Establishing the End Game: Hitting the Abort Button

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/02/05 – 00:00 -

We’ve all been there; your epic adventure has stalled.  Your players are in love with the game and you could care less.  It’s more than just writer’s block you’re just not feeling it, so what’s a GM to do?

Talk to the Players

Players have an excellent way of revitalizing interest in a campaign.  Ask them what they want out of the adventure and what they are hoping to do.  If your players are anything like mine they’ll have had goals from the get go and would love time to expand upon them and be able to achieve those goals.  This could prove for some good material to move the campaign forward.  With this try to focus more on the characters instead of the overall storyline, it’ll keep the game moving.  Play to your strengths, and keep working on the overall plot you’ll be back on track in no time.

Switch Adventures

During a Planescape game, Paul had three to five adventures running simultaneously.   We would be doing research on one and be tracking a villain from another. While I’m sure it required some juggling on his end as players we could pick the type of adventure we were most interested in.  As he was using prebuilt adventures, he was never at a loss for material. If your current campaign is going nowhere try changing the focus of the campaign for a couple of sessions.  The brief stint away from the main goals may prove to be enough of a refresher that work may begin anew on the main plot.

Give up the Ghost

Sometimes everything you do just proves to be in vain and you need to press the abort button.  Keep in mind a couple of things when ending.

Your players are emotionally invested.  They’ve spent countless hours playing in the game and developing their characters so try to give them some closure.  Try to wrap up as many character plots as you can.

Leave the story open to continue. Just because you’re done running right now doesn’t mean you won’t want to pick up this game in the future.  Try to leave a couple of threads around to pick up later.  Some suggestions may be that the villain they’ve been tracking the entire campaign sets a trap and lays in wait, only for the players to find out that there is another more powerful villain lurking in the shadows.

Give a sense of closure. As you are leaving some threads open you won’t be able to wrap up everything.  However, it is paramount that you give some sense of closure to the current storyline.  Choose a downer or a happily ever after ending but don’t just end it out of hand.

Have you ever had a campaign that you had to abort? How’d you go about it?


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Our Blog Rolled Snake Eyes

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2009/11/16 – 21:34 -

10:00 AM. A time I typically spend with a can of coke and Google Reader, catching up with several blogs. This morning, though, I noticed something a little different–our blog wasn’t amongst the sites listed. “Strange,” I thought to myself. I navigated to the page, hoping to find what was wrong, when to my horror I found the site was not resolving.

Over the next couple of hours I frantically dashed back and forth between two PCs, despairatly trying to figure out the problem. Soon I was in a knock down, drag out fight with our own blog. I’d try one fix, and it would respond by breaking in a brand new way. Finally, I fixed it to the point where the front page was resolving. Overjoyed with relief, I went back to my now wasted day, slouching into my chair and continuing work on other projects.

A couple of hours later, my mind frantically clawing at me to write, Jeff pings me. “The blog still doesn’t work,” he says. “The front page resolves, but if you click on anything it fails to load.”

I was livid.

I had too much going on to waste a moment–it was time for one final show down. I set a timer for fifteen minutes. If I ran out of time, the site would be down for the rest of the night. I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. By the time the timer wound down, I had emerged bloody andvictorious. I was jacked up. It had bested me for the better part of a day. I was tired, ragged, and ready to give up. But I didn’t give in.

This blog is not going any where. We do this because we love this, and we’re not going down without a fight. Catastrophic blog failure isn’t enough to take us down. In fact, we’re just getting started. We swing hard, and while we may knock a couple past the foul line, but like the Babe before us, we’re swinging for the fences. Besides, what else are bennies for?


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Categories: Behind the Bar |
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