So you've been playing Jack the Adventurer for a long time. Maybe months, maybe more than a year, maybe several. Who knows exactly? But it's been one hell of a campaign and things are escalating. The climax is coming up next session. If Jack is your character, how many of you are expecting Jack to be fighting a BBEG for his final challenge?
What I'm curious to see is how many people have actually finished a campaign with a heist? Or by overseeing delicate, high tension, peace talks at a summit? Or by making a discovery so great that it takes the world into a new age? Or by making a full scale siege on a fortress? Or anything other than just fighting a BBEG?
Now to be clear, I'm not talking about campaigns that end by TPK or end prematurely for whatever reason. I'm just curious to see how many people have had a climax to a campaign that did not involve a fight with a BBEG. If you have, what was it? Was it as satisfying for you as killing a big scary evil guy? And was it just the one time or does your DM do a good job of mixing things up?
Never seen it. :(
I've only been in one game that finished to the end, and yes, it ended in a fantastic fight with the BBEG that we barely survived. It was fantastic!
As for the rest of the campaigns I've been in, I've been in two TPK ending games and about 50 promising campaigns that ended in a fizzle. The fizzles ended because people got bored and wanted a different campaign or people moved away or someone else wanted to GM or we wanted to try a new gaming system. And this is in my 23 years of gaming (I started in the summer of 1990).
Edit: I do think it would be really cool to end a campaign with a high tension peace talk or a heist. For example, if Carrion Crown's Book #2 "Trial of the Beast" was run as a single adventure module and ended at the finale of the trial (or perhaps was expanded to a campaign in it's own right), that would have been a fantastic ending to a game. Especially the was my group ended it. :)
I've only been in one game that finished to the end, and yes, it ended in a fantastic fight with the BBEG that we barely survived. It was fantastic!
As for the rest of the campaigns I've been in, I've been in two TPK ending games and about 50 promising campaigns that ended in a fizzle. The fizzles ended because people got bored and wanted a different campaign or people moved away or someone else wanted to GM or we wanted to try a new gaming system. And this is in my 23 years of gaming (I started in the summer of 1990).
Wow...that ...really really sucks. I'm glad that the one campaign you did finish went well. I've been playing for almost as long as you (not quite) but I've only seen a hand full of campaigns just fizzle out like that. Usually due to inexperienced DM's who were struggling to keep people engaged for long enough to get through the entire campaign. But sometimes it's just a matter of circumstance.
20+ years and I've NEVER seen a campaign be completed.
As either player or the screen monkey, rough estimate of 20. Batting about a 2/3rds completion rate.
Wow...that ...really really sucks. I'm glad that the one campaign you did finish went well. I've been playing for almost as long as you (not quite) but I've only seen a hand full of campaigns just fizzle out like that. Usually due to inexperienced DM's who were struggling to keep people engaged for long enough to get through the entire campaign. But sometimes it's just a matter of circumstance.I've only been in one game that finished to the end, and yes, it ended in a fantastic fight with the BBEG that we barely survived. It was fantastic!
As for the rest of the campaigns I've been in, I've been in two TPK ending games and about 50 promising campaigns that ended in a fizzle. The fizzles ended because people got bored and wanted a different campaign or people moved away or someone else wanted to GM or we wanted to try a new gaming system. And this is in my 23 years of gaming (I started in the summer of 1990).
Thanks. I can actually go through what I can remember:
Spoilered for people who really don't care. :)
1990-1998 - I was in school (from 5th grade through high school). Any "campaigns" I was in was run by immature kids (me included!) that couldn't keep a consistent game going even if we were able to meet on a regular schedule. We had a ton of starting campaigns using multiple games (AD&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc...)
1998-2001 - I was in a single campaign that went from level 1 to level 4 in that amount of time (with two pauses, one because someone else wanted to GM - that lasted 2 sessions, and the other because we wanted to try V:tM, which lasted about a month). That long term "it takes 3 years to go up 4 levels" game ended with a fizzle, because we had one player who kept getting his characters killed - through no fault of his own - and he was getting frustrated with the game. So we started a new one in the late spring of 2001. In the summer of 2001, I left to join the army. Throughout that whole time, I also continued to try Rifts and Shadowrun games with other groups (sometimes I ran them, sometimes not) that never seemed to last longer than a month or so.
I didn't play for about 2 years.
2003 - I introduced D&D to my fellow soldiers and started a campaign. That lasted until we got deployed to Iraq. I didn't play for another 2 years after that.
2006-2007 - This was the awesome campaign I mentioned earlier. I was back home from the army, and joined back up with my old group. I joined them mid campaign.
2008-2010 - We had a series of campaigns that fizzled because we either didn't like the GM created world or someone else wanted to GM. I also started using meetup.com to play with new players (we had a monthly meeting for one shot games). I stopped after a year because I was tired of being dictated what my characters can and cannot do based solely on their alignment (The catalyst was a LN character in love with Cormyr and who only cared about Cormyrian laws - but I kept being told that because I was LN, I had to obey the laws of every other nation too, and I had to apply those laws to all monsters - specifically goblins, which Cormyr particularly hates and hunts). I also joined the bi-weekly games at my university's local gaming group, but those were usually just pre-made modules.
2010-now - Around 2010 I was introduced to pathfinder. I had a huge falling out with my old gaming group (which lost me multiple friends that I've known for over a decade - if you've seen my other posts here on the Paizo forums, this was the group with the power-fanatic control freak GM), and I had graduated from college and didn't feel like continuing with the college group. During this time, I also tried Play-by-Post games; I was in a couple and I ran a few. I stopped the PbP after I got banned from the forum for posting copyrighted material (it was nearly impossible to run a 2nd ed game without doing that). I was also running an online weekly Atomic Highway game. After about half a year, my PF GM got a promotion and had to move away. So I started my own PF game with the remaining players. Around that same time I got a new job which interfered with my Atomic Highway game, so I quit that. So I started my own PF group and I had a solid group, but after a year two of my players graduated college and moved away. We decided to stop my game when one of my players wanted to start running PF APs. Jade Regent was our first. We TPK'd in book 2. Then we went to Carrion crown. We TPK'd in Book 2. We're starting Rise of the Rune Lords in about a month.
And that's the story of Bookrat's gaming life. :)
It's a crime to have been playing so long and to not have finished a campaign or to have finished only one. Even the BBEG ending can be really satisfying. Now I'm kind of curious how regularly people actually finish campaigns.
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My group mostly finishes them with BBEG battles. I actually finished one with a non-battle, though - it ended with the PCs informing the King that his daughter was behind the plot to assassinate his son (the crown prince). It had the potential to turn into a fight, but the PCs decided not to go that way. Which wasn't surprising, since they'd been avoiding fights wherever possible.
It was a very short campaign, with only 5 sessions. I'm not sure if that had something to do with it.
I have a friend that tells a story about some game they were playing that was going for a year and half . The end was to pulling off a assassintion of a world leader. They played really late into the night and got to the point where all they had to do was roll the dice on the sniper shot and deal with what happned after the shot . They called it a night and planned on rolling for the shot first thing next week. Next week never happened for a bunch of reasons they could not ever get everyone back together. He is still bitter about it 10 years later LOL .
The most memorable ending to a campaign I've ever had as a player (not as a DM) involved a primary villain who was a low to mid level aristocrat with an incredible amount of political power. He had friends in the highest places. The party worked for an organization that was pretty much a knock off of the Illuminati but in a fantasy setting (so secrecy was also really important). Our job was to make sure the world went the way our order that it should. And in this case, we had come to the conclusion that he was to dangerous to let live, but that his political influence was to useful to let him die. There was a lot of planning done before we could do the job. Bribes were made, assassinations, spies placed, etc. But ultimately what we did was kidnapped him and switched him with a changeling. And the world went on completely unaware of what had been done.
The campaigns I've been in, or run, usually didn't have a finish. They were a string of various adventures, mostly unrelated.
Only recently have I been in campaigns which featured an overall story arc (one I ran, one I played), but those were both play-by-email, and they both fizzled.
I've had one campaign that ended in a climactic battle... But, it was between two armies.
The DM had a good idea, incorporating everything we accomplished to offer bonuses and penalties for our side in the battle. But, in the end, it just ended up being a bunch of dice rolls to see who won, with very little strategy or even direction on our part.
Great idea, but a little disappointing from a player perspective.
In games other than D&D/Pathfinder, many campaigns I've played or run don't end in battles.
In D&D/Pathfinder, every campaign I've played has either ended with a BBEG fight, or a large scale battle/war.
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Retired a couple campaignes, never seen one "Finished". Generally the players continue on in the world as we start new adventures.
I've had retirement come for characters after mass battles that had no specific BBEG, and we've had players who retired mid campaign to do other things (become a king, get married, etc...) because the player wanted to try something else.
But in my experience, campaigns never really end. Just story arcs in the campaign.