Tell me about your best (and worst) campaign endings

[Doug McCrae]

Best ending was probably a V&V campaign I played in as a teenager. We defeated the archvillain in his secret base then we were all killed when the US Army dropped a nuclear bomb on us. They were scared of our power.

The last campaign I played in had quite a poor ending. We got control of a magic artefact and used it to kill Lolth, attack a githzerai space fleet and make most of the party members gods. It was ludicrous, nonsensical and way OTT imo. There was no real reason for our party, 14th level at the end but not particularly important given the campaign involved Sigil, a mindflayer empire, time travel and numerous artefacts, to be wielding this kind of power.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

We have a couple of best/worst ones, depending on whether you ask the DM or us players.

First one was StarGate (played with d20 Modern rules). Throughout the campaign, we were dealing with some guy who later turned out to be the BBEG - a former Jaffar (or whatever you spell that) who wants to take the power of a dead god for himself. We enter his base of operations, right before he can finalise whatever ritual were needed to take the god's larva into his body. He starts telling us that there didn't have to be a fight, since he has no intention of attacking earth (he wanted to get back at the System Lords) and he'd be obliged if we would kindly leave him in piece.

And we did.

The DM nearly fell over. Not bothering with the final fight was unprecedented. But we believed the guy, sounded plausible, so why fight him?

Of course, his attempt to dominate the god failed and the Gouaou-whatever destroyed earth a couple of years later, but I guess the DM just wanted to get back at us


Same DM, FR campaign. We were to free an old ally from the bowels of the Zulkir of Conjuration's very fortress (For those who don't know them, the Zulkirs are the leaders of the Red Wizards of Thay, each being the most accomplished Red Wizard of his chosen School.) We get in through some tunnels, we free our ally, and the tunnel promptly collapses.

We're told that it was caved in about 30 feet - it would take forever to dig through there, not that we had that long, and that teleportation only worked within the Zulkir's summoning chamber, so we had to get there (likely past the BBEG-sized Zulkir) to get out.

My Psion just used several manifestations of Disintegrate to get rid of the rubble and we went to the pub instead.

Apparently the module assumes you'll turn tail and run when you see Tiamat.

I'd assume that as well. You know, Tiamat.

This campaign ending is approved by the Darvin Society of Natural Adventurer Selection

 

[Anthelios]

Best Campaign Ending: This was recent for me. I had just ran a game where the world was new and fresh, and the PCs would basically be the "First heroes" of the world. It was a Weapons of Legacy inspired game, where their weapons would end up being legendary. At the end of the game, they had gathered a force from across the world to defend the city of Esterfay from an army of demons and constructs, lead by a mage who had taken the essence of the imprisoned god of destruction into himself. It was a legendary battle, and the game ended perfectly with the PCs thrashing the Big Baddie and his minions, and establishing peace between all the civilizations they had found throughout their decade long adventure across the unexplored continent.

Worst: After the aformentioned game, I created a Steam-Fantasy world I really enjoyed, but everyone's schedules clashed for about two months and I ended up dropping the campaign idea for something less story driven.

 

[Atavar]

I ended a long-running Planescape campaign with a longish, high-level (18-20) adventure that I wrote myself (I had almost exclusively used published modules before then). The main quest was to find and safely destroy the campaign's long-elusive main villain. Through a pre-destination paradox, the villain actually created himself via time travel, and in the process of doing so launched the characters on their plane-spanning adventuring careers. If the characters destroy him, would they break the pre-destination paradaox and erase him from existence? Would this end up changing the timeline such that their own adventuring careers had never happened, erasing all of the good they've done over so many years?

I was able to add a lot of interesting elements to the quest. There was a demiplane consisting of a small portion of a character's now-dead home world caught in a never-ending time loop. The main quest was multiverse-spanning in scope and reunited the characters with several NPCs met over many years of game time. The party ended up sacrificing much of their hard-won gains from over the years in order to complete their quest. And, before leaping off the edge if Sigil in an attempt to enter the Far Realm, many surviving NPCs the party befriended during their careers assembled nearby, said their goodbyes, and watched the party take their leap, possibly never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the final fight was a little anti-climatic. The main villain was essentially an amalgam of the party members themselves, sort of like a gestalt character who was the equivalent of a 25th level character in every base class. In the end, though, the party cleric cast antimagic field from a safe distance, went in with the party monk, and the monk proceeded to grapple and slowly kill the now-defenseless villain while the rest of the party fought the flunkies.

Antimagic and grapple suck when used together against a powerful magic bad-guy.

Anyway, despite the last battle the campaign still ended well, and the players all had a great time.

Later,

Atavar

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

Excellent stories! Thanks for all the feedback. For posterity, I also found this over at Treasure Tables that deals with the issue:

http://www.treasuretables.org/2006/11/how-to-end-a-campaign-according-to-plan

There are six articles there overall.

 

[ashockney]

Best ending: the best campaign endings are great, because D&D never ends. Every great campaign ending I've run, always leaves the door open, and most times has resulted in an another adventure. Sometimes years later.

Worst ending: this one is easy. One of the few campaigns I've ever been strictly a player in, and I had an awesome dwarf character that I really liked. The DM was giving us all cool toys and bells/whistles to play with in 2nd Edition. We had played it up quite a ways, may 10th - 12th level. We get together for a big event, there are extra players there, perhaps eight or nine players total. We're going to Thay, sweet. We teleport to get there. Roll it, he says. Roll what? There's a teleport failure %. We hadn't really rolled it much, so without thinking much or protesting we rolled. Badly. You're in the dirt, and you're all dead. End of campaign. Man that blew.

 

[Wombat]

Best ending: My big Ars Magica campaign ended magnificently. Three years of real time, 35+ years of game time ended with a huge battle where the fate of the world stood on the edge and the Good Guys won the day when one of the characters sacrificed himself for the greater good. One of the few times I have seen the players in tears.

Worst Ending: **sigh** Do I choose the campaigns that fell on their face after two episodes, the horror game that ended up as a bad comedy because no one got in the mood, or any of the campaigns that I worked hard to put together only to have the plug pulled on them before the campaign even had a real session... Let's not got there...

 

[Evilhalfling]

Best campaign ending a 2nd ed HS game, that was restarted with 2 old players and one new, six years later. It lasted about 15 months and ended gloriously!
PCs went to the layer of the abyss owned by the Indian Kali – revealed as the ‘power of chaos’ who gave the god Hextor his extra arms. While there the paladin (of Heronious) soaked his body (except one part) in liquid death, turning his skin gray and making him immune to pain (ref: Achllies & Lord of Light by Zeanly)

In escaping from the abyss they ended up on a alternate world, where the party had never existed and Demons had been overrunning the plane for eight years. (due to an 5th level quest from High School campaign) the party ended up in one of the last great cites to hold out. The wizard shrugged and planeshifted back to his home. His tower eventually sank into the ground to create a dungeon for later generations.

The paladin refused to abandon the people and calling upon his horse and his god, rode out with the dawn to face the demonic hordes. As the sunlight washed over his grey skin it turned the true gold of Heironus’ own. <end>
__

More recently a campaign ended with a 300’ deep crater, a Kaorti archmage bound into magical slumber for 1000 years, and the PCs taking over the Tower of Decption (free WotC adventure from web) turning it into a wiz tower and a shrine to the elven godess of gateways.
The PCs had fought thier way through the primary Kaorti Cyst - killing off 5 of 6 of the 'Commitee' of mages, to plunge the 'Sword of Normality' into the heart of the far realm nexus. An NPC (an undead halfling looking for redemption) pushed the swordsman into the saftey of the parties antimagic shell. After the crater, and the decision to use an artifact on the last of the Kaorti, the rest was merely talked out, not played. It was not nearly as perfect as the previous, but still nice and final.

Its all about self sacrifice - dying while winning is more fun then talking out the rest of your PCs destiny. Although just leaving the game open can work to.

The worst? Games that fell apart due to player conflict, or that ended abruptly, with the intention of doing a final session.

 

[Jolly Giant]

Apparently the module assumes you'll turn tail and run when you see Tiamat.

What level were you guys? I mean, Tiamat is a dragon. A really big one! And a god.

I'll agree it isn't a good ending to a campaign; or at least that it's a highly unusual one, but running away does seem to be the only sensible option.

One of my own worst endings was also a TPK (of sorts), caused by the party's refusal to turn away from something that was obviously way out of their league: To make a long story short(ish), they were way out in the middle of nowhere, when they crawl into a small cave on a mountainside to seek shelter from a blizzard. While sitting there they smell smoke, and after some sniffing around they discover that there is a tunnel, just big enough to crawl through, leading from this little cave and into the mountain. They crawl in, and the tunnel is really long.

Eventually they find that it comes out near the ceiling of a really huge cavern, at the floor of which is a drow city. The tunnel they just crawled through is simply a ventilation shaft. (I just wanted them to know how to find this place, as I was planning for them to come back there much later in the campaign.)

Well, they knew they couldn't do anything against an entire drow city at this time, since the party was only level 5 or 6. So they decide to leave as quitely as possible, just as I had planned for them to do. Then one guy gets a "bright" idea.

I can't remember why or exactly what it was, but they had something that allowed them to cast Shrink Item X/day. They crawl back out and start looking for suitable boulders on the mountainside. Having shrunk a number of suitable rocks, they bring them back in through the tunnel. Using Fly spells, they quietly search the cavern ceiling for suitable cracks and hollows to stick the shrunken rocks into. Having placed the rocks, they move away and dismiss the Shrink Item spells.

Tons of stone start raining on the drow city, hundreds of feet below. The city is by no means wiped out, but takes some serious damage. Giggling and laughing, the PCs run away.

Then the guy who originally had the "bright" idea gets another flash of insight. He stopped laughing and got the others attention by saying "Ok, that's it guys. Campaign's over, we're all dead. A few divination spells; a Teleport, and then we'll have group of powerful, PO'ed drow on our a**es."

He was right of course. No way were the drow gonna let them get away with this, and they were just too far away from anything or anyone that might help them. The players all wanted to end the campaign then and there, to spare them the embarresment. It was a very anti-climatic and unsatisfying end to what had so far been a fun and heroic campaign. :\

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

Almost every campaign I've ever run or played in has just petered out or ended abruptly when one or more people (usually the DM) got sick of it. The worst ending was my previous campaign where the players revolted and walked out. Never mind why - suffice it to say it was my fault and I felt like such a twit. But we moved on.
The best ending was therefore the only one that ever actually ended with a finale and a big "The End" sign (which I held up). It was one of those "big, final apocalyptic battle" ones, although the villain wasn't a BBEG as such. They all fought, nearly died, pulled through, one of the most important, complex and beloved NPCs died a valiant and noble death (or did he?), then the PCs emerged from the rubble of the city and took up their roles in helping to rebuild and wrote themselves permanently into the history books. I even played When You're Gone by the Cranberries and made a thanks speech, after which everybody applauded five long years of campaigning and then paid for dinner.
That was a great ending.
For me.