Ending a Campaign Well

[Necrosnoop110]

Generally, I am seeking advice and tips on how to end a campaign well. My group will be wrapping up my campaign within the next few months and I want to make it the best it can be.

Things I should make sure I do?

Things I should definitely avoid?

(If it matters this is a 3.5 D&D homebrewed campaign were the PCs essentially save the world. We've gone from 5th level to hopefully end up around 17th)

Peace,
Necro

[JohnnyMayHymn]

you might want to ask the players if there are unfinished goals for their characters, stuff they want to do before the world ends(if they fail)

this could help build suspense too if they know there is a really tough fight ahead

[Ryu Hayabusa]

First of all, any good ending leaves the participants satisfied. You need to ask yourself how you can leave them feeling satisfied. What would need to happen to make them satisfied? Once you can answer that question, you can craft the final stages of your campaign. Like any good climax, it needs to be exciting and fulfilling when it does that. Whatever it is they want to do, make sure they feel they earn it and that it was a worthwhile endeavor to do so. It's all about the payoff at this stage, so make it a good one.

[Necrosnoop110]

LINK: The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time

LINK: How To Write The Ending Of Your Novel

[archangel.arcanis]

Wrap up pretty much everything, you can leave hanging threads to tie into a future campaign but try not to leave too many. As was already said make sure the players are satisfied with where they leave their characters. Have some narration for each PC to say what happens to them after the game, just make sure it is going the direction the player wants and doesn't ruin the character for them.

[X-Codes]

Don't mean to whore for WotC, but this is basically what the entire book Elder Evils is about.

[Dragon Snack]

My campaigns usually end with a TPK.  You should probably avoid that.

Although some of them are STILL talked about...

[Bloody Initiate]

Generally I'm happy putting a campaign/character to bed after a massive reward that I feel I earned. Gigantic rewards tend to get your mouth watering at first, then you realize that you've been given more than you can use in a balanced fashion and suddenly it feels like time to put that character - and whatever missions they were doing - to bed. After all, they've got epic adventures in their history and obscene rewards they earned, you don't want to spoil their legacy by getting them killed in the next campaign.

[RobbyPants]

Finishing story arcs is often a good place. Tying up loose ends can be good, so long as they aren't trivial by the campaign's end. Significantly altering the campaign world (hopefully in a good way) can be a nice place to leave off.

On a somewhat related note, I'd suggest avoiding using the Deck of Many things at any point in your campaign. Every time it's come up in the past, it seems to force the campaign to end unpleasantly.

[GMarshal]

My advice is to end as soon after the climax as possible. Once they've done whatever the campaign goal was, they have the whole emotional payoff of basically WINNING. Narrate the rewards, do the crowning ceremony, show how what they did matter, and then cut it off. There is nothing more disappointing than having stopped the end of the universe as we know it, becoming a baron of the thanelands and receiving  that staff of the archmagi you were lusting for, and then having to go off and kill more random crap, because apparently saving the world wasn't enough.

Later, in another campaign, they can hear about the legends of their PCs, but once they've gotten the massive reward they were going for, they have little more to fight for. Plus, your whole campaign has been working towards the climax, in a multi-year build up, any threats after that are going to be disappointing by comparison.

So, yeah, give them the rewards you know they want, the flashy recognition, the titles and the loot, and the end it. Narrate a small epilogue, showing how what they did changed/preserved the world and the segue into the next campaign.