D&D 5E Quittin' Time

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When a game is getting a little long in the tooth, how do you go about deciding on the next thing? Do you press on to the end even when it's stopped being fun? Do you mix it up by starting over with low-level characters in the same setting? Or do you cut you just let the old high-level campaign remain forever on hold, moving on to the next big thing?

Basically, I'm asking how to balance the desire for closure with the desire to start something exciting and new.

It's several years off, but I intend to finish my long-running campaign (going since 2006) with a literal 20th level "save the world" adventure right after the adventure where the heroes will (probably) change the nature of the world permanently.

At that point, I will ask what everyone's characters do in retirement. I suspect one or more characters will have successfully started down the path to divinity at that point. Others will want to explore the multiverse. And at least one will just want to go back home to their family and be the guardian of their hometown once again.

All of that will remain the background of whatever comes next, almost certainly with new characters.

 

[bloodtide]

As a DM, I will always add a couple End Game scenarios to an on going game. Basically things that will accelerate the game right to the End. So, if needed, we can wrap the game up in a session or two.

If you have a hard core dedicated group, it is sometimes good to "pause" the game for a bit and then go back to it. I have had Forever Groups....that play all fall/winter, and then break for spring/summer, then come back.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I generally try to wrap things up, but most campaigns I’ve run have simply fizzled or reached a point where the PCs are “comfy” and the players are fine with walking away because it’s just not as fun as it was.

A couple of campaigns I’ve been a part of are “immortal” in one way or another. For example, one D&D campaign with round-robin DMs started out in AD&D, translated to 2Ed, then to 3/3.5Ed then got put on hiatus because of real life issues. The core players are still in touch, but the game remains on hold. Every attempt to restart has been derailed by new RW issues: grad school, child rearing, divorces, job demands, etc. But everyone involved would be happy to continue if/when we could coordinate our schedules.

But one thing I found pretty cool was a system a group I was in in Austin worked out. Everyone in the group had to pick one or more RPGs and design a campaign for it- even if it was just using published adventures- and everyone had to have a PC for each campaign. Every game night, two players had to show up ready to run their campaign, with one designated as the primary and the other as the designated backup, with everyone else bringing the appropriate PCs and whatever else they felt they needed. Who was picked to run was voted on unless someone volunteered. And if someone needed a break from GMing, all they had to do was ask.

For 3.5 years, we almost never had a game night without gaming, and we got to try a bunch of different RPGs, genres, and so forth. Some of the campaigns lasted years, some only a few sessions. All told, I probably played 70+ different systems in that time, including a couple of playtests.*





* as I recall, all for SJG products, some of which saw commercial release.

 

[Oofta]

Maybe the campaign never truly ends, but like this thread merely gets rises from the dead?

 

[Oofta]

In my campaigns we discuss it, but generally I go to 20th level. Sometimes there's a primary big bad, other times other threats just kind of get woven into the story or pop up because I tie something in from past sessions. Tying things in from the past can either be just little things I dropped in just in case that I may or may not use. I almost always drop more potential threads than people can ever follow up on, so I keep track of those as well and think what may have happened when the group didn't follow up on it.

So one story arc ends, another rises up. Along the way if people get truly tired of their PC I let them swap out, hopefully with some NPC I've introduced as a side character but that still has a tie to the overall narrative we've developed along the way.

 

[Quartz]

Since the thread has been resurrected, let me offer that a good way to go is short mini-campaigns. Say one tier. Then you can finish relatively quickly and do something else and maybe come back at some point (like this thread) or segue straight into the next mini-campaign.

 

[ECMO3]

When a game is getting a little long in the tooth, how do you go about deciding on the next thing? Do you press on to the end even when it's stopped being fun? Do you mix it up by starting over with low-level characters in the same setting? Or do you cut you just let the old high-level campaign remain forever on hold, moving on to the next big thing?

Basically, I'm asking how to balance the desire for closure with the desire to start something exciting and new.

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

The best way to handle this IME is to force the campaign to a climactic end, then either TPK or save the world it is over.

Ending a campaign is fundamentallly different than building a long-term perpetual campaign. For the latter you are basically writing a soap opera. Before you end one thing you are moving on to the next plot line and you often have several running at the same time.

Ending a campaign is a lot more like a one-shot or alternatively an epic motion picture. It is do or die time and if you do then there is not much more left to figure out.

 

[cbwjm]

Just finished a great story arc after 4 years (technically, nowhere near 4 years, we just had major scheduling issues during covid). Not sure if we'll come back to these characters, they were only level 7 so still plenty of room for adventure.

We have a second party though which was just a fun diversion suring covid that people wouldn't mind going back to. I was running the players through the old thunder rift adventures forming a mini campaign, think I'm at the point where I can send them out of the rift in the final adventure, might drop them in Sigil instead of Karameikos though. It's a fun party, it has: a Mac Feegle, a loxodon rogue, a dwaaaarf cleric, stupid sexy Flanders, and Bob the average ranger. A joke party which was a lot of fun to run through those old adventures.

 

[zedturtle]

Where I think a lot of campaigns fizzle out is because the DM and/or group hasn't thought about the real time commitment being made and whether that is sustainable for the given group.

I think the best option is to conceive of the end state of the game in terms of real time (hours, weeks, months, years, sessions or perhaps levels) before the campaign begins, then shave a few sessions off of that. Better to leave them wanting more than to let it die on the vine.

So the solution is on the front end in my view, not on the back end. If you're trying to figure out a way to bring it in for a landing before it fizzles, you already done flumphed up.

Yep. I think that too many of us are dedicated to that 'endless summer' ideal of a campaign lasting forever, and that's not very likely when you get older. I'm planning a summer mini-campaign for my son, his cousin, and their friends. It will have a clear time limit --- I'm running the main dungeon at Gen Con (and for Free RPG Day), so there's one time limit and school will be starting up around then as well (in the American South, schools tend to get started well before the change of the season, because the growing season is much earlier and longer. That doesn't matter too much, but schools are about a century (or two) behind anyways. Lots of cultural inertia.