Every epic Dungeons & Dragons campaign must conclude eventually. Whether it is a published module like Curse Of Strahd or your homebrewed sandbox adventure, every good story longs for a satisfying ending.
When you are nearing the end of your epic campaign, it is helpful to have a conclusion in mind to work towards even if the party's actions will alter it. You need something truly incredible to cement the fantastic memories everyone will have of your campaign. To help out with this, here are some classic endings that you could use for your final act or session of your campaign.
8 Returning To The Starting Town
After a long campaign, it can be satisfying to have the party return to the first town they visited. Perhaps the main villain has taken over the town in the act of revenge. Maybe an artifact kept there is more relevant than it first seemed, and the party needs to head back to fetch it to save the day.
Returning to this starting town after being away for so long is a great way to show how the party's actions have impacted the world around them. A lot has changed. For example, an NPC they helped on a short side quest might now be running things. How the party last left the town, for better or worse, will ensure a fun surprise for your players. It is also a great way to bookend the campaign by ending things where it all began.
7 The Final Showdown At The Villain's Lair
The villain often has an evil lair that the party must visit. It is crucial to build up to this terrifying location. It is the baddie's home, they will have formidable lair actions and know the area like the back of their hand. Having a final session or two dedicated to an ultimate showdown here is a classic way to end your campaign.
The villain's fortress will likely be covered with deadly traps and challenging puzzles to try and keep the party out. Your players will need to be fully prepared for entering their abode. This is the ultimate conclusion to the story. Win or lose, the adventure will end here. So, go all out with the combat and chaos and make this showdown as memorable as possible.
6 The Cliffhanger
Having the campaign end with a cliffhanger is a great way to shock your players. Perhaps the party has concluded their final battle and is relaxing at the Yawning Portal, happy and content when an unexpected figure from their past arrives. You might have a magical item (that they didn't pay much attention to) start to activate just as the villain is defeated. The group might be approached by a mysterious organization that has been observing their adventure up to this point, requesting their help.
Whatever the twist is, you don't want a cliffhanger ending to be completely random. Make sure to seed in hints and clues to whatever you have planned. No matter what you decide, a cliffhanger is an excellent way to finish up one arc and hint towards the next era of their adventures, or perhaps allow your players to simply imagine what will happen next.
5 Are We The Bad Guys?
Perhaps you've been running a campaign in the domains of dread, and your party has inevitably been corrupted over time, giving in to evil desires. This doesn't necessarily mean that your campaign has gone off the rails; if you realize that the group's alignments are shifting to a more villainous side, fully embracing this new narrative can be fun.
Give the group victory over their initial goal, but use the finale of your campaign to explore the consequences of this change of heart. It is an intense moment to have old allies banding together to defeat the party. Alternatively, perhaps the players learn why the villain was doing all their evil deeds. They might have been working for someone even more powerful, and now the players must take their place. Or perhaps the villain was holding back a formidable threat that the party must focus on now. No matter what, there should be real consequences for the villainous party to deal with.
4 The Time Limit
To really up the stakes for the end of the campaign, add a time limit for the players to race against. This could be a physical ticking clock, or just a set limit of sessions left until the villain's plan is complete. This will add a lot of tension to these final moments.
The party has no time for idle chit-chat, both in character and out, quickly forcing them to create plans of action. The villain will unleash a dangerous threat if they do not cast a reversal spell in time, or maybe the party has all been cursed and only has a few days to finish their quest before they are transformed into monsters. With a time limit, your campaign ending will be hectic but very memorable.
3 Back From The Dead
Has a classic deadly monster defeated the party? Did the main villain wipe them out with a powerful spell? Having a full party wiped out so close to the finale of your campaign can be frustrating and disappointing, but this does not need to be a final downbeat ending. You can take this defeat and twist the campaign in a completely different direction.
The party might awaken to find themselves in the Fugue Plane, the Abyss, Hades, or any other plane of existence. In this final session, you can give them a chance to escape hell to surprise the villain one last time. Alternatively, perhaps they're now ghosts, with fun new ghost-themed character sheets, and they can attempt to influence the living world enough to save the day before moving on to the afterlife. It can be a fun, last-ditch effort to do some good after an initial failure.
2 Going Back In Time
It can be fascinating to incorporate time travel into the campaign for a more elaborate, mind-bending ending. Just when all hope seems lost, the party finds themselves getting launched back in time to the very beginning of the campaign, witnessing their past selves completing quests they remember doing so many sessions ago. With their knowledge of the future, the party can attempt to influence events from the shadows to change the outcome. They might even turn out to be the Patrons of their past selves that initially sent them on the epic quest.
This ending does require a lot of preparation to pull off. You'll need to foreshadow that time travel is possible early in the campaign. It is a balancing act, as you want to hint towards this inevitable finale without taking away any agency from the players during the main campaign. The party could either realize that they are responsible for many key events during the campaign, or they could set out to change the timeline drastically. Either route can be fun, making this ending unique to other adventures.
1 The Apocalypse
The main villain has been victorious. Perhaps the party failed to defeat them in a big battle. Maybe they were too distracted with other things and let the villain's master plan go unopposed for too long. Regardless, it does not need to be all doom and gloom when the party fails the main quest and the world is launched into an apocalypse.
You can play out an exciting aftermath session, where the party must adapt to a world where the villain won. Perhaps the realm has been overrun by dangerous creatures from another plane of existence. Maybe the world has been transformed into a hellish landscape.
The party now must learn how to survive in this terrifying new reality and set out to save the NPC allies they met along their journey. If the party can navigate this apocalyptic domain, perhaps they can find a new calling in life to focus on, or maybe even a way to return things to normal. This could also be the setting for the next campaign, with a new set of characters.