Campaigns die. It happens for all sorts of reasons, some possibly avoidable and others not.

Let's post-mortem some campaigns that died untimely deaths.

What happened?

Why?

In retrospect, what actions might have kept the campaign alive?

We live in a day and time when many people are running around thinking they are super busy, with more stuff to do than they have time for.  The biggest obstacle I have, is people not having the same work schedules / shifts; and no single day and time every week, when everyone can meet for hours of gaming.  Nobody is going to sacrifice important family time to sit down and play a game for multiple hours.

Jobs, kids, grandkids, grass cutting, people addicted to cell phones, people who follow sports teams, people who have other hobbies which are more important to them, etc. have all been problems for me.  I am forced to pitch one shot games, when convenient.  But, that is still gaming; so I'm glad I can at least do that.

One shots allow a lot of freedom for the GM.

Pretty much what Razor said.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1089801Campaigns die. It happens for all sorts of reasons, some possibly avoidable and others not.

Let's post-mortem some campaigns that died untimely deaths.

What happened?

Why?

In retrospect, what actions might have kept the campaign alive?

I once tried using "tactics" with monsters. That's the day I understood the power of focus fire. Killed a PC in the first encounter, and the player was rightfully pissed. Killed the campaign dead. Since then, I have always tried to put an element of randomness to how I run opponents.

last campaign died because the guy who was the keystone for the group moved from the midwest to the east coast for work.  I suppose I could have locked him in the basement, to prevent his moving, but that would be a problem because I only have a one bedroom apartment.  Plus he was former military and I'm a pasty nerd.
I didn't try to become the new keystone because the last time he moved (Texas to join the military) it caused me a great deal of stress that aggravated my already precarious mental health, requiring heavier medications that really fucked with my head, and left me with serious allergies to alcohol, shrimp, and mayonnaise (even small amounts can cause toxic shock).

One game I killed myself as two of the players were getting offensive/vulgar at the table and happened to do it with a game I really liked and was DMing at the time. After that I determined to end the campaign. But since one of the players was suffering a severe medical problem I stuck with it till the campaign was well along and had come to what was a good closing point and ended it on a high note  rather than just ending abruptly on the spot as my first urge was at the moment of the incident. Also because it was a personal irk and not something the other players were having trouble with far as I know. Though one player could tell I was really upset at the time.

What would I have done differently? Unfortunately probably nothing at all in that case.

Another was a Rifts campaign obstensibly for several hermaph players and players of hermaph characters from the group mentioned in another thread that to this day I am not exactly sure what happened specifically. But one of the problems was at least two of the characters were alot more powerful than probably should have been. But I was pretty lenient for what was allowed at the start believing everyone would keep their big guns reigned in. But pretty quick a few were grandstanding which detracted from the action. Part of the problem was one of the players was a flunkie of the moderator that had caused me to resign. Nothing serious. But there was some overt hostility. Eventually it just kind of puttered out.

What would I have done differently? Probably reigned in the characters power levels and put my foot down more on grandstanding. Not sure really.

And one 5e campaign went on hiatus when one of my players tried to commit suicide due to severe depression and even more severe levels of alcoholism. This is another one there wasnt much we could do about as the gaming sessions were part of the players stability. But he still fell off the wagon brutally. I feel as if I should have done more. But I dont know what.

And way back had my gaming group disband as two of the players mother bought so into the "Satanic Panic" craze that she moved out of state. Not alot could have done there too other than maybee try to enlighten her. But her freaking out came out of the blue.

Usually a campaign ends prematurely because several players leave at once, moving out of town especially. My Runelords campaign ended after 2 years when one player's work shifts changed and another moved. Happily I was able to resurrect it 15 months later as an online game.

I think it is probably best to plan a campaign for around 2 years, they tend to lose momentum after that. Also the PCs may outgrow the system. My Loudwater 4e game was 5.5 years but the best stuff was in the first 4 years and 20 levels.

Most of my campaigns die because I end up trying to keep too many plates spinning. The sandbox gets too big for my little shovel.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1089819I once tried using "tactics" with monsters. That's the day I understood the power of focus fire. Killed a PC in the first encounter, and the player was rightfully pissed. Killed the campaign dead. Since then, I have always tried to put an element of randomness to how I run opponents.

That's very important even if somewhat unreasonable from enemy's perspective. An intelligent enemy picks the target of the spell based on tactis, but with multiple monsters I randomize and roll on front of players who gets attacked. Sometimes a player seeing his buddy is heavily wounded will say "I'm protecting him, getting in the way of opponents" increasing chances of him being attacked, that's cool in my opinion and adds up to the game.

But not to drift off-topic most of my campaigns died because I overdid them, had this great idea of how things will look not taking into account that:
a) players don't know such background detail as I do so things that are super-interesting from my perspective might be compeletly boring for them
b) between sessions I think about the campaign about ten times more than them so they simply forgot a lot of things and my super-duper overthought campaign loses cohesivness

Above can be summarised in stating that I was a douchebag gm who is more concentrated on his elaborate plot than on his players. They still had fun but could have way much more. The solution was I stopped being that douchebag, gave a lot of power over the game to my players.

Quote from: Godfather Punk;1089844Most of my campaigns die because I end up trying to keep too many plates spinning. The sandbox gets too big for my little shovel.

Something I have to watch out now, I tend to overdo. Old habits die hard.

About half of my campaigns ended because of people moving.  Some of them we were able to end on a reasonable note, and others just died.  All I could have done to save them was to make them shorter.  That's what I tend to do now--run multiple "campaigns" in the same setting, so that campaigns can end on a high note.  A "short" campaign for us is anything from 1 to 2 years.

The only campaign I had outright die because of the campaign itself was my last D&D 3E campaign.  It died because I burnt out on 3E completely, and didn't catch the signs quickly enough to wind down gracefully.  The best way to have fixed that was to have stopped playing 3E one campaign sooner than I did.

Most of the games I have been in ended because we felt it that it had played out and it was time to move on. Others lasted a short time, but then ended when we, or at least the GM, realized that there wasn't as much of a lengthy campaign to the concept than was originally thought.