I’ve had a number of failed campaigns. Most of them would fall under the types
@Reynard enumerated in post
#12.
Failed to Launch
I would put our attempt to switch my sandbox campaign to Old-School Essentials in this bucket. We went two sessions, and it was obvious my players weren’t on board with the system’s expectations. It was actually XP for gold that was the big deal because they didn’t like how it pushed them towards “dungeon heists” as the primary direction of play.
There was also a time when we were doing 4e, and it was my turn to GM an adventure. I burnt out after one session of trying to run Thunderspire Labyrinth. I don’t really think it was the system’s fault or the adventures. I just wasn’t in a place to run at the time and only found that out when I tried.
Collapsed Under Its Own Weight
I’m going to include TPKs in this one. I had a
Rise of the Runelords campaign end in a pretty stupid TPK. The players had gotten to the end of the second module (
The Skinsaw Murders) and were climbing the tower at the end. The get to the top and engage the boss (a pretty nasty lamia matriarch). The ranger charges and gets killed on her Attack of Opportunity. I’m like: huh, that didn’t do much damage. The party had taken some damage from traps and didn’t heal it up. I point this out and ask them if they want to go ahead and do that, and they said no. The ranger’s death started a cascading wipe that ended with PCs’ jumping to their deaths from the tower to avoid whatever designs they thought the lamia had for them.
Our
Shattered Star campaign didn’t exactly collapse under its own weight. We hit a point late in
The Asylum Stone where I was like: this module sucks; I don’t want to run it anymore. The way we had been playing Pathfinder 1e is by treating the way the system works as sort of like physics. When that adventure decided to do something completely weird with an enchantment, it was jarring. That AP also had a really awful encounter with a seugathi that I retconned out of existence when it ended in a TPK. It’s supposedly a CR 6, but its insanity aura has a ridiculous saving throw. While the party members are beating on each other, it’s blasting them with wands. When I saw the TPK coming, I go to the group: this encounter is naughty word. For 6th level characters, it felt incredibly unfair. At least everyone was cool with pretending it didn’t happen.
I’d also put the Pathfinder 2e version of my sandbox campaign in this bucket. It didn’t end in a TPK, but I hit a point where I just didn’t want to run the system anymore. Designing monsters and traps was too much, and I really disliked that I didn’t feel proficient with the system even after a year of running it. That’s what lead to the aborted take using OSE. We ended up using Worlds Without Number for a while, which eventually lead to my devising a homebrew system to do exactly what I want for my game. I’m not sure how good of an idea that was to save me time, but the sunk cost fallacy means I’m definitely not stopping now.
Killed by Toxicity
I was running my group through the
Scales of War AP for 4e. It was
okay, but a toxic player ultimately killed it. I’ve
talked about it here before, so I won’t go into detail. That player was also toxic as a GM when he ran. I just got tired of it one session, and I ended the campaign and group. A few of us got back together with some new players, and that’s when I ran
Kingmaker.