This is the end
Instant Campaign Builder Part IX: Ending the campaign
This article is part of the Instant Campaign Builder Project.
Why plan the ending?
I strongly suggest planning the ending, the last scene of your campaign before the first game is ever played. Here’s why:
- Knowing where the campaign is headed – or where it could be headed – can help you make a lot of decisions on the fly and improvise more effectively.
- You might realize you need to plant clues, items, or information along the way.
- Once the ending is planned, foreshadowing becomes an option. A while ago I wrote about roleplaying foreshadowing.
Expy the dragon says:
When in doubt, add a red dragon
to the last scene of your campaign.
It spices things up!
How to end a campaign
I would definitely try to deliver on the promise you made in the first game. Other than that I would refer to TT’s How to end a campaign.
End a campaign…
In a lot of ways it’s like a TV series where the creator(s) actually have a plan for where the series goes. Somethimes though the realities get in the way and the series is cut short. Does it stop dead in the middle of an episode? Do they get fewers easons than they thought they were going to get and have to cram a lot of ideas into the last season? Maybe they get a follow-up one-off where they can wrap things up or maybe they actually get to play it out how they saw it.
By all that I mean it’s a great idea to have an plan for the end of the campaign, but sometimes if reality comes crashing in you should be ready to crunch things down to essentials to reach a conclusion rather than have the campaign stop abruptly.
All this is assuming your campaign survives forst contact with the players’ hair-brained schemes of course. :)
Or you can actually return to an older campaign and conclude it properly like we did here: http://chattydm.blogspot.com/2007/07/ending-campaign.html