thread: 2005-04-21 : Planned Endings
On 2005-04-22, Emily Care wrote:
It may not necessarily be "endings" that give us such good stuff but the resolutions and closure implicit in them.
Those are things we crave in every aspect of life, but especially in narratives.
Games that have finite arcs encourage a playgroup to intentionally create resolution. Incorporating techniques like the ones Victor outlines allow a group to
ensurethat this will happen rather than leaving it up to chance and a hope. But it need not mean an end: closure may resolve all the tensions and thus end the interest in the plotline or character, or it may resolve it into a new situation that can then be explored. The happy medium with intention.
What's it like when a story doesn't end? A mess of creative potential gets squandered. If my character Caleth hadn't been caught & put on trial for murdering her parens it would have been a great loss to me in the character concept I wrote for her. If I'd had her slip out the back door of the covenant before she'd been identified, I'd have prolonged her story & dodged resolution, but I'd also have jettisoned what I'd asked for by creating her. My choice, perhaps, but ultimately likely to be less satifying.
Climaxes in storylines are resolution of the plot. They are just the payout of whatever we've put in to the game leading up to it. The characters, the setting, the situations, we put it there to come together in a mad alchemical mix that gives us that je ne sais quoi we get from a good game.
Rules that help me move toward resolution can help me move towards getting the full value out of what I've made up.
Endings & resolutions are at the same time new beginnings. Allowing and working towards giving a story resolution lets the characters—or the plot, or the world—be dynamic in a way that you are robbed of by having no clearly defined resolutions.
