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View Full Version : Abrupt ends to campaigns



Crake
2013-10-07, 01:25 PM
So I'd been running a game for about 7-8 months that I had long plans for, it wasn't even half way done at this point, the players were all about to hit level 10, and everyone looked forward to the game we ran every week. Then suddenly one of the players announced that he was moving away as a career choice... Now there were only three players, so him leaving dropped the party size to two, and we all decided to put the campaign on hold until further notice. As I'm sure many of you have experienced, this likely means the game will be put on ice indefinitely and thus never finish. That was about two months ago now and the spark of GMing has yet to return me. This was my first real game as a GM too, and I feel absolutely devastated at the prospect of never completing it.

How do you get back on the GMing horse after something like this? I just can't imagine myself GMing anymore when the game could just fall apart like that again.

RochtheCrusher
2013-10-07, 01:51 PM
Unfortunately, this sort of thing just happens... and it isn't limited to tabletop games. I've had it happen several times with forum-based RP, and it is really disappointing when it does.

One essential thing to help this is to find a core group... as few as yourself and one other dedicated player can do it. In my case, this player and myself work a few hours of overtime a week making things easier for the rest of the group... doing paperwork, discussing how to draw them in without pushing them too far, supplying dice and note-taking materials, whatever... as a DM, it really helps if just one person has your back.

Obviously, trying to ensure that your player base minus one person is still critical mass is a good thing. This may involve taking a risk on some geeks you don't know (like from the comic shop or whatever, most have a bulletin board for meeting folks), but again that support from your core players will help you train them up and, if necessary, figure out how to boot them out again without letting them kill the group.

Lastly... you really need to be willing to fight for your hobby, without going nuts. Be willing to try running with 2 players. Be willing to figure out how to get a new player, or how to Skype the old one in. Work at it... but if you fail?

Well, you got to tell a story for 8 months, and you learned a lot about what does and doesn't work, and you had fun. That is a success as a campaign, even if it doesn't feel like it... and it's worth trying again. You don't have to finish the story to produce something that was worth telling.

LibraryOgre
2013-10-07, 01:58 PM
If no one is up to GMing, take a break. Play board games, hang out, but if you're not up to it, don't run.

Or, find another game, and try for something more episodic.

Crake
2013-10-07, 02:07 PM
Unfortunately, this sort of thing just happens... and it isn't limited to tabletop games. I've had it happen several times with forum-based RP, and it is really disappointing when it does.

One essential thing to help this is to find a core group... as few as yourself and one other dedicated player can do it. In my case, this player and myself work a few hours of overtime a week making things easier for the rest of the group... doing paperwork, discussing how to draw them in without pushing them too far, supplying dice and note-taking materials, whatever... as a DM, it really helps if just one person has your back.

Obviously, trying to ensure that your player base minus one person is still critical mass is a good thing. This may involve taking a risk on some geeks you don't know (like from the comic shop or whatever, most have a bulletin board for meeting folks), but again that support from your core players will help you train them up and, if necessary, figure out how to boot them out again without letting them kill the group.

Lastly... you really need to be willing to fight for your hobby, without going nuts. Be willing to try running with 2 players. Be willing to figure out how to get a new player, or how to Skype the old one in. Work at it... but if you fail?

Well, you got to tell a story for 8 months, and you learned a lot about what does and doesn't work, and you had fun. That is a success as a campaign, even if it doesn't feel like it... and it's worth trying again. You don't have to finish the story to produce something that was worth telling.

When you put it that way, I think part of the reason I feel so devastated is because I kinda felt like the player that left was a core player. We connected quite closely as player/GM, and his character was quite important to the developing plot.


If no one is up to GMing, take a break. Play board games, hang out, but if you're not up to it, don't run.

Or, find another game, and try for something more episodic.

Yeah, I'm currently part of two other games (one thst just started, actually being run by one of my former players no less and another that's been running for almost two years now), but while GMing I realised I enjoyed that far more than I ever did being a player, I just feel so conflicted about it all.

lytokk
2013-10-07, 02:34 PM
Some people get more enjoyment out of telling a story than being in the story. I think that's the best DM/Player comparison really. If you want to keep running your game, consider running the player who had to leave as an NPC. Try to keep him towards the back and really only RP with him in party. That's really the best way I've found to run NPC party members. If you can, try and rewrite the important parts of that character into the other 2 members, so that you're putting the importance on the players.

Otherwise, it was mentioned to try skyping him in.

I've had a few games with abrupt endings, both as a DM and player. As a DM, don't take offense. Sometimes circumstances are beyond your control, but sometimes you actually do have to fight to keep a game together, based on schedules and interest. Whenever I was a player and a game just ended, I hated it. Felt like something was left unfinished and I always wondered what happened to my character. If its clear the game can never be finished, try chronicling the events of the game, and then write out the way you would like for it to have finished. At the least, you've got a nice story out of it and if you're building your own campaign world, a few high level NPC's who have already saved the world once for advice to new characters.

Crake
2013-10-07, 02:39 PM
Some people get more enjoyment out of telling a story than being in the story. I think that's the best DM/Player comparison really. If you want to keep running your game, consider running the player who had to leave as an NPC. Try to keep him towards the back and really only RP with him in party. That's really the best way I've found to run NPC party members. If you can, try and rewrite the important parts of that character into the other 2 members, so that you're putting the importance on the players.

Otherwise, it was mentioned to try skyping him in.

I've had a few games with abrupt endings, both as a DM and player. As a DM, don't take offense. Sometimes circumstances are beyond your control, but sometimes you actually do have to fight to keep a game together, based on schedules and interest. Whenever I was a player and a game just ended, I hated it. Felt like something was left unfinished and I always wondered what happened to my character. If its clear the game can never be finished, try chronicling the events of the game, and then write out the way you would like for it to have finished. At the least, you've got a nice story out of it and if you're building your own campaign world, a few high level NPC's who have already saved the world once for advice to new characters.

Funny you should mention chronicling the events of the campaign and writing my own ending, because that's something that I'm actually working on

veti
2013-10-07, 03:04 PM
First, don't take it personally. Life happens. D&D is a hobby. There will always be some things - quite a lot of things, in fact - that will always take priority over D&D, even for someone who was previously quite committed to the campaign.

It sounds like you need a larger pool of players. A group of 4 is, as you've found, a bit - unstable. There's a reason why the classic adventuring party is 5 or 6 PCs (meaning, 6 or 7 total players in the group, meaning that most weeks, you expect there'll be at least one who won't show up at all, and another one or two may leave early or only be present part-time. So long as the absentee isn't always the same one, that's OK.)

You could try Skype, but I would see that as sort of a bridging loan - it's hard to keep going for a long session over a medium like that. In the longer term, you need to rewrite your story to allow for that character to become an NPC, and introduce 2 or 3 new PCs as soon as possible.

Edit: "write your own ending" is also a good idea. Then your next campaign can be set in the same setting, but 20 or 100 years on, when this one has passed into history. That will give your surviving players a chance to find out what happened to their old PCs, which is valuable, particularly if they achieved something good-but-unexpected.

Mr Beer
2013-10-07, 04:49 PM
If I want to GM, having 2 players will not stop me at all. I would be running the game with the remaining people and seek input from the missing player about how he would like his character to run. I would probably give him a quick email update after every game and ask for directions (if he shows any interest) because you're keeping it alive in his mind and he'll be keener to get back into it when he can.

In the meantime, actively recruit. If you don't know anyone who games and your players also don't, look online and post physical advertisement in game stores.

Tabletop RPGs are not always the easiest thing to find a group to game with. Outside of large colleges and universities, which is a 3 year window of RPG nirvana, be prepared to have to work to make it happen sometimes.

RochtheCrusher
2013-10-07, 04:56 PM
When you put it that way, I think part of the reason I feel so devastated is because I kinda felt like the player that left was a core player. We connected quite closely as player/GM, and his character was quite important to the developing plot.

Well yeah, but... sometimes your best player gets a job (or worse, a girlfriend :-P) and has to go. Gotta try not to take it personally, but yes. That can be a game killer.

On the other hand, once you find another dedicated player, that's unlikely to happen again. Most players are far more replaceable, though obviously it still takes a toll as a DM.

On the whole, it seems like you've got your GMing under control. 8 months really is a long campaign, and you don't get players to stay that long unless you're doing something right.

As others have said, there are worse things than taking a break until you feel like running, or until someone begs you to... but it's worth getting back on the horse.

Couronne
2013-10-07, 05:02 PM
I found it easier to cope with the collapse of a campaign once I stopped looking at in terms of where I wanted it to go and started thinking about it in terms of what I was providing for my players, whoever they were.

It's the difference between telling the story you've written and helping the players build a story. Depends what your enjoyment factor in DMing is though.

Now that I see my role as DM as facilitating the story and ensuring that the players have fun in the sessions they attend, wherever the campaign ends out, theres a net positive (rather than a deficit of 'story untold and fun not yet had'). It also means I prep less up front and am more malleable storywise as a DM - that approach makes it easier to integrate interesting ideas and events into the plot from session to session without a whole load of revisions.

Also, if you are able to build another group - the prep you've already done is not wasted! Write a new beginning which dovetails into where you left off, have the new party come across the remnants of the old one and then pick the story back up again.

Although I use a minimal prep approach these days, if you stick at DM'ing and are savvy about it, all of the prep that you do do, all of the plans that you never saw come to fruition - they're all valuable as prep for future adventures. One of the reasons I can now run a session on the back of basically no prep is that I have a ton of stuff from previous games sitting on my laptop that never saw the light of day and can be called up as and when.

Averis Vol
2013-10-07, 05:41 PM
I just had a game I was runnin for a year and a half end last Saturday due to work related issues and the PCs having too many choices and not enough agreement on the correct campaign course. And after running it for a year and a half, I wasn't exactly upset, but I was disappointed my PCs never got to experience the whole world of things I had planned for them.

So I dusted I off and started work on a new game that we will be playing this Saturday. My PCs are excited for the new one and I've enjoyed building a new part of the world for them to explore.

As fr how to deal with it, I guess that while I am bummed a bit, I have a multitude of ideas swirling through my head, I can keep my ideas alive and reuse the older scenarios I didn't get to see played out. Another thing is I got a good feelin when my players said that as long as I was running something they were happy because they enjoyed the world I made and appreciated the hours of work I put into making it as in depth as it was. So the real joy for me is getting together with my friends and us testing each others wits in a cola orative story, and its something I would so if I had four, three, seven or even one player(s).