That is, how many TTRPG campaigns that you were a part of reached a conclusion where you'd say the fiction of the game was finished? Story told, done, complete, etc? Instead of fizzling out (due to scheduling conflicts, loss of interest, moving on to a new game, etc). I'm trying to figure out if my experience is typical or not. I've played in or run 20+ campaigns since I got into TTRPGs about 20 years ago, but I've only ever "finished" 3 campaigns. One-shots don't count! I mean something that was meant to be episodic and take a long time to unfold. (I made this a post instead of a poll because I'm interested in specifics if you have them!)

I am running something next week that is just ripped straight from the pages of Dune Messiah (pro GM tip literally no one will notice if you do this). It got me thinking: What are the books you've read (I'm thinking Sci-Fi/Fantasy but I guess anything) that you feel have had the biggest influence on the way your games run? For example: I wouldn't say they're my favorites, but the old REH Conan pulp stories have had an outsized impact on how I run games. I love the mystery of the wilderness and the idea that magic is ancient and dangerous, and I love that the action is usually driven forward because Conan is trying to steal something or kill someone, and not because the action finds him and he gets wrapped up in it. What comes to mind when you think about SF/F books and the way you play and run your games?

The idea: players are hired to run a line of wire, strung on poles, from a monastery to a distant town along their route. They'll be paid ten gold for every km they cover, and a 500g bonus if they get there within a reasonable time frame. Frank the Overseer is sent with them as the monk's representative. As they travel the money they stand to make rises higher and higher, but Frank's demands become ever more bold - whatever it takes to get the wire done on time. Think of the train track being laid in Once Upon A Time In The West. So at some point the players have to ask themselves, "do we do bad things to finish the job, or do we walk and lose it all?" Along the way there could be townsfolk that welcome them, homesteaders that refuse to let the line through (uh oh), animal dangers, engineering puzzles, and all the while the villain of the piece is travelling *under their protection*. What say you?

You ever have a campaign die out before its time? I've had plenty of them, and sometimes it's fine to just let them go. But I have two or three campaigns that I look back on and really regret letting fizzle out. It was just a scheduling/timing thing, and everything else about the game was great and fun. So I decided to do an experiment to bring one of them back - sort of a TTRPG necromancy. I found my old campaign notes, and this is what I did to bring back the game: - Reach out to the old players and get most of them on board - Fill the empty seats with new players (they'll play old characters, though) - Posted 6 short "chronicles" in our Discord server detailing the story so far (this game was 12 years ago, so most people didn't remember much). This was a total of about 2,000 words that covered a full year of weekly play, so it was pretty condensed and I cut out a lot Then I prepped for a "Session -1": a world building session we'd do collaboratively to get on the same page about where we'd begin the game. Because here's the catch: I don't want to just play this old game. I want to FINISH it. So we're going to get clear on where we left off, then we're going to fast-forward through time until the endgame and play THAT. So for Session -1, I just assembled a quick list of factions, NPCs, and locations that were important to the campaign when it dropped off. And when we got together for the session, I had each player: - Pick two factions they liked - Describe how those factions would interact in the time after the game ended (ally, conflict, etc) - Talk about how their character might have gotten involved in that interaction So we had a rough timeline of a few things that had happened after the end of the game and how they'd play out. Then we just riffed together on what the natural consequence of all that rising tension was and decided on the inciting incident that brought the party back together. So we had factions/NPCs/locations (which the players had tweaked), a rough summary of active conflicts, and some momentum to how the player characters were involved.

I feel I've driven the plot in a direction that leaves players with only one collective goal SO STRONG that for many sessions any new interests I throw at them will either be ignored (not towards goal), or feel trivial (why are we forced to engage with these NPCs?). It wouldn't be the first time I rewind a bit and go a different direction. Talk to me about the times you've done the same, rather than suffer through self-inflicted maybe-terrible sessions.