Ever since the original Dungeons & Dragons, pen-and-paper role-playing games have distinguished themselves from most other game formats by not having a clear condition for "winning" them. You could, technically, lose them if your Player Character died, but then you just rolled up a new one and continued playing. A campaign could last for as long as the Player Party and the Game Master cared about it, with no mechanics/rules provided by the Game System for when and how to wrap it up.
This began to change as early as The '80s, but after the Turn of the Millennium, indie designers (like those affiliated with The Forge) started challenging the established tabletop role-playing paradigms, including the "indefinite play unless you die" one, resulting in the invention of the "endgame mechanics", which formalize how parts of or even the entire narrative are to be wrapped up. These generally come in two varieties:
- Campaign endgame provides specific rules on when and how to wrap up the entire campaign, including all of the player character's arcs, which must be resolved in one way or another soon after the endgame is triggered by anyone. This variation is usually found in games geared towards very specific genres with a more or less rigid Story Arc.
- Character endgame provides rules on how to gracefully but permanently retire individual player characters from the narrative, usually by turning them into an NPC, as well as on how to treat these ex-PCs later in the campaign. This variant is suited for more free-form narratives and usually serves to gracefully remove characters from play who have either become too high-levelnote or exhausted their dramatic potentialnote .
Note that the term "endgame" is used differently in MMORPGs, where it refers to all the content that is restricted to players who have reached the Level Cap.
Examples of campaign endgame mechanics:
- The Body Horror RPG Abnormal has one of three endgames for a session. If the investigation goes badly and they end up with too many shards in play, the Witness (player character) is Utterly Consumed by the horrors plaguing their life; if the Witness ends up with enough shards on the "Normalize" stage, they stave off the worst of it but must learn to live Permanently Entwined with the horror; if the Witness manages to reclaim four or more shards, they drive off the horror completely and get to live a Life Reclaimed.
- Band of Blades ends when winter falls and the remnants of the Legion reach Skydagger Keep, an abandoned fortress in the mountains, and make their last stand against the Cinder King's lieutenants and their undead hordes.
- Cerebos: The Crystal City is about the player characters' journey via train from the nameless City by the Sea to the eponymous Cerebos in search of their lost memories. Along the way the players deal with various dangers at Stops and Events, and establish which character is the Seeker (who learns their secret goal, and whose story the campaign will focus on) and which are Saints (who try to help the Seeker complete their secret goal, which isn't always a good thing) and Demons (who try to convince the Seeker to let go of their past, which isn't always a bad thing). Eventually, the players reach Cerebos and deal with one last Danger, after which each surviving player takes an epilogue roll to see how their adventures played out.
- DIE, like the comic it's based on, tells stories about characters from a mundane modern world (Personas) trapped in The Game Come to Life, where they're heroic Paragons in the eponymous fantasy world, which is fuelled by their flaws and conflicts. To leave, and end the campaign, all surviving Paragons simply need to assemble in one place and unanimously agree to leave. The catch is that at least one will be an adversary, the Master who initially trapped them in the world of DIE. And the game will actively try to persuade more of them to stay. The key word is surviving, though - anyone who's dead or undead ('Fallen') doesn't get a vote.
- Heroine has Campaign Endgame rules for the Heroine's return from the magical land (usually after saving it from the Villain and growing up as a human being), which structure the epilogue narration also detailing the fates of her Companions and the magical land itself.
- In Mork Borg, every in-game day the GM rolls a die, and on a roll of 1, one of the Miseries from the Prophecies of Nechrubel happens, changing the game world in sometimes drastic ways. You plan the length of your campaign by choosing a die size (a d100 will likely give you a very long campaign, a d6 a very short one), and after every Misery you drop a die size. When you roll your seventh Misery, the world ends. You can start a new game, or do as the book tells you to and burn it.
- My Life with Master has one of the best-known Campaign Endgame rules, which says that as soon as any one of the playable minions successfully defies the Master's orders, they must attack and kill the Master, ending the campaign. Since it usually takes a bit of time, other players have time to get in on the action or simply to hash up their stats, which determine their character's ultimate fates in the epilogue, which occurs as soon as the Master perishes.
- Mythender isn't mainly meant for longer campaigns, but there is an optional rule whereby a setting starts with six Greater Myths for the players to End. If the number drops to zero, Mythic Norden itself has been Ended and is replaced by a mundane world where humans are free from gods and monsters forever. If, on the other hand, the number ever rises to twelve (which it can, since every Mythender who suffers apotheosis becomes a new Greater Myth) then Mythic Norden has become so powerful that it can suppress the creation of Mythenders and will thus endure forever.
- Pendragon naturally ends with the Battle of Camlann, in which King Arthur dies alongside all but one of the player characters. The rule explicitly state that the fighting continues until the second-to-last PC drops. Arthur then tasks the last survivor with returning Excalibur to The Lady of the Lake, and after he's done so, the campaign is over.
- Scion: Ragnarok has... well, Ragnarok, the final battle that ends the world in Norse myth. It's highly assumed that almost every NPC - and most of the player characters - will not live to see its end, but you can damn sure go out fighting.
- Scum and Villainy, unlike Blades in the Dark (which it is based on, see below), has both character and campaign endgame rules, recommending that the GM retires the crew after they reach a +3 status with one of the major factions and do a major, multiple session-spanning, setting-changing score for them.
- SIGMATA: This Signal Kills Fascists: The Resistance getting close to victory triggers the Great Betrayal — one of the four Resistance factions destroys one of the others and joins with the remains of the Regime in the hopes of setting up a new dictatorship with themselves in charge. The remaining two factions band together and there is a final battle over the fate of America.
Examples of character endgame mechanics:
- Blades in the Dark forces the Scoundrels into retirement after they accrue four Traumas. After retiring, they become regular NPCs, although their quality of life depends largely on how much coin they have managed to hoard during their criminal days.
- In the Chronicles of Darkness:
- Mage: The Awakening:
- The core game suggests Archmastery as an endgame, whereupon the Mage surpasses the normal limits of magic and goes into seclusion as an All-Powerful Bystander — and joins the multiverse-spanning cold war against even more powerful entities.
- With Imperial Mysteries making archmages playable, they too can do this by Ascending to the Supernal Realms permanently. The book includes a diceless sytem for one possible Ascension strategy where the archmage transcends the physical world by rewriting reality to suit their will in a series of great quests.
- In Changeling: The Lost, this is the Bad Ending: Changelings who reach the highest level of Wyrd are in danger of losing their minds, forsaking their humanity, and returning to Arcadia to transform into soulless True Fae.
- Vampire: The Requiem describes the mythical state of Golconda, where vampires become Ascended Demons and free themselves from their physical and spiritual weaknesses. Since it's set in a vicious Crapsack World, it also suggests subverting the trope by asking And Then What? and letting players struggle to maintain this state.
- Promethean: The Created has rules for the Golem-like Prometheans to complete their Pilgrimage, gain souls, and achieve true humanity. It also points out that this leaves the ex-Promethean in the World of Darkness with selective amnesia and none of their powers, and observes just how sadistically this trope could be subverted. This has given the game an undeserved bad rep as "the game where you win by losing all your cool powers" among those who haven't read it.
- In Beast: The Primordial, Beasts who want to leave their vestigial humanity behind forever in favour of their symbiotic Horror can work towards an Inheritance:
- If they raise their Satiety stat to the Cap and then die, their Horror becomes an "Unfettered" spirit, free to roam the Primordial Dream. At most, it inherits remnants of the Beast's memories and personality.
- If they physically merge with the Horror, they become "Rampant", a mindless creature of pure hunger that's unleashed upon the physical world.
- If they become powerful enough and succeed in a quest to prove their dominance, they become a "Beast Incarnate", a perfect symbiosis of mortal and Horror. Although they're still technically playable, the game suggests that they're better as plot devices than as Player Characters or straightforward antagonists, as their new powers are beyond the scope of the game.
- Mage: The Awakening:
- The premise for Dead Inside is that each player character has somehow lost their soul and needs to either regain it, get a new one, or assemble one from bits and pieces of magical energy. If they succeed, they become a sort of enlightened being called a Sensitive. They can continue playing if they can think of further goals for themselves (for instance, a Sensitive can become an even more powerful creature called a Magi, and a Magi can aspire to gaining True Immortality), but the default conflict of the game is over.
- Zig-zagged in Dungeons & Dragons, where some editions allow for indefinite high-level play and others provide endgame scenarios for top-level characters.
- Original D&D generally does this recursively: characters can level up to demigodhood, whereupon they can rest on their laurels or voluntarily De-power themselves and live another mortal life. If they ascend again, they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and vanish into realms unknown.
- AD&D 1st Edition supplement Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia (1980). When PCs reach high level, raise their ability scores to divine levels and gain a body of worshipers, they can ascend to godhood. They immediately become NPCs under the Dungeon Master's control.
- AD&D 2nd Edition: The basic game books only provide support for PCs to reach 20th level. The Dungeon Master Guide suggests that PCs who reach that level retire to "semi-NPC" status where they leave active play and devote their time to non-adventuring duties but remain present in the game world. TSR later caved in and released the High-Level Campaigns book in 1996 for levels up to 30 again.
- Basic Dungeons & Dragons, in particular the BECMI version, allowed characters to reach 36th level, and allowed for characters to have a shot at becoming Immortals, the god-like beings that watch over the world of Mystara and possibly other worlds too.
- In the original tabletop version of Dragonlance, characters are limited to 18th level — the gods send any characters who exceed this to another world, presumably to prevent very powerful characters from attempting to kill a god and to take their place as Raistlin attempted (he was 18th level at the time).
- 3rd Edition: The Prestige Class "Risen Martyr" from the Book of Exalted Deeds allows a martyred character to return to life as a Deathless. In exchange each new Character Level they gain must be in Risen Martyr, and when there are no more levels of the class left to take, they're recalled to the Heavens for good.
- 4th Edition provides Epic Destinies that govern the top ten character levels, each of which has an endgame for a character who reaches level 30 and achieves their Destiny. Demigods ascend to godhood, Archmages merge with magic itself, tricksters fade into legend, and so on.
- Heart: The City Beneath: Each class has several Zenith abilities which significantly affect the local area and then remove the character from the game. Typically, two are some sort of retirement (often one broadly positive, the other a darker path) whereas the third is triggered by a character death.
- HELLAS: Worlds of Sun and Stone: Max out your Glory and it's only a matter of time before you leave the material universe behind to join your patron god. Max out your Fate and it's only a matter of time before your foretold doom catches up with you. Either way, it's time to pass the torch to your child or protégé.
- Necromunda: In addition to the street gangs, it's possible to play as law enforcement as a squad of Arbites. They have much better gear and huge cyber-mastiffs, but they hit a level cap at which point the character is removed to serve as a Veteran Instructor elsewhere.
- The One Ring: If a player character retires, falls to the Shadow, or dies, the player's next character is assumed to have been mentored by the old one and starts with bonus XP proportional to the old one's. Voluntary retirement and Heroic Sacrifice provide the greatest XP boost.
- Most Powered by the Apocalypse games include Character Endgame mechanics:
- The original Apocalypse World allows players to retire their characters to safety as a special Advanced Upgrade. A retired PC becomes an NPC, but unlike almost all others, the Game Master is explicitly forbidden from messing with their lives (i.e. they get Plot Armor for their trouble). The game encourages players to retire long-lived characters with the debility mechanic, which imposes permanent penalties on their stats every time they're critically injured, — accruing too many of them makes characters largely unplayable.
- Monster of the Week encourages character retirement with the luck mechanics: every Hunter has seven points of luck to spend and only a few can ever get one back. When your luck eventually runs out, the Game Master is legally allowed to screw your character over at any time without warning, quickly resulting in a messy death unless you retire them first.
- Flying Circus provides two separate ways for a character to leave the game - the first option is to take on a Destiny after fulfilling exceptional requirements (e.g. proving oneself worthy of leading a community), whilst the other is retiring, which costs a maximum of 15 Thaler, reduced by several factors (e.g. getting an addiction under control or adjusting to losing a comrade)
- Red Markets has the player characters trying to save a bit of their profits from each job towards a "retirement plan" that usually means bribing your way across the border wall from the zombie-infested Loss to the zombie-free but totalitarian Recession, though there's other possibilities suggested like establishing your own Enclave in the Loss.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has a version specific to the Chaos Champion career line: once they earn enough rewards from the Dark Gods for their distinguished service, they have a chance to be transformed into a Daemon Prince to serve eternally. The fledgling Daemon is usually called away to the Realms of Chaos, leaving the player to roll up a new character with a hefty starting bonus.
