On Endings in storytelling (Patreon)

(Assembled from a Twitter thread, with slight edits and a bit of elaboration)

In my ~30 years of gaming, I have brought few campaigns to a planned, satisfying conclusion. Even fewer as the GM. But tonight my home game tied a beautiful bow on our Court of Blades campaign. 

Just in time to start GMing a new Court of Blades game for @speculatesf

As a novelist, one of the things I had to learn was writing endings. I've started so many more novels and stories than I've ended. But endings are their own thing.

For me, a satisfying ending reflects the beginning to show the arc/distance the story/characters have come. The seeds of the ending are contained in the beginning. For this game, it started & ended with The Deathless, who I played as ancient Wizards trying to return from death.

The retinue's "origin story" errand, which I ran without dice ala the Masks: A New Generation "How we came together" prompts and inspired a bit by the Court of Blades series at Actual Play (including the designers themselves), was to track and banish a Deathless that had possessed the scion of the Brizolatto Crime Family. The act soured the family against them, which hounded them all campaign.

During the campaign, I introduced a Nightmare on Elm Street-esque Nightmare Curse, which was a plot by another Deathless to amass power. The players had put "Powerful artifacts, curses, rituals" in their palette, so I obliged.

The next-to-last errand foregrounded the anti-nobility Prince of Tatters, leader of a powerful faction of Knacks (Wizards) as his minion Knacks were trying to claim the crown of a third deathless for the Prince, who was revealed to be the scion of the First House, Battalia. This reveal? Came about because of a character bond that was decided by the players.

The group's Eye (Spy) had taken the bond "I'm watching X for the House" and chose our Hawk, a hunter. The Hawk had a secret mission...to kill said Scion. The Hawk was tracking said scion, and the Eye was tailing the Hawk. The Eye's vantage point gave them the view needed to see the scion use a magical code to enter a secret tower. The Eye went to the tower after the scion departed and discovered that the scion was, himself, The Prince of Tatters. Heir to the First Family and yet working against the nobility. Merely a plot to attack his rivals? Perhaps.

So when the retinue is ordered to capture said Scion, the scene was laid for conflict...will the Hawk favor his personal mission over the retinue?

Other character threads:

Throughout the campaign, the group's mastermind was trying to reconnect with his granddaughter, doing so by investigating her paramour, a firebrand revolutionary. He learned that the revolutionary faction was aligned with...the Prince of Tatters.

And the Bravo, our fourth, was the last survivor of a noble house purged for heresy...by Battalia. And the scion aka Prince in particular.

Most of this connective tissue and recombination? Was done with material already in play when I decided to progress to endgame. It was mostly a matter of weaving threads from different characters and missions together back in with  the original mission and nature of the group. How can I connect Character A's personal story with the main plot or with the personal interests of Character C? Some of this was done for me by the players with their Bonds or through play.

In their last mission, the Bravo was dueling to save his life from a new charge of heresy, the Mastermind was seeking proof that his granddaughter's paramour is a dangerous criminal, the spy was seeking to capture the scion, and the Hawk was deciding whether to capture or kill.

Every character had personal and broader stakes, there was the potential for internal conflict, and we got a big drag-out duel, intrigue, a chase, and a chaotic melee involving four factions..

The retinue captured the scion, the Bravo won his duel, and we as players then moved to epilogue, highlighting character grace notes.  But I had one more trick up my sleeve.  When the Hawk went to kill the scion after he'd been interrogated, the scion didn't stay dead...

I described the scion surging back to life, revealing the ghostly figure of...another Deathless. Who had possessed the (not magically talented) scion to pit the nobles against one another and gather power. So everything folded back into the thematic core. With this ending, we tied character  arcs to plot arcs to a group arc and everyone got an epilogue scene as we showed character aspirations accomplished or goals pursued if not complete. 

Turns out working as a professional novelist for a decade gave me some good GMing tools. :)

I'd been writing it as a novel, there'd be more room for revision. But it wasn't a novel, it was a collaborative story told through a game. I will remember the joy and satisfaction I felt with my friends as we basked in the echo of "The End" forever.  

Court of Blades is good.

You can buy Court of Blades (by A Couple of Drakes) here: acoupleofdrakes.itch.io/court-of-blades and watch me start a new campaign with it on Speculate! Premee Mohamed, Marie Bilodeau, Gregory A. Wilson, and Brandon O'Brien and I are creating our own setting:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcMKGE-tXguWvG-BtmbrV0d6yGou7k9rV