When do you make a new party?

[Keinnicht]

Here's a question for you all. I've recently been DMing again, and have a question: When do you have the players roll up new characters, and start a new campaign?

There's the obvious answer of "when the players get tired of their characters." There's also the TPK option, but I would hope that most campaigns do not end on this note.

Is there a level cutoff for you guys? For example, do you refuse to run epic levels? Or at the end of the campaign? Do your players just run the same character forever?

[Knaight]

Once the story is told, the game ends. What exactly that story is is initially a huge mystery, but one will emerge, usually along with various character goals. The goals are either resolved with a finality or rendered irrelevant by character change, this essentially becomes the story, and it starts wrapping up with no particular effort given to doing that.

[arguskos]

Here's a question for you all. I've recently been DMing again, and have a question: When do you have the players roll up new characters, and start a new campaign?

There's the obvious answer of "when the players get tired of their characters." There's also the TPK option, but I would hope that most campaigns do not end on this note.

Is there a level cutoff for you guys? For example, do you refuse to run epic levels? Or at the end of the campaign? Do your players just run the same character forever?
I tend to end games when the players and I agree that things are at a natural end. Typically, this is when one of a few things happen:

1. Everyone is dead. This happens more than I'd like, but then again, random crap happens. :smallsigh:

2. The campaign's story arc ends in a conclusion that feels satisfying. The bad guy is (probably) defeated in a permanent fashion, the good guys have a "we am are the bestest" feeling, and things feel good all around. None of that "And the villain was defeated... or was he?" jazz with #2.

3. We are all tired of it and no one wants to keep playing this game. This one rarely happens, but it does from time to time. In this case, I tend to take a break from GMing for that group, just to let memories fade a little.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Most recently, my group has been doing semester-long campaigns--we have X weeks to play in the campaign, then we wrap everything up and start another one after the break. The definite schedule allows the DM to conclude everything neatly and no one ever has a chance to get bored of their character or the campaign.

[LordBlades]

We usually end campaings in three circumstances:

1. When the story has reached it's conclusion.

2. When the game is no longer fun to play. This had so far only happened once. We usually play pretty optimzied casters, and after a certain level you just have too many 'I win' buttons. The party in case was something like Druid, Cleric/Dweomerkeeper, Psion/Anarchic Initiate, Factotum/Bard/Sublime Chord and Wizard/Incantatrix. After lvl 15 or so it usually took only one of us to obliterate any encounter without full spellcasters in 2 rounds max. So encounters became a bit lackluster (the 533rd wizard fight brings little enjoyment after the 532nd). So we arranged a quick showdown with the BBEG and ended the campaign there.

3. Due to RL troubles. Until very recently (past 6 months or so) most of my gaming group were all college stundents, and it was pretty difficult to say how much time we would have next semester.