Have you ever finished a campaign?

[Umbra]

How do you know a campaign ends? Depends (of course).

I've run a campaign loosely based on Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence (a great set of children's books) where the party had to find the six signs of the Light and banish the Dark forever. Probably my groups favorite so far. Ending in a bang.

I've run a campaign of adventures without a major theme/story arc that just stopped after the last adventure run simple because we moved on to something else. Ending in a whimper

I've played in the original Dragonlance games which had a clear cut end to the first 15 modules, but we then played on in Krynn for a little longer. Ending in a bang and a whimper.

I'm currently running RttToEE but my players are bored so I'm tossing up between letting die or short cutting to big finish (bang or whimper)

 

[Jibril]

Well after playing for almost 12 years in 2 versions of Shadowrun and 2 versions of D&D I've never ended a campaign. Its worth noting that all that experiance is with the same small group of friends and all of us seem to have some measure of ADHD so we get bored with most of the games we have played after 2-3 months of weekly sessions and then we just scrape them and do something else.

I've never played in a group were everyone wern't freinds that did other stuff together so I'm not in the best position to offer advise about player attendence, if someone didn't show we would either play without them or we just went to a movie or something else if too many people didn't show.

 

[Galethorn]

I played one that ended...simply because it didn't really have a single, binding purpose, and all the characters had gotten rich and powerful enough to warrant an end to their adventuring days. It was basically a FR game run by a FR fanatic.

My character in the campaign was a barbarian from the Silver Marches, who was massively strong (34 strength at level 16), and near-singlehandedly killed a Young Adult Black Dragon in three hits (two were natural 20s) at level 2. He went on to grapple (and pin) the head pasha of Calimshan while the rest of the group stabbed him. He was also involved in a plot that resulted in Halaster being imprisoned in a magical mirror. His last official act was to defeat the evil, plane-shifting monster in Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, despite getting four negative levels. He had adamantine gauntlets that he used smash through walls while raging, along with a greatsword that did more than 80 damage in a single hit on more than one occasion. That was definately the most overpowered campaign I've ever played. It came to a true end when one of the characters wanted to fight the gods, and nobody else wanted to go along.

However, I've been in...uhhh...lemme add it up...
three campaigns as a player (one of which died out last summer, and one of which that began last weekend), DMed one campaign that ultimately died out about a year ago (because of burnout--it was my first campaign, and I didn't know the game well enough to DM, apparently), DMing a CODA-rules LOTR campaign that's on hiatus (because I enjoy my homebrew D&D setting more than Middle Earth), and DMing a new, highly successful campaign right now that's been going for about a month and a half (but, amusingly, only about a week in game-time).

So, given my track record, it's kind of surprising that we ever ended a campaign. However, it's largely been with the same group of people (well, sort of; it's grown from an original four players (five including me as DM) to people who I met through the new as-of-last-summer DM (who I met through one of my players), and the numbers fluctuated a lot, resulting a very large group, which even boasts having a girl member).

 

[barsoomcore]

I listed just one. A campaign a friend and I dreamed up in high school, and ran together as co-DMs.

Took seven years and chewed up more PCs than I can possibly count, at its height consisted of 14 players and the highest-level PC at the end of the game was 10th. The party collectively had three magic items.

One survived the final climactic battle.

We had champagne. It was good.

I am about to embark on the "Final Season" of my primary Barsoom campaign so I expect another 20-30 sessions will wrap up that story. I am very certain that it will finish. Likewise, Dead Man's Chest will wrap up very soon, possibly this weekend. Barsoom has been running for four years now, while Dead Man's Chest is just a couple of months.

Variety, Life, Spice.

 

[demiurge1138]

I've finished two. One was a "mega-campaign", comprised of three smaller ones, that eventually reached epic levels before it ended, with a TPK. More of a mercy-kill, actually.

The second I finished just recently, and unlike the first, I'm actually satisfied with its ending- there was a definite climax, conclusion and denoument rather than "OK, you're dead. Let's start over".

Demiurge out.

 

[robberbaron]

I've only finished one campaign: a heavily modified AD&D1 game that I've run for 15 years and which finished 2 weeks ago.
One of the characters ascended as a Demi-God and the only surviving original character retired after completing his goals.

Sad to see it go, but it gives me the chance to run low-level 3.5.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I answered "Yes", but technically I was in a game which came to an end shortly after I left. It was, however, a proper "climax" ending.

(I left because I had issues with the DM's increasingly railroading approach to the campaign which were only exacerbated when he decided it should end in a few sessions' time.)

 

[MonsterMash]

In so far as the campaigns I've played in have a end possible, my current one for example is pretty much open ended as the players have some specific things to achieve, but there is not an overall story arc.

My original OD&D characters from 1977 I'd say ended in the campaign as a couple reached their maximum level as Dwarf and Elf respectively and they had enough cash to establish a castle and oppress the peasantry rather than go adventuring for money.

 

[Ant]

Satisfying closure in a campaign is a rare and beautiful thing. I've been most fortunate and privileged to have DMed two 2ed D&D campaigns to climactic ends. Some of the players still bug me about resurrecting one of them "just to tidy up a few loose ends."

I'm not going to count our 2ed to 3ed "transition" mini-campaign. It entailed ripping apart the fabric of reality in one tumultuous explosion of gibbering chaos. Hey, I'd do anything to get out of the FR setting.

My most pleasurable campaign ending was for CHAMPIONS, however. I can't speak for the players but I know I got a little emotional when they read the final handout that concluded, fittingly, with the words THE END.

Our 3.0 campaign continues to be great fun and will likely involve an interwoven 3.5 campaign soonish.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Ended Campaigns

I notice quite a few posting how their D&D games "petered out" over time. I have actually found out that this is a fairly common complaint from some former players who are reluctant to try the game again..."why bother? the DM will get bored or all the players will move or not show up and then our time was for naught." Lots of players like solid endings.

That said, over 24 years I have had a few games fizzle...usually so fast I had little control on what to do. But I try my very best to see the warning signs and prepare a suitable ending to the story and the characters so the players themselves feel comfortable talking about how their PC "retired to rule the bandit gang of gnarly woods" or whatever rather than "oh, well, we had 2 more keys of time to find but the players stopped showing up so the game died."

So while the players don't always like it, I try to plan definate conclusions to give everyone a cohesive story arc within a time frame I feel everyone is comfortable with. And then, really as someone asked, do campaigns really end?

An 18 - month Kalamar game had a very satisfying, exciting conclusion.
Two different 4+ - year Forgotten Realms campaigns ended great, and happy retirement.
A 5 - year campaign in my homebrew setting finished again with a great adventure and retirment.

And yet all of these campaigns have been revisited in the years since with reunion games. My Unlikely Company FR game meets 2 to 3 times per year to play 1-shots of their old favorite PCs. There's more old war stories than adventure, but it serves the purpose!

-DM Jeff