Knowing When To Stop
Jun. 19th, 2009 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theronIn my recent discussion of Gamer ADD, I mentioned my concerns about wrapping up the big "season-ending" arc in my Champions campaign. The problem in this game has largely been one of trying to maintain momentum and focus. When I started the game last August, we were able to play every second or third weekend. Since January of this year, we've played three times, generally two months apart. Our last game was in early May, and the one previous to that was mid-March. When I started the campaign, I intended to run a lot of out of the box adventures, rather than coming up with my own plots. Unfortunately, things hit a point where a plot integral to the flow of the campaign was needed. The lack of actual play gave me ample time to second-guess myself, and eventually I painted myself into a plot corner.
Add to that the fact that I'm at a nearly all-time low in terms of enthusiasm for comics and superheroes. Marvel and DC have done nothing to help this situation and I realized that I had two weeks' worth of unread comics still sitting in the bags from the store. Unlike some GMs I know, I tend to immerse myself in inspirational material when I'm running a game, and a dislike for the genre is a sure sign that I'm running low on mojo.
So, it was with great relief yesterday that I got an email from on of my players, in fact the player who's been at my table longer than anyone except my wife. He's seen this before and he knows as well as I do that, if I soldier on, things are likely to get worse before they get better. His suggestion: Call the last session a season-ending cliffhanger. Because it really works pretty good from that perspective. The heroes encountered the vanguard of an alien invasion. In the aftermath, they learned it was just one of many attacks and things are looking pretty bad everywhere. When I get the fires stoked again, we can make next season about fighting the invaders and the inevitable rebuilding.
And that's what we're going to do. I sent out an email to the group and the response was quite favorable. Next weekend, we'll still get together at my place, but we'll play some board games and talk about what's next. One of the guys wants to run a World of Darkness game, which would certainly be something new and different (in all my years as a gamer, I've never played a WoD game and can count the number of times I've played the Storyteller System on one hand with fingers left over). If we don't go that route, something else will come up. And I can stop feeling guilty about trying to force an ending that wasn't happening naturally.
Add to that the fact that I'm at a nearly all-time low in terms of enthusiasm for comics and superheroes. Marvel and DC have done nothing to help this situation and I realized that I had two weeks' worth of unread comics still sitting in the bags from the store. Unlike some GMs I know, I tend to immerse myself in inspirational material when I'm running a game, and a dislike for the genre is a sure sign that I'm running low on mojo.
So, it was with great relief yesterday that I got an email from on of my players, in fact the player who's been at my table longer than anyone except my wife. He's seen this before and he knows as well as I do that, if I soldier on, things are likely to get worse before they get better. His suggestion: Call the last session a season-ending cliffhanger. Because it really works pretty good from that perspective. The heroes encountered the vanguard of an alien invasion. In the aftermath, they learned it was just one of many attacks and things are looking pretty bad everywhere. When I get the fires stoked again, we can make next season about fighting the invaders and the inevitable rebuilding.
And that's what we're going to do. I sent out an email to the group and the response was quite favorable. Next weekend, we'll still get together at my place, but we'll play some board games and talk about what's next. One of the guys wants to run a World of Darkness game, which would certainly be something new and different (in all my years as a gamer, I've never played a WoD game and can count the number of times I've played the Storyteller System on one hand with fingers left over). If we don't go that route, something else will come up. And I can stop feeling guilty about trying to force an ending that wasn't happening naturally.