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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CuRoi" data-source="post: 5619878" data-attributes="member: 98032">How have you wound down your campaigns in the past? Sort of... I ran an extremely long campaign that spanned about 12 years real time. We "wound down" twice as we took breaks for other games, tried to get people reorganized after scheduling conflicts caused breaks, etc. We also ran concurrent campaigns (alternating weekends) for a while. Our first "break" came after a very long hiatus. I had been out of town quite a bit with my job and was unable to continue the campaign. I made sure we squeezed in enough sessions to get to a solid stopping point - the opening battle of a war that had been brewing throughout the campaign.  However, the result of building up about 6 years of material made coming back to it after about a 6 month break pretty daunting. Which leads to the next question- What methods have you used to appease players who might not be as keen on a fresh start as others?  There were lost of unanswered questions but also lots of history. Once we took 6 months, some players started to get a bit fuzzy on that and a bit overwhelmed. So in that sense, some of the players were ready for a new start, but to help convince them I added a hook. The fresh start was in the same campaign world - across an impassable sea where the original inhabitants of the previous campiagn's lands had come from. So the familiarity and the potential promise of merging the worlds was one "carrot" used to get everyone on board. Also, the players would be getting many questions answered about the original campaign because they had been battling shadowy, evil forces from this "old" world for months. Have you ever left a campaign and then picked it back up some time later (months, years decades)? As a GM, how did you satisfy yourself and give yourself the closure you felt you needed? Yes and no. Since the last campaign was a "child" of sorts of the original it doesn't completely meet your definition. We ended that "child" campaign with the PCs accomplishing their objective to travel to the "old" lands. Theoretically opening up the bridge between both campaigns. The original campaign wound down at the aforementioned climactic battle scene. It was the typical "tolkienesque" sort of thing where I could bring back friends and foes from throughout the past to help add closure.  However, the "final battle" was never truly fought. This may sound a bit like the opposite of closure, but in gearing up for the battle they tied up many loose threads, met with friends, dealt with foes, and pulled together quite a bit of story in a satisfying way that accomplished many of their goals. However, by leaving the "final battle" unfought, it also left them wanting to come back, someday.  You say you don't have a "story based campaign" with just some stories more important than others. To really get everyone on board and feel closure as a DM, you need to wrap up some of those threads, without cutting or tying all of them off.  In mundane terms, it's a person getting ready to head off to college. They need to pay some bills, visit some friends, maybe settle some scores and then they are gone for several years. The story isn't that they went to college, that's the assumed future. The story is how they dealt with everything leading up to the climactic event. At any rate, one of those "more important" stories needs to provide an impetus for the PCs (and thus their players) to move on and the thing they do to prepare will wrap things up neatly.  Hope that makes sense...</blockquote>

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