@Patrick Benson – Yep, TV seasons are a great analogy — maps pretty much perfectly to this take on closure in RPGs.

@Crimson Newb – Oh yeah — big time! Avoiding burnout is huge, and I should have mentioned that. Great point!

One tabletop campaign I’m in has been going for just over three years, and I’ve been pining for it to conclude for months now, mostly due to boredom with my PC. The DM has run 3 or 4 versions of the same setting over many years and is, I believe, loathe to let go of the environment he is so comfortable in.

The other tabletop game I play in has the DM pushing to wind things up, but we can’t seem to meet often enough to finish it off. Still, he and I are cooking plans for co-DMing the next campaign in a similar but time-shifted setting but with all-new PCs.

Guess which group I have more energy for?

Scott and I designed it that way. When we met in 2007, we were both in a mode where we wanted to experiment with new games, many of which were outside the usual fare of D&D or Shadowrun. Both of us had games that we wanted to try out, instead of having them languish on dusty shelves.

We worked up a plan to have mini-series instead of lengthy campaigns. A GM would plan for a game lasting four to ten sessions. A little less or a little longer wasn’t a problem. The idea was to have a conclusion to the mini series, one that would wrap things up but perhaps leave the game open to a sequel in the future.

It has worked out well. We opened with Star Wars Saga Edition. Primetime Adventures then took us into unfamiliar territory. A short but enjoyable game of Coyote Trail and a Shadowrun 4e one-shot transitioned us back to traditional play. The demand for a Star Wars sequel was heard and answered.

Scheduling issues seemed to crop up a lot during 2008, but we had a successful conclusion to the Star Wars sequel in the end. Now we head into our first D&D 4e series and a chance to fully evaluate the latest incarnation of the grand old game.

Spirit of the Century stands ready to fill in any gaps. REIGN and L5R “consider” making an appearance in the future. Or perhaps Primetime Adventures will see another run with a fresh new “show.”

I’m really enjoying the short story game style of my other group, which has been good for trying out lots of games and planned endings at the end of each one. It really increased the percentage of games I’ve played in that reached a conclusion of some kind.

In the other, a couple was moving away, so I had to drop all of my long term plans and wrap up the storyline in one major adventure. I think that actually made me more creative (having to wrap up a few major plots at once rather than spread over many levels of adventuring), so it was naturally more epic. Ironically enough, despite it being one of our shortest campaigns and having all of the main plots wrapped up, it is the one they still talk about picking up again someday.

The truth is, from my experiences, is that the vast majority of campaigns just stop, they don’t end. Interest starts to fade, and rather than constructing a good ending, the game just withers until its replaced by a new shiny game.

I bet campaigns would be much better served, if they were given a dramatic ending, rather than just dropped.

In fact this just happened in the group I play in. Our Star Wars game was getting stale, and the GM (after talking to some of the players…not all) decided to drop the game and switch for a new campaign.

One of the players was put off by the fact that the game did not have an “ending”. It really soured the players gaming experience, and has made him hesitant to get into the next campaign, for fear that campaign will just get dropped as well.

So having an ending to a game, gives that sense of closure. For a campaign that is dying, you don’t need a long drawn out ending, but something that gives the players a sense of completion.

Learning how to bring a story to a close can not only mean the difference between Amazing and Great campaigns; it can also make a huge difference in how you remember those stories. Will you remember your tremendous final victory or how the bad guy effectively got away because you never got around to dispensing justice?

I’m moving again in a little less than a year and I’m currently running Pathfinder’s AP, Rise of the Runelords. I am not certain we will make it to the end, so I’m beginning to consider now how we can bring closure for the PCs even if they don’t make it to fabled Xin-Shalast.