So has anyone here ever seen a campaign come to its conclusion?

So has anyone here ever seen a campaign come to its conclusion?

Every game I've ever been in, running or playing has just petered out after a few sessions after people start to lose interest or the GM gets busy.

Yes.
A 4e campaign that lasted two years.
A dark Heresy game that lasted about half a year.
A 4e campaign that lasted a summer.
An Adeptus Evangelion 2.5 game that lasted a year and a half.
A 4e campaign that lasted half a year.
A MAID RPG campaign that lasted half a year.
A BESM 3e game that lasted three months.
A Shadowrun 4e game that lasted a year.
An Adeptus Evangelion v3 game that lasted two years.

There might have been some more, but there you go.

I’ve ended multiples, yeah. It just takes the right group and some dedication to what you’re doing. It helps if the group takes it seriously when it comes to scheduling, which is usually where games fall apart.

Two. Both were around 3 months long. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and 3.5.

as a GM I never plan ends to campaigns and just run every session like it'll be the last

Longest campaign I've run/been in went for about a year. There's normally five or so smaller games each year between different GMs, usually not overlapping

One. DM ran us through the Tomb of Horrors. Took us a couple months and several characters but we made it to the end. One person was even still playing their original character.

Right now I'm in one that the DM is trying to wrap up by May since he's moving and wants to complete the story as much as we do. The party's dwindled down to just two players with a third that can make it on occasions.

Forgot to mention, that second game's been going since February of last year. Meeting once a week, playing for about three hours at a time with only a couple weeks we couldn't play due to holidays and real life stuff.

I was in a Metal Gear Solid hack of Only War that lasted for 4 years and ended recently.

>been running a campaign for over 5 years
>"epic" length and players are just now hitting upper teens
>everyone has, for awhile now, fully immersed themselves into their characters and the world I made
>get messages from them to talk about things happening in-game
>hear them talk about how they discuss the campaign at work
>I never liked high-fantasy but went along with DMing anyways even though I had never done it before because, all my friends moved away for work, was lonely, and dnd was the only way we still got to "hang out"
>I hate the setting, and hate DMing, and want to end it but I cant because I'll just end up having to DM again and no one wants to learn a new system.

No. If I don't DM it will always, ALWAYS, end after two sessions.

After recalibrating the group's expectations, several.

We don't have the time to dedicate ourselves to years-long plots. Instead, the GMs in the group have all agreed on short-form campaigns, 8-12 planned sessions with room for player dickery to shorten or lengthen things. Solid A plot, then a B and C plot for us to chase as we see fit.

There's nothing stopping us from reusing characters, and this means that we actually see stuff get done.

Get yourself a side group online, user

Tried multiple times. Lucky to last past the first session, usually a group of or at least one That Guy with a DM that cant kick people so ruins the experience, meme spouting faggots, people with anime avatars, and a plethora if houserules have seen the end to every would-be online group I've tried.

We've only properly ended two campaigns.
Both of the endings were a bit of a let down.

I mean technically. But only because my party committed suicide by retardation and the bad guy won.

It tends to be pretty 50/50 with games I run. If it's in a universe I create from scratch, the campaign is pretty successful. One I ran was basically Greyhawk meets a serious and played-straight Discworld and we've had two campaigns lasting about a year each and played to their conclusion. However, if I run a game in an existing universe, it tends to die out after two or three sessions. I've run games in Bleach (3 sessions), Soul Eater (2 sessions), Star Wars (1 session), DC (2 sessions) and probably a couple others I'm forgetting. Currently planning a RWBY game, which shows that I'm insane and repeating the same experiments over and over.

Is there even a way to end a campaign? Every adventure has the potential to go on forever until all people involved die. Are games finished when we decide they are? If so, every game we ever played ended because we decided they were finished by not picking them back up. What is an ending?

>What is an ending
a resolution of matters that leaves a sense of closure

Story time please.

I saw one, I joined the group and basically was a ride-along for the last session. I also participated in one (the subsequent campaign of the same group) that concluded.

Both were savage world's games, the first was pirates in the vein of PotC where it was ostensibly the age of pirates on historical Earth, but magic and monsters and shit were there too. The second campaign was Deadlands (or Deadlands Reloaded? it was Deadlands the setting and savage worlds the system) we stopped an ancient Aztec god from being incarnated to reap a terrible vengeance against the enemies of the ancient empire (i.e. the entire continent north of the mexican border) and of the three PCs that made it out two were basically primed to be big bads (or at least a very scary random encounter) in the next grand story.

I was also in a campaign that ended abruptly, but because the host and GM moved several states away on relatively short notice due to job changes, so there was nothing really to be done.

>What is an ending?
The denouement after the climax. It's like you don't know anything about narrative structure.

I've only ended one myself, but I follow what my friends are up to and they seem to get to the end of many. They have a tendency to get stuff done much faster than their GMs anticipate, and they often have shorter (3-4 month) campaigns. The only one I've ever ended was about three years long, and was sort of two campaigns in the same world one after the other. I say it was kind of two campaigns because only one character survived from session one to the end of the first, and the rest of the new characters had completely different goals (different side of a lich's war to ascend to godhood). The surviving character (mine) ended up losing everything for supporting the lich and ended up switching sides.

Are you me?
Except I actually enjoy my setting.