Great Finales

[tylermalan]

I just DMed the best final session of an adventure/group that I've ever run. There were 7 players and we played through H1 and H2 over the course of 7 months. This session tonight was the final session of H2, and it could not have possibly been better. Great player buy in with their characters making awesome roleplaying choices for how and why their characters do what they do... awesome. Not only a great finale, but WOULD be a great START to a campaign too, which makes it even better in my opinion, because you get to think that even though the group is over, the characters still live on, doing what they do.

Basically, the group split up into 4 different groups for in-game reasons, and it was a really, dramatic high note to end the campaign on.

Anyway, I'm really high on the game right now so I just thought I would share. Anyone else have any awesome endings?

And if anyone wants details, I can give em!

 

[Jack99]

Anyone else have any awesome endings?

All my campaigns have an awesome ending.







Dead heroes

 

[Silver Moon]

I ran a great Wild West campaign (with D&D classes, races, magic and panthions) that was a very active four-module campaign from Aug. 2004 to April 2007. I think we had a successful conclusion where:

1. The Saloon that the PC's owned hosted a huge poker tournament (filled with lots of historical characters)
2. The main villain of the campaign was arrested and imprisoned with the PC gambler winning the villain's saloon in the poker tournament.
3. The Vampire Lord villian from the 3rd Module was slain in dramatic fashion (and at the hands of the PC of the 3rd Module's DM).
4. Wyatt Earp was acquitted of all crimes from his war against the Cowboy Gang.
5. The PC Deputy was elected town Marshall.
6. The PC Schoolteacher won the support of the town and consumated her relationship with another gambler.
7. The PC saloon girl reconciled with her family back east and became engaged to her childhood sweetheart.
8. The PC priestess received a higher calling from her deity and moved on to the Pacific northwest.


Basically, nearly all of the key plot threads wrapped up, but in a way that still left opportunity for campaign spin-offs in the future. Since then I've done a 4+ game table module with secondary characters from that campaign.

And I've also recently started a 'Pulp' themed PBP campaign(set in 1882 Florida on the same world) that includes two playing characters and three NPC's from the previous campaign. (ENWorld Story Hour titled "AGELESS Campaign" - the acronym being Adventurer's Guild of Exemplary and Legendary Explorers, Scientists and Scholars)

 

[tylermalan]

All my campaigns have an awesome ending.

Dead heroes

Lol, that's what's up.

I ran a great Wild West campaign (with D&D classes, races, magic and panthions) that was a very active four-module campaign from Aug. 2004 to April 2007. I think we had a successful conclusion where:

1. The Saloon that the PC's owned hosted a huge poker tournament (filled with lots of historical characters)
2. The main villain of the campaign was arrested and imprisoned with the PC gambler winning the villain's saloon in the poker tournament.
3. The Vampire Lord villian from the 3rd Module was slain in dramatic fashion (and at the hands of the PC of the 3rd Module's DM).
4. Wyatt Earp was acquitted of all crimes from his war against the Cowboy Gang.
5. The PC Deputy was elected town Marshall.
6. The PC Schoolteacher won the support of the town and consumated her relationship with another gambler.
7. The PC saloon girl reconciled with her family back east and became engaged to her childhood sweetheart.
8. The PC priestess received a higher calling from her deity and moved on to the Pacific northwest.


Basically, nearly all of the key plot threads wrapped up, but in a way that still left opportunity for campaign spin-offs in the future. Since then I've done a 4+ game table module with secondary characters from that campaign.

And I've also recently started a 'Pulp' themed PBP campaign(set in 1882 Florida on the same world) that includes two playing characters and three NPC's from the previous campaign. (ENWorld Story Hour titled "AGELESS Campaign" - the acronym being Adventurer's Guild of Exemplary and Legendary Explorers, Scientists and Scholars)

That sounds pretty cool! Especially after having run for about 3 years.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

My Wednesday group just recently wrapped up a campaign that I’ve been a part of since August or so, I believe. Playing 3.5e D&D with a DM (MarkCMG) who doesn’t pull any punches, we somehow avoided TPKs and advanced pretty quickly. It was fun getting a chance to play some really high level characters--we were 17 by the end.

I can’t, however talk about the last session without a bit of background, because there was a nasty (but fun) trick at the end.

The cast:
Leehay Encrow - human rogue
Jaeryn Nargalla - elf wizard (me)
Herman the Dwarf - fighter
Michael Cross - bard
Charelton Blunt - human cleric (deceased)
Charlene Blunt - human cleric

Our recent exploits had been centered around a massive dwarven ruin that we quite literally fell into while dealing with some frost giants. Once I discovered the joys of teleportation, we were able to make repeated forays into the dungeon while being able to retreat to our home, a village we had taken over from an evil lumber consortium.

Several sessions back, we lost our cleric in a nasty fight with an iron golem. He was never afraid to really wade into combat, and that wound up getting him killed. Our tactical retreat didn’t include getting his body or his stuff, so we went back to town and planned to come find him. We teleported home, then came back, hoping to find our cleric, but his remains were no where to be found. Mostly undeterred, we pressed on with a new ranger friend, who soon died, and went back into town again, and met with Charlene, the late Charlton’s widow. She joined us to ensure the recovery of her husband’s remains and we continued our exploration.

One of the trips home, we were attacked in town by a gigantic land kraken (yes. really.) that destroyed our base, the inn, and on multiple occasions, we battled with a rather nasty green dragon. Our past few sessions had been mostly consumed with trying to kill the dragon who’d stolen our dwarf’s ancestral axe, and nearly killed us on multiple occasions (succeeding once with me).

During the last session, we fought our way past a nightwalker, 100 zombies and multiple deadly traps to get to the dragon’s lair. We had an epic last battle waiting for us.

Leehay rounded a corner and got breathed on by the green dragon, though he was able to dodge out of the acid without any harm done to himself. (Previous encounters with the dragon had taught us to keep an acid resistance spell running on us at all times anyway.) The dragon teleported or dimension doored away from us and its cronies--these strange shapeshifting giant mole-men--deal with us. Each of these beasties was capable of doing quite a bit of damage, and we also had a sneaky dragon to battle.

The fight definitely reminded me of the awesomeness of wizards, especially at high level. I dealt probably close to 1000 hp of damage throughout the various fights of the evening. Meteor Swarm and Disintegrate (34d6!!!) made up most of the damage. We finished off the vile beasties after a long, hard battle, and started to collect the hoard of treasure.

And that’s when our cleric turned on us.

Little known to us, Charlton had never died. He’d just forged a pact with a demon we’d encountered earlier in our forays throughout the dungeon. A pact which led him on a path to lichdom while disguised as Charlton’s wife Charlene. We were spread out across the large room filled with rubble, and made easy targets for the lich’s spells. Two bad rolls spelled the end of my existence--low initiative, and a bad save against a destruction spell. Had I survived longer, I could’ve easily done a ton of damage to the lich or teleported myself and a few others far away from him.

The round after that, Herman found himself teleported to the negative energy plane, where he met certain doom. Thankfully, the bard and the thief were able to sneak away through various bits of magic and trickery.

Ultimately, the lich will pay for his treachery, we figure--two people got away with all of the treasure we’d accumulated, and could probably find ways of bringing both myself and Herman back from the dead.

(The cleric summoned the kraken that destroyed our inn and killed our favorite barkeep and his son, by the way.)

The little twist at the end provided a fun bit of story line to an otherwise straightforward dungeon crawl, and while it wasn’t immediately obvious what had happened when our cleric turned on us, he talked us through it at the end of the night while we packed up.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Just about to have an awesome end to a campaign. Pardon me if I go on a bit...

The heroes are helping to stem an Orcish invasion of the Wild Coast. They sneak into the Orc city (basically a series of interconnected buildings with a fort at one end all built on an ancient tel) to scout numbers and try to discover plans. Unfortunately they were betrayed by (an ex-PC) paladin of Hextor. They get dropped into a death trap and are left to die. Of course they don't. They kill the giant scorpions and escape into the ancient labyrinth beneath the city.

Aside: While down there fighting the occasional animated statue they discover there is a ghoul city in the caverns beneath the labyrinth. A great magical seal is keeping the ghouls from coming up. I assumed they would destroy the seal and let the ghouls finish off the Orc city. ANd they certainly considered it. And may even intend to go back to do it, if they live.

They find a way out of the labyrinth into the Orc slave pits. From there they break into the city proper. They capture a couple of guards. Kill them outright, no attempt at interrogation or forcing them to act as guides to get them out of the warren of an ORc city. So they start wandering at random through the city. Next they capture a couple of ORc children who are apprenticed to a weaponsmith. They interrogate them enough to discover that just down the corridor is half a dozen Orc weaponsmiths. Kill the kids and wait. Weaponsmith comes down to see what the lazy slugs are doing. PC's hit him, enough that he goes down but not enough that he dies outright. He starts screaming. PCs charge smithy. A few smiths stay and fight, a couple run to raise the alarm.

So now our heroes are in an Orc city with the alarm raised. They start running at random. A few rooms go by and they run into their first armed Orcs. Fighting. Orcs screaming they've found the filthy humies, reinforcements come running. They beat of the first wave of attackers and decide to go up to the series of interlocked roofs that cover the entire city. Nothing much stopping them running for the edges and trying to escape into the forest. Nothing except their own stupidity. The group leader orders them to charge the castle at the far end of the city.

Remember this is a fort on high alert, the alarms are still going off. Guards are on the walls. So they make it across the roof tops to the fortress wall, all strung out as a few folks have failed the various jump checks to go from level to level. A few more orcs have reached the roof and are charging them. ORcs on the fort walls are shooting at them. At this point the party leader says 'I have no idea how we're going to get through the walls.' Thinks a moment then 'back down below!' So now they've gone back into a room. ORcs are on the roof above them, yelling out their position. The main fort is right next to them. The defence is getting organised.

ANd that's where we had to leave it for the session. The group is mostly out of healing now. All the members are at least a little injured. The one PC who's likely to survive is the rogue who, the moment they were on the roof, said 'I dive into the shadows!' And there he has stayed. Smart rogue.

The others will sell their lives dearly I'm sure. I've been keeping track, they've killed 26 orcs and 2 bugbears in this running battle so far. They have some powerful summoning spells they picked up in the labyrinth. One of them summons a giant fiendish land octopus. So the fight is far from over. But with over a thousand ORcish soldiers around them, not to mention the higher level commanders, I don't see them escaping. They may well prove me wrong but had better start displaying more smarts than they have recently.

 

[Mark]

One of the trips home, we were attacked in town by a gigantic land kraken (yes. really.) that destroyed our base, the inn, (. . .)


And that’s when our cleric turned on us.

It's the age old story: Boy meets demon, boy summons colossal squid, boy turns into lich, people start dying.

 

[Bold or Stupid]

The two that stick in my mind are both 3e ones (my 4e campaign is still ongoing but should be spectacular).

The first one was Planescape, they'd survived and won my version of the Factionwar for the "liberal" factions (sensates, godsmen and other s vs the law brigade+fated). and turned their attention to the on going issues they had with Fiera (she wanted the Druid ShapeShifter as a play thing he wanted to be free). Basically the party planned an attack and in two round killed Fiera, Belial and a leveled pit fiend (I slightly upped the BoVD stats) amazing planning with great appropriate dice luck (the druid critted and killed Fiera). Hard fight that we still talk about know (in complete remembered details) six years on.

The other one was an Eberron game, the party was in Adar (sp? Kalashtar home) sealing up it's defences, one had to go home to face a great evil, the Paladin went and the remaining party barely survived the rest of the crawl. The paladin had to lead troops to stop a surprise attack on Breland by Sora Maenya, this lead to a battle in a tight pass (v. 300 I know) with Paladin vs hag mano et mano. The paladin died, torn in half by her rend follow up (a crit!) and Sora Maenya retreated as she needed healing before her rage dropped. The couatl the rest of the party had ressed and freed appears and cast calm emotions, killing the Hag, then it picks ups the paladin's body and flies off to inter it in the Temple of the Silver Flame in Fallen (an area he was clearing up). Very fine couldn't have gone better with me fixing it.