Hi all!
Recently an almost 2 year running roll20 group I'm in came to a sad end. I've been in a lot of groups at a lot of gaming tables (both real and virtual) that were amazing, but for one reason or another, they eventually ended, and everyone was pretty bummed, even though we knew it was for the best.
So I'm curious about the times where your groups have stopped playing together. What were the pitfalls that lead to the end? Were they always amicable ends or were they messy? What advice would you give to other gaming groups as they struggle to keep things exciting over the long haul?
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Lots of reasons. In my experience the following apply:
1) scheduling and time demands - adults especially have so many other responsibilities and time commitments sometimes it becomes hard to keep a regular D&D schedule.
2) the weight of creation/keeping it fresh - after a while (it varies by group and DM) it becomes harder and harder to keep up with the details and depth of a campaign. For, me the game mechanics invariably become more cumbersome. Additionally, it becomes more and more difficult to keep a campaign fresh. The more you do in a campaign, the more likely you'll start treading on old ground.
3) familiarity breeds contempt - sometimes playing with the same people for too long just gets old. You may even love the people you game with, but after a while you get so used to the way they play or the types of things their pcs do that enui sets in.
Back in high school it was because Summer was over and well, just don't have as much time!
Other reasons campaign have ended in my groups: distance, no time, reality getting in the way, loss of interesrt on the DM's part, loss of interest on the players part, bordome, health problems, financial problems, friends having falling outs, desires to try out a new gaming system over the current one, lack of transportation, ... man... I have been playing a while when I look back over the years. But with all of those reasons that games have ended, I sure have conjured a lot of great memories throughout my time that are connected to this simple little game!
The group I play with now, I have been playing with for years. Decades! Some of them since highschool (and let's side step how long ago that was for now) It hasn't always worked out that we can complete a campaign but we sure try our damndest haha. This group has survived the many perils of sundered tables, and though the end may come for us one day long from now, what do we say to death? "Not today!"
... Sorry GoT is coming 
.
The only amicable group disbandments that I have ever experienced where either as the result of schedules no longer matching up, or the result of me moving to a new city.
All the rest were basically the inevitable end to a group comprised of incompatible players that, for one reason or another, insist on staying a group instead of actually seeking out groups of compatible players.
I'm of the opinion that when players are actually compatible - they like the same sorts of stories, can agree on how rules should work and what the game play should focus on or reward, and they share similar sense of humor and genre preferences - that Rhenny's points 2 & 3 above are entirely avoided: it's okay if you re-tread some old ground because things don't have to be new/unique to be fun (unless that is the only thing giving you any fun), and if you are genuinely compatible with the other players you won't even care if they play the same character in every single game because that character brings you enjoyment (and I have a player that has only played one character that wasn't a dwarf in the 10 years I've known him, so I know about that for sure).
However, I am also of the opinion that most gamers don't actually realize that their group is made up of a bunch of ill-fitting members that would all be better off if they played the game with different people (because being good friends, or even relatives, doesn't actually make you compatible as gamers, but many people mistakenly believe that it should or does).
My regular group in Florida stopped getting together when I moved to Colombia and only two of that group managed to make the transition to online play.
One of my groups died because we always played over at the home of a married couple in the group; when they got a divorce, our group of friends were split with the rest of the assets. We couldn't really play together after that.
One died because a couple players moved from Florida to Charlotte.
Two have died because the store we were playing in closed.
One... well, one may or may not still be going. I left that group before the fighting started because I could see it coming and it just wasn't fun to be there any more.
Scheduling difficulties nearly killed off my gaming group a couple of times. It can be tough to worry about both creating the adventures and planning the dates. I switched from fluid dates based on schedules to dates set in stone and if you make it, you make it. That approach has seen us through for almost two years now, and worked out well.
You grow up, you have kids, you move. Stuff happens.
But I plan my "seasons" with ends in mind. Finality. So every 6-8 sessions, there's a sense of "this chapter is done." And we avoid a looming sense of nostalgia. Then we do a season of another game or campaign. To put some distance between the end of a line and the beginning of the next one.
You should really give this a go. Not necessarily exactly how I do it, but with the players' emotional impact in mind.
bawylie, I like your suggestion on the "seasons" bit. We tried doing something like that where we would keep characters and essential world, but that each DM in the rotation could start something and end it. We would have started new characters, but we wanted to reach the upper echilons of the levels and if we kept rolling new ones it would be hard to do that.
One of the questions that kept coming up in recent campaigns was, "why do our characters care about X?" That got me to thinking of long term and short term goals. I really like the Personality/Ideal/Bond/Flaw part of this edition because, early one, it gives some dimension to characters. But when do we re-evaluate some of the ideals or bonds? At some point we might acomplish what we (as individual characters) had set out to do, then what does that character have to work towards?
I agree that the DM keeping things fresh (and keeping the DM fresh) is important, but ultimately, why are these x number of fantacy people travelling together? What is their joint goal over the long term, and how can it be broken into short-term goals translated into DM friendly adventure hooks?
I play Adventure League at the local store on Wednesdays, but I already miss my Monday night crew. 
Thanks for sharing folks. Any others with tales of woe? Maybe even stories of groups that almost imploded, but something saved the day? I'm not looking for suggestions on saving my group. It has more or less disbanded and is looking to reorganize (fingers crossed) in May. I'm just curious.
Our last campaign ended because it was Pahterfinder and 5th came out. Not everyone wanted to go to 5th, but that is the only thing DM would would run.
OK, not exactly the case. The campaign was heading int higher levels and the DM was overwhelmed with multiple players having a much higher system mastery not willing to tone things down for the DM (Why can't I summon an army of Ronin Hound Archons and pay them only a few coppers a day from the city's coffers. It is RAW by some old 3.5 book about hiring mercenaries that should be legal for Pathfinder. They won't give us a mechanical advantage, other than being a teleporting army for a book that has a fair amount of mass combat at its core). The DM finally broke and admitted that the game was no longer fun to run, and saw that he was much more suited for 5th. Nobody else wanted to run an alternate Pathfinder game, so those that didn't care for 5th left.
Yes, I am that DM, and I'm much better now. [Said in my best John Astin voice]
In the current situation:
Try scheduling "event" programming. Special one-shot reunion adventures. Give people tons of advance notice, and have one every three months.
In general
I have found it's best for campaigns to actually be planned to come to an end. Much like a string of franchise books that go on to long, sometimes campaigns live beyond their time. End it in a blaze of glory and start anew.
(These two pieces of advice are not mutually exclusive, btw)
I like campaigns that take at least 2 years to complete playing a minimum of once a week. And I don't like reaching 13th level ever in less than two years. There is only one group I can play that way with, and I fear and dread the day we can't play together anymore. But at least I will have plenty of crazy kids who go from 1 to 20 level in 3 to 4 months at the hobby shop.
When the bulk of my group consisted of undergraduates, we basically played during the school year, ending things wherever they stood at the end of the spring semester, and starting a new campaign in the fall. Later, when we had scattered across the world, we starting playing online via maptool. The first campaign that ony of my current players tried to DM failed after a few months because the DM didn't have time and had taken on more than he could handle. Then, I started a (4e) campaign that lasted 6 years and went from level 1 to level 30. There was one period of time when we had to take a break for about 6 months because I was writing a book and I found D&D to be too conducive to procrastination (though before taking the break, I was *really* well prepared with very elaborate scenarios, maps, etc.). Other than that break, we took a month here or there occasionally if we had schedules clash, and while most of the time we played weekly, I tried shifting to a biweekly game for a few months before taking the longer break hoping that would be sufficient. In any event, playing a 6 year long campaign was a pretty incredible experience. We started our current (5e) campaign in August and have been going strong ever since.
We've definitely had some turnover over the years, and occasionally people left on non-amicable grounds. In college I remember there were two players who were basically competing for the same love interest, and it got to the point where the two of them couldn't both play in the same game because they hated one another. A few years ago, there was a rage quitting incident which was exacerbated by real-life tensions between a couple players. Nearly 20 years ago, when I was in high school, my brother rage quit after his character, surrounded by dozens of orcs, was fireballed by another PC (to be fair, he warned him: "If you fireball me, I'm going to quit!" -- "I'm going to cast..." -- "Don't do it!" --"...fireball, centered on Ragnar" -- "[Expletive]!!!"). Those were learning experiences. Sometimes also individual players would lose interest, and this was much more common for players that we met online but hadn't been friends in real life first, so I can imagine a group composed entirely of people like that might be harder to keep together. In a couple cases, I had some players who were very committed to their MMO guilds or whatever and who temporarily quit in order to devote more time to them (or until we rescheduled our game night). But I've never seen an entire group break-up for any reason other than the DM didn't have time to continue. If you DM, they will come, I've found.
My last player form my old 90's group confirmed this year he won't be playing anymore. I have more players now but still kinda sad. Always had 2-3 players to rebuild around now that is gone.
Zardnaar wrote:
"The day, the stooooory died...
Bye bye miss faerunian pie
Drove my spelljammer to the levee but the levee was dry"
My last group broke up because of a player death (player, not character). The group consisted of myself, my friend who passed, his step-brother, and his step-sister. We used to play with two other friends, but they became alienated from the group after my friend got married (I didn't like his wife either, but I stuck by him through his marriage and its dissolution because he was my friend). A few months after my friend passed, his family moved away.
Rastapopoulos wrote:
rookrock wrote:
The story died when people started to talk more about character builds and optimizations for the game rather than cool plots and twists. When people sit around and talk about how they combines certain feats and magic items with wealth by level they are instead playing Magic the Gathering and optimizing their cards instead of talking about cool stories, events, and interesting PC's and NPC's.
ime the main causes of games ending are:
(i) OP PCs who cause intraparty imbalance. The game ends because other players and DM get bored/annoyed.
(ii) Real life change over time (move away, competition for time, not interested enough anymore). Inevitable over a long enough period of years.
(iii) Significant mismatch of playing styles. Over time it seems more productive to seek out a more compatible group.
Happily online sites like Roll20 make finding new players much easier than in years past.
I just seem to have bad luck. My group seems all gung-ho about it, but after two or three sessions, one thing or another forces a postponement and then everybody forgets about it. I take out my frustration by assuming the heroes failed when writing the next campaign.
Well, I didn’t play table-top RPG for a long time. I had a great difficulty to find people, but when I found, personal problems just made the thing a lot worse. Now I’m not playing because of indecision and creative paralysis. Just can’t decide which edition (or system) I’ll be running, or which adventure I’ll DM. There’re still lots of issues so that makes the whole thing harder. Well, wish me luck! 
Rastapopoulos wrote:
You never know when your group will split up. I think it's worth continuing even if it comes down to only 1 player, though. At any rate, make the most of your time together and try to be supportive of each other regardless how you disagree.
rookrock wrote:
SirAntoine wrote:
cassi_brazuca wrote:
My favorite group break up was is the one I can't remember.
We were stationed in Germany and we had a 6 man D&D campaign going for almost two years. I was the DM and I was about to fly back the US, so the game was ending. It was a weekend where no one had any scheduled duty, so we were going to wrap up every campaign and player story in an epic beer and bratwurst 24 hour marathon.
Kindoms were claimed, demons banished, wedding vows read, and then the beer kicked in. It was like a Hangover movie for nerds as the sun came up and we were trying to figure out what we scribbled on our papers and why the swashbuckler's character sheet was torn in half. I'm pretty sure a couple of the characters had a fight to the death, but I can't be certain. One thing we did figure out is that everyone had found a magic item that had changed their alignment to evil and now the surviving characters were the big bad guys of the world.
I ended up with just enough time to get to my shuttle to the airport without even stopping to brush my teeth.