Ending a Campaign... How?

[Lindeloef]

So I'm running my first Campaign and was wondering how I should end the campaign. What ending can I create, so that my players say "okay, I don't want/need to play this character anymore".

The obvious choice is (of course) they have to sacrifice themselves to prevent evil. But that's kinda lame/cliche.
Also it's hard to send a Hero, who has just slain e.g. an Evil Good, back to farm potatoes. I know this kind of endings will develop in the campaign.

That's why I'm not looking for a specific answer for my Campaign, but I'm interested in your endings. How did you end a campaign (preferred campaigns ending in epic tier)? Just to get an overview of possibilities.

 

[lostingeneral]

If you're ending the game in epic tier, you sort of have a "built-in" ending with epic destinies, should you choose to do that. This basically defines where your characters wind up from the end of the game and onward.

Having everybody forced to sacrifice themselves, well... as a player, I wouldn't be a big fan of that ending. Here's my character, who I may have spent an entire campaign developing, and suddenly he's just dead. Yeah, he saved the world, but... he's dead.

For my part, I'm going to be using epic tier to sort of coincide with the characters' epic destinies so that each of them actually takes steps to achieve their own respective outcomes. The ending will tie all of that together in one last hurrah that also grabs the main plot.

 

[Ahrimon]

I'd say don't worry about it. No plan survives first contact with the enemy goes both ways. No detailed campaign survives contact with players.

Develop some plots & places, release the PC's and enjoy the ride.

 

[OnlineDM]

I agree with the above statements. If you're still early in the campaign, don't worry about the ending.

And when the time comes for the campaign to end, I think it's fine for the PCs to "ride off into the sunset." That is, they're alive and well and perhaps might be off to other adventures... but your game is going in a different direction now with a new campaign and new characters.

And who knows? Maybe your group will want to revisit those characters in a few years, or meet them as powerful NPCs in a different campaign, or something like that.

It's fine to leave them alive and well.

 

[Pour]

I had PCs that survived my last campaign become the leaders of many of the continent's religious, political and military powers in my current campaign. My players, a lot of whom played the current game at one point or another, really enjoyed knowing/seeing that their old characters were out there, and often speculated on how the new challenges of nation-running and continental war were being handled by them.

In fact, I've really made past PCs an intricate part of my current party. All PCs are offspring of their old characters where applicable (though at level 19 there's been a few deaths, alts and players come and go). I've also made one of my old PCs a mentor to a current PC, another old PC a major campaign villain, and a third a current PC's rival.

A friend of mine DMing a game set it beyond the lifespan of the old PCs, but had their old gear floating around the current campaign, so PCs are using older PCs' weapons, implements and choice items with artifact status, which I thought was clever.

If you're going to set more than one game in the same homebrew setting, embrace the history of it.

 

[Robtheman]

I find the most important part of ending the campaign is describing how the players successes or failures impacted the world. This applies to any level of play.

The reward of role playing is often the belief that we are impacting an imaginary world. You can build the importance of this type of conclusion by remembering to share this information through out the campaign. When they finally defeat the bad guy their should be immense impacts on the way the world(s) function, the balances of power, etc.

As you consider what changes will occur you will find gaps in the power structure, pantheons, societies, etc. Perhaps you can fit your character's in to highly prestigious positions, ascend them to minor godhood, or make their individual story the center point of an emerging culture or social group.

This helps the player to see the greatness of their achievements while rewarding with an intangible. Unless they want to RP administration of a culture, religion, etc.. As some of us know, with great power comes great responsibility and with great responsibility comes lots of paperwork.

 

[fba827]

some of my campaigns end in a confrontation with a big bad evil guy that was a puppet master for many of the earlier plot threads.
but, yeah, planning it ahead of time rarely works out well since players somehow know how to choose the path you never expected them to do...
but my point being, look at the campaign itself, what were the themes and goals of that. and if there is a theme/goal, from there, you can derive what might be an ultimate goal that provides closure/satisfaction.

 

[SabreCat]

Try leaving it up to your players!

At the end of the heroic tier in my game, I ran the game through the final battle with the Big Bad of the tier, then had the players take turns free-narrating two things:
- Some way their actions during the tier changed the setting.
- What their characters did, or what happened to them, after the final battle, with the understanding that 10-15 years would pass between tiers.

With the first point, warring kingdoms united, plagued lands were healed, a magocracy turned to democracy, and more. For the second point, one player chose to have their PC die a heroic death defeating another villain, one retired and passed the adventuring torch on to a son, two spent their days bringing about the changes from the first part and establishing networks of allies for later... and one became the villain of the next tier!

Whatever you plan, I highly recommend giving the DM seat over to the players for a few minutes at such a monumental time. They will surprise and delight you.

 

[fba827]

Another thing I like to do, after the session itself, is write up a very loose epilogue of sorts to email out.

Listing various NPCs that the players had a connection with and what happened to them

what happened to the various political things they were involved in, etc.

etc

and through it all, there should be a hint or implication that the epilogue entry for any given person/place/thing was affected (for better or worse!) by things that the PCs did.

 

[catastrophic]

Just touching on what people said above: don't sweat the finale early on, and in general, try to front load your campaign as opposed to the opposite. Don't hold back, or plan for some far off event- keep your focus on the stuff going on game by game, and making that the best you can.

I'm currently running a doubel campaign for 2 groups of 5 players, with huge sweeping storylines and heaps of big suprises and twists waiting for them as they approach epic tier. But all along, i've tried to keep myself focused in the here and now, and on what I can do for the game up front and session by session- and the result has been a far better game.