End of a Campaign

As you may have heard, I started playing D&D sometime back in October. I'd never played before, so starting out as the Game Master was pretty intimidating. Still, I learned as I went, and my guys were learning, too, so we still managed to have ourselves a good time.

Last night was the last official session of that campaign. It seems as though it's quite rare for an RPG group to finish up a campaign, so I feel pretty good that we completed this one. There's a few things to wrap up epilogue style, but the finished the major campaign objectives last night.

The storyline comes from Shamus's D&D campaign. You can read his version of the story there, otherwise I'll summarize for you here.

The party, an elven cleric, dwarven fighter, and half-elf bard, were shipwrecked on an island they'd never visited during a storm. The island is in a state of civil war, so their presence is not welcome. In the course of their attempts to escape the island, they inadvertantly unleash an ancient evil, a lich king sealed away long ago.

They proceeded to spend the rest of the variously fleeing from this powerful creature and trying to figure out how to defeat him. Along the way, they saved the mayor of a city, defeated a local mafia-style outfit, released the tormented souls of a long dead elven people, and freed the long trapped guardian spirit of a very special mountain. (I take seriously the idea that your players should get to do cool stuff.)

Last night they finally defeated the lich king. His phylactery (an item which holds the lich's power) had been sealed away, and thus his power had been severely curtailed. This being the case, when the players defeated him, his spirit was trapped without escape.

The whole experience of going through all this has been quite fun. It's given me some writing experience and given me a lot of knowledge about how to play the game. I maintain unreservedly that these games are for anyone. Even if D&D's high fantasy and combat heavy rules aren't for you, there are games out there that will scratch your particular itch.