Give your D&D campaign the epilogue it deserves

► 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.

Music from Epidemic Sound

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[fearmusrozenrot]

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'

[CroobieLetter]

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

[mrmuffins]

I’m a huge fan of doing level 20 epilogues and finally giving players a chance to see their characters at full power

[Jessie_Helms]

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.

[CrispysTavern]

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.

[annak]

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!

[CarnageRedemption]

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.

[Docsfortune]

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.

[gmchris]

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")!

[davideromano]

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.

[lstndamned]

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.

[meander]

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.

[rmorganslade]

You can officially add technobabble specialist to your resume XD

[tacoman]

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.

[RWalk]

This is literally perfect, I have a campaign ending tonight that I wasn't sure how to wrap up. Thanks for the great advice!!

[IncendiumRPGs]

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.

[stypayhorlikson]

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.

[BlueVegasOfAustralia]

I ran a game for about three years. The party got involved in political intrigue, civil wars, made alliances and fought endlessly that whole time to get to the ending. A huge pitched battle in a burning city with all their allies against the enemy. They won, striking down the villain and bringing a new era of peace...

[Scarlettx]

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).

[erikwilliams]

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