Alison Place <alison_place_at_y...> wrote:
> Hi, Rob,
> I can sympathise with your desire not to inflict
> awfulness on what is meant to be a going-away present
> to Josh. Good point, there.
Awfulness has its place. To my mind its place is to create a
challenge to overcome, so its value as a conclusion to a story is
limited, and at least a part of this story is ending. The story
ending still needs some bite (a choice with >1 interesting outcome)
which is why I liked Orpheus for this situation rather than the
choice of doing in some innocents (great for normal character
development) or not.
Rob, can I suggest some mechanics of that final session which I
reckon could give it a real buzz?
- Work out in advance the basic problem, as you have been, but get
Josh to flesh out as much as possible of the actual story. I'd
suggest again that you feed the other players (who will presumably
not be going on the quest) some of the NPC's or the challenges (which
could be to describe a very tempting situation, say, rather than play
a character). Get Josh and the others thinking about who could play
each one.
- At the start of the session, let the other heroes send Josh's PC
over and provide him with the community support when he chooses to
use it. They then fade to black.
- In one of the very first HQ stages, here you front up what will be
the final choice which is not necessarily "will he succeed" as he may
have been assuming. I think the timing of this is key - don't do it
in advance of the session, spring it on him during the session but
early on so it should give a buzz to the whole thing. I think if you
presented the potential tragic outcome at the very end, it might come
over as quite a grotty thing to do by the player(s) and make it end
as a damp squib.
- I really like that idea of one of the outcomes (the live happily
ever after one) being explicitly the choice Not To Be A Hero. Both
this outcome and the other, tragic, one(s) should impact on the
remaining players. For example, if he and she live happily ever
after, this could be turned into a neat ability for the others, not
sure what but some sort of hinterland for them.
- I'd suggest morphing the tragic outcome from the final "don't look
back" into something also involving temptation but which forms the
basis for all the contests. This then fronts up that final dilemma
and can make the player's aim be to succeed at each stage, get that
carryover until the finale when you have one big roll. There should
be a way to make the tragic outcome impact on the other PC's too - if
you can make it some sort of double-edged sword (e.g. Mykka +/or
Josh's PC perform a final act of heroism which solves an in-game
problem but remain forever sundered, perhaps giving the PC's an
associated flaw if they want it) then it also becomes genuinely
tempting to the player. I think that a great way to do this would be
to open up the possibility that this HQ could bestow a great benefit
upon the other PC's but (second-guessing your players here) Josh's PC
and the others have agreed that this is not why he is going on the
quest. The point of the HQ is then not "can he get a body for Mykka"
but is rather "can he resist heroically saving his friends in order
to follow his original purpose of living happily ever after". One way
to do this would be, once he has crossed over, to make it apparent
that some other group (the baddies of the game) is concurrently
heroquesting against the PC's and the paths are getting mixed up. If
Josh's PC starts to favour the heroism making it a no-contest, you
can play your Mykka card - she sobbingly makes it plain that she
wants him, not his heroism, bringing it back into the balance. This
also conveniently leads into a setup for the next session without
Josh where the PC's are in big doodoo.
That all got a bit abstract but there might be something there you
can use.
Sam.