D&D General 70% Of Games End At Lvl 7?

[Shiroiken]

The real issue is games just falling apart. Since nothing can really be done about this, I don't like counting them into the equation. If you only look at completed campaigns, I've found it depends on the DM and edition. IME, most campaigns have a story to be told, and the end level should be based on that.

In AD&D, a lot of campaigns I was part of were more open ended, going until the DM tired of it. Because of this, they tended to end between levels 10 and 20, but I ran one that ended at levels 30-35. In 3E, I found that most DMs didn't like higher level games, so ending closer to 10th level. Since 4E was better at higher level play, I found that most of those games were back to levels 10-20.

My successful 5E campaigns have been a variety of levels. My first one went to level 17, with a supplemental revisit adventure at level 18. My next one went only to level 7, but the story I wanted to tell was complete at that point. I just finished Vecna: Eve of Ruin, which ran from levels 10-20. For my current 5E2024 campaign, I have plans up to about level 10, but we'll see how it goes.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

There’s something foundational here that tends to go unexamined: not why campaigns end early, but why the game assumes they should run all the way to level 20 in the first place.

The 1–20 progression is rarely questioned because it’s baked into the DNA of D&D. That structure has been carried forward since the beginning—sometimes expanded, sometimes stretched—but never really reevaluated. We know the design rationale: legacy, completeness, breadth of play. But the deeper question is whether this model still fits how the game is actually played today.

Because if fewer than 10% of campaigns make it to level 10, and 1% make it to 20 (per Beyond’s old data), then we’re not talking about an edge case. We’re talking about a dominant play pattern that the official structure fails to reflect. Campaigns don’t end early because of mechanical overload or narrative failure—they end because the social and creative bandwidth required to sustain a long-form narrative with consistent player availability is simply rare. Real-world groups burn out, move on, or start fresh long before “endgame” is even on the horizon.

And yet, the level 20 framework implies that every campaign should be reaching for that point. It builds in a subtle but persistent narrative pressure: if you didn’t get to 20, your campaign was incomplete. That framing distorts expectations, not just for players, but for DMs trying to build something sustainable. It also skews design, because it forces the system to cover 20 levels of progression whether or not the average table will use even half of them.

This is where 4E stood apart. It didn’t just extend the level range to 30—it structured play around that scope. Heroic, Paragon, Epic weren’t just flavor; they were mechanical tiers with clear stakes, tone shifts, and support. The ambition matched the structure. You can debate its success, but the design was internally honest.

Most other editions, including 5E, haven’t taken that step. They inherit the 1–20 frame, populate it with content, and then leave it to individual tables to make it work. The result is a system where 90% of players are engaging with maybe 60% of the available content—but are still paying for the whole package. That’s not just a pacing issue—it’s a structural inefficiency.

What would happen if the game acknowledged this directly? If 1–10 were treated as a complete game—mechanically and narratively self-contained—and levels 11+ were modular expansions, tailored to specific campaign styles? High magic, domain play, plane-hopping, mass combat. Let DMs and players opt into that scale, rather than being asked to plan for a marathon when most are running a 10K.

That wouldn’t limit ambition. It would focus support where it’s needed, and offer more intentional tools for those few who do want to build long-form campaigns. Right now, the system assumes that every table wants to climb the whole ladder. But what if that ladder isn’t the default? What if it’s the optional module?

 

[Staffan]

Come to think of it, another reason the majority of campaigns end at early levels is that that gives you time to run more campaigns. A level 20 campaign is probably going to take like 2-3 years, and you'll easily have time to run 4 campaigns that end at level 7 in that time span.

 

[Mistwell]

I have never had a campaign last beyond 13th level. For 5e, my highest level PC is 12th level though that is going strong and will reach higher levels I think.

But we also take much longer to level than most, it seems. We have lots of sessions of just RP. We play a single campaign for years. A campaign can last 7 years for us.

 

[schneeland]

The biggest hurdle is time and keeping a group together long enough to reach the highest levels. I don’t think any mechanics I can think of will help with that.

Tend to agree. While we did have power level issues around level 11 or 12 in 3e, and I also found 5e to become less interesting even a bit earlier, the major factors for campaigns wrapping up or falling apart were rarely system-related.

 

[Mistborn]

In my long career as a dungeon master we have reached 10 levels with the group quite a few times, 2-3 times to 13, once to 16 and now we will do 1-20 (we will finish in December). Personally, I'm a fan of less magic overloaded games and don't like too much how D&D changes with levels. I also greatly appreciate the mechanics independent elements of the game. The game at high levels in this regard has nothing to offer that can't be done below lvl 10, sometimes even better because the player characters are more fragile, with fewer magic options that kill a lot of story options.

 

[Reef]

Come to think of it, another reason the majority of campaigns end at early levels is that that gives you time to run more campaigns. A level 20 campaign is probably going to take like 2-3 years, and you'll easily have time to run 4 campaigns that end at level 7 in that time span.

This is also a biggie for us. As I mentioned earlier, our Level 6 campaign has taken close to a calendar year. We try to play weekly, but with schedules, that has worked out to about 25 sessions so far. At this point, the story we're telling is coming to a satisfying end point. And I'm looking forward to telling a different story with different characters.

 

[Mistwell]

Exactly. Wish is very hard to DM. My opinion is that you should always create some kinda curse to balance. If a PC can wish, then so can a boss mob. Make yourself more powerful and it's up to the DM to make sure they learn the meaning of the phrase, "Be careful what you wish for".

But these days it's almost just casting any 8th level spell. Doing anything else with it is highly risky.

 

[Staffan]

Highest level I've gotten to as a player is 13th I think, in a PF2 game using the Age of Ashes adventure path. That campaign got put on hiatus because one of the players got changed priorities. The game itself worked pretty well at that level though, and I finally got to use my "speak with burrowing animals" ability to talk to a purple worm, so that was nice.

Highest I've DM:ed is probably 11, looking at the saved character sheets I have for my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. That campaign got put on hiatus when we switched to playing online during the pandemic, and we didn't pick it up again after. It probably wouldn't have gotten much higher as it was almost finished – they'd probably have hit level 12 as a formality after they were done with the current part but at that point the campaign would basically be finished, depending on whether we wanted to play out any final mopping up.

 

[bedir than]

I wish these surveys were about did the campaign end? At what level? Did the campaign stop? At what level?

An ending and a quitting are different things. Nothing can be built into the game for the second part.

But the campaigns I've run that ended did so short of tier 4 because I don't enjoy planar stories.