Give your D&D campaign the epilogue it deserves
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
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► INDEX
0:00 Intro
1:20 What is an epilogue?
3:50 Penny Dragon Games
5:17 How to do a kick-ass epilogue
5:35 Should the epilogue be its own session?
6:37 What happens next?
7:46 Player control vs. DM control
8:52 Final roleplay
9:52 Character spotlight
10:44 What happens next?
11:21 Meta discussion
If your Dungeons & Dragons party is one the lucky ones to reach the end of a campaign, make sure to send them off right! This video is all about how to create a meaningful epilogue to celebrate the end of your D&D game.
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as an "epilogue", our DM decided to reveal that our whole two and a half year long multi arc campaign that spanned lvl 5 - 11 was a prologue. we have a campaign wrap-up/session zero tomorrow. so excited.
Your DM sounds incredible. I wish I could play in a campaign like that - or better yet, run one. How did the campaign go? And if you're responding to this after the session zero happened, how did that go, too?
All the corners of our world are mere prologue...
How was session 0?
Is your DM Eichiro Oda?! Holy crap!!
I am SOOO happy for you! My game is only a few sessions old and I would be heartbroken if my character (The Angus’ Bane, Minotaur Barbarian) doesn’t get his complete story arc. Being able to basically restart your campaign with the same group sounds like something out of heaven to me! Good luck with the new campaign!
Had an epilogue for a campaign that finally ended. Sadly, the party failed, despite their greatest efforts. They saw the town again....their characters in world still have statues to them now in that town. 'We gave some, but some gave all. We will not forget your sacrifice'
I think that it’s important to show that, if the characters failed, that their world is somewhat worse for it. It’s a downer, but otherwise the players might think that the characters didn’t matter to the outcome of the conflict.
omg, that inscription is so sad and well-worded 😢
@@andrewjohnson6716 I think even in defeat you can be inspiring though. Like even if you lose, your heroism and self-sacrifice could inspire others and pave the way for the next group of heroes who actually win.
@@andrewjohnson6716 True. ironically, I had the town overcome because while we know what happened, the town only knew that the BBEG's forces were crippled, And the bodies of their heros were found in the room with the BBEG's while their forces were in full retreat...but it was a double, not the real villain, who's body was there. But when the entire town is against them, don't matter how powerful they are, they gotta flee. Ended up being a future villain used in the follow up campaign where they saw the statues. Had they not been able to cripple the BBEG's influince in their fall, the town wouldn't have survived. Instead, they became bittersweet memories and legends in a town that would never know their tyrant still lived. Something the town would remember as a sign that since the party consisted of those that would have been overlooked earlier in their lives, it was proof they could never know where the next heros may rise from.
@@daneroberts1996 Admittedly, I think you give it more credit than it deserves. I had made it based on memorials to fallen soldiers. since in that world, it's what they would be seen as.
After 40 years, only have a few memorable epilogues, since more than half of my campaigns imploded for any number of reasons. As for the ones I remember... One got hitched after months of in-game mooning and letters from afar. Another went home and settled a long-running spat with her mother that had lasted decades. Another was the scheming rogue who went straight for love of a man and a cause to fight for, now an officer in Imperial uniform on the parade field, the PCs flush with victory. But the worst was the cleric who spent the next five years in an insane asylum.
Then there was the IRL epilogue.
Years ago, my wife and fellow DM passed away only 2 or 3 sessions from the end of a long-running campaign. Most of our group were her blood relatives or in-laws. So, after weeks of delay (for obvious reasons), I found a way to say goodbye to her as a player. On the very last session, the PCs were granted a vision of my wife's wizard and her panther familiar, alive and well, but now in the service of a god for reasons perfectly woven into the campaign narrative. Still don't know how I held it together.
Damn, that sounds like an incredible ending. RIP to your wife.
Wow didn't expect a random comment to get me crying like this. Words fail me here, but just know that this has touched my heart and it goes out to you 💙
@@savingplayer1613 The feeling is mutual friend. Reading something like that just fuels my desire to find my own group to tell those kind of stories.
@@davidparkes7741 It was. Everyone at the table thought it was handled with a lot of affection.
@@savingplayer1613 Thanks so much! Years have passed, and remembering it now is more happy than hurtful.
I always like to do epilogues for my campaigns but now for the first time I'm doing a sequel campaign which is in the same world around two years later. I'm kind of excited to revisit the world with mostly the same players but all new characters. This summer we did a one shot "interquel" with the entire original party to kind of set up campaign 2.
Been doing that for about forty years. For me it never stopped getting exciting whenever I started to write a new campaign.
I've recently started the "Final Campaign" in that world... with players who've been exploring the world for the majority of the duration it's been going. They know it as well as I do, one them was at the first session. Every campaign I have run through that time has featured another new part of the world that they may have visited or passed through in the past, but while opening up the new places, letting them their own experience of the world by visiting favourite old haunts always works well. It may not be the "final" campaign, ever but it will finally provide answers to questions some of the players have wanted to know for over 30 years.
Every new campaign starts with new Level 1 characters and they almost always try to visit "The Rat and Dagger" tavern in the port town of Tasskurr. It was bought and run by one of the original characters who is now in his seventies (character that is... player is in his 50s) but inevitably turns up along with some (ageing) NPCs who have been around since year dot.
Stick at it and keep your world growing. There is no real downside to evolving a personal game world and reusing it for many, many campaigns. And when the players start to realise some of those campaigns may even be linked with a deeper more important mystery at their core... they may even start to appreciate how much work you have put into it!!! (I use the word "May" with caution...)
I've never been a big fan of the over blown epilogue. The players invariably win, and we don't go in for the slow, pause every 6 or 7 words for effect, sweeping speeches dumping exposition and descriptions everyone forgets by the time you finish talking.
For us its usually a case of "Straight to the pub" and get stuck into the reminiscing and the Q&A.
The players asking me about the stuff they never got round to dealing with or the meaning of hidden clues they never solved... Or me admitting to the vast amount of stuff I made up on the spot, because they broke the plot...
THAT is what my players want at the end. Explaining motivations of NPCs, why someone did what they did... all that stuff that they don't get to see during the game.
That's where our epilogue happens (with beer.)
My first campaign in a few years is getting fairly close to resolving, and I'm starting to plan another campaign that will take place probably about 200 years after this one. The outcome of this campaign will have a major impact on what the world looks like in the next.
@@jacobsargent5367 I'm in the exact same spot! Even the 200 years part! Nice.
I'm doing a sequel campaign that takes place approximately 10000 years later.
I'm not the one running the campaign I'm currently in, but the DM has outright stated that if and when we finally take out the big bad, he's got a 1.5 story planned where everyone is playing one of the surviving npcs about 10 years after the end of the current story and we'll go around helping clean up the original party's messes they left behind while trying to save the world.
I’m a huge fan of doing level 20 epilogues and finally giving players a chance to see their characters at full power
We had a campaign fizzle out due to the pandemic, really close to the end too. After talking to the DM we decided on one last session. He condensed the final material into a one-shot. Two of our players didn't show, but we had them filled in by our new groupmembers. Because we knew it was the last session we had epilogues prepared. Afterwards we went out to dinner where we reminisced the highlights of the campaign and all the meta stuff. It was an awesome day and I am glad we went through with it
I’ve only had one epilogue and it by far the highlight! A big reason was the MUSIC.
I get flack for this but I think music can really elevate a DnD game to the next level. An emotional final song to fit the emotional final moments can make it all the better.
Agreed on the role music can play. I ended my previous campaign with selected tunes and time to let each player tell me what their character did after the game was over.
Agreed. I had a final session for my last campaign, and had an epilogue which I spent time writing, and also allowing players to describe where they would've gone, and the music elevated it tenfold
Bro my table is silent often when the music is off haha. Don’t let anybody give you shit for building the mood
I keep over a dozen different spotify playlists for different moods/situations, and I'm always looking for more stuff to fill them out with (witcher, skyrim, and world of warcraft so far have been very good to me). Great movies depend on their soundtrack, it is critical to keeping the mood and energy, and anyone who says it doesn't have a place at the table is crazy.
I bet it is, but I usually just use some ambient sounds (e.g. waves, rain, wind, footsteps, crowd of people talking etc.) to fit the current setting, but I feel like my players are often just a bit confused where the sounds are coming from and then forget about them. I should probably ask them if that helps, though to me personally it helps imagine the scene a bit better...
With music though I struggle to find something that actually fits the mood, given that the players can heavily influence the mood with their RP and actions. I don't want to put in overly dramatic music when the players are actually joking about something or trying to figure out how to evade that situation. I just have no idea what music to put in without it being too much or quickly clash with the current mood at the table if I don't have something else ready immediately.
I literally just ended a campaign that we started in 2019 , like, 3 days ago, and we had an epilogue that really was wonderful. As the DM, I tasked each player with writing what their characters stories looked like over the next few years. Did they spend it with each other? Did they split up and marry NPC's? Open up their own bakery or alchemy shop and enjoy small town life? It started with a celebration in one of the realms largest cities, celebrating the group and all their accomplishments, mourning the ones they lost in that time, and even promoting one of the players to a higher rank in the faction they were a part of. The party was filled with some of their family members and NPC's that they had met and had grown attached to.
Eventually the party had to wind down, and to start an RP prompt, I said something like "As the party begins to come to close, you all find yourselves together in this crisp night air, and you begin to realize that this may be the last time you are all in the same spot together." this kicked off some nice RP, and then I went around the table, had them roll initiative one last time, and each read their personal epilogue in initiative order.
I loved hearing each of them read about the dreams and ambitions that their characters could now accomplish, and what their plans were, many of them involving NPC's that I had created and grown attached to. It was overall one of my favorite sessions we ever played. I will say, though, that I ended it with a bit of a tease about something that happens a few years after they finished this campaign, just in case they want to bust these characters out someday for one more final run with these characters that we had grown attached to. I mean, in a fantasy world, does the opportunity for adventure ever really go away?
Anyway, thanks for the video, it made me feel better about how I handled that last session. It was scary since there isn't a ton of info on epilogues like this. I just wish you had released it a week earlier!😆
This is such a cute idea! Thanks for sharing.
I ended my first campaign with a real ending.
One guy had IRL stuff making him 1 hour late consistently, another had a new job coming up, and I was interviewing for a new job.
It lasted something like 6 months, 25 sessions.
I could see the writing on the wall, so I plainly asked the entire group, “we’re nearing the midpoint of the campaign and we could easily hit 60 sessions at this rate.
_But,_ I think I could work something out where it’ll be done in about 3 sessions.”
We all agreed it’s better to send it off properly than let it fizzle out 3 months later.
It really added a sense of out of character pressure because we all knew we were running short on time, which fit because the characters were under the gun with mass destruction looming.
A way of handling epilogues I enjoy is the "Ending slides" a la the Fallout series. It's a bit of work from the GM perspective, but asking the players what each of their characters would be aiming to do/how they'd respond to certain scenarios and then asking the players which of the NPCs and factions they are most interested in hearing about will let you tailor the 'slides' to wrap up everything the players want to hear about.
John Blutarsky married Mandy, and eventually got elected as president of the United States...
(next slide)
I recently finished my first ever campaign as DM (yay!), and had a "what happens next?" epilogue similar to the one you're describing here. We then also ran a postscript where we jumped forward in time a few years, everyone levelled their character up to level 20, and they had a "[Party], we need you to save the world one last time" sort of mission. It was great fun both from a narrative standpoint (seeing where the characters were several years after we last left them) and from a mechanical one (getting to experience epic-tier play), and I'd recommend it to anyone finishing up a campaign!
One of the funnest and most memorable epilogues we’ve ever experienced was The Deck of Many Things. Some of us received riches beyond measure, some literally fought death and triumphed, others got trapped in another dimension or plane while the rest did nothing, took the deck, and disappeared.
Last month me and my party finished a 3 years long campaign. For the last three sessions we choose to go for a week out to a beautiful mountain town of the Apennines. If you can, make it special: it is quite the "once in a lifetime" experience, and those stories and characters will likely never come back.
And for the record, yes. There were tears.
We had a years long campaign reach the grand finale. It was a wild weird west theme. Battle at the Alamo against the Drow queen in a giant mechanical spider that shot meteor storm cannons. Level 20 characters. That battle took hours. Then the DM started a new campaign 20 years later in the time line. “ Remember the Alamo” was a lament that the lvl20 characters who were now NPC’s said all the time.
I keep every character sheet from every campaign that ends in a steel box marked "Valhalla"
That's cool. Those mofos earned their happy endings
This is literally perfect, I have a campaign ending tonight that I wasn't sure how to wrap up. Thanks for the great advice!!
Btw, we had a great finale!! After the boss fight, we enjoyed a nice epilogue with the players finding a good end to each story - and even the beginning of some new ones. Thanks again for making this the best campaign I've wrapped up yet!
Closure is so incredibly important to me that even this video that just talks about epilogues with no story of its own has me a bit emotional.
I rarely get to do epilogues because we have a "keep the characters around in case we do more stuff in the same continuity" attitude. My favourite from one time when we did was when a wizard who was also a bit of a fence/blackmarketeer decided he was going to become the wandering item merchant in someone-else's story, complete with a golem made from parts he'd gathered during the story to carry all the stock.
Time for an Epic-logue!
I’ve been playing for longer than I care to admit and in ALL my years, only 1 campaign has ended properly without a TPK.
And it was beautiful
hehe. nice! our campaign still going...since october 1994. still a few more years before it ends...
Wait up, wait up.... TPK isn't a proper ending??
I have always had campaigns end with a fizzle, except for my very first module of LMoP that was an intro game for most of us to DnD. That one had a short epilogue we improv'd on the spot. Iirc we took the money we earned and opened a cool nightclub with our bard in the city, with our new buddy the Spectator guardian coming with us to be the disco ball :)
@@FlatOnHisFace of course it is :P
My first D&D epilouge, we woke an ancient balck dragon with a hoard of treasure, and our DM let us choose between dying in a fiery blaze of glory, joining the dragon to take over the world, or miraculously escape, and it was fantastic. My wood elf druid Isilinin got to Wild Shape midleap to tear out his eye, and it was AWESOME :D :D :D :D :D
One of my proudest accomplishments is that I managed to run a full level 1-20 Adventure Path campaign. We did have a bit of an epilogue, but probably not as much as I should have done.
Narrative cohesion and satisfying conclusions are exactly why I enjoy creating short stories for each session. I’ll write them up, streamline the events and make them more compelling, and my Players will get to see how their actions would look “on the big screen” in a way.
With the groups I've played with, our DM gives the results of what has happened for our concluding points and then asks "So what do you do now?" It's usually a quick synopsis of what a character does like continues going out to help people, marries her love and they have a ton of kids, etc. I personally like not having a full session for an epilogue because I get to just live with a "we did that" moment as the final big thing.
This video came out literally between my running the last session of my current campaign and its epilogue. Our last fight went long, so I wasn't going to rush the epilogue. Instead, we're going to do the epilogue, then switch to a session 0 for the next (with a different DM, very exciting!) Very timely for me!
This honestly just makes me so excited for our campaign wrap-up. We have roughly 8 sessions and our big finale after what will be a total of two and a half years of playing this story. Our DM has already let us know there are 3 major possible outcomes, and we've already talked in and out of game that provided they're both still alive, my PC and a beloved NPC will finally get their wedding (which had previously been interrupted months ago in game).
You can officially add technobabble specialist to your resume XD
I don't even care what the ads are, you always go so extra that I love to watch them.
Last year I managed to finish a year long campaign we did during the pandemic lockdown over roll20. I think I wrapped it up ok, but this video definitely would have helped and made me feel more secure about how it ended!
Give the same care to players who leave for life reasons as well. Send them out well.
Also I loved your tragedy reference respect to anyone going for tragedy endings!
after never living past third level in Gygaxian dungeons in the '70s, I was brought into a game with two of my kids and their friends that ran to completion. We simply told the story of our retirement and now that is canon in the world. We can run into a statue or hear a story about a character passing through a nearby town.
And somewhere, if we are running a party at the same time period of one of our adventures, we may see five arrows fall from nowhere just because some ranger was experimenting with some powerful magic. The DM tells us that in our next run, that happens prior to the destruction of the Litch King, we will meet one of our party at a time before he became famous. I love the continuity.
I would be interested how you start campaigns. I feel like I always just say, "you're in a tavern, go."
My campaign's final chapters begin tomorrow night. So as usual, you have impeccable timing! :)
I'm a fan of sequel campaigns / one shots. Even if you don't play the same character, the players get to re experience places and see how their first characters changed the world
Oh man, what great timing. I'm ending my 2 year campaign in a few days and I'm SO nervous. Hoping it goes well :')
Wow, talk about serendipitous timing. I'm getting ready to end my 1-year long Eberron campaign as the players are restless and want to play Spelljammer.
Ginny Di’s sponsor skits never fail to amaze me. So consistently interesting and creative.
I have never played a campaign to the end, but I seriously love the idea of an epilogue and sitting down and having a meta conversation
For the first campaign that I ran which was a sort of introductory campaign to my players since they were new I actually ended the campaign after only 8 sessions. I had never reached the end of a campaign before although I had played for around 3 years and some campaigns having many more sessions than 8. But it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with D&D. Although the characters hadn’t gotten lots of time to develop their characters, it still felt like they all managed to get the story and ending they deserved. The point is, that ending really made the game into something else. When the story had a end, the characters simply got way more interesting and it felt like their actions in the world actually mattered. I would easily say it was the best thing of the entire campaign
I've had the pleasure of finishing a couple of games. Most in World of Darkness but just recently, two 5e games that culminated together in a joint epilogue. A beautiful send off. That's three under my belt now. Soon, I'll be going for a fourth :)
We are finally nearing the end of our three-year campaign where I have been the DM. We have laughed, cried, conquered, and experienced the greatest joys together. I don’t know how we will say “goodbye” to this sweet little world we all created together…..but I really appreciate this video for allowing me to view it as a celebration instead of a tragedy ❤️
My current 5E group started our campaign with "Lost Mines of Phaldelver"
When we completed that module, the sorcerer insisted that we skip town to avoid the parade, which would have been... gauche or something?
I have decided that if my character dies before we finish the game, the corpse is teleporting back to the town and sparking a montage of celebrating the other heroes
I have done epilogues for a scant few of my games, since only about 10% of my games ever end naturally. For unnatural ends, I do a "behind the curtain" session, if I am given the opportunity, but many of my interrupted campaigns, have a chance for further stories, months, or years later, so players can fill in the long game with me, if they make the time.
However, since I run multiple overlapping campaigns, in the same campaign worlds (in a Gygaxian method), players, and characters, can't write their own epilogues, only tell me their intent, as the world keeps turning.
Gygax legendarily let his players "blue book" writing chapters about their downtime, and getting feedback from Gygax, including elaborate epilogues.
I have gotten a very few opportunities to write my own endings, for my characters in other games, but both the GMs that let me, passed in '18 & '21.
I mean, you could just let them write it freely and treat it as a your-character-believes-that-to-be-the-reality situation. That way, you don't hamstring them and they can't go roughshod on your setting.
Your timing is perfect. We just defeated our BBEG last night after a three year campaign. One player had his epilogue at the end of the session, because life responsibilities are taking him away from us, but the rest of us will get our epilogues next week.
In quite the coincidence, I just ended my two year campaign on Tuesday, and we're doing our epilogue this next week, so this video's going to prove extremely valuable. Thank you as always for putting out such well thought out content!
The group I DM and I just completed a campaign lastnight that lasted 10 months from level 20 to 30. It was great!
We are so close to this. My party is so close to the end of a full run 1-20 campaign. I didn’t want to think of the epilogue, but they have been playing for years, and I know they deserve an amazing one. So many changes along the way, and hopefully, they get to enjoy their lives after the end. And then we start a new game. This might be the first open campaign I finished, and not because the semester was over.
This couldn't have come at a better time! I'm ramping up to lay out the plot points to the finale of my first long form campaign!
A great way to gain closure into the game even if the campaign ends up breaking apart before the grand finish is using story arcs and time skips. I tend to have a time skip (in game time of 1-12 months) whenever a major story arc ends. That way the characters can tell what they will do on their "time off" from adventuring. In a way if the campaign breaks down, that recent timeskip will work as an epilogue scene. In my games this does backfire though because my players start liking the world and their characters even more, because of this immersion that comes from the time skip and they end up still wanting to play more and more. I will be posting a video of my time skip ideas on my channel at some point.
Your video production and content keeps getting better and better, thanks for sharing.
We literally just finished a one shot which turned into a mini campaign last night. Only the third Dnd game I’ve completed in nearly 10 years with my group! It ended with one character death, and the rest walking away poisoned from the final battle. Sort of sad but it was an under dark adventure so pretty much expected! Great game 😊
in my group, we finished two campaigns of a homebrew trilogy.
the first one ended with a big epilogue session, each of the characters describing how their lives would go and what they'd do, us making some world-affecting decisions together and finally the dm telling us the results of all those decisions, how each character's life actually went and how it ended, as well as how the world continued.
the second one, which was a bit of an intermediary, ended with a short sea battle, months after the final boss, in which we were hopelessly outmatched, dying one by one in pursuit of our quest. during that fight, we still did things which shaped the fate of the world, together with the outcome of the final boss fight, and afterwards the dm gave us a quick rundown of what we'd accomplished.
I do mini campaigns lasting 1-2 sessions with my new team, but I love the epilogue ideas. Thank you!
Next tuesday is the final session of a campaign I'm in. This made me really excited about it, even when it's sad to let go. Made me think more about my character and what he wants, and I think I've got it. First, we still have one last fight to get through, though. Wish us luck. I bear the sword that's needed to slay them, so we're gonna need it.
Just finished a campaign of 2.5+ years this past weekend! I was thinking of how to do an epilogue for the group and this video came up 😆
Thanks for making exactly what I was looking for! Great video and ideas!!
perfect timing Ginny…. I’m very nervous ending my 3-year campaign this weekend, and your video really gave me the confidence i needed!! < 3
I like the way TFS handled their epilogue where basically there was an era of peace and the DM asked each player what their character would do and then described any results that might entail while also describing how the world is moving on.
We did one for our 2 year campaign. It was really cool for many of the players, but for me it was the first opportunity to follow up on all the plots we DIDN'T follow, but were more compelling to me than our chosen path.
My DM recently ended our campaign. We were playing for over five years and we were all crying through the epilogue. The DM managed to find the perfect end for all our characters. It was so bittersweet but I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
Super advice. I have a campaign creeping towards its end. This helps a alot
The creative skits you do are so fun too watch! I found your channel a few days ago, and I love your content!
Ending a campaign I've been running for three years today, so I'm rather glad I stumbled across this. Though I've experienced a campaign coming to an end once before, we didn't really have much of an epilogue or proper ending. Now, I hope we can end this one well.
Really great video! Also, that ad felt like your audition tape for voiceover work!
Instead of an out-of-game briefing, you can let players in on some secrets with a closing cut-scene or two. Be careful not to be too self-indulgent when running a scene with no PCs, but the result can be really fun. One of my proudest moments as a GM is the party giving their NPC hireling a friendly send-off and following him a ways down the road where he removed his disguise. The entire low-level campaign, he'd been an infamous assassin using the adventuring party as alibi and cover. He walked off Kaiser-Soze-style to get his next missions. Jaws were on the floor as players pieced together tiny clues from across the campaign (those times when he "broke character" to hit an enemy when a commoner would miss or just got unreasonably "lucky")!
I hope to one day be able to do this for my players. Very inspiring video, Ginny!
In one of the campaigns that I've been in the ended properly, the DM asked each player to write an epilogue for our characters, where we went, what we did, etc. A couple of the characters were really long-lived (a Drow and a Dread Necromancer that managed to complete the apotheosis to Lichdom), so a couple of them were bittersweet as they ended up outliving their fellows by several centuries.
I recently finished my first epilogue for my first full campaign as a dm, and I did a bit of everything mentioned in this video.
When we started, I got back everyone into the moments just before we ended the previous setting, brought up things that happened, to hopefully get them back into the idea of what happened, and what helped this, is that despite the parties own quest, there was still a war raging on in the country they were in.
I also asked them how they wished their character to end, and got them to write an ending for their own character, but I also came up with my own things to spring on them, with npcs and such. On top of that, if they had anything in the moment they wanted to do, they could.
and I wrote a whole ending thing for npcs they knew, and how the world developed and what their actions had caused. It was to me at least, the perfect combination of everything that worked perfectly for my group, it wasn’t a perfect ending ofc, but it was perfect for us.
Good timing for my group. As always, thank you for the video.
This video dropping four days before my year plus long campaign wraps is best timing EVER
Very nice video, I was planning to have an epilogue for my current campaign and this helps alot!
Great video, as always. Thanks Ginny!
Excellent video, as always. I love the tips and advice and hope that as a DM, I’ll get to see my party to an epilogue one day.
Also, your hair and makeup are ON POINT and I love it.
One group I used to play with had rules where if you wrote original in-universe fiction during the game, you got a small XP boost.
This went up to 11 after the end of one campaign, where the epilogue fics spawned not only an entire AU for the setting, but laid foundations for the next campaign.
That thumbnail had me going for a second well done, and such an excellent video 👏
Great job on the ad for Waystar! Technobabble's an art form.
Such a thoughful breakdown Ginny, thanks for this!
hey Ginny!! I just watched you on the dungeon dudes livestream, your roleplaying was soooo good. I've never wanted to play a bard until i saw that. it was great! Please do more collabs with them.
I almost don't dare to hope, because a dashed dream pierces deeper than the jaded blade of apathy. And yet even here in not saying it, I reveal my heart's desire. It's a maddening dream to chase, but I just can't suppress the want.
I have the idea and I even know more or less where I want to finish my story, but I'll be back here about 2 sessions before the ending!!
we had an epilogue for a campaign we had played for 3 years throughout highschool. it was generally goofy and short but we got to come up with nice endings for our characters after our quest, ranging from gambling all the money away at a casino to donating all the reward money to local bard colleges 😂 then they all lived happily ever after in their small little cottage
Hi Ginny Di! I don't often leave comments, but really like your mix of "role-play on screen" with "actual useful info". Happy Gaming!
Wow! That add was epic! Seriously. Way to go the extra mile.
One epilogue I remember as a player was that the PC found love and family.
Good ad.
Currently finished two long term campaigns with the same group. We use the way of having the epilogues and "talk" as their own session.
Both giving time to players given thought to were they would send their character.
While they also prepare questions and I answer any they might have. Also usually drop the promts for the next campaign setting
I just saw XP to level 3s video are YOU WERE IN IT!!!🤩🤩 I was so surprised 😲
I like it how, whenever I need to do something for the first time in a DnD session, there's a Ginny video about it.
We finished our Saltmarsh game recently after over 2 years playing, had a mini DM led end to main campaign hinting about what might be ahead, asking where we intended to settle or what we intended to go on to do next, and then a month later had a level 20 oneshot set 5 years ahead to finish off some plot lines left open, and bid farewell to our beloved PCs! We got to do this in person with snacks and minis and it was so lovely 💖😭
Amazing video and advice as ever Ginny!
I love all your videos but I had to upvote this one just on the terrific thumbnail alone
Yeah definitely love doing those epilogues to resolve the story and I didn't quite think of it like an opposite to the backstory but ran it that way and I like that description! Another thing my groups have done is continue the next campaign in the same world. So epilogues also have a chance to influence how the world looks leading into the next game. Then next game when they meet this mage guild they know that it was founded by one of their old characters and are instantly a bit more invested.
LMAO! OK Ginny, you totally "got me" with that intro! Well played.
I actually just had a campaign end. It was due to unavoidable life changes, but it happened to coincide with the end of a narrative arc, so it was the perfect place to end the campaign with a 'ride off into the sunset' epilogue. This couldn't have been better timed :)
the last campaign that I've reached an end in we had a short epilogue describing in broad strokes what happened to each and everyone in a few short sentences, and we had a few open storylines that we set aside on purpose to have follow up one shots and short campaigns whenever the group isn't able to be complete for the new campaign :D
so we basically opened up one shot adventures that the players are already invested in :)
Epic timing we were just discussing this in my current campaign.
This comes at a great time. The party in the first campaign I've ever DM'ed for is about to go toe-to-toe with the BBEG tomorrow night. My mind has been spinning with all of the possibilities of what happens throughout the world if they succeed or fail or partly succeed or anything in between. It's nice to have someone so clearly bring up the basics of what is important to help me re-focus.
You are a Champion of the Commons! Big Brain energy for Big Play. Keep up the good work!
I'm so happy to see this video because I will most likely be having the epilogue session of my campaign in about a month, and the campaign has been going on for four years now. I am so excited and so scared to do this epilogue because I know I will be crying when it comes.
From watching that intro I suddenly thought about starting a dnd campaign with a story that fades into the campaign, then at the second to last session recap the story through that same storyteller shaping the story based off of what happened then the players can see how it ends and finish the story
This was fantastic!💜
Maybe a prologue video soon? 🤔
Dimension 20's Court of Fey & Flowers has given me an epilogue idea I'd like to try one day. Get the party to think of their imagined futures and when they would head off on different paths. Get them to write letters from that day to the group and any NPCs that mattered to them. Then have a final session to read them out to each other. Letters can be directed to those that have passed too. And if characters died then get them to create the letter/s only now found in the bottom of a teammate's bag from shortly before they died.
My current game is halfway through my planned material, but we might only have, like, eight or ten sessions left, so this video is absolutely perfect. I like the ideas a lot, and I'm excited to wrap up my first big adventure. I like the idea of a meta discussion and talking with the players beforehand. Thanks for the video!!
Just had my finale yesterday--this video was exactly what I needed. The tips let me give my players complex and conclusive epilogues that were the perfect capstone to our adventure. Thanks again!