The Horror
It didn't work because, in a scenario in which the player characters were facing down the awakening of Cthulhu, they utterly failed. In fact, thanks to one of my player's actions they helped wake him up. This led to a showdown where one character sacrificed himself to save the others, causing a submarine to go nuclear in Cthulhu's face. You can read how it ended here.
What was amazing was that none of it was planned; I had contingencies, of course, but I never expected things to spiral so marvelously out of control. We ended up with a real showstopper, complete with players making unexpected sacrifices. It was a high point in the campaign. It was hard to top that.
So I didn't. We had one more session before my daughter was born, so I decided to play two scenarios, In Media Res and The Music of the Spheres, to show how insane the world got after Cthulhu's "death."
Cthulhu isn't dead of course. This is just another step in the evolution of the Great Old Ones…in this case, Cthylla. I adopted Monte Cook's World of Darkness model for my reboot of the campaign, with the "Nightmare Wave" originating in the ocean where Cthulhu exploded.
It was a fitting way to pause the campaign. It took me six months until I came up with a way to bring everyone back.
Your Turn: Have you ever had such a show-stopping moment in a game that you had to end it then and there?
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