Today’s guest article is by reader Tom Puketza, who I believe is our most prolific guest article writer — his previous articles are Building a “Petri Dish” Sandbox and The Handmade, Super-Simple Wizard Tower Tile Set. Thanks, Tom!
Recently I finished the Xbox game Fallout New Vegas. Without giving anything away, you’re shown a long slide show detailing the fate of all the people you met in the game. This took me by surprise and gave the game a really cool immersive feel. Naturally, I thought it’d be a good thing to shamelessly steal for use in my tabletop campaign.
Every campaign racks up a list of friends, enemies, and factions. What happens to all these people? If your group has spent actual (real-world) years adventuring it can be very rewarding to revisit the notable ones and see how things panned out.
The basic idea is simple: Write up a good narrative conclusion to your campaign, but also include epilogues for as many NPCs as you think may be appropriate, then find a good way to present all this to your group during or after your final session. Below are three delivery ideas as well as pros and cons to each approach. Maybe you can think of others.
Round Table Read
Place your epilogues on a stack of 3×5 cards, hand each player an even number, then have them go around the table. Each player reads a card until you reach the end. You probably want to have some good ending music playing in the background.
Pros: Getting the players involved gives them one last bit of personal investment. A good set of players could also really make things shine.
Cons: We are not all born actors and orators, and you’re asking everyone to deliver cold reads. If you’re going for a dramatic delivery, this can derail into giggles, false starts, and general messiness. The wrong set of players could also completely ruin this experience. There is also a high potential for misunderstanding, so make sure your cards are as explicit and clear as possible.
GM as Omniscient Narrator
Instead of giving the players your 3×5 cards, you the GM read them yourself. If you’re confident enough, you can really turn this into a solo performance. For example, you can do what Fallout does and present each epilogue from the point of view of a particular NPC. You can also spice this up using old props, maps, and whatever other tokens and art you used to reference all those old adventures. (That is, if you still have it lying around.)
Pros: GM has total control. You can practice your delivery.
Cons: GM has to effectively perform uninterrupted for several minutes. This means earning undivided attention, and we all know nothing in gaming survives contact with the players intact. Also, rather than prepping for a game, you may end up rehearsing. Gathering props and art and trinkets the players used, or ones they will recognize, may be challenging.
TOTAL MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA
Projectors! Slide shows! Soundtracks! Art and props! ACTING!
Pros: Awesome.
Cons: You’re basically mounting your own mini stage production. This means your campaign conclusion has just become an event. You will need lots and lots of rehearsal time. You will need to do tech rehearsals to make sure all your equipment works. You may get odd looks from your family. You might get tied up in things like “subtext” and “artistic intention.” You may or may not be as good a narrator and actor as Ian McKellen.
General Tips
However you do it, you want to make the players feel like they made a difference in the world. You want to show the consequences of their choices and how the people they met made out in the end. But probably most importantly, you want to create a feeling of closure to the story everyone shared. A definitive, proper ending is a really powerful experience. Its what makes us remember our favorite movies, books, performers, politicians, and events. It provides emotional satisfaction few other things can. And like they say about pizza: when it’s good, it’s great, and when its bad, it’s still pretty good.
In all my years of gaming, I’ve only seen a campaign end (as opposed to stop) a few times. And yet, it was usually anticlimactic and rushed. In one case I spent two years developing a character I really enjoyed. I had had so much fun feeling like I was in my own TV adventure series. But by the time it came to end things everyone grew impatient. The GM hurried the last game so he could get to the next campaign. A slide show send off would have been, dare I say, more respectful. If you are running a long campaign and can pull off a good ending like this, your players will remember it for years.
Here’s to memorable exits.
Alternate Idea:
Split up your NPCs by player, but based on which PC had the most interaction/impact on that NPC. Give the player a note with a name and where the NPC was last seen, and just let them make up what happens. You might save some for yourself, but the campaign is over, it’s not like your players can really screw things up if you let them make up some NPC fates.
That’s a really cool idea. I’m going to have to use it for the end of my Eberron campaign. 🙂
Awesome idea. Nothing says meaningful impact like epilogues, and to have the players’ actions reflect through NPCs is great. Totally stealing this.
If you really want to go all out, can also record it using Movie Maker as I did for the end of my Fallout Campaign. Here is the one I cooked up. Nates Fallout Campaign Ending Which borrowed from FO2, and various images found on the interweb as a movie/slideshow. The players were very happy to see it as it wrapped up a 4 year run.
There’s a good section in Odyssey where Phil and Walt talk about cementing a good ending–including a reference to Martin’s Throw a wrap party article.
I like the idea of a slideshow, but worry that it’s non-interactive–that you’re providing all of the information, and at best asking them to read what you’ve prepared. I bet it’s still miles better than my normal “and we’re done” endings. 😉
I haven’t played Fiasco yet, although I want to – so far I have the books but I’ve only seen it played on TableTop. One of the cool things is that at the end everyone takes turns telling what happened to their character afterward. (The number of scenes and whether they should end happily or tragically is determined by what was done by – or to – the character during the game)
You can tweak the Round Table Read to avoid the problem of players stumbling over reading your script by distributing the notes in advance. Give each player the notes for one NPC a day ahead of time so they can prepare. You might encourage the players to add a bit of their own commentary (as long as they don’t change the story). Trying matching the NPCs to players who are similar or opposites, depending on whether you want a sympathetic reading or a “rage read”.
While it’s not for everybody, I’ve been sending (very) short stories about NPCs to my players. We play every other week, and as we neared the end of a campaign that had been running since October of last year, I wanted to keep everyone up on what was happening to their friends and allies who had gone their separate ways, so I’ve been sending them these updates on off weeks. I plan to write a wrap-up as well that details where those characters that live out the campaign are headed.
What might work really well is combine this idea with John’s idea of Introductory Scenes”, linked here:
http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/enabling-player-fun-introductory-scenes/
You could have each player have an epilogue scene with their chosen NPC. They give you their chosen NPC, and you give them the PC’s age – then you improv and play out the two of them catching some years later. That’s would a lot of fun – once-barbarian warrior Kragyn, now an old senator, visiting the deathbed of the mage Delilah, who civilised him and loved him when he was young.