D&D General Did anyone ever "win" D&D?

[Alzrius]

It's common knowledge that D&D is a game that you don't really "win." That is, there is no game-determined endpoint; rather, there are instances that cause someone to stop playing a character, be it permanent death, retiring the character, or something else.

The closest thing that the game has to a forced endpoint is a character that hits the level-cap, something which can be awkward as different editions have had different views on exactly how many levels a character could gain. Probably the closest thing to a universal endpoint in the game is divine ascension, since that typically mandates that you retire the character.

What's interesting about a character undergoing divine ascension is that it's not typically thought of as a "win," since the character is still there, just in the form of an NPC. After all, there have been plenty of times in D&D when gods have been in trouble (usually showcased in the published settings, but still), and that could very well include your former PC-turned-god.

The exception here - one of the only exceptions in almost forty years of D&D history, seems to be characters in Basic D&D that - as laid down in the Immortals set, and again later in the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set - become "double immortal," as I call it. That is, the characters become Hierarch Immortals (the highest tier of the Immortal ranks), and then give up their immortality to become a 1st-level mortal character, and then manage to become a Hierarch Immortal a second time.

At that point, the material indicates that the character is immediately brought through the Dimensional Vortex (e.g. the edge of the multiverse) to become one of the Old Ones (no relation to anything by Lovecraft), and so is beyond the scope of the game.

That, to me, seems to be about as clear of a "win" as you can get - not only has the character achieved the lofty goal of divine ascension, twice, but they've effectively transcended the entire game. There's no other instance in all of D&D that I can think of that has the character effectively moving beyond the game universe as part of hitting the end of their character progression (save for one: a twentieth level ascetic, from the 2E Legends & Lore book, which upon hitting twentieth level becomes one with Brahman, achieving enlightenment and oneness with the whole of the cosmos).

My question is, has anyone ever done that?

I've been on EN world, and other online D&D/RPG communities for quite a while now, and I've yet to hear of a single person whose character ever achieved this particular feat. So I'm asking outright, have you ever done this, or known (or even heard about) someone who has?

EDIT: Nuts. This should have had the OD&D/BECMI tag.

 

[ChaosShard]

A game I ran for over a year and a half (weekly 8+hour sessions)that ended with the PCs becoming deities and being put on a new world created by AO (the Forgotten Realms Over-God.)

They had messed up the world so much with their crusading (for starters: they wiped out the Zhents, literally razing their cities and killing any who opposed them) along with applying the pimp-hand to a few Gods, that, after a divine trial, AO made a new world for them and put them there... Along with their most hated foes to balance things out.

 

[the Jester]

The pcs in my campaign "won the game" when they successfully completed Return to the Tomb of Horrors in campaign play, with no softballing, and did it with no permanent losses.

 

[Greenfield]

We tend to run campaigns with major goals built in, even if they are progressive, multi stage achievements.

We've run several of these to completion, and thus "won".

The real question is, I guess, did it *feel* like a win? Was there a sense of accomplishment?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

But "winning" is never an individual thing, as in "I beat the other players". People who come in or play with that kind of attitude are the only real losers.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I win every time I play.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I know it's not exactly what you asked about, but it's related to the thread title.

When I was relatively new to official RPGing (a couple years in), I was renting a room from a woman. Her son lived in another room for free, and he was about my age, but really obnoxious. At one point, he came into the room while we were playing, and, after some light prodding, wouldn't leave us alone. So, I gave him a small handful of dice (something like 1d4, 2d6, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20), and told him to play with us. So, he sat down, and I told him to roll those for his stats. He rolled, and I freaked out, and called the players over. We all declared that "he won", and that we'd never seen that happen before. He bought it, and walked away, happy, leaving us to game.

And there's always Pierce from Community: "I won Dungeons and Dragons, and it was advanced!"

 

[Mark CMG]

"Play . . . or play not. There is no winning D&D" - DM Yoda

 

[Matthias]

Winning at D&D? It's when everyone at the table (including the DM) is having fun and making a memorable game story others will enjoy the retelling of.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I won D&D when I defeated the Dungeon Master in hand to hand combat.

 

[delericho]

I never heard of anyone winning in the manner described by the OP. Certainly, when we played BECMI D&D, we never advanced beyond the Companion levels - we fairly quickly moved to 2nd Edition.

I did run one 2nd Ed (Dragonlance/Spelljammer) campaign where the PCs achieved divine ascension. It was not exactly a shining moment in my DMing career.

However, in the age of Adventure Paths, there does seem now to be one other, pretty clear, means of winning the game. In which case, my group successfully won my "Shacked City" campaign a few years ago. And I have another group about to win my current campaign - it's homebrewed, but it's deliberately structured like a published AP so have a similar win condition. (Of course, they might yet fail.)