mythos. We had innumerable children. When all was said and done, we each wandered off into the sunset of a world of our own creation and lived eternally ever after and were not bored.

Zelda Themelin · Jan 25, 2002

Well, kind of often happens me growing bored, and leaving everything hanging, but those games are sort of never-ending type too. I'd DM:d couple of fixed campaings where there is that last big adventure, but it never seems to work for games where it wasn't planned and enforced from beginning.

If game is good, I say let it last as long as it does, and end whatever way it needs ending. I always like to have few short-term games going on, so I can do something new.

However, incidently almost all long-term games where I played, ended my character directly or indirectly causing destruction of that universe.

Minthrilheart · Jan 25, 2002

Close to my End

I play a Dwaven <Knight Of the Chalice> character in a long Campaign, its almost over.

So far we are dealing with gods, Demon artifacts, and creatures from the Astral and Abyssal Planes.

I would like to go out fighting with a blaze of glory!

Just my Coppers Worth