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Beowulf DW
2011-05-03, 07:38 PM
Although I've played in several campaigns, for the first time ever, this past Friday, my friends and I completed a campaign. It was a first for me. I'd never completed a campaign before. Such a sense of fulfillment. And it had a story worthy of a novel!

Does everyone have an experience like this when completing a campaign for the first time? Is it common for campaigns to end on a high note like this?

slaydemons
2011-05-03, 07:45 PM
I have no idea I would assume so, I have never even completed a published adventure though I am halfway in sunless citadel meepo is pretty awesome talking in third person also made my party giggler as I used the responses given in the book for any other question meepo don't know, leader might. they asked "what is your favorite color."

Incanur
2011-05-03, 11:21 PM
Does everyone have an experience like this when completing a campaign for the first time? Is it common for campaigns to end on a high note like this?

Relatively common, I think. I've satisfactorily concluded three campaigns in all. Others have just fallen apart.

Remmirath
2011-05-03, 11:21 PM
Sounds like you had a good campaign!

Unfortunately, most of the campaigns I've completed thus far have ended in the world being destroyed for one reason or another...

... Although one just ended with a doppleganger (who had taken out the party wizard/party leader, unbeknownst to us, some time ago) picking off everybody but my character one by one. He only escaped because he ran like anything at the first fireball. It was pretty great, really, especially once we were looking back on all the little things that might've been signs it was the doppleganger already. Not exactly a high note, though.

We are getting rather close to finishing up one extremely long-running (on the order of seven years now) campaign, which is looking to either end on a very high note or a very low note. Basically, either we'll have saved the multiverse or failed to prevent its annihilation (or at the very least iron-fisted slavery, depending on which of the villains should come out ahead in such an eventuality). Should be memorable whatever happens, at least. :smallbiggrin:

Ozreth
2011-05-04, 01:14 AM
We are getting rather close to finishing up one extremely long-running (on the order of seven years now) campaign, which is looking to either end on a very high note or a very low note. Basically, either we'll have saved the multiverse or failed to prevent its annihilation (or at the very least iron-fisted slavery, depending on which of the villains should come out ahead in such an eventuality). Should be memorable whatever happens, at least. :smallbiggrin:

Nice, thats a pretty long campaign! Mind if I ask what age you guys are? And has it bee the same group the whole time?

Jerthanis
2011-05-04, 04:55 AM
I went my whole middle and high school careers with maybe 3 completed campaigns between them. All of them were epic and amazing and memorable to today. Every other story that fell apart I just sort of took for granted was to be expected.

When I met my current regular DM in college, I found a bizarre trait that he had... he doggedly finished every campaign that was in any way salvageable. The only campaign he's canceled in the last 6 years was one where one of the players cheated on another, that drama came out and the way he set up the story required half the PCs betray the other half and didn't realize it until it happened. Every other campaign has come to a satisfying conclusion. Not every one has lasted as long as he originally intended... but he has always been able to drag even an uncooperating story across some kind of real finish line.

So take this from my experience: Never Give Up. Finish that story kicking and screaming. Get whatever players are still alive and put them in a room until the story is over. It's worth the effort because a conclusion, even an ending which is less than perfect, even one that seems rushed is still infinitely better than just having the game totally fall apart with no 'and this is what happened'

Just gain this determination, add six years and you will have so many memorable endings, paradoxically you will not even be able to remember them all.

Beowulf DW
2011-05-05, 12:26 AM
Sounds like you had a good campaign!

I did!:smallbiggrin:

I became a god of war and honor. My first divine act was to troll the god of unjust war (hehe).

Your campaign sounds far more awesome, though, saving the multiverse and all.

Did you have a bunch "sub-campaigns" leading up to an exciting conclusion, or was it the same story arc throughout?

Shademan
2011-05-05, 12:49 AM
totally.
and my was it a great end for my players.
The paladin realized that the NPC paladin he had fought besides so many times were his dad but never got time to actually talk to him about it. his dad died lonely in a barn, drunk, a few years later. The Paladin became Duke (commander of the royal army) and helf the position for the rest of his life.
The monk started a school that would become known as the Fistycuff school of self-improvement. three NPC's they had met later graduated from the school and had adventures of their own.
The goblin barbarian saved the world from a dead daeva (false god from the stars) and killed the man that had destroyed her clan. she died of the wounds but instead of facing the afterlife that await goblins (it is not nice) Nerull sent her to the afterlife of the other races, the land of the gods. The goblins had no gods, and as the years went by, they started to see her as sort of a protector of their race, and she elbowed her way to the table of the gods.

good times all around

Cisturn
2011-05-05, 09:50 PM
I've most of the campaigns that I'm a player in, though the ones i DM have a less than great track record. I'm not sure what my favorite endings have been. There was one where i became St. Cuthbert, and another where my guy became a King. I think the best ending though was probably one of the simplest. I was playing a prince (the son of the other guy) Who successfully defended the world against an ancient angry god. At the end, a new dawn rose, and my characters kingdom could continue to grow and flourish.

Archpaladin Zousha
2011-05-06, 06:49 PM
I kind of got a feeling like that when I had to leave a campaign. It was at the end of the penultimate chapter of the campaign's story, before the final battle. I had to leave because I was moving back home for the summer, so the DM had initially been trying to give my character a final blaze of glory (I was totally cool with this, since it gave me a chance to really milk the paladin experience for all it was worth). It kinda backfired when my character proved just too tough to die, even having a mechanical snake the size of a 747 crash into him and surviving!

I roleplayed that the reason I wasn't joining my friends was because someone needed to remain behind and take command of the surviving armies when or if the various wounded kings succumbed to their injuries. All the other PCs bade me farewell, even giving me gifts (trinkets, mostly, but it was still touching). Then I bade them good luck and that's where it ended for me.

I was unable to attend the final session, but the DM sent an "Epilogue" to everyone via e-mail, and though my paladin wasn't counted among the "Godslayers" as the PCs became named, he still had an awesome epilogue, being one of the few surviving commanders of the army after the god's death triggered a massive series of natural disasters, and after that, he singlehandedly rebuilt his god's church, which had nearly been slaughtered to a man, and became a strong force in the rebuilding that followed. I wasn't in the final battle, but I still felt awesome because this was the kind of closure I had been waiting for and it was the kind of retirement my paladin would have wanted.

There were plans to have him return in the sequel campaign as a kind of "Force ghost" since the campaign took place a few centuries later and he most likely would have died of old age, but the campaign never really got off the ground.

grimbold
2011-05-06, 08:43 PM
finishing a reall 1-20 campaign is hard
i have heard of maybe 10-15 done IRL

Krimm_Blackleaf
2011-05-06, 08:46 PM
My group has only ever actually finished two games, neither of which was entirely to our satisfaction. My friend's Shadowrun game and my own 3.5 game, and by the end of both all we wanted to do was finish and move on. All the games before that we just stopped, not finished.

gibbo88
2011-05-08, 03:41 AM
My group has only finished one, and that one was done by our non-usual DM. One failed because we were running around at about level 10 and someone new wanted to join. though the two original characters were horribly multiclassed (one was my first and yeah....those generally don't go well I don't think). The other was when the characters all got killed to come back as ghosts, however two of the players seemed to take it a bit much to heart that they died and another person, who had been the DM's sounding board for ideas, wanted to join.

The one we finished was good though, if a little rail-roady. The DM meant well but there was pretty much nothing in the way of side quests to participate in, we just kinda chugged along on the main quest.

AslanCross
2011-05-08, 08:52 AM
The first campaign I completed was Red Hand of Doom, and I also agree it could've made a great novel. (See my campaign journal link)

I don't think all campaigns end well, though; in fact I think most just sputter and die, like my first campaign ever. As for campaigns that do reach a conclusion, I wouldn't know if a satisfying ending is par for the course.

Noneoyabizzness
2011-05-08, 06:33 PM
Ran a 2e campaign to completion once. 28 lvls of pure joy

Incanur
2011-05-08, 06:58 PM
finishing a reall 1-20 campaign is hard
i have heard of maybe 10-15 done IRL

My most recent group did 3-17 and 5-15, plus a jump to low epic for the finale in both campaigns.

onthetown
2011-05-08, 07:40 PM
Every time I've completed a campaign, the group focus has run low and the plot a bit dry by the point that it ends, so it always seems rushed and anticlimactic.

I had a good one, though. So it's definitely an awesome feeling when you wrap everything up. :smallsmile:

Paladineyddi
2011-05-08, 08:29 PM
Congratulations to you!

I have been playing D&D for 13 years now and i have NEVER finished a campaign...

working on one thats been lasting 4 years now but it seems not close to an ending but my gaming group will propably apart in the next few years :(

valadil
2011-05-08, 10:57 PM
I don't think we ever completed a game until I got to college. Now most of the games I play in see an ending. I guess at some point we learned time management skills. That or we learned the value of shorter stories with clearly defined endings. I'd rather run a 5 session short game that ends than a 15 session game that gets put on hiatus and may return some day, but probably not.