Failed Campaigns

Sometimes a D&D campaign just falls apart. I’ve been the DM for over 20 different campaigns, and quadruple that and more with adventures and one-shots. It just happens. 

A campaign is a series of adventures knitted together to form a story, at least that’s how we define it at our table. 

When a campaign doesn’t reach a conclusion or a point where the characters can feel closure, this is massively disappointing and underwhelming. 

Let’s exclude all the reasons how a campaign normally falls apart. People move locations, people fall in love or get a new partner, people find a new group, people have a different work schedule, people get a new hobby that eclipses D&D and so on. 

I want to look at in-game and story reasons for a campaign capitulating. I’ll try and explore and give my thoughts on a few reasons why campaigns fail and what we can do as Dungeon Masters.

1. Character Death

It happens that a character has become so intrinsically involved with the story and campaign world that rolling up a new character simply won’t cut it. 

In my Dad’s playing style (70s and 80s AD&D DM), if a character died, boo-hoo, roll up a new one and get on with it. 

In the new 5e style, building a character takes thought and effort, not like in our old school games. You pour energy into traits, skills, the path your class takes and a backstory. 

But this isn’t even what I’m talking about. Even in the new modern “your character is a super-hero” style, a character death can be dealt with. Usually if the death is early in the game, it isn’t a massive problem.

If later in a campaign, it better be worth it.

I hate breaking my player’s hearts by killing their favourite dudes in an encounter that wasn’t meaningful. 5e isn’t built for that. It’s built for a glorious beginning and end. Ask your players (after sessions and privately) how they see their character going out at all. If they say PLEASE GOD NO, keep that in mind, that it’ll break their heart. 

It sucks even more if they have gone beyond 5th level I’d say. 

The campaign had so much more to offer, the characters they were building or built were legendary! Maybe they’ll never make a better one? They can’t just make a new one and continue adventuring with the other characters because the story of that game WAS their story. 

NOW. All that being said, that doesn’t mean I don’t still kill the characters in an encounter they weren’t “supposed to die in”. 

Just because I want their end to be epic, doesn’t mean I wont kill them with a random encounter. Sometimes the dice roll where they may and I am something of a stickler for this (see RPG Philosophy: Fudging Dice Rolls). 

How to avoid the feeling of a letdown? Death is inevitable. 

End the campaign. 

This is the option I took once. I decided that whatever the other two characters in the game would do, it would become legend, after their two friends died. 

My brother still plays his Druid from this campaign where two main characters died in an epic end battle. He plays in one-shots and solo-adventures. We weave him in and out of games like a Merlin figure. I also use him as an NPC. He gets a kick out of seeing his old character be a big player in the world and I always ask him what his old character would do or think. 

Although ending the campaign is the most logical, it also hurts. We still remember those two great characters that died, and we always think “what if?” 

What if the campaign had continued? 

Try and have family ready. 

The best option for me is for the character to have a family member ready to take up the mantle of his mother or father or sibling. I try to seed the idea of a family early on in the game, especially if we’re playing a political game or a game that spans a kingdom. 

It’s logical and natural to have a partner or companion and raise children with them whilst still adventuring, to come back home between adventures and look after them.

If the children or siblings are too young, skip a few years and morph the campaign world. They will get a kick out of seeing how the world their dead character helped shape, has changed. 

Retcon? 

For me this is not really an option, but the thought crossed my mind that we played a “what if” scenario, where they had not died. This option is way better than having a god or high level cleric throw them a bone. But it still feels like a cop-out. 

Resurrection? 

Yes it can be an option, but used sparingly and fitting with the world. In my campaigns, the motto “only death can pay for life” is omnipresent.

So if a character is raised, it will hurt the people they love.

Old Character? 

As I said, they can’t really start a new character unless… you already have them running other characters in that world at the same time. 

This is a trick I learnt a long time ago. Simply have a random one or two sessions where they play as another character. Their main character is tending to lands, drinking in a tavern etc. 

This one or two sessions will tie them to a new character in that land, and provides a backup if their dude bites the proverbial dust. 

This isn’t always satisfying, as they’ve poured hundreds of hours into the dead dude. But it’s another option to make sure your grand epic doesn’t fall on its arse. 

You have to try and ensure this old character has a link to the real party, perhaps they control two characters for one session and the new character leaves them after the adventure is done. 

Then they can weave that character in and out when they wish. 

2. The Story Isn’t Good Enough

Sometimes the idea you had didn’t work. Sometimes the game just doesn’t have that spark. Sometimes the campaign just fails.

This happened to me on multiple occasions. 

I have found the reason for this is that my game didn’t have a clear premise. 

The premise is perhaps the most important for me and my players. 

If the characters gather in a tavern, clear out a goblin lair, fight a giant spider at the end of it, find a magic sword in its web and go back to town with the loot, this can be such a great time. 

But what is the premise? It has to survive a campaign. There has to be something happening behind the scenes, the world has to be operating without the PCs.

There has to be a hook that draws them in each week. If all that happens in one session, but it happens in a world where they are bounty hunters and get gold for each goblin head, then Bounty Hunters becomes the name of the game, and each week they go looking for bounty. 

Always be trying to look for the twist that engages them. 

I try to find the name of the campaign way before it is started. I find the name and I find a few lines that describe the game, as if it were a novel or a movie you are pitching to an agent or producer. 

This helps me keep the idea in my mind. Even if players stray from the premise, hooked onto delicious side-quests, they always know that premise is there. 

The King-in-the-Ark - A dreadful evil has been locked away, but his madness spreads throughout the nations and factions, driving them to war against each other. The heroes must find the Chosen Child to lead them against the evil. 

OR

Myth Mountain - One champion is chosen from each of the five villages at the bottom of a faerie mountain. The champions must light 7 beacons that scale the mountain, and light their way to escape this hellish existence and rise into heaven.

Myth Mountain and The King-In-The-Ark are my novel series ideas, but worked just as well for a D&D game. 

Ideas that I had which failed due to story reasons, not scheduling, included my Spelljammer game, a standard tavern start game with no premise as I mentioned above (at least 2 times), and almost ALL of the 5th edition campaign products. Storm King’s Thunder, Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss all failed before they could get going. Either I’m a bad pre-written adventure runner, or they’re unclear adventures. 

Admitting failure is just part of the gig. 

You say sorry guys, I don’t think it’s working, my next campaign will be way better. And you start thinking of a premise. 

What if the premise fails? 

Then it fails. Try again. Just because you have a clear premise, doesn’t mean it’s a good one. 

Don’t be afraid if your premise sounds cliche. 

You can twist the cliches as your players run along in what they think is a standard quest. If the characters made an all dwarf party and go to claim back their homeland, I guarantee you that they will have a good time if you do your job right. Maybe a faction of dwarves remained and kept the dragon prisoner, using its breath to magic their forges? You can always find a twist to the stories you love.

You make the encounters interesting, you make them care about the NPCs, you make them fear the villain, the cliche won’t matter. This is an RPG story, not the next great novel. 

What if they cling onto something that isn’t the premise of that game? 

Great! It’s their premise now. If they saw a lake castle on your map and want to slay the sorcerer there, then that is the new story. Don’t worry when they have their own hook or idea. Go with it and they will love your game for it. Develop their story and morph it into your own.

3. They Finish The Story

Sometimes the players finish the story their characters were playing, any other story after it doesn’t quite work. They have to retire their characters. 

This happened when I ran Curse of Strahd (far and away the best 5th Edition campaign). The characters killed the vampire lord and were victorious in an epic 6 month long campaign. 

But they loved their characters, they wanted to carry on. They didn’t want to adventure in Barovia (the gothic land there), they wanted to move out from Barovia. And logically so, their job was done, they were heroes. 

We went on a few adventures with their characters, but none of them truly had purpose. They WERE that story and that campaign. Perhaps it was a failure on my part that the characters are all split off now and not involved in any campaign, they are just sort of retired, hanging around for one-shots. 

How to deal with finishing the story? 

I imagine a game in the future where these same characters are aged and must meet up in a dark tavern on a stormy night and journey with the gypsies back into Barovia for one last mission. 

That is the way to solve it. Have the characters meet up years in the future for another mission, try and link it back to the old story in some way. 

It’s okay for the characters to be retired. It’s okay for a campaign to end, if it reached a satisfying conclusion. The players will love their new characters anyway. Maybe not as much immediately, and the temptation to be lured back to the old one, but it’s time to move on and let the past be buried. 

If they really really really want to play ONLY those characters, I would probably tell my players to shut up and make new ones, but I wouldn’t recommend you do that. 

I would tell you to get to work thinking of a new premise to connect to those characters. However hard it may be, the players sometimes only want to play those characters…

This can also work. How else does a lvl 18 War Cleric exist? He can’t have completed one campaign. He has completed many campaigns that spiralled in and out of each other in a fine (yet disorganised) web. 

4. PCs Fighting and In-Fighting

This hasn’t fully happened to me yet, but the threat of it happening has been present many times. 

Inter-party conflict is something we sometimes relish in, as long as it doesn’t devolve into murder and they can agree that the common goal of the party is the goal that trumps all others. 

But when the characters start trying to kill each other it gets nasty. 

There’s nothing a DM can really do other than jump in with monsters, try and defuse the situation with NPCs or defuse the situation outside of the game and ask the players, do you really want to do this? 

We’ve had player characters kill other player characters before, sometimes it is natural and brushed off, other times it threatens to end the game. 

Your job as a DM is to try and create a purpose that unites them. If you really don’t want inter-party conflict, make it clear at the start of the game and tell the players. 

A uniting purpose is usually some great evil, or some great treasure, or some great national threat against all.

Always they are bickering about the right course of action. Always they are bickering for whatever faction they each represent, if they are not a united front. 

This is great, this is the juice that keeps the conflict going. You can sit back and let them debate, and most of the time they will have fun doing so. 

Whose morals will win the day? Will it cost them? This will create superb roleplaying opportunities. 

Generally I let the conflicts play out. But that’s only because I’m experienced enough and know my players well enough. If they kill each other I would probably laugh (and cry later) and say, well that campaign’s ruined. 

These conflicts usually sort themselves out with the players level-heads winning out. 

And sometimes it actually makes sense that one of the characters is killed for their betrayal. I let that just happen. 

We had one character burnt alive by the party for betraying them all, supplying information to a dragon, acting as a spy for it. That was pretty wacky. (You know what you did, Kieran). He played a Tiefling as well, so had fire resistance. Brutal. 

Conclusion 

I’m sure there are a few more reasons why a campaign fails, and it’s usually to do with story decisions. The players derail it all by wanting to build a tower and stay there. No problem, the tower becomes the focus. Derailing is not destroying. To destroy a campaign is when there are high level characters dying, an unsatisfactory story playing out, finishing the story and characters in-fighting. 

So if it ends, and it’s not to do with scheduling… don’t worry, get prepping the next one.

Because it will be better.