campaign climax

[SpiderMonkey]

To all of you DMs out there:

When you develop a campaign, do you create conditions in which the campaign is completed? What are standard conditions in your campaign? Do you decide after a few sessions? Or do you simply let them drift into oblivion? What is the standard length of time (in the real world) that your typical campaign lasts? Through how many levels does your campaign span?

I just wanna get some discussion about some of the more overarching aspects of DMing.

Enjoy!


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[arwink]

I usually develop some idea of where i'd like a campaign to end after the first dozen sessions or so - until then I'll just throw hooks at the PC's and see which one they bite on.

That being said, the intended ending is rarely the end. One the few occasions I've taken a campaign towards it's inevitable conclusion, it tends to be an issue of gut instinct more than anything else. Sometimes we reach the end point with plenty more things to run adventures about, sometimes we hit a finish point that feels right much earlier than i expect.

 

[Tabarnak Smokeblower]

They only campaign I had planned till the end was one of my firsts with OD&D. Since then, I have learned to know better.

I have a bad habit of cutting my campaigns short, so I don't plan for the climax. I don't think about it at all. Whatever happens, happens. Players have a way of going into unexpected directions anyway

TS

 

[EricNoah]

I love it when campaigns have an ending. I think it starts when you are designing the campaign and sort of have, perhaps, an ideal image of how it could end. Sometimes, though, it hasn't been planned since the beginning but as you play you can sense that things (story-wise) are coming to a head and start working on weaving things together a couple of adventures ahead of time. It sometimes doesn't feel like it's going to work, but then all of the sudden there are all of the pieces -- you can ignore some, and take the rest and turn them into an adventure that ties most of those pieces together.

 

[Crothian]

The players are my campaigns. Sure, epic adventures and weorld altering events might be going on, but when that's all over the characters are usually still there living life. I like to intermix the mundane ever day stuff with the heroics. So, the campaigns end when the players can actually say that this is a good point for the character to retire. Sometimes it happens after the last epic battle, but most of the time they take a few sessions to clean up the details and make sure the characters retire in style.

 

[S'mon]

My campaign is open-ended - and arguably I've been running the same campaign since the late '80s, although players change. I see a campaign as a TV series, open-ended, with plots/themes or 'seasons' of limited duration within the overarching campaign. Eg the last 'season' ran a year and concerned the attempt to overthrow the Overking, which failed in the final battle. This new season I'm starting will have a different theme, probably going into the Southland deserts.

 

[Durifern]

It's my first campaign I'm running so I can only speak how it went so far and how I plan to take it further:

IMO it's quite good to divide your campaign in several big pieces like newbies (levels 1-5), would be heroes (~6-10) and true heroes.
It took us something about three years to finish the first big chapter of our campaign (we play once per month on the average) reaching 5th level. I had to cut down XP severely, otherwise the tone of the campaign would have changed too fast. I tried to convey to my players the feeling that they're playing with the big guys, now that they have left that stage some people will know their name, not everyone will like them, though.
At the beginning of our campaign I started with a general idea where I want them to be and what they basically will have to do.
I think it's important that a campaign reaches a closing point when the PCs have accomplished something significant so that a change of pace is possible but that doesn't mean the end of the campaign.
With the level progression we prefer our campaigns are virtually open ended.
The last campaign we played was still OD&D and it took us seven years to reach 9th level and the only reason why we stopped were that our master hadn't the time anylonger to do all the necessary work.