When should you End your campaign?
This is one of those little nuggets that every Game Master wrestles with: When is it time to END the campaign and for the heroes to ride into the sunset? And it’s not a question that comes with a simple answer, but more like multiple choice with various consequences.
Before going further, it’s time to mention that some of these should be established at Session 0, especially for shorter games and campaigns.
1: When the Story is over.
So the first option is when the STORY is over, and by this, I mean the major campaign arc. Whatever villain you have is defeated, most of the side plots have been addressed, and everyone is sort of taking a deep breath and going “Aahh, that felt good .”At that point its time. Maybe give it one more time around the table, just to make certain that all the player characters make it home to their respective rewards, allow the PCs to say farewell to each other, and so on. It’s probably even a good idea to warn the players a few sessions ahead that “We’re coming up to the end now. Once that’s over, there’s going to be a single gaming session more, to tie up loose ends – it’ll probably be combat light, and then it’s on to the next one.”
2: Module Length
This is where you’re playing a particular module (or even a set of modules), and that’ll determine the gaming sessions. Once you get to the end of it, that’s it. The players will be roughly able to keep up with how far along they are, as they see you go through the module(s) so that they’re mentally prepared. This has some strength, especially in campaigns where the investment levels from the players are different: They’re only stuck for so long, before being able to move on (for better or worse).
3: By Mutual Agreement (also known as “Burnout”)
The sessions have lately not been as fun as they were to begin with, or maybe something is just feeling wrong about it. This is where many campaigns normally end, simply as people start to lose interest. This can happen in any sort of campaign, whether homemade or an official adventure path (for example, the Giantslayer Adventure Path is good, but it is unfortunately rather weak in installment number 5, which has caused many to drop out from it — even at the best of times, this was always one of the “OK” rather than “GOOD/GREAT” adventure paths).
This is also known as burnout, as when player enthusiasm fails, so does the GM’s level of enjoyment. It is no fun to be the only one trying to engage with a game and having to prepare for each session when the people you’re playing with don’t care.
Potentially the most rewarding type of campaign, it’s also the rarest. It’s the one where each major story arc ties together into the next one, and the people playing in it don’t want to stop. I’ve only ever had the enjoyment of playing in one of these in my almost 30 years of gaming. The heroes are engaging to the players and the GM, the NPCs are interesting and organic parts of it.
So the question here is, how do you keep this campaign going instead of ending it? Eventually, the heroes will reach a level where it’s no longer possible to provide a reasonable challenge. At that point, it’s up to you as the Game Master to “turn back the clock” on the heroes, and go “OK folks, it’s getting difficult for me to provide the heroes with a challenge, but none of us want to give them up. So, we need to reduce the power level to a point where you can still have fun.”
This could be a simple mechanic of simply reducing the heroes levels to match wherever you want it to be (I had this happen in AD&D, back when level drain was permanent. An ambush from a bunch of undead and suddenly we went from level 17 to 6, and we could have fun again), or it can be “Flashback Campaigns” – perhaps there’s a clue from the past that you need to figure out, so the soul of the heroes are sent back in time to inhabit their younger bodies (and because of the peculiarities of the magic involved, they would have no memory of it) or they’re LITERAL flashbacks to an adventure or two, where they were lower level (with less equipment too), that the characters are (in effect) talking about around a campfire table.
I hope all of these give you some food for thought. 🙂
Until next time. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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