thread: 2005-04-21 : Planned Endings
On 2005-04-25, Jeff Rients wrote:
For the last 4 or 5 years when starting a new GMing project I always try to envision an endgame. My rather-successful-if-I-do-say-so-myself Mob War mini-campaign had an overt end condition: When one gang or the other wins the mob war, the campaign is over. I estimated it would take 4 to 6 sessions to tell that story. On session 5 the PCs and friends stormed the summer mansion of Big Al Tolino, killing him and most of his trusted associates. With Al Tolino unceremoniously stuffed into an oven, the campaign was over. Each player was then given an opportunity to narrate a "years later" epilogue, adding one new fact to the game. That functioned quite well as the cherry on top. The epilogue round proved to be player-empowering by allowing them to decide what eventual fate their ne'erdo-wells suffered, but the decision to do the epilogues was imposed by me. But I'm working with players more into gametastic action sequences than negotiation of the shared imaginary space. This wasn't the sort of thing they normally do.
My present superhero game is explicitly structured as a "twelve issue miniseries" from Marvel comics. My plan is to pace the last few sessions so that we can end on session 12, with a similar epilogue round at the end of the campaign.
I am drawing upon action adventure TV metaphors for my d20 Modern game. We're planning on playing exactly 20 sessions structured as 2 seasons followed by a feature film. The last two sessions (UltraForce Omega: The Movie) will be played with the narrative stakes and special effects budget completely maxxed out.
In the past I've tried to run an AD&D game that was meant to be a fast-track to running the ridiculously high-end module H4 Throne of Bloodstone ("For Characters Levels 18-100"!?) but that campaign petered out in all the usual ways that games lose steam: people move, folks lose interest, the GM wants to run a shiny new game, etc. If my supers or d20M games take a similar dive, at least I can pretend that the comic or show was canceled by the coporate bigwigs. :)
