Whats the best way to end a campain?

F

Fictionaut

First Post

• Jan 25, 2002

• #21

Most campaigns that I have run or participated in went past the point where they should have ended, and simply stopped when we all got bored with the characters or the setting. The party in the game I am currently DMing, however, consists of the children and/or apprentices of retired high-level PCs. Most of them controlled kingdoms (or at least a trap-filled tower in the middle of a foreboding wilderness in the wizard's case), so I gave them the opportunity to outline a system of government and any far-reaching plans that the characters might have.

The second generation characters were all kidnapped at a very young age and raised apart from their homelands, unaware of their origins, but by now they've returned, and the players are enjoying seeing the changes in the world that their decisions predicated. Plus, the old PCs are still around for when the Epic Level book comes out this summer, so I may yet have them come out of retirement and fight some greater menace.

 

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Thaumaturge

Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)

• Jan 26, 2002

• #22

barsoomcore said:

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.

Click to expand...

I can see that. It really does depend on the definition of campaign. I've run the huge world-shattering stories before and in those cases I agree with the "kill them all in heroic fashion" segment.


Thaumaturge.

 

R

Rubeus Hagrid

Guest

• Jan 26, 2002

• #23

My game has been running since 1984, has been through eleven groups, with only my wife remaining from the original game. One Tabletop and one PBEM group can't get enough of it.

Its built into my game that the old PCs often become the new generation of Deities.

The main Plotline, which began in 1984, is entering its last chapter, which should take another two years to play out.

The "game world" also includes links to a Star Trek campaign, my Superhero Universe which has been around since a month after the D&D one, and at least five other inhabited worlds that have been visited or glimpsed with more stories to be told in, on, and around them. I expect to still be DMing the same world with the same history in my 90s.

 

Emiricol

Registered User

• Jan 26, 2002

• #24

Usually, I'll kill them. I do this 1) because it gives me ready-made legends for my game world, and 2) the bodies are never found so I *could* have a former-PC-turned-NPC show up if I wanted... or just rumors of it...

Of course, my current main homegrown campaign is only 13 months old, but that's just 'cause I only started playing again when 3E came out.

 

Rybaer

First Post

• Jan 26, 2002

• #25

My personal favorite campaign ending, or at least the one I was most proud of, was an epic three session long finale that somehow managed to tie up every last loose plot thread. And, amazingly, it made sense.

In the final epic battle, the characters joined forces with a restored dragon to duke it out with a horror of unspeakable evil across the spans of time. Two characters died, two others ceased to have ever existed, and another two survived and lived out the remainder of their lives in peaceful retirement, but with little recollection of the events that had transpired.

The players were all very satisfied. They particularly enjoyed how the seemingly unrelated plot threads wove together at the end - almost like a Tom Clancy novel but with more of a surprise twist.

-Rybaer

 

Holy Bovine

First Post

• Jan 26, 2002

• #26

I'm more in favour of the last big adventure and then retire option. Not that I wouldn't do a TPK but the PCs would probably still take down whomever they were fighting against - victory in defeat kind of thing.

An interesting thing I did once was give one PC a brief vision of the future of his world. he saw several (very aged) members of his adventuring band (but *cue ominous music* not himself) sporting terrible injuries like missing eyes/legs/hands etc. The group seemed sad and depressed as if they had failed at something very important (wonder what that could have been?).

Never did get to finish that campaign - more inter-player conflicts than you could fling a dead cat at.

 

Castaigne

First Post

• Jan 26, 2002

• #27

Tomb of Horrors

 

Dispater

Explorer

• Jan 26, 2002

• #28

Well I would preffer to kill them all, but sadly, my campaigns never come to this. We just grow bored, and then start a new one and leave all the old characters forgotten in my drawer. It's a shame, but characters only die on the rare occassion when a player leaves the group.

 

EOL

First Post

• Jan 26, 2002

• #29

I voted that the campaign should never end, now of course this is not possible (eventually you'll die), but I think what I meant has been alluded to by other posters. Essentially the legecy and the contributions of that first group of PC's should linger throughout the entire campaign, whether it's through legends told about them or their children adventuring, or becoming gods, whatever, but ideally any campaign will go long enough for the PC's to have a lasting impact which is carried into every campaign after that.