Winding down the campaign

[Jimlock]

Another idea would be to have them celebrate their retirement in some rich brothel, where they get to spend all their money and magical items in a single night of pleasure.

...ohh.. wait a minute... this is too close to real life and not at all epic...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Campaigns with multiple parties like this always fascinate me. Must be a blissful headache to DM.

It's a play by post game that's been running for more than five years, so it's a little easier to manage than a tabletop game. If a tabletop party had split like this one did early on, I would have split them into two nights of gaming.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

One of the best things you can do is offer some kind of closure. Players enjoy having that last epic battle and sensing that their characters have had some form of accomplishment.

One possibility is to have some final conflict and then the next session do half and half of 'what do you do now?' Tell a story of how they all ended up. The other half of the session can be spend laying the groundwork for your new campaign and then having a character design session.

 

[Ulrick]

For the last campaign I wound down, I played "Into the West" by Annie Lennox at the table while I summarized what the PCs did at the end of their careers.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgcoBKWTW14]‪The Return of the King Soundtrack-19-Into the West‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Reynard]

Lots of good suggestions in this thread. Thanks, all.

Interestingly, at the start of the most recent session (we probably have 3 or 4 before the campaign ends/goes on hiatus) with all the various options presented to them for points of "closure", the players chose to dive into the next dungeon (the DCC "Dread Crypt of Shiroz") rather than do storyline wrapping up-ness. I guess they just like to go on adventures.

 

[scourger]

...the players chose to dive into the next dungeon (the DCC "Dread Crypt of Shiroz") rather than do storyline wrapping up-ness....

That's great. More of our games die or just fade away rather than reach a conclusion or resume. Some get a restart, but those are rare. I do find that players have a lot of investment in their characters that seems to be more important than continuing the main story.

 

[haakon1]

Good ideas here. I'm kinda setting it up in my campaign so the PC's can retire when it comes to that. They just got a castle to run (the Keep on the Borderlands, where the campaign began) and the monk is planning on building a monastery there with a brewery.

But how does one decide when a campaign is done? Should I wait until my players tell me to pull the plug ("the series got cancelled by the network for low ratings", a la the demise of the original Star Trek), or should I bring it to a close before there's a hint of that ("always leave 'em wanting more"/"go out out a high note", a la the end of Seinfeld)?

 

[Kannon]

Lots of good suggestions in this thread. Thanks, all.

Interestingly, at the start of the most recent session (we probably have 3 or 4 before the campaign ends/goes on hiatus) with all the various options presented to them for points of "closure", the players chose to dive into the next dungeon (the DCC "Dread Crypt of Shiroz") rather than do storyline wrapping up-ness. I guess they just like to go on adventures.

Sounds like a good case for an ending with them regaling the patrons of the nearest bar with highlights from their adventures, ostensibly before heading out on yet more, "off-screen" adventures.

 

[TarionzCousin]

My old planescape campaign ended with a laid back session without any combat where the PCs were confronted with a dilemma of what to do with a memory stone that held an experience pivotal to the Lady of Pain becoming what she is. There was no resolution, just a funny last exchange:

Sensate fighter: "I dare you to use the memory stone. Think about it, what greater pain could there be than the Lady of Pain's ?"

Sensate wizard: "Listening to your inane attempts at philosophy?"

...

The abyssal lord held a clue about the Lady of Pain; eventually the clues led to a secret society within the Sensates which the Lady of Pain once allegedly was a member of. The story was that the Lady of Pain took on the pain from this abyssal lord (via a memory stone) the PCs had defeated and that was what made her into what she was today. Hence the ending: What to do with the memory stone?

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]: So what did they do with the memory stone?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]: So what did they do with the memory stone?

Well there was a bit of a conundrum because they weren't 100% sure this wasn't a last ditch trick of the abyssal lord or the product of a misguided secret sect. Still, they were as sure as they could be the stone was legit.

The fighter wanted to access the stone to learn the Lady of Pain's secret, and had dreams of making the Sensates the one true faction of Sigil and Left Hand of the Lady of Pain.

The wizard was cautious and considered trapping it in a Demi-plane (but what happens after the wizard died), destroying it (but what if LoP needed it in th future), or turning it over to the LoP (but what if it was a trap). I guess you could say the wizard suffered analysis paralysis.

There were also 3 power groups after the stone...

The sensate secret society (Sinerites) believed the stone was meant to be shared with the entire faction, and thus would free the LoP from torment. Their esoteric philosophy held that the original Sensates were supposed to share the pain with the one who would become LoP, but they faltered at the last moment. The Sinerites sought to set matters "right."

An astral deva, present during the ancient failed battle against the abyssal lord when the stone was used and the Lady came to be, also coveted the stone. He believed the Lady was actually an evil sorceress who sold her soul to the abyssal lord and then sacrificed hundreds to avoid her fate. By destroying the stone he believed it would send the Lady to her rightful afterlife in hell.

And Aoskar, the "dead" god of portals, actually was Mazed because he came close to finding the stone and using it to learn the Lady's weakness. The experience held in the stone, according to Aoskar, is bound to the nature of portals and planewalking. Aoskar wanted to open a great portal to another layer of existence, in essence a heretofore unknown plane and way of experiencing reality. He believed the stone held the secret to do that.

There wasn't any final resolution. The PCs decided to hang on to the stone, and since they had dealt with the other 3 power groups that knew of the stone, the Lady of Pain was content with that.