Failed Campaigns

[Reynard]

I think most GMs have them: campaigns we prepped for, recruited players for, maybe even had a session or two for, but then it just collapsed. What's yours?

The one that I think of when I think "failed campaigns" was this way overly ambitious Exalted 1E campaign that was straight up a retelling of the seminal 80s run of X-Men (but with a tough of the movies). I was writing for Exalted at the time so I was super confident. Character creation went great, with people choosing and building cool Exalted versions of key X-Men. I had big plans.

We played one session and the weight of the Exalted system was a hurdle too high. We never played again.

 

[bloodtide]

I have a couple:

The Heist Game: Couple years back a group was taking a break from their normal game, and asked me to run a Heist Game. So we do a bit of planning and they all make mid level characters. So I make a nice vault and the bunch of NPCs and city around it. Then we start the game. It's al ready a bit of a slow go as the group is disorganized and the players feel no "need" to do the heist: as it's the first adventure. So the players just sit there, talk about doing the heist, and sit there some more. They are really flustered by the little things like the vault is guarded 24/7, it has an alarm spell on it, and only two npcs in the whole city have keys. So it was a couple hours of not anything happening.

The Pirate Game: The they decide they want to be pirates. Make characters, get a ship and get ready to plunder the seas. I make up a sea setting. So they head out, find a merchant ship, take it...and get a load of lumber. They are a bit underwhelmed. For the next hour or so they plunder lots of merchant ships, and don't have so much fun. They ignore the whole Hobgobin Maine full of gold filled plunder ships from the elven lands. They ignore all the other pirate social life, and social life in the cities of the coast too. So the game goes nowhere.

 

[DMZ2112]

Oh, gods.

My head creaks under the weight of ended worlds.

I guess most recently, the personal discovery that I've been stanning D&D for three and a half decades based on the fact that I ignore half of it while running broke the axle of a perfectly good D&D5 post-Planescape exploration sequel campaign and upended it into the ditch after the prologue.

I'm still hopeful I can find a system that supports it (and me) better and get it rolling again. Fortunately I have a very patient group.

 

[ThorinTeague]

I think most GMs have them: campaigns we prepped for, recruited players for, maybe even had a session or two for, but then it just collapsed. What's yours?

The one that I think of when I think "failed campaigns" was this way overly ambitious Exalted 1E campaign that was straight up a retelling of the seminal 80s run of X-Men (but with a tough of the movies). I was writing for Exalted at the time so I was super confident. Character creation went great, with people choosing and building cool Exalted versions of key X-Men. I had big plans.

We played one session and the weight of the Exalted system was a hurdle too high. We never played again.

Pretty much most of them? Although there are two that come to mind because of toxicity. One was more recently (about 2-3 years ago) with internet randos. Session zero, character creation, discussion of the goals and first adventure. It was the afternoon of session one and I was taking a nap. When I left the channel all was well, and I returned to find one recruit had just started spewing some hateful nastiness and verbally abusing everyone in the discord channel. I banned and booted the culprit but it was too late, the campaign had already been shattered and most of the players had left the channel.

Another one goes back to 2000 or 01, Can't quite remember for sure. 3E had just come out and I was very impressed with it. I got some friends together and we started a rotating DM campaign. Everything went fine with the first few adventures (Which I ran) and we rotate to DM #2 (#2 is right). DM #2 gets his adventure rolling (it was decent) and then no call no shows the next week. So we're all at the appointed meeting place (a FLGS) with our buttcheeks flapping in the breeze, pockets full of dreams and palms up. So one of us picked up the reigns and just jumped in with an improvised adventure so that we could play something. Well DM #2 finds out and goes total ballistic, throws a huge fit on the forum, spewing toxic nastiness at everyone.... aaaannnd that was the end of that group.

 

[thullgrim]

I have appetite control issues combined with commitment issues. This means I plan. If things and end many of the prematurely in favor of the next big thing.

Last year it’s was both Masks of Nyarlathotep in Savage Worlds. Ended with a tpk and we didn’t keep going. I will go back to it though.

Shortly after that it was The Enemy Within we are 1/4 of the way through DotE when I halted it in favor of the next thing.

It’s a problem I wish stop or solve. I really do.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Recently killed a 2-3 year campaign - I just wasn't feeling it any more. They had gotten to about 8th level. I had 3 more big beats I wanted to get to - Barrier Peaks; a journey to each of the elemental planes to begin to reconstruct... something; and then a final battle between the two sides that I was going to use Kingdoms and Warfare for...

I asked the players if they wanted to just skip ahead to the parts I was interested in - they were more interested in the journey to get there; and I wasn't. So I killed it

Now with that group we are playing Tomb of A and it's good

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The one and only real campaign I've ever tried to run in my homebrew setting had two sessions before the pandemic arrived.

I later tried to use a very different part of the same setting for a "one shot" I put together for mostly non-D&D-playing friends, and that also proved ill-fated.

 

[CubicsRube]

Noting not to brag, but to challenge the Op's assertion - I have never had a failed campaign. Largely I think that is because I run campaigns with a discreet ending.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I tried to invade Russia in winter.

 

[John R Davis]

Really struggling to think of failed campaigns. I think they only failed if we decided the modules turned out to be garbage ( descent into Avernus and Aegis of Empire).
I think we have struggled through a few but decided to finish them ( waterdeep: no heist, Spelljammer).
On the (+) side we have finished in the last few years:
Homlett/UK2/UK3.
Castle Amber OAR.
Jade Regent
And a few very good homebrews