Amber Campaigns: Endings

[RPGPundit]

How do you handle your endgame?

Is it important, at the final session(s) of the campaign, that all the PCs be together, united? Is it important that they all be doing the same things?
Is it important that they get a resolution of all their storylines; or only the central major storylines that affect the campaign as a whole?

RPGPundit

[JongWK]

Tie up the main plots, and one or two sideplots that interest each player character. It doesn't matter if the campaign ends with a happily-ever-after epilogue or a TPK, but you want something that leaves the group (that includes you) satisfied.

If you're planning a follow-up campaign, keep some plot hooks and seed new ones.

[boulet]

I'm not looking (as GM or as regular player) for a story in my RPGs much. Thus I'm not obsessed with campaign endings. If one presents itself, whatever the game is, fine. I'll even go as far as agreeing that it feels nice and complete... group hug, pat on the back, happiness and joy. But I'm fine with leaving a campaign with many questions unanswered and characters still in the middle of some action. The group decided they're getting tired of fantasy and want to play some other genre? Sure let's put the game into slumber mode. Maybe we'll come back to it. Maybe not.

To me it feels as if the general rules of fiction were assumed to be bolted on the hobby. It's like if a Hollywood writer was coming to our table and tell us that one of the holy commandments of RPGs is "there must be an end to your campaigns". Well... huh... no. There must be fun at the table. If more fun is achieved by ending campaigns fine, but it sure isn't high on my priority list when it comes to RPG.

Maybe I'm being a little verbous and tedious here. But I've felt quite weird about many implicit expectations of campaign structure since I've been troll... huh reading Anglophone RPG boards. I've never played with people who had such expectations when playing in France. A campaign ends when we're tired of it or when all the juice have been drown, just like a long lasting TV series that gets winded. Other campaigns are like Dr Who, they keep going on and on... maybe with a different cast or a different tone. (I may be out of line here, I really don't crap about Dr Who)

[Croaker]

Like boulet.
I've never even known a campain ending.

The closest I've come to that was my Amber campain ending mostly frozen in ice, with brand as a winner, but it could very well have continued, it's just that we lacked time and dedication.

[RPGPundit]

I have had a few campaigns that closed in a way that could be seen as "fiction", in the sense of everything being wrapped up in a neat little package. I've also had plenty of campaigns that ended abruptly for one reason or another.

But to me what seems best is probably for not everything to get resolved. If there's a major plot element, a major opponent in the game, then it makes sense for THAT to get resolved, not out of any concerns of "fiction", but because this being a GAME, it makes sense to end the game with the major challenge of the game being resolved (one way or the other).
The rest, however, isn't as important. This being the emulation of a created world, and the world going on as it does, there's no way that all the details will be made to fit, that everything will be explained, or that all of the individual PC's ambitions will be satisfied or their plans finalized by some predetermined "end date" of the game. Not without breaking emulation, anyways.

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