Players Decide to End Campaign

[Steve Jung]

Somehow I think that info will used with us.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I hear you on systems and games that I want to run and the players don't. It's why I do a lot of convention and GameDay one-shots. Ah, someday I'll retire to Ye Olde Gamer's Home where other frustrated DMs will agree to play what I want in exchange for me playing in their games.

Sorry it busted up for you. I hope you can get it together again someday.

 

[Silver Moon]

Somehow I think that info will used with us.

Somehow I think you're right Deputy Marshall Martin.

 

[Thia Halmades]

They're collectively correct, SM. Polish it, write it anyway, keep it around. Hey, now you can write it without the added pressure of having to run it. I'm finding it's easier to write my material on counter-weeks; I'll run my Ravenloft campaign and the next day have some more material for it while it's fresh, even though my homebrew is only six days away. I'm milling material and ideas from years ago which just crops up again.

Good ideas never die. They ferment. Sometimes like wine. Sometimes like cheese. Sometimes like feet. You never can tell.

 

[scourger]

Happened to me all the time when I did more DMing. As someone else said above, you're lucky they didn't just boycott you. It's a real downer to lose a campaign and even worse to have it just die abruptly. Now, I just DM less and curb my enthusiasm for a lot of projects that I see and could get excited about running--I don't get them or get too excited about running them. Also, talking to the players beforehand can yield valuable feedback as to how they feel about the idea of playing a certain game or in a certain genre. I did a Spellslinger (Western D&D d20) mini-campaign for about 8 sessions last year after determining there was enough interest. It was fun. I would love to run more Western games, but it just has limited appeal to the other people with whom I game. Deadlands Reloaded will be my next foray when it is released. I suggest you check it out. DLR will use the Savage Worlds rules, which is much, much easier to prepare & run than d20 (or just about any RPG I've played or run in the past 25 years--the possible exception being ORK!). There's a little more payoff for the players, too, since they get to be Wild Cards (which makes them kind of special). Check out the Test Drive here:

http://www.peginc.com/Games/Savage Worlds/Savage Worlds.htm#Savage Worlds Downloads

Otherwise, I just consider that the time I put in as a DM (or would-be DM) in reading &/or preparing a game has to be fun for me. It's hard to stay self-centered, but I had less difficulty with it once I realized that most of the others in the group have little or no problem with it at all.

 

[Michikawa]

These kinds of things happen eventually with every group and every campaign when the critical time limit is reached. I think the most important thing is not to get depressed or go looking for answers to questions like "what went wrong" because it's most probably not about that at all - sometimes people just need to take breaks from things that have gotten too usual.

I remember one campaign in which I was a player and it ended quite similary - we just decided as a group that it's not that fun anymore and maybe it's better to leave it lay at least for a while and check out other games - one shots for example - and come back later if we feel like it. And luckily usually there are many ideas and structures in the campaign plans which can be used in other games.

Hopefully you'll get your chance to GM the ideas and structures in near future and I'm quite positive you will!

 

[Piratecat]

This is interesting to hear. When my D&D campaing eventually ends, I'm going to have a similar conundrum. There's easily a half dozen interesting campaigns that I'd like to run, but what might have the staying power I'm looking for? I keep getting tempted by what I unfairly think of as gimmick settings -- Al Qadim, for instance, or a psionics-based Indian setting, or a Modern game based off of the Weekly World News - but a big part of me wonders if they'll still be as much fun after the setting becomes more understood.

I wonder... do you think your players could have told you ahead of time that they weren't interested in a Western game? I'm not sure what communication is like in your group, but doing an impromptu survey might help clarify how they're feeling.

 

[jdrakeh]

It happens; however, it's wise to polish up the material, set it aside, and keep it around, because knowing most gaming groups, you WILL get a chance again to run that western. People get bored, want to try different things, and what doesn't appeal now may suddenly appeal in six months to a year.

Wise advice. At some used bookstore in Kansas, there are approximately 90,000 words worth of a finely-tuned campaign setting and a 5'x6' hand-inked wall map of mine floating around. At the time I swapped them out for AD&D 1e modules (as I'd recently acquired every 1e hardcover and boxed set) I didn't forsee ever using them again. Since that time, I've found at least a dozen situations in which that setting would have come in very handy.

 

[Silver Moon]

I wonder... do you think your players could have told you ahead of time that they weren't interested in a Western game?

Well, up until now they had all appeared interested, with three of the players having each DMed a module in the setting. Today I found out that was part of the problem. The player who was most adamant about ending the campaign had DMed our 4th module, a 12-night module that ran from February to June of 2004. He's never calculated experience points from it and some of the players have been bugging him to do so, including a few comments at the start of the game on Sunday after the player who ran our 9th module in the campaign awarded experience. So he decided right then that if the campaign were to just end he would never have to.


I'm in a better mental frame about it now than earlier in the week, a large part due to my having finished prepping my Sidewinder:Recoiled game for tomorrow's Central Massachusetts ENWorld Game day. The advice given in this thread and a similar thread posted over on the Dragonsfoot board has been very helpful.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

So he decided right then that if the campaign were to just end he would never have to.

This is just crass.