So, what ways have you (or have you thought of) ending your campaigns, in a way that they don't so much fade away as actually finish, and well?
Name the game (system, setting, or genre) and how you ended/plan to end it/thought of cool ways to end it.
RPGPundit
MegaTraveller:
The players travelled to the Atlantean Ringworld, ate from the tree of life and became Protectors, forfeiting their free will, in order to kill Yaskodray and safe Humaniti from his interference.
Wasn´t planned at all.
Rules Cyclopedia, Pact of Sanctum Cruor, fantasy. The characters achieve immortal status and combat the opposition that drew humanity to the world of the dragons. Either that, or they replace the Creator(s) inside of Tiamat's belly so the Creator(s) are free to create a Utopia for humanity or they create that Utopia themselves.
D&D 3e homebrew setting. The PCs discovered and fought a secret evil cult in the heart of the Duchy of Briz. They eventually discovered that the cult was in cahoots with a group of evil Elves. The PCs managed to pretty much destroy the cult, saving the son of the Duke in the process (although the Duke himself was killed). The final session involved a confrontation with the Elvish leader, who escaped successfully. The PCs subsequently were knighted, but they knew that even more powerful evil Elves existed elsewhere in the Kingdom, no doubt up to no good... (I wanted to end the campaignon a satisfying note, while leaving open the possibility of continuing it at some point in the future.)
MERP, early Fourth Age campaign. The PCs travelled across northwestern Middle-earth on a quest for a lost palantir (one of the ones lost in the Bay of Forochel in T.A. 1974). They ultimately recovered it, returned it to King Elessar, and became knights and heroes of the Reunited Kingdom. (Interesting note: I ran this years before ICE published Palantir Quest.)
In my last D&D 3.5e game the players discovered that one of their own was destined to kill the others, so they spent several adventures planning for that moment-and when it came they pulled off an amazingly well thought and planned action that saved them-or so they thought.
As we start what we're calling the second generation game they've found out that the same fate befell their previous characters, only now they're not sure who killed them all. So we will play these new first level characters who will adventure looking to get revenge for the destruction of their families and home during said fight-it will be fun to see which PC survived, and why, as well as who betrayed them.
We're having a blast getting all in place!
Every campaign I've run since 2002 has had a definitive ending.
None of my campaigns have had a definitive ending that I drove towards. I can't think of any campaigns that anyone in my group has run in the last ten years that have contained within them an ending we strove for. There's always more things to do and more fun to be had.
Story arcs come and go, but we keep on keeping on. Usually the genre gets a little old or the GM needs a break so we switch to a new system, new GM, and new underlying worldview.
Quote from: James McMurrayNone of my campaigns have had a definitive ending that I drove towards. I can't think of any campaigns that anyone in my group has run in the last ten years that have contained within them an ending we strove for. There's always more things to do and more fun to be had.
Story arcs come and go, but we keep on keeping on. Usually the genre gets a little old or the GM needs a break so we switch to a new system, new GM, and new underlying worldview.
Yowza, that's not fun to me. I mean, it's cool, but wow. I have way too many games that I want to try or love a lot to do that. I run my games on a semesterly basis, which works great now that I'm in school, and will work great when I'm teaching.
It lets me run a game for a set amount of time, and have a definitive beginning, middle and end.
Cool. We've got no time frame limits at all, so just go until we're done. I've got a lot of stories I want to explore, but most of them can be put into any genre. The ones that can't can wait. We have beginnings, middles, and ends. The only difference is that our ends (and sometimes our middles) usually contain within them the seeds for several new beginnings.
The dragonstar game I ran in highschool is the only one I've run that actually ended. There was a climactic battle between the rest of the party and the PC who had by that point become the main villain and pledged his service to freeing Nyarlethotep in return for control of the galaxy. The bad guy actually won, I did a short narration of what events occurred afterward and everyone had a great time. Shortly after I left for college. I did run a brief game set after the events of the last game, but it was for different people.
Quote from: RPGPunditSo, what ways have you (or have you thought of) ending your campaigns, in a way that they don't so much fade away as actually finish, and well?
Name the game (system, setting, or genre) and how you ended/plan to end it/thought of cool ways to end it.
RPGPundit
My games end when the players are "established". They founded the Mage's Guild, they became the duke, they got the promotion, etc.
The best example of this is when I ran this campaign where one character with a Black Lotus agent from City-State of the Invincible Overlord and the other was a blacksmith (with warhammer as his fighting skill). Basically the campaign started with them getting an assignment to find out what was happening with this noble clan. They were known for fomenting rebellion against the Overlord.
The campaign revolved around finding out some information in City-State (A lot of bellmakers were being hired away). A journey of several weeks to the lands of this noble clan (Escorting another noble to their villa was the cover). Investigating what the clan is up too (They were making cannon and black powder). The Epic escape and finally the denouncement where they returned with the Overlord's forces and cleaned house.
The blacksmith got his mastership and his own shop. The Black Lotus guy got a promotion and his own group of agents to manage. After that the campaign was done. This was one of the first of my campaign to have a definite ending. The rest all had a "there is one more hill to look over" vibe going for them.
I guess to end the campaign you need a plot that has a definitive ending.
This will show my age but we played West End's "Price of Freedom" box set. This was one of the games that used a d20 rather than d6. I had picked up for "pocket change" and we were engrossed with the idea of running an avatar campaign. (The premise behind the game was what if the nightmare of the 1980's Republicians came true. We knew the game was simplicistic but again, none of us had heard of running an avatar campaign.) Actually, we took their suggestion of trying to stat ourselves except for saving so many skill points for combat skill.
We ran a few adventures before I decided for one more game in which we either freed our hometown from the Soviet invaders or died trying. In the meanwhile, everyone had one or more people they knew in real life who ended up dying in the game. For instance, there was a massacre set at our local church because a large group of protestors gathered to fight the clamp placed on religion. Of course, the Soviets didn't care and hundreds of people were killed. Another adventure had us fighting out of an ambush after one of our acquaintances betrayed us. We had a running firefight to get out alive. The acquaintance had waved us off just before he was shot in the back. Of course, we also did the intro scenerio, subsistuting our local bridges for the ones in the New York setting.
In all, about half of us died and all of our avatars in the game suffered losses from the death of loved ones and the destruction of the places we cherished. Our actions, in the end, allowed for the remaining members of the U.S. army to swarm and free our hometown from the Soviets.
We played up the stereotypes in order to have a good time but of course, we knew that such a real life scenerio would be far worse than what we could imagine.
The rickety old priest and the big, bad, demon king on a bridge overlooking the exiled demon city with their hands around each others' throats... while the rest of the party is busy opening a time portal to the exact moment when God laid waste to the Earth (for worshipping said demons) with his Seeds of Fire.
Big Boom. Party dead. Demon city turned to ashes. Everyone goes home happy.
Regular TPKs mean you don't have to worry about this problem.
Just sayin'.
It was only this year that I played my first game with a built-in story arc. My own games tend simply to stop on the ever-ongoing road.
Earthdawn 1e: long story short: I dropped a moon on Barsaive.
My last "BIG" GURPS campaign before this current was a once-a-month deal in 1990/1991 It was about a magic-touched commuter bus from mid-west America that wound up by accident on an alien planet.
In the last session: The bus driver came back to life via a spell backfire that dpoused the bus with re-incarnation energy - thus his body could be restored and it turned out that his szpirit has been haunting attached to the bus during the whole campaign. ("Union contract didn't cover this shit")
The "Metro Team" as they had taken to calling themselves made their case before the Intersteller Seanate that Earth should not be attacked and should even be put on a protected list of planets. Their Irari ally also argued in their favor.
As one of their last major acts the "STRETCHED" the bus back to Earyh and let it pop back into existence in Ohio long enough for the Bus Driver 'T' , to tell his family that he was still alive and give them a choice about what to next . As I remember they decided to move to the alien Planet that the players had been helping to protect and defend.
Story ended with all the player characters back on the strange world setting up a new government and trying their best to get the Waterfall city organized.
Oh yeah their bus now had a space-worthy airlock on it, and triple beanm laser turret installed on top of it....and they had learned how to harness that planets mana to make it magically hover/fly whenever they wanted to.
There was also the crew of the restored B-17 bomber that they had made friends with, the grateful Holocast survivors who were learning what had changed back on Earth in 40 years...and all sorts of other things.
It was a definite ending to the stopry arc.
Maglor the Maglorian improved his english vocabulary quite a bit. Pretty good for an 8 foot furry alien who looks like a cross between a polar bear , an ape and an overgrown puppy.
- Ed C.
Quote from: AosEarthdawn 1e: long story short: I dropped a moon on Barsaive.
FUCKIN' A! That's the kind of stuff I like to hear about!
I ran a special operations game in Shadowrun a few years back, where the PC's played super high level black op's for Saeder Krupp, and the game ended when Lofwyr had them Halo onto a small South Pacific island, which had been heavily fortified by a newly risen Dragon, who had come into possession of an atomic bomb.
In the end the PC's and the Dragon died in the flames of the Atom.
I have some cool plans for my next D&D campaign.
My last Icar campaign finished well (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6237), from everyone's point of view but it certainly finished early. I had an idea about a climax but the players don't like to be railroaded - doing so is not good. They like to find their own way through a campaign. This often means that you don't get a big climax of an ending between good and evil but as long as everyone round the table thinks it's a good and fitting ending, that's ok.
I'm actually building up to a campaign "ending" potential event. It's a good long time away, but still must build the proper tone with regards to the players.
Dragon on the loose (nearly killed the full PC group last time, players risked a lot and gambled on surviving more readily, they're choice though.)
The WraithLord Matthias sending out his armies of ghostly creatures, mummified undead, and myrk and trolls. Trying to get his hands on the Dvegr maid who will allow him to unlock his ancient allies prison. (Her blood is needed to slay the Great Oak the Elves put in place, the Elf he has captured will chatter the stone prison the Dvegr put in place.) If he manages to open that prison--things will be very very dire.