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© 1998-2001 Dru
Pagliassotti
All rights reserved.
Adventure Writing: Ending
the Successful Adventure
 The hardest part of
a story to write is the last line—and the hardest scene to run in
an adventure is the closing scene. Unlike a story or a show, you can't
just end with a one-liner and roll the credits.
By the time you end
the adventure, it's often quite late and the players are starting to yawn
... or they won't stop talking and end up dragging the closing scene out
interminably ... or the whole scene is an anticlimax after the thrilling
showdown and the characters just want to spend their awards and get healed.
What can you do? Well, sometimes you can spice up that ending with a little
bang to wake the players up, or shut them up, or bring them back to the
problem at hand.
There are approximately
five ways a successful ending scene can play out (if the adventure was
unsuccessful, it's another story, which I address in You
Win Some, You Lose Some).
And They All
Lived...: The most common ending is the simplest. Hands are shaken,
the reward is collected, the booty is split, the characters go on shopping
sprees, the end. This ending is the Old Reliable for one-shot adventures,
although it's also pretty standard in campaigns. And, in truth, it's a
nice, solid ending. Probably 80 to 90 percent of your successful adventures
should end like this—nice and straightforward and satisfying.
Wrapping Up
The Loose Ends: Often an adventure leaves the loose ends dangling—escaped
villains, destitute victims, potential romantic interests. You may want
to let the loose ends hang so you can tie them into another adventure,
but you can also use the ending scene to wrap them up. Perhaps the escaped
villain attacks the characters as they're collecting their pay; or the
victims show up on the characters' doorsteps, begging for a handout to
rebuild their burnt farms; or the romantic interest makes his or her feelings
known at last, or is spirited off by a jealous lover or angry parent.
The GM can often predict
what elements are likely to remain unresolved by the end of the game and
should be ready to call them to the characters' attention. Wrapping up
a loose end doesn't necessarily mean that the NPC can't be used again
to start an adventure—it just gives the players some extra closure
on the adventure.
But Wait, There's
More! Sometimes one adventure can dovetail into another—this
is common in mini-campaigns made up of a number of different adventures
all leading up to an overarching main goal—but it can also be used
in a normal campaign when one adventure clearly leads to further work.
The GM can foreshadow the next adventure during the closing scene, letting
players know what's to come in the next session.
Some campaigns, like
AD&D's Al Qadim, were set up like this on purpose—AQ was deliberately
created to permit the multiple embedding of adventures within adventures,
emulating the famous tales of 1,001 nights. The players set off on adventure
one, meet someone who drags them into adventure two, are forced to sidetrek
into adventure three, complete adventure three and go back to adventure
two, complete adventure two and go back to adventure one ... and so on.
This can be fun for a while, but players want resolution eventually, so
don't drag it on too long.
Unforseen Consequences:
So, the mission seemed straightforward enough to the characters. They
took it, completed it, and divvied up the rewards. But what if there's
something they hadn't anticipated? What if their actions cause an economic
collapse in a nation that is then invaded, and war commences? Or there's
a power vacuum after the villain dies, and somebody worse takes the villain's
place? Or the characters suddenly become famous and can't get a moment's
rest because the media are clamoring at their doors, asking for interviews,
and screwballs are claiming to be the characters' long-lost lovers or
suing for imaginary damages? Complexity theory shows that the smallest
actions can have great effects on society, and most adventurers' actions
are far from small.
To work out an unforseen
consequences ending, the GM should take a moment to consider the long-term,
wide-ranging effects on the area caused by the adventure's success. How
will the ecology be affected if the local dragon nest is eradicated? How
will the economy be affected if the market is flooded with smuggled diamonds?
How will the global organization of terrorism be affected if the leading
terrorist cabal is closed down? How many different groups have an interest
in the local ecology, economy, or sociopolitical organization of the area?
Will they fight each other for control? Who will that fight affect as
they struggle to take over an area or fill a power vacuum?
In this ending scene,
the characters should open a newspaper or hear some sort of report about
the consequences, and realize (ideally, with horror) that those consequences
were caused by their actions. This puts a little darker shade on the adventure
that isn't appropriate for most games (cyberpunk may be an exception),
but if judiciously applied once or twice in a campaign, it can have great
effect.
Mwa-ha-ha: Another
ending to use sparingly is the doublecross or frame ending. There are
a variety of ways this ending can play out, but in all cases, it's bad
for the players.
The easiest is to stiff
the adventurers on their pay—they show up at the office where they
were to collect their reward, only to discover an abandoned building showing
no sign of former occupancy, or another business there that has never
heard of their employer and claims to have moved into an empty office.
Another doublecross
is to give the adventurers the reward but to make it hot—and then
have the double-crossing employer tip off the local authorities. The authorities
will arrest the characters and the employer will have, of course, an ironclad
alibi when the characters try to blame him (or her). This works especially
well if (1) the adventure had been particularly dangerous, and (2) it
can be subtly revealed that the employer is related to an old archenemy
of the characters who had been arrested or killed many adventures ago.
The employer had hoped the adventure would kill the characters, but when
it didn't, s/he had a back-up plan.
A third doublecross
is for the adventurers to perform a variety of duties for an apparently
honest employer and later to discover that they've been working for a
villain—a disguised demon, perhaps, or a famous thief, or a terrorist.
The innocent adventures they've been sent on might have all had secret
but horrible unforseen consequences or turn out to have been mere distractions
for the authorities or ways of getting meddling adventurers out of town
while the real diabolical plot was carried out elsewhere.
All of these doublecrosses—and
the many others you'll be able to think of now—are nasty tricks
to pull on the characters. They shouldn't be run more than once each,
and generally not often at all, unless your campaign is particularly dark
and nasty. Remember, if the game isn't rewarding, the players will eventually
stop showing up!
As a general rule, 80
to 90 percent of the endings to a successful adventure should be straightforward.
The adventurers should be able to collect their rewards and go off to
enjoy themselves. But don't forget to add a little variety every eight
or ten adventures! Different ending scenes tend to give the players a
greater sense of the complexity of your world ... and make the characters
a lot more paranoid. And a paranoid character is a surviving character,
right?
originally written November 28, 1998
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