How did you end your campaign?

[Breakstone]

So my campaign is wrapping up to a close, and I've been pondering how exactly to end it. Epic fight with the big bad atop a thousand-foot tower that's bobbing in the wind? Large-scale army battle between diabolical forces? Or should they return back to where it all began, the tavern where the aged warrior first asked them to join his side in combat?

In the past, I've played in the end of one campaign and ended another. All other campaigns died out before their end was due.

In the second edition I co-DM'd, we fought this evil guy who had been taken over by a magic item. Basically, he represented all the negative energy in the universe. As we battled, stars were slowly winking out. The universe was being destroyed. We ended up sacrificing ourselves to rebuild the new world (the Third Edition of the world, if you will).

I had the pleasure of ending the third edition campaign. I squeezed every iconic adventure into that, from omens about exploding cows (abominable... a-bomb-in-a-bull!), to a fire fortress in the middle of hell, to a labrynth guarded by a minotaur, to a riddling leprechaun. And although the characters defeated the Big Bad, and the Further Big Bad, they witnessed a bunch of draconic troops marching out of the castle to invade their world. Although the campaign had ended, the Dragon Wars had only began...

So how have you ended your campaigns? One paragraph for each campaign, please, just to keep things short and sweet.

 

[Wormwood]

So how have you ended your campaigns? One paragraph for each campaign, please, just to keep things short and sweet.

I've ended every campaign in one of three ways:

1. In a fit of rage.
2. Upon request.
3. I just stopped showing up.

Short & sweet.

 

[Breakstone]

I've ended every campaign in one of three ways:

1. In a fit of rage.
2. Upon request.
3. I just stopped showing up.

Short & sweet.

Heh heh heh

 

[Shemeska]

Well I've had one game that died from DM burnout. Technically it's on hiatus, but its been over 4 months and I'm not looking back.

My other campaign, a Planescape game (which devoured my zeal for running anything else besides it like a jealous girlfriend), has been running for over 14 months now and I've had the main plotline sketched out since the start, including the eventual likely end of certain parts of it. As far as those might go, without revealing anything since my players may read this, open endings can be good for some things. Other parts of the plot are utterly up to influence by the players, and they've already altered one part of the plot significantly by some quick thinking of theirs to come up with something I hadn't considered at the time. *grin*

 

[BSF]

Well, the last campaign ended when the PC's interrupted the ritual protecting the undead legions marching across the land. Specifically, they entered a pocket semi-plane that a slumbering god of Madness was trapped in. They woke the god and the paladin held off the god's avatar while the rest of the party sealed the doorway. The god had no choice but to leave through the Astral plane and find a place for himself in the multiverse rather than claim the Prime as his abode.

The rest of the party then returned to the ritual chamber and wiped out the cultists and undead participating in the ritual, however they did not destroy the Nalfeshnee that was driving the ritual. They then teleported back to their home city to help in the defense against 10,000 undead. Including 4 dracolich's, 3 Nightwalkers, some undead battering rams, ghostly towers, flaming skeleton warriors, 3 death knights and the leaders, a divine and an arcane lich.

By my count, the PC's were heroes and "won" when they broke up the ritual. That ritual, feeding off the subconscious energies of a slumering god, were encasing the undead in a protective field that gave them turn resistance +4,+4 HD, +4 AC and +4 to-hit and damage rolls. Even normal skeletons look scary like that. But now, the PC's wanted to be the all-around heroes and fight it out to the end.

They won, and it wasn't even a TPK. But, I did manage to kill off almost every significant NPC.

 

[Nightfall]

With much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And also me screaming "THat's it I quit!"

 

[Treebore]

The way I intended on ending my Ravenloft campaign prior to my moving was Omega.

Omega was this guy that was in, and going to be in, every bar (or drinking establishment) that the PC's went into. He was the loudly snoring drunk at the corner table.

I knew that sooner or later, one of the players would get curious and or annoyed, maybe even paranoid, and go wake up Omega. It would not be easy to wake Omega. As a matter of fact you cannot bring Omega to full conciousness, at least no mere mortal can. If you try hard enough, a mere mortal can bring him to a high enough level of conciousness to speak. A word.

This word would have brought about the end of the world.

Unfortunately my house caught on fire, combined with my needing to move across country, so I never had time to run the final session or two taht would have been needed to bring about this end.

Why such a senseless end? It was the only way i could think of to end the game and stress the senselessness (is that a real word?) of the world of Ravenloft.

Prior to that most of my campaigns ended with characters entering "retired" status and new ones being created. Some ended because too many players moved away at once (military).

One game ended because the 2 of the players were tired of playing in a game where they always had to worry about their characters dying, or at least getting badly hurt, and there always being bad guys. Go figure. Since a third was moving away to go to college, the remaining three voted to start a new game and bring in some new players.

I could have written all of this in one paragraph but it would have irritated me.

 

[Bagpuss]

Campaigns can end? Weird.

More seriously, most end from GM/player apathy or writers block, or other commitments come up and we can't meet up to play anymore.

 

[Sir Trent]

Heh

One memorable campaign which lasted over five years in RT was modeled basically around one very evil wizard who chose the players as his personal enemies/whipping boys. They opposed this wizard at every turn, and vice versa. Over the course of the campaign, the party periodically would fall into a state of suspended animation, awaking after a number of years that increased with each 'nap'. Each time they awoke, their old nemisis would be waiting for them, older and increased in power. In the end, after 10,000 years of elapsed time and the characters all old physically (we played weekly for the whole five years), they finally managed to breach the wizard's defenses and get within sight of him. The three characters that survived, that is. Many didn't. The party leader shouted the wizard's name and said 'here I am, I'm still alive' to which the wizard responded "Who are you?" The wizard had managed to preserve his own life but had gone senile in the long years of awaiting the characters last 'nap'. For the last year of playing, the party saw the old wizard's hand in every bad thing that happened, even though he was long past the point of actually being able to harm them.

Not grammatically correct, but one paragraph

 

[diaglo]

one campaign ended for me with the expulsion of a couple from the host/DM's house. the boyfriend tried to bite the DM. a scuffle ensued and i left shortly afterwards. i couldn't bring myself to going back. too many strange and disturbing images.