How should a campaign end?

[maggot]

I'm a player in a long-term campaign that ended yesterday. This is D&D, so of course it ended with a big fight. Which we won. And then we grabbed the great mcguffin and the campaign was over like that.

I felt disappointed. But I had to ask myself, "How would I have liked it to end?"

As DM of another long-term campaign, I don't want to disappoint my players when I finally wrap it up.

So if you are a player how would you like a campaign to end? If you are a DM, how have you ended campaigns and how did it go over?

 

[Deadguy]

When I've brought a campaign to an end in the past, one thing I always did was give a post-finale wrap-up. Hopefully by that stage in a camapign you have a pretty good idea what motivates the PCs individually, and you have some idea of how the world is post-finale. So go through and talk about how each of them stands a year or five down the line. Perhaps the human Cleric is ambitious, so mention how he leverages his success into political influence, and he achieves primacy over a major temple (preferably one they've encountered in the game). Or maybe the Dwarf Fighter wants revenge against the Hobgoblins that drove his Clan away from their ancestral halls; describe how he manages to draw together a mercenary cadre and the remnants of his Clan, and overthrows those cursed Hobs!

Basically it's a little feel-good session that lets the players know that their PCs' actions made a difference, and let them achieve other life goals. And of course, this can provide a springboard for a further campaign in the same setting...

 

[Kazuel]

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How should a campaign end?

That's a good question. My last one (not the one I'm playing now obvioiusly) ended with our party getting wiped out to a man. Was a huge and fight and was very close, but in the end, we just weren't rolling good enough. On a side note, our GM said he was going to kill us eventualy. It just happened soon rather than later.

 

[Beard in the Sky]

On a side note, our GM said he was going to kill us eventualy. It just happened soon rather than later.

Geez... I don't think I would be in that group anymore.

 

[Kazuel]

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Don't take it the wrong way. Our group was on the verge of killing each other. Here's the short story of what was going on.

The Party (all 7th level)

Dwarf Cleric (GM's Best friend)
Elven Druid (Best Friend's wife)
Elven Illusionist (my buddy)
Human Fighter (GM's wife)
Human Rogue 5/Monk 2 (Me, I was going for a ninja like character.)

Now my character was Lawfull Evil but for the most part I got along fine with the group. However, because we were RPing our characters, the dwarf and I often had huge arguements over the best course of action. In the end it was decided that the Druid be the group leader. That solved our problems, she made the decisions and we followed them. However during one fatefull battle, our druid and Wizard die. Due to some complications, the wizard didn't reroll a new character and so the party went down to 4 members (the druid rerolled a sorcerous since we lost our wizard). With out a group leader, the dwarf and I fell back into argueing but this time it led to blows. We had had enough and we needed to establish the alpha male so to speak. During the fight, the fighter, who had pretty much kept to herself (she is very new to D&D) decided to end the fight by hitting me. Since both the cleric and I were men of honor we ended the fight because I was at a serious disadvantage. Now I had a delima. I was insulted and there was no way I could chalange her to an open fight. I decided to deal an invisible death to her. At the next city we got too, I bought some poison (don't ask me which ones, I don't remember off the top of my head) and some empty bottles that were marked as healing. That was as far as I got, as the next battle we fought, killed us all. I had planned to replace the fighter's healing potions with the poison hoping that she would use them when she was really hurt and it would send her over the edge, or she would administer them to someone else in the party, they see she poisoned them and turn on her. I had worked everything out with the GM and he was fine with this as it was in my character to do. Well because of the way the group had been falling apart and bickering (all in character) our GM decided we needed a purge. The battle he put us up against, wasn't anything too over whelming, we just rolled so piss poor that we got taken out early. No one was really upset that it had happened because of the way the game was going. We needed a fresh start.

I hope this clears things up.

 

[Snoweel]

Shoulda seen *that* coming - seriously mixed-race party, evil character(s)... what do you expect when you're going to play what your "characters would realistically do"?

When you start your new campaign, try creating characters that would realistically get along and choose to work toward the same goals - no evil characters, and ideally, all good alignments. And unless the entire party is made up of elves, don't include any in the party - elves are notorious for not playing well with 'lesser' races.

Followers of conflicting gods should be avoided too.

Anyways, I'm with Deadguy - a Hollywood-style wrap-up gives some satisfying closure to a campaign: "Krusk and Lidda got married and went to live with the Snow Barbarians. Lidda died giving birth to their first child and Krusk became a bitter alcoholic."

 

[Ylis]

Honestly? I like my character to die at the end of a campaign. It's only truly over then. Otherwise the "other" GMs always have a chance of pulling her out as an NPC, horribly playing her, and maybe even getting her killed by the current party (which is always a letdown...). As the only female player in my group, it's almost always my characters that get chosen as NPCs....go figure...

 

[Wormwood]

My campaigns always end the same way.

Acrimony, insults, and lingering antipathy.

 

[Elf Witch]

Honestly? I like my character to die at the end of a campaign. It's only truly over then. Otherwise the "other" GMs always have a chance of pulling her out as an NPC, horribly playing her, and maybe even getting her killed by the current party (which is always a letdown...). As the only female player in my group, it's almost always my characters that get chosen as NPCs....go figure...

You do realize that there is nothing stopping him from having the character raised and using him any way?

I think an ending that was described of having the party know what they did was great. Now I have never played in a game with an ending of any kind. The party has been left hanging on the end of a robe, stuck in the abyss, things like that. And man it sucks big time and is starting to ruin the pleasure of gaming for me.

 

[Deadguy]

I suppose the thing is Elf Witch, most DMs don't want to plan a self-contained and terminating campaign. After all, we all as DMs just know that our ideas are boundless and our creative weelspring a ceaseless source of new adventures. Except that, as you've discovered, it just isn't so. Instead we face burnout, boredom and ennui, coupled often with a desire to try out the newest 'thing' on the gaming block. So instead of having a good, memorable ending, the campaign either peters out, out of boredom, or is just sort of forgotten when something else comes along.

I can't say I am much better. All bar one of the campaigns that ended with a definite denouement did so because I was running them in a University games club, so they had a definite start and finish. The other one was a deliberately short campaign run for a couple of friends just so they could game together; since I didn't have a lot of time for this, I planned a short story for them to do, with a distinct ending. All the rest of the campaigns I have run have fallen apart in some way, or been put on indefinite hold. So they've lacked any resolution. And comparing with other GMs I know, I am not alone in this.

Perhaps you need to set up a game with a fixed purview and duration, just so you can get the feeling once more of a resolved campaign.