As my home group approaches 10th level, with many loose ends still about, I find myself thinking about the end-game, and how to wrap up a long-running campaign.
What do y’all got in terms of end-game mechanics, procedures, or just advice. What games do this well?
Bonus points for PbtA games that do end-game stuff well.
subbing because I’m curious too!
Urban Shadows has a really solid “beginning of session” move that creates more and more conflicts and threads to be tied up. When I eventually needed to close out that campaign, I and the other players took advantage of that move to start pointing these threads together. Two become one, four become two, etc.
I have not finished but some DW games. But in one of them, we prepared a bunch of replacements characters.
In a game like Stonetop, where the settlement history is as important to the PCs, maybe you could devise a mechanism of developing new lvl 1 PCs that take the place of the old ones.
Maybe the old PCs become too aged and trained the new generation, maybe the old went on a highest quest, while the new remained, maybe they mix both characters together…
Aaron Griffin is right: US is essentially the best.
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As far as wrapping up the campaign, try to figure out what thread is most important to your characters. Focus on building that up to a climax, and maybe try to wrap in another loose thread or two, and push towards a spectacular finish.
If you’re talking about domain management and mass combat-style end game stuff, I’m a huge fan of Kevin Crawford’s An Echo Resounding. The rules are stripped down enough to easily fit into DW.
We haven’t got there yet, but I was thinking of waiting until all characters hit level 10 and then freezing the campaign, jumping forward 5-20 years, and having them pick from the standard DW options (retire to NPC, stick around as Gandalf to a new level 1 PC, or have a mid-life crisis and take up a new class). I feel like those options make a lot more sense after a big time jump. Then we could love-letter some of the dangling plot threads and leave others still dangling to be picked up by the new generation.
I suppose it’s a kind of Last Airbender > Legend of Korra type of transition…
In All Things Under Heaven, each playbook has an AW-style advancement track with 12 entries (increase the key stat, increase another stat, take a move, take another playbook’s move).
Then, each has their own version of this:
Once all the options above have been filled, the next time you fill the track you must choose 1:
○ Vanish into the Wastes, embracing the wild magic and becoming more than human
○ Reject the wild magic, tearing it out of you and living on as an empty, broken shell
I’m explicitly playing against the colonialist West Marchest thematic arc of “and then you succeed at civilizing the wilds”. Your character only has a temporary (albeit long, probably 14-16 sessions) lifespan, and your closure comes from their story having an ending.
Personally, I feel like something like that is fitting for Stonetop?
I don’t want a grand climax where you kill Brennan and his crew, expand the village to a town, and solve the mystery of the Stone all in one final session.
I want to know what happens to the characters (PCs and NPCs) I care about, what becomes of the alliances they’ve made and Arcana they’ve gathered, and what permanent mark they leave on Stonetop.
I want explicit mechanics that provoke & assist the GM and players to create an interesting epilogue to their story.