How would you end the Adventure Path of Savage Tide Early?

[Viento Oscuro]

Pardon me for my bad english. I have been a DM for awhile and running the Savage Tide. However I think life is getting in the way of the game or the game is getting in the way of life and I want to bring the game to a close. We are half way through the city of the broken idols. How would you end the adventure path on a positive tone?

[NPC Dave]

Reduce the remaining encounter areas and let them face off against Khala as soon as possible. Defeating him liberates the Isle of Dread from Demogorgon's control and the PCs return victorious to develop their own domains on the isle of Telmute and the colony of Farshore.

Drop any references to the Crimson Fleet collecting the savage pearls, or have the PCs find evidence shipments were only about to start and they prevented any significant distribution.

[Haldrick]

Basically I agree with NPC Dave, here are my thoughts in more detail:

1. The campaign has to end with the world saved. So they need to find evidence/correspondence that shows The Shadow Pearls cannot be made anywhere else and that the ones already delivered have been used or accidentally broken.

2 The climax has to be special. Look at your party and enhance Khala or add helpers to make the fight really epic.

I stopped my ST campaign at a similar point.

[Lee Hanna]

We ended with the battle of Farshore, and I think some bits of adventuring on the island were shortened, too.

[Brother Fen]

Depending on how much time you have, you can just skip to the last installment.

[Peter Stewart]

I tend to think there are three logical breakpoints in the campaign.

First, after Tides of Dread. The party fought off the fleet, killed Vanthus, and saved Farshore in an epic battle. Good conclusion that neatly wraps up the big elements of the story. Scrub all references to shadow pearls, and make krakens cove an aberration.

Second, at the end of Serpents, especially if you don't reintroduce Vanthus and instead have Lvinia abducted (along with others) by the Crimson Fleet. Alternatively, have death knight Vanthus make his stand at the base. In either case, the Crimson Fleet is a big regional terror that has haunted the party before, and gives some meaning to the end. It's the last material plane adventure, let's you wrap the last of the pearls (recovered at their base before being shipped out) and is generally a potential high note wrap up where you can easily wrap any loose ends, escaped does, etc.

[Peter Stewart]

Obviously third is the written ending. It seems like many, even a majority of games end around City though. I think it was a lesson designers took from Dungeon when they started on APs. Gm fatigue is a real thing, and twelve chapters is a great many.

I had a gm run through the first six, plus something like fifteen other adventures thrown in. It was a pretty epic campaign for a while, but even it bogged down. The game became hugely unwieldy, characters got stale, and the plot was muddy. Very little ever seemed to get resolved, and story stretched on. Eventually the game died due to his fatigue and frustration after... 8 years or so?

[Mykull]

You could have all of the Shadow Pearls in Khala's possession (he hasn't shipped them yet).