We finished our Curse of Strahd session this weekend!

Pre-injury, I was working on a series of posts that talked about my session prep for each session. This is the final post for that series, and a post about my first time ending a campaign!

First, let’s fill in the gaps.

The party successfully retrieved the sword of sunlight and dealt with its curse. They worked with the Keepers of the Feather to save the children kidnapped by the werewolves. And, they defeated a longtime nemesis—Sir Alexander, a vampire spawn.

Sirya and Kara had collected all the prophesied elements to defeat Strahd. So together with their NPC allies, they once more entered into Castle Ravenloft. As foretold, they fought Strahd deep within the crypts, fought their way out to locate his tomb, and destroyed him once and for all.

So, then I had to prepare for the final session!

What I prepared:

  • Recap

One last recap! I think the most valuable piece of advice from this series is this—write up a little recap for your players. This final recap was a short, broad summary of the party’s entire adventure up to killing Strahd.

  • Read the “Strahd Dies” section of the ending chapter

I made a mistake here. I’ll touch on it later, but since the previous session had reached and defeated Strahd, I didn’t have much time to fully prep his fight and the aftermath. So I missed that there was one final combat after killing Strahd (Rahadin, who the party had left alive thus far).

This wasn’t a major issue because we ended right after they destroyed Strahd, but I could have handled it better—maybe even set up the fight right at the end of the last session as a cliffhanger. Something to remember for future campaigns!

  • Edited an ending scene

I really like the optional ending scene with the spirit of Sergei von Zarovich and Tatyana reuniting. And, it fits with what the party accomplished—Ireena made it all the way through the adventure, and they spent time getting to know her (and uh, she and the bard are girlfriends).

Also, I was pulling away from the original adventure’s characterization (minimal as it is) of Ireena as just a vessel for Tatyana’s soul. In my campaign, Ireena is still Tatyana’s reincarnation but with a personality of her own, with a character arc that centered around her becoming her own person. So a scene where Ireena disappears with Sergei wouldn’t… make sense.

Instead, I edited the scene such that Tatyana’s spirit divested herself from Ireena and left with Sergei. Thus Ireena is relieved of the burden of many tragic lives that aren’t hers, and Tatyana and Sergei’s spirits get their rest.

  • Thought about what to discuss during the session

I didn’t write it down, but I came up with questions I would ask the players to see what their characters did after they saved Barovia.

What I improvised:

  • Answers to the players’ questions

After the Rahadin fight and the “final scene,” I let the players ask me a few questions about details of the campaign. Their questions covered some details that the characters never discovered but weren’t major plot points, so I felt comfortable just giving them the relevant information. I’m a curious person myself, after all. I wanted everyone to have a sense of resolution.  

  • Responsive epilogue

Also after the fight and final scene, we talked about what the characters would do next. This mostly consisted of conversations like:

“I think my character would [do this].”

“Okay, yeah, you can [do that]. [Describes events that happen around the character doing that.] Does that sound good?”

“Yes, except [clarifying detail].”

“Cool, so instead [this happens].”

Some of these turned into roleplayed-out conversations between the characters and NPCs. This lasted for the rest of the session.

What I would change:

  • Pay more attention to the ending

I knew that Curse of Strahd was going to wrap up soon, but I missed a few details that indicated it would be *this* soon. So I was caught off guard when they found and defeated Strahd in the second-to-last session, and then surprised that they still needed to fight Rahadin afterwards.

It’s probably good to keep the ending in mind throughout the campaign. And, once they recovered the sunsword, it would have helped me to start “preparing” the ending, I think.

  • Prepare properly for the “final boss fight”

On a similar note, I probably could have made the Strahd fight cooler. I think I did a pretty decent job with his battle dialogue and describing the fight. But maybe I could have put together a little playlist, maybe I could have written out some better dialogue, and so on to make it even better.

  • Better way to end the call?

I don’t think this would have been an issue if we could do an in-person session, but something about ending the final session’s Discord call felt… awkward? It was a little earlier than our usual runtime, so that was part of it. I’m not totally sure what would have been better here. Maybe an on-theme final closing line?

What I think worked well:

  • Ending scene edits

I think the final scene with Sergei and Tatyana worked very well. The players weren’t sure if there were going to be other things they had to deal with after Strahd and Rahadin, but this ending scene made it feel like “you did it, this is the end.” I think I’d incorporate a similar kind of ending narration in homebrew campaigns, too.

  • Recaps and “achievements”

The recap went over well and got everyone into the final session. And after the end, we went through and talked about some of the characters major achievements in the plot (for example, Ireena Kolyana survived, they restored two of the gems to the Wizard of Wines winery, they found the Sunsword, and so on). I think this contributed to the feeling of “yes, you did it!” that I wanted in this session.

  • Responsive epilogue (for our party size)

I think the conversational epilogue or “responsive epilogue” worked well for two players, maybe it would work for three. In bigger groups, I might be concerned about an imbalance of time spent on each character.

This was the first time I’ve ever officially ended a campaign (my past ones have fizzled out due to schedule issues). I feel pretty good about it overall! And I’d like to hear what you all think—have you ended a campaign before, as a player or DM? How did it feel? What did your player characters “do” afterwards?