Ken L
March 6th, 2017, 01:49
So yesterday, I just completed an arc for my sci-fi setting, and it wasn't intentional.
Normally when we plan campaigns we either follow one of two formats. The first is the standard story line which is actively planned for with room for improvisation as your party walks along. The second is the sandbox where you throw up a few bounties or low hanging fruit and react on whatever catches interest. Sure there's arguably more formats but within my mind I’d consider them variants or combinations of ‘planned’ and ‘unplanned’.
For the planned story, we manufacture an end goal for the campaign’s closure, and we work backwards to place beacons along the way for the desired end. There can be many goals such as ‘the fate of the kingdom’ but for the most part, they are accounted for in the realm of expectation for the GM.
For the unplanned story, we create a play-pen of sorts where there’s a world that exists with several interesting hooks, but whose details themselves aren’t even articulated outside of the vague descriptors. The devil’s in the details so these campaigns require more improvisation on the part of the GM but leave a gaping hole story-wise compared to a maintained outcome.
The End.
How does a story end when the story itself is within the hands of the readers, or in this case, the actors? Is it an eventuality that everyone can see coming? Or does it arrive by a thunderbolt, fast and strong? The only prior experience I’ve had ending an open world campaign like this was when my players tired of their characters and desired to play something new. In that event I suppose it ended in a whimper and can be contributed to my inexperience as a GM at the time. The aphorism of ‘If I had more experience’ however doesn’t eludicate any better ways in which I could have ended it better. Sure we role-played how each of their characters retired and lived happily ever after; but is that really a satisfying ending?
Some say that the end is when all loose ends are tied, as well as when the player’s characters have achieved all their personal objectives to feel the need to retire. It produces the concept that everything that goes well, ends well and that ‘everything is sunny in Philadelphia’. The opposite is that a series of events have occurred that necessitate the end of the campaign, be it good or bad.
This gets me to the point of closures and endings. Many of my favorite books have vague and ambiguous endings with the main characters having left some kind of impact on the world. This ‘leaving of one’s mark’ can be for good or ill; the epilogue of what happens to that abbey your party helped rebuild for those monks in their 4th session, or the mob boss’ son having murdered his family. But what if your players left no mark? The world still sucks, little timmy still has a limp, and bob the paladin still hasn’t reclaimed his honor. Is that really a desirable ending?
If anything, my last session has told me that yes, it is a desirable ending, and it can be a masterstroke of story completion.
To give some perspective, my campaign started off as a short 4 shot adventure in a new experimental setting I was developing. In the end it took off as I added more sub-plots to open up a sandbox element afterwards to form an awkward conglomeration of “what happens after the main adventure” with “gun for hire”.
The storyline initially follows a group of runners undertaking a government contract involving a brewing war between several gangs in a slum-like area of my world. This ends with revelations of a cover-up as well freedom fighter elements against the ‘Executate’ with the resolution being a public revelation… along with a hefty payday.
After this I started digging into my player’s backstories, short as they were (they were only supposed to last 4 session after all), for more leads of interesting things to add to the world. That allowed me to add personal elements to a handful of contracts they carried out as they progressed. Be it the mystic adept’s habit of smoking a certain narcotic stirring up his family past, to the the shaman’s contact with the ‘fifth form’ during a critical failure during an encounter with the ‘white bishop’.
Overall they completed only 5 missions after the primary mini campaign before their final mission. Now I didn’t really expect it to be the last mission, but it felt natural in how it played out. It was a recovery mission that took the party to one of the docking halos at the edge of my world (it’s a giant dilapidated colony ship). The original objective was to recover cargo from a returning ranger expeditionary vessel whom in the docking attempt had crashed into the halo disabling all starboard ports. Given the state of my world, the center of the ship is the crux of civilization, with the ‘star decks’ or space facing districts being more of an outlaw country. The halos themselves extend outward into space akin to a thin centrifugal ring, making it the very boundary between the world as they know it and the empty vacuum on the other side.
The lore here is that the central government maintains the ‘tethers’, or safe passage through the star decks to reach the halos, as they are the only way to launch and maintain scouting vessels. A few sessions prior, I had hinted to strange happenings in outlaw territory in response to the very first mission they did (the government contract). One of my encounters was an ambush by this gang truce on the very tether they were travelling lead by the NPC from the ‘resistance’ they encountered earlier. The goal of the group was to hold docking halo bravo hostage to get concessions from the central district in the form of supplies. One of my players during a tense negotiation instead suggested commandeering a ranger for a frontier colony instead. That in itself isn’t odd except in this setting, all jump drives are attuned to ‘the heart,’ a magi-tech reactor in the ship’s core that powers everything. Commandeering a ship would only last so far as it would be a simple thing to sever all vessels from their power source. This would effectively be taking a one-way trip after the initial jump.
It was a suicide mission, for the frontier colonies themselves are outside the ship’s range of influence. They’re founded by exiles whom live isolated within asteroid clusters or borderline barren planetoids. The jump range of all rangers being limited to a light year bubble around the heart, so as the colony ship moves, frontier postings at the edge of the bubble’s tail will fall out of range. These colonies are ‘doomed’ as they call themselves, but there’s a certain freedom to living by your own laws and customs that makes them attractive.
It’s here where my party found itself at the ranger’s airlock, with a rag-tag band of ‘rebels’ with the before mentioned NPC in toe they’d convinced to go. Some within the party saw the trip for what it was, while others were kind-of star struck. There was some great RP in that moment as the party split between those with obligations (family, duty), and those whom had their eyes starbound. As the ranger departed, I described from an outside perspective of a port window as a small speck of a thing departed the ruined halo before vanishing in a brilliant flash of light.
See you around Space Cowboy.
I couldn’t think of a better way to end it, so I loaded up ‘Call me’ to my mix-deck (i’ve been using the bebop OST) and we all just kinda sat and listened for a good minute before diving into the after-game banter.
Nothing had changed, and I suppose the central district would regain control of the tether as well as the halo in due time. The party members that stayed devised an alibi, and it helped that the face who could convince a beggar to part with his coins, was among them. It was business as usual, and yet perfect.
We’re currently taking a break for a few weeks before diving in once more with new characters, but it had me thinking, hence this post. What makes a great finale? Is it planned or spur of the moment? In addition, how does campaign length play a role? I ended up with 22 sessions and only 3 level ups yet it didn’t feel short, it felt.. correct in a fashion.
Bests,
Ken
Normally when we plan campaigns we either follow one of two formats. The first is the standard story line which is actively planned for with room for improvisation as your party walks along. The second is the sandbox where you throw up a few bounties or low hanging fruit and react on whatever catches interest. Sure there's arguably more formats but within my mind I’d consider them variants or combinations of ‘planned’ and ‘unplanned’.
For the planned story, we manufacture an end goal for the campaign’s closure, and we work backwards to place beacons along the way for the desired end. There can be many goals such as ‘the fate of the kingdom’ but for the most part, they are accounted for in the realm of expectation for the GM.
For the unplanned story, we create a play-pen of sorts where there’s a world that exists with several interesting hooks, but whose details themselves aren’t even articulated outside of the vague descriptors. The devil’s in the details so these campaigns require more improvisation on the part of the GM but leave a gaping hole story-wise compared to a maintained outcome.
The End.
How does a story end when the story itself is within the hands of the readers, or in this case, the actors? Is it an eventuality that everyone can see coming? Or does it arrive by a thunderbolt, fast and strong? The only prior experience I’ve had ending an open world campaign like this was when my players tired of their characters and desired to play something new. In that event I suppose it ended in a whimper and can be contributed to my inexperience as a GM at the time. The aphorism of ‘If I had more experience’ however doesn’t eludicate any better ways in which I could have ended it better. Sure we role-played how each of their characters retired and lived happily ever after; but is that really a satisfying ending?
Some say that the end is when all loose ends are tied, as well as when the player’s characters have achieved all their personal objectives to feel the need to retire. It produces the concept that everything that goes well, ends well and that ‘everything is sunny in Philadelphia’. The opposite is that a series of events have occurred that necessitate the end of the campaign, be it good or bad.
This gets me to the point of closures and endings. Many of my favorite books have vague and ambiguous endings with the main characters having left some kind of impact on the world. This ‘leaving of one’s mark’ can be for good or ill; the epilogue of what happens to that abbey your party helped rebuild for those monks in their 4th session, or the mob boss’ son having murdered his family. But what if your players left no mark? The world still sucks, little timmy still has a limp, and bob the paladin still hasn’t reclaimed his honor. Is that really a desirable ending?
If anything, my last session has told me that yes, it is a desirable ending, and it can be a masterstroke of story completion.
To give some perspective, my campaign started off as a short 4 shot adventure in a new experimental setting I was developing. In the end it took off as I added more sub-plots to open up a sandbox element afterwards to form an awkward conglomeration of “what happens after the main adventure” with “gun for hire”.
The storyline initially follows a group of runners undertaking a government contract involving a brewing war between several gangs in a slum-like area of my world. This ends with revelations of a cover-up as well freedom fighter elements against the ‘Executate’ with the resolution being a public revelation… along with a hefty payday.
After this I started digging into my player’s backstories, short as they were (they were only supposed to last 4 session after all), for more leads of interesting things to add to the world. That allowed me to add personal elements to a handful of contracts they carried out as they progressed. Be it the mystic adept’s habit of smoking a certain narcotic stirring up his family past, to the the shaman’s contact with the ‘fifth form’ during a critical failure during an encounter with the ‘white bishop’.
Overall they completed only 5 missions after the primary mini campaign before their final mission. Now I didn’t really expect it to be the last mission, but it felt natural in how it played out. It was a recovery mission that took the party to one of the docking halos at the edge of my world (it’s a giant dilapidated colony ship). The original objective was to recover cargo from a returning ranger expeditionary vessel whom in the docking attempt had crashed into the halo disabling all starboard ports. Given the state of my world, the center of the ship is the crux of civilization, with the ‘star decks’ or space facing districts being more of an outlaw country. The halos themselves extend outward into space akin to a thin centrifugal ring, making it the very boundary between the world as they know it and the empty vacuum on the other side.
The lore here is that the central government maintains the ‘tethers’, or safe passage through the star decks to reach the halos, as they are the only way to launch and maintain scouting vessels. A few sessions prior, I had hinted to strange happenings in outlaw territory in response to the very first mission they did (the government contract). One of my encounters was an ambush by this gang truce on the very tether they were travelling lead by the NPC from the ‘resistance’ they encountered earlier. The goal of the group was to hold docking halo bravo hostage to get concessions from the central district in the form of supplies. One of my players during a tense negotiation instead suggested commandeering a ranger for a frontier colony instead. That in itself isn’t odd except in this setting, all jump drives are attuned to ‘the heart,’ a magi-tech reactor in the ship’s core that powers everything. Commandeering a ship would only last so far as it would be a simple thing to sever all vessels from their power source. This would effectively be taking a one-way trip after the initial jump.
It was a suicide mission, for the frontier colonies themselves are outside the ship’s range of influence. They’re founded by exiles whom live isolated within asteroid clusters or borderline barren planetoids. The jump range of all rangers being limited to a light year bubble around the heart, so as the colony ship moves, frontier postings at the edge of the bubble’s tail will fall out of range. These colonies are ‘doomed’ as they call themselves, but there’s a certain freedom to living by your own laws and customs that makes them attractive.
It’s here where my party found itself at the ranger’s airlock, with a rag-tag band of ‘rebels’ with the before mentioned NPC in toe they’d convinced to go. Some within the party saw the trip for what it was, while others were kind-of star struck. There was some great RP in that moment as the party split between those with obligations (family, duty), and those whom had their eyes starbound. As the ranger departed, I described from an outside perspective of a port window as a small speck of a thing departed the ruined halo before vanishing in a brilliant flash of light.
See you around Space Cowboy.
I couldn’t think of a better way to end it, so I loaded up ‘Call me’ to my mix-deck (i’ve been using the bebop OST) and we all just kinda sat and listened for a good minute before diving into the after-game banter.
Nothing had changed, and I suppose the central district would regain control of the tether as well as the halo in due time. The party members that stayed devised an alibi, and it helped that the face who could convince a beggar to part with his coins, was among them. It was business as usual, and yet perfect.
We’re currently taking a break for a few weeks before diving in once more with new characters, but it had me thinking, hence this post. What makes a great finale? Is it planned or spur of the moment? In addition, how does campaign length play a role? I ended up with 22 sessions and only 3 level ups yet it didn’t feel short, it felt.. correct in a fashion.
Bests,
Ken