Finishing Off a Campaign - Right Ways & Wrong Ways

[Particle_Man]

The horse nomad united his people and became their king. Etc.

I read that too fast and was thinking "That Nomad was *some* horse!"

My usual endings are just "stop right there" endings, where we just stop playing, and all loose ends are left dangling.

My better ending was a narrative one (we were in a King Arthur setting, and had the big battle, and they STILL wanted to know what happened to their characters, so I did a riff on Armageddon, Camelot 3000, etc. They seemed to like that).

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

I've only had one successful ending. The others died with a mewl.


Things started slow, and slow, and grew faster..

Until a bunch of desperate and wild-eyed adventurers threw themselves to a tortured death rather than let the apocalypse come..

and survived. Mostly.




What can I say? I told them what happened to them, how they died, and that they'd managed to save the world. They never got the credit, though.

Of course .

I don't think there's a drama about ending on the high of a big battle. Any reason for having an after-session that couldn't be cleared up with narration?

 

[reutbing0]

I don't think there's a drama about ending on the high of a big battle. Any reason for having an after-session that couldn't be cleared up with narration?

Players and their characters often have goals beyond resolving the main campaign story arc. An after-session gives the player the opportunity to do something with those goals. You could just narrate that, but I'd prefer to give the players a lot of input. And there's no better way to do that than to run a game. As a player I'd definitely want to have some IC time to reflect on what happened in the campaign and to determine the future of my character. Most importantly though I find that these kind of sessions are a lot of fun. As a campaign gets closer to its climax, the plot thickens, and the fate of the world is at stake there is little time for trivialities. The time after the world has been saved, well that's really a time to have some fun and play up some of the more lighthearted elements of your character.

Oh, and a narrative technique I like to use is to end the campaign in familiar place/situation that hearkens back to the beginning of the campaign. I like the kind of closure and the satisfaction of coming full circle that gives.

 

[Piratecat]

I
I don't think there's a drama about ending on the high of a big battle. Any reason for having an after-session that couldn't be cleared up with narration?

For me, I'd want to have another game for the same reason that books have epilogues or the RotK movie didn't end with Sauron's death. It's what happens to the people afterwards which is really interesting to me, and I think that my players might want a chance to say goodbye to their characters and the world without worrying about combat-mechanics at the same time.

 

[diaglo]

For me, I'd want to have another game for the same reason that books have epilogues or the RotK movie didn't end with Sauron's death. It's what happens to the people afterwards which is really interesting to me, and I think that my players might want a chance to say goodbye to their characters and the world without worrying about combat-mechanics at the same time.

ditto.

when we ended our OD&D campaign the players all wanted to know and have a say in what their retired old PCs did.

78 years in the campaign world...

 

[Psion]

Here's one I've said before:

Once you have put a satisfactory ending to things, some players may express I desire to go back and play their characters again. I would recommend against it unless you are sure you can wrap it up a second time. I sort of ruined the ending to a great campaign by revisiting one I put a satisfactory ending to the first time.

 

[diaglo]

Here's one I've said before:

Once you have put a satisfactory ending to things, some players may express I desire to go back and play their characters again. I would recommend against it unless you are sure you can wrap it up a second time. I sort of ruined the ending to a great campaign by revisiting one I put a satisfactory ending to the first time.

i ran the Tomb of Horrors as a one-shot for my group.

i had it for years and well... always wanted to run it... and everyone was back in town...
so they pulled their old PCs out...

10 minutes total time before the TPK...

we hit reset and they tried again... took the whole session with basically the same result. but a lot of fun.