Going Out With a Bang

As we geared up to finish our most recent campaign, Road Trip Remix, I’ve been planning the finale. The act of planning an ending to a campaign is an important step since a final sour note can frustrate or even potentially ruin the experience. Planning out how you want or need your story to end, where your players want to leave their characters, and how to get there makes it much more likely you'll achieve an enjoyable ending.

The first thing to plan is the structure. Here, the campaign genre is an important factor to consider. For systems where fighting is an important theme or component, this should involve a final boss fight, preferably using a character you’ve had planned from the beginning, and a character that has been active in the story itself. The boss needs to be the toughest fight possible, but so overpowered as to be impossible. For Legal Tender, this meant Vectors with the DCA and highly trained enemies in the Governor’s forces. On the other hand, if you’re playing Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green, meeting Cthulhu would be less an exercise in defeating the Great Old One and more an exercise in trying to make it out of the encounter alive. Thus, the ending needs to fit the system. If combat is possible, a fight makes sense, but an escape or an intense negotiation can also make for a lively ending.

Perhaps more important than what you do is how the ending goes down with the players. After inhabiting the campaign world and their characters for so many sessions, ending the campaign with an out-of-character moment can be a massive disappointment. Reflect on how the players have been using their characters, how they’ve grown over the campaign, and what story beats would be worth poking in the finale. For MonsterHearts, J.J., Catrin, and Neko all had moments to shine and moments that helped highlight their characters — J.J.’s and Catrin’s fight with the boss, and Catrin and Neko’s dialogue.

Lastly comes the ending itself. Weak or on an incomplete ending can also be a disappointment. If there is a finite ending, make it a firm ending. If the story calls for ambiguity, then include ambiguity but certainly point at the ending. If this is a campaign that everyone might want to come back to in the future, leave seeds for future stories in the ‘adventure continues sense, while resolving the campaign problem. Going back to MonsterHearts, our heroes were able to resolve the immediate threat , and Aaron left some seeds we can expand on in a future campaign.

With the ends of campaigns, planning is key. What is there for the players to solve, to defeat, to realize? What will satisfy everyone at the table? What do you need to do to create those conditions? If you can ask and answer all these questions, you should have a finale that will be beloved and memorable. Are there any lessons you’ve learned in ending a campaign? Any stories of ends that went right -- or wrong? Talk about it in the comments.

GM's Corner 07: Writing Historical Roleplaying Scenarios (Ethan)

I've been dedicating a lot of my recent RPG creativity to writing historical gaming scenarios. I've written three Lovecraftian horror scenarios set during the American Civil War (with a fourth in progress), as well as another couple of scenarios set during the standard Call of Cthulhu period of the 1920's that include strong real-world historical elements. I've also been researching the Black Death in 1340's Europe, ideally for a future Red Markets-related project. If you want to listen to some of my scenarios, I'm running them here on Technical Difficulties (check out He Calls Me by the Thunder, part 1 and part 2), as well as for Role Playing Public Radio.

I also really love reading and playing historically-focused RPG scenarios, like Caleb Stokes's No Security scenarios set during the Great Depression, and the Trail of Cthulhu World War I collection Dulce et Decorum Est from Pelgrane Press.

I figured I'd share a few of my thoughts and tips about designing historical scenarios, since I've been thinking about it so much recently.

1. For me, the most fun thing about historical scenarios is getting to explore a new time and place, to imagine how people living in that place would deal with strange and dangerous situations differently than someone living in our modern world. I always play up the unique historical conditions of a scenario, even as I'm mixing in fantastical or supernatural elements. How might a Lovecraftian monstrosity affect an Antebellum slave plantation? How would a 1920's radical socialist newspaper deal with a malevolent sorcerer?

2. I recommend writing pre-generated characters for most historical scenarios. I don't want to force my players to do a bunch of their own historical research just to make up appropriate PCs. So I'll write characters that fit an appropriate archetype: the wounded artillery officer, the corrupt militia trooper, the crusading field nurse. But I also make sure to leave the pregens vague enough that each player can invest their own details into their character's personality, to make it their own.

3. When I'm researching for a game, I start broadly and then get more specific. A prominent historical event can be the seed of a scenario plot, like the Gettysburg Address or the Missouri Mormon Wars. I'll cruise Wikipedia or read a general history to get broad ideas. Then to develop the scenario, I'll dive into the detailed facts of the event and let that shape my plot, like how the black workmen on the Gettysburg National Cemetery project were surprisingly well-paid, and how Lincoln was getting sick while he was giving his speech. Having loads of details adds a lot to the players' sense of immersion.

4. That said, I have to resist the urge to cram every single tidbit in. Remember, we're writing games, not lectures. The main focus needs to remain on the characters' choices and actions, not just on the set dressing. Make sure that the details you do emphasize are ones that the PCs can use to inform their actions, so that they feel more like they're embodying real people from the era. The design of the Gettysburg courthouse probably doesn't matter, but the person playing the war widow might like to know a lot about the traditions of mourning dress.

5. Make sure that you let the actual play at the table be as free and open as you would in any game. Don't pull a "Stop having fun, guys!" on your players, just because they're doing something that doesn't quite make historical sense. Maybe gently remind them of how a particular historical fact might guide their behavior, but don't be a stickler about it. Remember, nobody's getting graded at the end of this.

Those are just a few tips. I might revisit this subject again in the future, to talk more theoretically about how to use historical games to explore big themes, or how to take ideas from historical research and use them in other genres like fantasy and science fiction. Let us know if you you find this sort of thing interesting! I hope I'm not the only one. :)

Ethan