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My group is six years into a megadungeon campaign, and I find myself with a lot of dangling plot threads. PC backstories are still unexplored, ancient cults have been left un-exterminated, and MacGuffin artifacts have been all but forgotten. I feel lucky to have gotten all the way to level 17 with such a long-running group, but I'm having trouble figuring out what to let go and what to pay off.
Do any of you guys have experience with tying up loose ends in very-long campaigns? How do you tell the difference between plot threads that deserve a conclusion and ones that are better left forgotten? The end is finally in sight, but there just isn't time to do everything!
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Keep them in reserve, then build future campaigns around them.
After all, even the greatest heroes can't do everything. They can't necessarily do everything they've ever personally sought to do. What they leave behind still *exists,* for good or ill.
Perhaps some of it has no more interest {in / to} the world (such as a character's long-lost lover); but some certainly will (a cult that has been allowed to thrive.) If such things are forgotten to the heroes, then perhaps the next generation of champions will arise to handle those threats.
And invariably leave their own seeds that will grow into the adventure hooks of their successors.
A favorite thought of mine with issues like these is that prep is never wasted, it just gets used later.
But, you can have other people in the game world stumble upon and resolve the issues that the players have left dangling. In my games at least, the players do not exist in a vacuum and the world doesn't revolve around them, only the plot.
I ran a campaign way back that went on for a little over a decade.
...but aside from that, all of my games are a very specific story. When the story is told, the game is done. I can usually predict how many sessions the campaign will take and what the average party level will be. Makes it a lot easier to figure out what to add and what to leave out, etc.
gm should make a list of ALL of them. then build the anty-party npc who comes after you as the guys who actually DID finish all them objectives, oh and look at all that shiny gear and titles they got for doing so...
"..btw i saved your cousin's-sister's-husband's-ex-roommate from the werewolf curse that made him kill your parents..."
I made a short list in a text file to track them. But since the campaign needs to be finished, most of them will be dropped or covered verbally in the epilogue. The latter preferably by a player, but I still have to figure out how to pull that properly.
It's a bit frustrating to not cover them in play, but actually there are so many things we could do and only so many sessions. I remember myself that the main goal is fun, not completeness.
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If I DON'T want the thread to stay active I just explain that other agents of the Lantern Watch took care of him.
Oh. My God. My players founded a adventurer academy in their town. That itself has been a dangling plot thread. Now it's a solution.
Cheers! I think this is going to work exceptionally well. :D