Author Topic: How do you end a campaign?  (Read 4088 times)

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RealMarkP

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How do you end a campaign?
« on: April 09, 2010, 01:51:49 PM »
I've never played in a campaign that officially ended. In all cases, events in the real world caused players to stop playing, which consequentially ended a campaign in mid-story. This is a question to other DMs out there that officially ended a campaign. How do you end it?

Insanity or death is one way....

Solo

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2010, 01:57:45 PM »
A huge explosion is often entertaining and satisfying.

"I am the Black Mage! I cast the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

The Legend RPG, which I worked on and encourage you to read.

archangel.arcanis

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2010, 02:02:41 PM »
A huge explosion is often entertaining and satisfying.
Our group has, what i assume is a throw back to 2E, a rule that is when a holding bag goes into another holding bag it goes boom (not kilo or mega tons but giga or tera tons of boom). I guess it is based on the astral tear of holding bag and portable hole, but that is a great way to end a game. Nuke a god was fun with that.
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PhaedrusXY

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2010, 02:03:22 PM »
I've never actually ended one that I was DMing (as yours, they always just died out for RL reasons...), but I've been in campaigns that actually came to a natural (and planned) end. Usually the PCs "win" or "lose" somehow. In one game I was in, we averted a catastrophe that would have destroyed the multiverse, and became gods of our own new plane that was created as a result. That was a high-powered game that ended at around level 30, IIRC. There's not really much to RP after that point, unless you want to make up a new game system, or convert the old Wrath of the Immortals box set to 3.5. ;)

Of course, you could have the PCs achieve (or fail) ultimate goals less encompassing, but still have it be a logical place to end a campaign (maybe they are granted land by the king for their services and become nobles and retire from adventuring, or whatever).

I was in another campaign with a bad DM who was tired of the game and the overpowered PCs, so he basically encouraged us to kill each other and then during our in-fighting had some even more overpowered NPCs attack. This led to a near-TPK with the survivors really having no reason to travel together after that. So that was that... I wouldn't recommend that method. :P
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RobbyPants

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2010, 02:18:38 PM »
The Deck of Many Things.  Whether or not you intended to end the campaign, this bad boy pretty much takes care of everything.
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dither

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2010, 02:23:12 PM »
Possible suggestion: split the characters up and give each one a "solo path" to their end. Perhaps have them ascend to a higher plane of existence.
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Solo

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2010, 02:33:21 PM »
NOOOOO! Not TV Tropes!

"I am the Black Mage! I cast the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

The Legend RPG, which I worked on and encourage you to read.

Flay Crimsonwind

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2010, 02:42:43 PM »
TPK?  :smirk

BruceLeeroy

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #8 on: April 09, 2010, 03:05:24 PM »
TPK?  :smirk
That's what I was going to say! Damnit, as soon as I saw the title of the thread I knew someone would have beat me to it.

The only campaign I've played that came to an official end did so after we had destroyed the world, which apparently had been the gist of a prophecy we'd been told early on. Oops.

RealMarkP

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #9 on: April 09, 2010, 03:22:55 PM »
TPK might be a decent solution for lower level campaigns. However, the one that I'm DMing deals a lot with the gods. in fact, the resident cleric died already and met her deity. So, TPK complicates things because of the fact that an afterlife is known about.

veekie

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #10 on: April 09, 2010, 04:02:56 PM »
Depending on how epic it is, blowing up the afterlife seems fun.
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dither

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2010, 04:16:32 PM »
Giant robots using galaxies as ranged weapons. The creation of the Universe as an ultimate attack. The end of the Universe as a finishing move.
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"Vegeta! What does the scouter say about Dither's power level?"
It's over nine thousand!

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Well blow me down! :P
A SECTION OF THE CAVERN HAS COLLAPSED!
dither, Miner, has died after colliding with an obstacle!
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archangel.arcanis

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #12 on: April 09, 2010, 06:47:20 PM »
Giant robots using galaxies as ranged weapons. The creation of the Universe as an ultimate attack. The end of the Universe as a finishing move.

Why get so big and expensive just use the Magog World Ship
Clerics and Druids are like the 4 and 2 in 42. Together they are the answer to the ultimate question in D&D.
Retire the character before the DM smacks you with the Table as the book will feel totally inadequate now.-Hazren

dither

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #13 on: April 09, 2010, 06:50:47 PM »
Giant robots using galaxies as ranged weapons. The creation of the Universe as an ultimate attack. The end of the Universe as a finishing move.

Why get so big and expensive just use the ROW! ROW! FIGHT THE POW-WAH! Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan

Fixed it for you.
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vanity
Read my webcomic!
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[spoiler]
Quote from: Shadowhunter
Quote from: Flay Crimsonwind
"Vegeta! What does the scouter say about Dither's power level?"
It's over nine thousand!

Quote from: Bauglir
Quote from: Anklebite
Quote from: dither
Well blow me down! :P
A SECTION OF THE CAVERN HAS COLLAPSED!
dither, Miner, has died after colliding with an obstacle!
[/spoiler]

Empirate

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2010, 02:05:44 PM »
You don't have to let it end with the big bang, ascension, whatever... some good old epilogue is often highly appreciated (though make sure it fits in the same session as the climactic boss fight/ritual/court session/whatever).

You can use the good old: "What happened thereafter was an even more incredible adventure - but it is another story and will, if at all, not be told today. For other stories await."

Or you can ask your players to each narrate to the rest of the group what their characters are going to do with the rest of their lives as heroes: "I'm going to return to my mountain home, where I will negotiate a lasting peace with the Storm Giants. In the upcoming election for Alderman I am going to stand, and with my heroic reputation, likely win. For the rest of my days, I'll be a good and wise ruler for my people, and war with the Giants will be a thing of the past. My people shall remember me as just, wise, and only occasionally too drunk to stand."

Or you can just provide a fade-out montage: "Imagine the pitted, body-strewn, smoking battlefield on which five heroes with blood on their swords and sparks spewing from burned-out wands gather around the Shadow Demon's carcass. Much will still need to be done: an empire rebuilt, a crown prince brought back from the dead, friends mourned and enemies buried. But for today, there is nothing to do anymore except bind your wounds, and leave this place of death behind. All consequences of your feat are not yet foreseeable, but one thing is clear: you have done a great deed today. Feeling deeply content and proud, but also still strangely numbed by the events of this hour, you lean on one another in your mute procession back to the broken gates of the city. You have reached the end of what you set out to do, and the smokes of the battlefield - or is it the mists of time? - cover the rest."


I even ended a truly epic four-and-a-half year campaign by telling the players that nothing of this had ever happened, and that the PCs would never now know the great story of which they had been a part. That was a time-travelling campaign which revolved around averting a catastrophe, though, so it was what they had wanted. The truly heart-wrenching part was their goodbyes before

dither

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #15 on: April 12, 2010, 04:00:15 PM »
You can always do the "never-ending ending" that Return of the King gave us: do the little epilogue for each and every character, show us what happened to them "in the end," where each NPC ended up, and try to tie up any loose ends that might be hanging. Be sure to gauge which NPCs the players care about most and try to give them the most satisfying conclusions.

Most of all: leave the players feeling like they accomplished something with all of their deeds.
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vanity
Read my webcomic!
Dither's Amazing Changing Avatars

[spoiler]
Quote from: Shadowhunter
Quote from: Flay Crimsonwind
"Vegeta! What does the scouter say about Dither's power level?"
It's over nine thousand!

Quote from: Bauglir
Quote from: Anklebite
Quote from: dither
Well blow me down! :P
A SECTION OF THE CAVERN HAS COLLAPSED!
dither, Miner, has died after colliding with an obstacle!
[/spoiler]

wotmaniac

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #16 on: April 12, 2010, 07:03:29 PM »
The way I ended my last one went a little like this (woo-hoo, I finally finished one!):
the game went to about 25th level, and they finally met-up with the BBEG -- in this case it was a demi-lich.  After systematically finding and destroying the phylactery, they went to the BBEG's castle, and killed him.  His death caused the castle to collapse.  As I started to describe the collapse, a couple of the players tried to interrupt - at which point I was just like "nope, I'm in the middle of a cut-scene" - anyway, I finished describing the collapse, and then told all the players to imagine their own ending.

The next 3 hours were spent hanging-out on the back pourch, talking about various possible endings (in other words, they liked it).

May not work every time, but it can't be all bad.

I see there being 1 of 2 endings for my current one:
- TPK (and in this case, the "P" stands for "Planet")
- the world is saved; their will be much rejoicing.  I'll probably work up some appropriate aside for each character; and have some Conan-esque cut-scene/block-text.
Followed by vigorous discussion about what to do for our next campaign.

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Flay Crimsonwind

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #18 on: April 13, 2010, 02:45:35 AM »
NOOOOO! Not TV Tropes!

TPK?  :smirk

TV Tropes has this effect, no?
Yeah, but primarily it's felt in real life, not in-game.  :p

That being said, the only campaign I've ever DMed any significant amount of time ended in a way incredibly similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In fact, essentially, it pulled the whole plot from that play as it's ending. The players seemed to like it.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the film version with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leading roles (or do like I did, and buy a $5 of the play and read it).

For those who need a quick spoiler, 5:50 to the ending. I don't think I need to explain it... hopefully... The play helped me write out plots for DnD easily, many plays are brilliant for that, even if you don't steal plots and just use quotable lines as inspiration.

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Re: How do you end a campaign?
« Reply #19 on: April 13, 2010, 04:28:25 AM »
They ascend to demigodhood and with their combined gods-in-my-campaign-setting-don't-use-statblocks power beat the crap out of the draconic demideity that's been harassing them the whole game.

There was, of course, a climatic final battle that actually used the rules the session before.
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