Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

How Do You Know When Your Campaign is Over?

Sometimes as DMs we plot out the direction of our campaigns. Players being players, if you give them any sort of freedom it is doubtful they will follow the path of least resistance.

How do you know when your campaign is over?

Player apathy? DM apathy? Player goals reached? Just feels like it? The itch for something new?

I will freely admit as a DM I probably have about 6 months before the next great campaign idea hits me - usually for my players, the desire for change lags behind my own.

When is the right time to bring your campaign to an end, and is it necessary to have everything tied up neat in a bow, or can it end like the second book in a trilogy, with more stories to be told, but in this case no one to tell them?


4 comments:

  1. Usually when players get transferred or move away.

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  2. My main campaign world, Seaward, is 36 years old.
    I don't think I can answer this question.

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  3. I've only had a couple of campaigns that ended when we met a predetermined "end point". More often, the campaign fades away as people become less willing or less able to schedule a consistent time for the game. I used to play in a monthly Pathfinder game that met consistently for the first year, once every d4+2 weeks in the second year, and once every d3 months in the third year. Theoretically the campaign is still going, but this month it is officially a year since our last session, so I think it's dead.

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