My campaign is approaching the end. Advice Needed

[Lucius]

Hail!

I´m about to end a 12 years campaign. In truth my plan is to end the campaign next year, the 13th year of game (a sugestive number).

The climax of my campaign will be the TOUD (with is related to the plan of the Gc, the main villain of my game).

The point is that I´m facing 2 problems :

1- How to deal with the pasage of the years? The present year in my campaign is end of 759, I will run the years normally until 763 BC. From 764 I will try to make the years advance faster, but I can´t reach a goo method to do it. I don´t want to skip years, pfor example taking the party from 764 to 770. But I don´t think that wil be possible to play all the years in the way to 775 in a average number of 30 adventures.

I´m open for ideas.

2- This problem is related to my campaign plot. I want to give some hints of the Gc true intentions to may players along with some info bout the events that will cause the TOUD.

Some of these hint I know how I wil give to my players, but I feel that it´s not enough, I want to give some more hints along the years (for the GC plan and for the TOUD). My problem here is that I don´t know yet how to give these hints for my players. All I know is that I need different sources for these hins come from, and they need to be easy to insert in a adventure, be as a unexpected reward for some task, or the sole purpose of an adventrure.

I hope you guys vcan give me some good thoughts.

Thanks.

[Nathan of the FoS]

If you need time to pass faster in your campaign, you can run an adventure (or series of adventures) in the Shadow Rift. Since the Shadow Rift runs at roughly 1 year to 14 days (at least sometimes--I'm not sure if it doesn't have other time scales) you could adventure there for three months and return to find that seven years had passed in the rest of the Core.

[Jester of the FoS]

1) In my most recent (and all-too-short) stint at 'Loft DMing I set up my adventures so each one took place during a different month. Some were weeks or even days apart while others five or six weeks. But each was in a different month.
Why must interesting things happen weekly in adventures?
Do something similar, space out the tales. Maybe even gradual increase the time.

2) Time Travel. Either right before or during the final adventure arc. They are mist-napped to the ToUD and are able to play a key role. Perhaps they arrange this or travel there from the present or perhaps it is part of a greater destiny or perhaps it is just fate.

3) Change the date of the ToUD or have a key event occur earlier than expected.

4) One last mission. Just don't advance the timeline, play as normal. Then end on a high note and have the players and characters savour their victory. Their goals are completed, the badguys have been foiled and all is over.
Then the big end happens, something draws the heroes out of retirement. It's been 10 years since the last time they picked up sword or scroll and almost 15 since they were all together in one place. They have families now, they're older and perhaps out-of-shape (to say nothing of old or middle-aged), but they're needed and there's no one else...

[CorvusCornix]

4) One last mission. Just don't advance the timeline, play as normal. Then end on a high note and have the players and characters savour their victory. Their goals are completed, the badguys have been foiled and all is over.
Then the big end happens, something draws the heroes out of retirement. It's been 10 years since the last time they picked up sword or scroll and almost 15 since they were all together in one place. They have families now, they're older and perhaps out-of-shape (to say nothing of old or middle-aged), but they're needed and there's no one else...

I really love that idea! It might be a bit difficult to persuade the characters that there are no more bad guys to beat. I like making the players believe everythings fine, and then all of a sudden tearing the whole world down around them...

As for some possible ways to spread hints:
- something has driven an NPC mad, but the PCs can only get small bits of information out of his mad ramblings
- dreams
- a psychic link (or a simple cutscene), which lets one of the PCs experience something through the eyes of an NPC. The difficult part for him would be to find out what it actually was he had seen...
- foreboding: some pretty mundane events, somehow hinting at some bad that is about to happen. Like seeing a seagull break a clam open, pulling the soft flesh from the shell, all the time fixing the PCs with an icy stare before it finally flies away.
- finding items in odd places (why would somebody hammer three nails into a tree in the middle of a forest?)
- and of course diaries, letters, songs, prophecies,...

For more specific hints maybe you could tell us a bit of what you want the players to learn. Something about animals or monsters? Maybe strange tracks in the woods, bitemarks on dying animals, maybe even the ruins of some buildings...

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If you need time to pass faster in your campaign, you can run an adventure (or series of adventures) in the Shadow Rift. Since the Shadow Rift runs at roughly 1 year to 14 days (at least sometimes--I'm not sure if it doesn't have other time scales) .

I'm pretty sure it's the other way round, at least in canon. That's why the Rift can have centuries of true history without having existed that long. You can adventure in the rift for years and come back having only days pass. But there's no reason that can't be a variable effect.

Same goes for mist travel. oyu can mist travel to an island or cluster domain, and when you get back to the core, poof, it's 10 years later. But I do prefer the coming out of retirement idea...

[Jester of the FoS]

Read my most recent Races of the Mists article for more Shadow Rifty time manipulation.

Retiring the heroes shouldn't be that hard. Just run it like the final adventure. Make them thing the BBEG is dead, his plans foiled and everything shiny. But maybe one of his minions survives, perhaps his weakest and most insignificant (it'd be fun to bring back one of the original threats from one of your very, very first stories). He's the loose end... [/i]

[Nathan of the FoS]

If you need time to pass faster in your campaign, you can run an adventure (or series of adventures) in the Shadow Rift. Since the Shadow Rift runs at roughly 1 year to 14 days (at least sometimes--I'm not sure if it doesn't have other time scales) .

I'm pretty sure it's the other way round, at least in canon. That's why the Rift can have centuries of true history without having existed that long. You can adventure in the rift for years and come back having only days pass. But there's no reason that can't be a variable effect.

Same goes for mist travel. oyu can mist travel to an island or cluster domain, and when you get back to the core, poof, it's 10 years later. But I do prefer the coming out of retirement idea...

You're right--I had it backwards. Time passes more swiftly in the Shadow Rift, not less. Well, scratch that idea.

I'd like to second (third? fourth?) the idea of coming out of retirement--especially if you can design it such that they think the climax has come, and then re-convene them for a "new campaign". Hand them their "aged character" sheets and inform them that it's time to saddle up again--and now it's the real Time of Ultimate Darkness.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Another method would be to have the PCs doing things between adventures that is more time-intensive than normal. For example, after one adventure the group finds a book that is likely a source of important information to them. While the wizard performs the lengthy task of translating the book(s), which may take a month or so, the other party members work at rebuilding the town that was destroyed, taking that month to help rebuild the inn, to build barbicans around the village, etc.

Then it's time for another adventure, as the wizard informs them that he needs to find a special decryption cypher to really understand the information hidden within, so the PCs clear out some ruins deep in the mountains. Wizard now can make the translation exact while other PCs have been hired as guides through those underground ruins for a small group of workers who will finish punching a tunnel or two off of the original ruins to make a passage under the mountain, one quite profitable for trade (inadvertently helping Azalin make that traderoute through the Mountains of Misery, for example).

As other sources of information about GC's doings, have important NPCs from old adventures simply send a letter with info in it. Just a scrap that would mean nothing on its own, prefaced with "I remember, back when you saved our small town of Graflensburg, that you were interested in a Gentleman Caller of some fiendish background. I thought you were merely being quirky until I noted this passage from Knollsnef's Grimoire... I hope this can repay you in some small way for saving my brother and I." It's cheap, but also lets the PCs feel a bit better about the effect they've made in the world and that they've really changed some lives. Whether positively or negatively, however, depends on the NPC's reason for having learned that information to begin with...

[Lucius]

Thanks everybody!

Your ideas inspired me greatly, and in the next few days I will start to write the next adventures for my campaign.

Thanks again!