When the final bell tolls, the last drop of blood falls from the throat of your enemy, and the black sword is sheathed for the final time there is a moment of calm, a point where the story is nearly told and all we have to do is tie the final knots on the end of the grand, dark epic. A good ending to a campaign is like the ending to any movie or novel, it can all hinge on it.

Closing the books, packing the dice, hanging the dark cloak

Granted, most games don’t end with a cymbal crash and peal of thunder. Most end when the GM or the players get bored of the game or are unable to play it. So it’s rare that the ending of a campaign ever comes up.

That being said when you’re running modules or even writing them it pays to have an epic end to your long running adventure. Whether it’s the tomb of the ancient lich king collapsing, the enormous demi-god made of undead worms dissolving, or travelling off plane to annihilate a former angel turned demon to end the threat of his madness forever, the ending of your game should hammer home all the work the characters have accomplished to this point.

Just because you are running an evil game does not mean you should slack on the ending. On the contrary it means the ending has to be much more interesting. Good guys can get away with riding into the sunset. Bad guys need more style.

Everybody Dies

The trouble with bad guys is the end for them never goes well, and maybe that’s how it should be. With a mature group you can get some really great moments when you cut the game with a resounding sound of machine gun fire. A fight they simply cannot win is a good way to end the game.

The best time to pull this move off is when everyone has reached their potential as characters, when their stories have been told and their very little else for them to do. This was the case for one Mr. Montana in the movie Scarface. He had reached his peak, he had everything, but to do that he had to murder, bully, and commit crimes that probably cost the lives of hundreds. It wasn’t long after he reached his peak before he drowned in his own glory and died in a hail of gunfire and swear words that’s still considered one of the most badass ways to go ever filmed on cinema.

When your characters are bad guys at the top of their game, this is not a bad way to go. Again, it takes a mature group who is willing to end the game anyway. Even if one player doesn’t want to end his characters story just yet then it’s not a bad thing to kill off the rest and allow that characters story to continue with a new cast of other characters.

No matter what method of execution you choose for the players, make it brutal, messy, and absolutely glorious. If they die on a pile of their enemies it’s even sweeter.

Everybody Lives, kinda.

If no one wants to die the simplest answer is simply to end it with a bit of exposition. So the bad guys have conquered their enemies and removed all obstacles from their path. So, you go into a brief summary of how the characters conquered the world and blah, blah, blah.

It’s boring, but it works. Only use it if you have nothing better as it’s better than nothing at all.

Divine Intervention

Let’s face it, if you have active gods in your setting (i.e. Forgotten Realms) than they might dislike the idea of having extra powerful evil characters in charge of everything. Beyond making the world a monochrome and boring place to observe from the heavens it can really put a crimp on the church building and worshiper converting quota.

So, offer them ascension. What? You ask. Make them gods? Are you mad? No, I’m clever. You see making the bad guys gods essentially makes them level one characters again. They’re now fighting on a level they could not have possibly imagined against beings that are a lot more experienced in the games of divinity than they are.

On the flipside if you are ending the campaign at that point you’ve given them an epic ending they can’t complain about. Their characters are now gods. They’ve ascended beyond the scope of stats and numbers. Thus, they are beyond the game. Included in the bonus is if you continue to play the same world as before you can include them as deities that characters can worship and even gain power from. There’s something undoubtedly satisfying in worshiping an older characters and having him grant your current character power.

Infernal Intervention

Just how many dark deals, evil bargains, and dreadful contracts have the characters made with the higher forces of darkness in their time as characters? When it’s time to cal the game, it’s time to call those debts. Just be careful that it is the time to end the game and that all characters can be swept up into these things in one fell swoop.

Also there has to be no feasible way for the characters to get out of the deals they’ve made or else the game will be dragged further on with their attempts to flee the devil. Of course, if this is how they’re going to be then maybe it’s not time to end the campaign.

GM Intervention

Just call the game, and possibly start a new one. I’m not going to talk much about this one as it’s simply the easiest option at your disposal.

What I will talk about is your next game. If you want this to pay off you either need to set the next game completely and utterly separate from the feel and play of the original game or keep all of the other aspects but let their characters changes to that world remain. The payoff to the first option is that the players will quickly forget their older characters as they focus on a new set of storyline and play. The second option has the added bonus of giving your players the satisfaction of knowing their original characters had a significant impact on the world they play in and even given the option of meeting and killing them to steal their loot. Hey, the life of a non player character is a cruel one.

Be daring, be bold, be nasty

When you announce that the campaign is coming to a close, pull out all the stops. No matter what you do, whether you kill the characters, ascend them to god hood, or steal their souls to be hammered on the anvils of Surtur into new demons then it pays to go as high, or as low, as you possibly can. So don’t hold back. Describe things in much greater detail and drama than you might otherwise. Steal from movies and literature if you must as these people tend to be much more talented at building a fantastic climax and wind down than the average game master (I’m sorry but it’s true).

Don’t be afraid to go around the table and have individual epilogues with each character. I’d like to note this is a direct steal from the storyteller systems suggestion of using prologues for its various exalted, and vampire characters. Let each character talk about what they plan to do after the climax, than exposit how that turns out. Kill them if necessary, but avoid it if possible.

Arise my child and embrace the power that is your birthright. Know that I am the game master and am not quoting a much better character from a more fulfilling game.

In the end the importance of a great end to your campaign cannot be measured in what few words I can fit into this column. In fact everything I’ve written over the past six months is but a small fraction of what one needs to know to make a satisfying game, let alone one where the characters are obvious bad guys to the setting. What’s important in the end is to have fun. The more fun you and the players are having, the less important outside advice is to you and your game. It’s difficult to improve on fun and more often than not it falls flat on its face. So stick with what you know. Take everything other people tell you with a grain of salt and live by your own experiences. If you are lost, seek help. Otherwise if you know the path, know what your players want and more importantly know what you want than never mind the advice of total strangers. This marks the end of my six-month long rant on how to gm for an evil group. Hope you enjoyed.