Workshopping "What is the best way to bring a campaign to an end?"

Question

I've recently posted the question What is the best way to bring a campaign to an end? on the Role-Playing Games Stack Exchange, but it was closed because it ended up seeming too broad or just phrased weird.

I am having a hard time narrowing down the question to a singular problem. Should I just stick with the end question of "Is boredom a valid reason to end a campaign?"? Or is that also too much of an opinion-based question?

What could I do to improve it and allow it to actually be a question that can be answered? I want to narrow down the question so it's less opinion-based and more focused, but cannot for the life of me figure out how.

I'm really hoping that I can get the question re-opened, because I'm pretty sure the answers would be really helpful for me later on.

Current version of the Question

This is mainly just a question I decided to ask out of curiosity because sometimes I can get bored of a campaign and I wouldn't want to end it because the players could still be enjoying themselves. The players have mentioned they liked combat scenes but would appreciate more opportunities for them to express their characters with role-play. With being a very inexperienced DM I know next to nothing about good ways to add changes to the campaign.

I'm currently just playing in the Eberron world with a homebrew questline and I don't really have a fully set idea what the players should strive for. (mainly because I cannot think of anything enjoyable)

I don't really want to end the campaign but with no new ideas coming into my head to spice up how the game is played it's really hard to bring back the enjoyment from when the campaign felt fresh and new.

For me, the combat appears to drag on too much and that limits opportunity for roleplay. I have discussed with the players and gotten mixed responses. Some like the combat and some want more roleplay.

As DM, I would like more roleplay - but I also want all players to be happy. How can I adjust my campaign to do this?

Answer 1

To sum up from what I've observed of the community standards here, this is a single-issue question and answer site where discrete (Single issue) questions that can have an answer backed by supporting evidence (Books/references for points of fact, specific anecdotes with how it helped solve the problem at hand for subjective help, see subjective questions and citations)

The scope of the question, while more supporting evidence for the situation you are in can be useful, the actual question should be a discrete, single answer question. The idea is for this site to be a repository for future users to be able to search for answers that have already been given, so having each question focus on one thing is best.

So, let's look at the things that could be converted into questions and note before you actually ask them, you should search to see if they already have answers (as some are common things)

I'm currently just playing in the Eberron world with a homebrew questline and I don't really have a fully set idea what the players should strive for. (mainly because I cannot think of anything enjoyable)

"What are some ways to integrate hooks to a homebrew quest to get their characters involved in roleplay?" is how I would phrase it. I'm new here though, so if someone has a better phrasing, I'm up to changing it! same with all the future suggesitons

I don't really want to end the campaign but with no new ideas coming into my head to spice up how the game is played it's really hard to bring back the enjoyment from when the campaign felt fresh and new.

I'd look up things on "DM burnout", there is likely material there. If not, a question of the sort of "What are some ways to restore DM interest in a campaign after the beginning?" Here you might get DMs telling you how they dealt with it in the past.

For me, the combat appears to drag on too much and that limits opportunity for roleplay. I have discussed with the players and gotten mixed responses. Some like the combat and some want more roleplay.

What are ways I could speed up combat?

As DM, I would like more roleplay - but I also want all players to be happy. How can I adjust my campaign to do this?

"How can I balance a mixed table where some prefer more combat and some prefer more roleplay?"

Note each of these should be its own question...and before you run with them, I'd wait until some of the actual long time members of the community confirm that my suggestions are good :).

Finally, So, the opening "What is the best way to..." Some of these questions are considered good/on topic here...if it could be answered with some form of specific reasoning why. Examples per Thomas Markov: "eat cheese cake" would be an opinion, whereas "to cook a cheese cake when I only have access to a 55 gallon drum and a welding torch" is something that people with experience can provide useful information on. The latter is acceptable here.

P.S. Speaking purely as myself as a mathematician I would prefer the more technically correct "What is an optimal way to..." to "The best way to", since there can be more than one optimal solution. Even more pedantically, a mathematician would prefer "maximal" as in mathematics "optimum" implies uniqueness. However, in English, it can be accepted usage to say there is "more than one optimal solution". That's not the community standard here though, so please treat this final paragraph as a minor bit of pedantry that can be safely ignored.