There and Back Again: When do YOU end the Quest?

[Decipher]

I always found that after the quest is "finished", its laboring and boring for the players to have to trek back to the stairs. Mostly, they just wanna add up their gold, check out the Armory, go to the bathroom, smoke etc. I require them to make it back to the stairs if there are rooms they haven't discovered yet or if there are traps in any of the hallways. Other than that, I usually skip the whole stair thing.

[j_dean80]

I always found that after the quest is "finished", its laboring and boring for the players to have to trek back to the stairs. Mostly, they just wanna add up their gold, check out the Armory, go to the bathroom, smoke etc. I require them to make it back to the stairs if there are rooms they haven't discovered yet or if there are traps in any of the hallways. Other than that, I usually skip the whole stair thing.

Can drag the game on when a Hero with 1 BP left searches for treasure and gets a Fimir wandering monster, manages to survive the attack, and heads tail to leave the others to deal with it.

I usually call the game if every room has been explored and no special treasures are still out.

[Goblin-King]

or if there are traps in any of the hallways. Other than that, I usually skip the whole stair thing.

This is just it... So you literally tell the heroes there are un-sprung traps left?

[mitchiemasha]

Double 1's Hazard mod, has my questing heroes quite scared on the exit attempt. With very close, lucky escapes. These were mid quest escapes though!

[Gomcse]

I usually just end it if they've cleared the dungeon. If there's anything left, I'll sound am alarm and have remaining monsters make a run towards the heroes. Then it's a race to the exit.

[wallydubbs]

The way my crew and I play, we don't use Evil Wizard cards, although that's pretty cool for some quests.
Once the heroes have completed the objective and out of danger, if all monsters are dead, traps disarmed and all rooms have been identified I will tell them there's nothing more to find and if they unanimously agree we will end it there.

However in some cases, such as Quest 8 Fire Mage, they can defeat the Fire Mage without exploring all the rooms. After they killed the Fire Mage in the central room, I told them "Your quest is complete, you may go back to the stairwell or continue exploring the board. In this quest there are 4 additional rooms in the bottom right quadrant of the board, they never went down the far right hallway, which leads to the room with 2 orcs and a treasure chest. After they cleared the other 3 rooms they were low on health and decided to head back to the stairwell, when I saw that no one was attempting to go down that far right corridor I allowed them to unanimously end the quest. Only after when they agreed and ended it did I tell them what they missed. At which point it was too late to go back.

[Kurgan]

If we're short on time, and they've killed and discovered everything on the board, I have no problem calling it a win if the players agree (or if we are itching to move on to the next quest).
If they've just otherwise completed the objectives and there are no monsters visible, it's a stretch, but probably the "right thing to do" if everybody is tired and ready to call it. Now if it's a case where you're meeting up the next day to finish up or something, by all means, make it a two-parter to get those last scraps of gold/whatever.

If they are fleeing the monsters or have other stuff left to do, you can bet I will make them roll it out to the stairs... and I do use the EW deck too. Fun stuff...

Imagine if three of the four heroes have plate mail and they are trying to make it across the entire board. And no, I wouldn't allow the Wizard to return BACK UP THE STAIRS with a bunch of horses or something...

[Kurgan]

I usually just end it if they've cleared the dungeon. If there's anything left, I'll sound am alarm and have remaining monsters make a run towards the heroes. Then it's a race to the exit.

I like this. Especially since the first time I did it, I powered up the monsters with black and blue dice while they were "on alert."