That’s the way my campaigns end. That’s the way my campaigns end. That’s the way my campaigns end.
So I’ve noticed that of the campaigns I’ve run, they tend to end with a nod and wink and “this a hiatus, not the end” but whatever my intention might be, they don’t re-start. Both times it was more DM fatigue than anything else, and DM fatigue has also killed a lot of campaigns I’ve played in. But I’ve also played in way too many campaigns that ended because several players had real life/responsibilities overtake their ability or desire to play. Sadly, I am pretty sure I have never seen a campaign actually play through to a conclusion, or end game, or PC retirement. Well, there was one fairly short but epic campaign, now that I think of it, which I think ran over a winter break from college, had about 13 players, and ended with a massive battle involving several hundred minis and the PCs…though honestly I am not 100% sure that we finished the battle before fatigue overtook us. It was a chaotic, short-lived, and awesome campaign. Come to think of it, there have been a few campaigns that just ended with a TPK, and usually the players or the DM or more likely both were just done with the game for whatever reason.* Still, the vast majority just end with tons of loose threads.
Now I’m not necessarily complaining about stopping in media res. There is actually something satisfying about feeling like we’ve told part of a story, but the adventures might continue in Meinong’s Jungle.
But, I do wonder what it would be like to play a campaign all the way through. I am thinking the next campaign I run should take the end game into account more explicitly. I absolutely hate “budgeting” XP and loot but maybe that’s the secret.
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*Well-deserved TPKs that occur to me now:
- A 3e game that had been drained of fun for the DM by one surly player’s constant rules-lawyering and min/maxing. (A dwarf cleric, because of course in 3e. But this was compounded by a loss of a player whose character was the reason all the PCs were working together. Actually I still kind of miss that campaign — Warhammer setting, 3e rules.)
- A 3.5e game that petered out when the DM couldn’t take the players’ collective refusal to follow a railroad track. (The DM simply had his Mary Sues come and fireball us to hell. But we did burn down the town first.)
- A 4e game where the players’ utter contempt for the system is probably best summarized by the party’s collective name: The Skullfuckers. (Contempt + hubris did us in, in this case — the party split up, some staying behind to loot corpses while others pursued some fleeing monsters, and we all ended up Ettercap food.)
Tagged: DMing
