Is There Ever Happily Ever After?

[8BitNinja]

This might just be my group, but do characters ever get endings where after conquering the problem they get to live in happiness for the rest of thier lives?

If you are wondering what I mean, in fairy tales, the paladin is told by the king to save the princess. He rides up to the dark castle on his white horse, kills the dragon and evil wizard, and gets back without any fatal injury. His reward is the princess's hand in marriage and he lives the rest of his life as royalty.

In RPGs, usually one of two things happen

1. After the whole affair is done, the king rewards the party with a rusty nickel after sustaining heavy injuries. They will then go do some other adventuring stuff until they die a gruesome death.

2. The party encounteres said gruesome death on said quest

[Satinavian]

Yes, i have seen a lot of those endings.

Usually they come via player initiative. The player has played the character enough or has done whatever he wanted with the character and prepares for retirement instead of the next quest. And then does retire the character.

Occassionally there is "The last big Quest for the character" which can be something related to his backstory or something else where loose ends exist. But that is not a necessity.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Kind of, but not often, at least for me. While my characters do sometimes reach the end of their time in the spotlight in one piece and in a good spot of life, I rarely play the types of characters who will achieve enough to be willing to retire within one lifetime. Usually they'll continue doing dangerous, stressful, and hopefully dramatic work for as long as they live even after the campaign is over. When I'm entering a campaign, I can never be sure at which point in their personal journey their story will end, so it's just easier for me to create people whose goals are long-term or open-ended enough that they will never realistically want to settle down regardless of how many things they achieve over the course of the story.

I've been around plenty of other players whose characters got their happily ever afters, though.

[Slipperychicken]

Putting that much structure and personalization into a roleplaying game would smack heavily if railroading, which the community has discouraged.

Also, it makes sense most PCs die violently. They repeatedly put themselves through RNG events that may result in their deaths, without being dissuaded by that fact, so it ought to come up eventually. It's like rolling a d100 for an hour and being shocked that you eventually got a 00 result.

It makes perfect sense in lore too. If you go around engaging in mortal combat all the time, you're going to run out of luck and meet your end eventually. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Knaight]

Straight up happily ever after fairy tale endings are comparatively rare, but the PCs ending in a better position than they began and not routinely risking their lives are pretty routine.

[Anonymouswizard]

It depends on the GM, the game, and a character. I've had, under the same GM, had a character set up a minor business, has one become a priest (although story wise he goes back to demon hunting as a priest), and one who had a new project that was going to make him very happy.

[Satinavian]

Putting that much structure and personalization into a roleplaying game would smack heavily if railroading, which the community has discouraged.I don't know why there has to be any railroading involved.

It is usually the player who decides that the character has enough of swinging swords and instead of investing his money in even better equipment for the next adventure buys a farm or a tavern or renovates the castle the group just conquered or finally does whatever his personal reason to start adventuring was, now that he is powerful enough.

And in stories where "the big threat of the century" was actually really the big thread of the century and is not followed soon by something even more threatening, it is usual that the surviving PCs retire somehow.

[Mr Beer]

If a player wants to retire and live quietly, well then they get a happily ever after as far as I'm concerned. I think it's a bit douchey to explicitly kill off someone's PC out of game for narrative purposes, at least without any sort of buy in from the player.

[MrNobody]

As a DM i always try to give my players some sort of happy ending, unless we are playing an horror or noir adventure in which an happy ending is not "required".

I had a paladin become the greatest good god of a new pantheon after the previous one vanished; a bard became immortal to have the possibility of gathering and telling his stories forever.

As a player, i struggle to gain a similar ending for my PCs.
In an epic adventure i had my changeling maste shapechanger become founder and leader of a "shapechanger's syndicate" spread across the multiverse.

[Cluedrew]

In longer campaigns... I have never because we have never finished them. I still bring my old characters back because most of the I don't feel they got the run they were supposed to.

In the shorter campaigns... sometimes the dying is the "happily ever after" (In particular we once had a mad cultist who sacrificed himself at the end of the campaign). I have never actually had what you could call a great success at the end of the campaigns, more like they managed to survive. But even then there is a wrap up to their story.

Happily ever after is the beginning of the rest of your life.

[DigoDragon]

Happily Ever After is certainly a thing if you want that after surviving enough dangerous quests. I've had many PCs end their character's story that way once the world is safe and the threat defeated. Some PCs though choose the way of Jack Sparrow, rolling out some new map or compass, looking out at the horizon, and heading off to the next perilous adventure.

[othaero]

They wont if they become parents because as we all know the most dangerous profession is raising a future adventurer

[Mastikator]

3. The character had a predefined goal that is actually achievable and a plausible reason for going on an adventure, when these goals are achieved and reason resolved the character retires and the players makes a new character based on a concept that he's been itching to try for the last 4 game sessions.

Most character I make have an end game in mind that can actually be done and once done will retire the character. After that they live happily ever after.

[Anonymouswizard]

Happily Ever After is certainly a thing if you want that after surviving enough dangerous quests. I've had many PCs end their character's story that way once the world is safe and the threat defeated. Some PCs though choose the way of Jack Sparrow, rolling out some new map or compass, looking out at the horizon, and heading off to the next perilous adventure.

I've only had one eternal wanderer character, actually a self-style missionary. I ended up abandoning the concept because it didn't fit in the group (much too serious), but the end of the campaign would have had her go back to her home country, leave a tome of her travels with a superior, and head out to a new country that she could spread the word in.

I've also had characters adventuring to achieve a goal, or just doing it as a job until they can start doing what they want. In fact, I had one adventuring because a war had finished and he wasn't completely certain what he wanted to do, and so volunteered to go somewhere where he might come to know what his enemy was actually like (personal experiences actually made him a massive supporter of the peace, because he was a priest and wanted to save his enemies).


3. The character had a predefined goal that is actually achievable and a plausible reason for going on an adventure, when these goals are achieved and reason resolved the character retires and the players makes a new character based on a concept that he's been itching to try for the last 4 game sessions.

Most character I make have an end game in mind that can actually be done and once done will retire the character. After that they live happily ever after.

This is generally the idea I tend to use for long games, which I rarely play. I think of it as a TV series (or series of films), where for a longer one a character might retire and be replaced by a new character. A character will achieve their goals or be injured or decide they'd rather do something else and be done with it.

However I generally play shorter games, and they tend to either end with 'and the party split as people went to achieve their goals' or 'and the adventure continues', occasionally both.

[sktarq]

Relatively often with an -ish attached.

By my nature I like building things and ideas. This comes out in a fair number of my characters in various ways that lead them to "stop adventureing" by setting up business empires, a new branch of a church, feudal realms, a research tower etc. It usually starts small or when a big adventure ends I'm left with a question of "why does my character get involved?" so retiring to take management of these things is kindda a happy ever after except - doing things like running a boarder march, turning Sharn's Fallen into a Blood of Vol driven self help/economic uplift program, being part of the royal court and trying to keep it working for the good of the smallfolk etc is generally it's own kind of high risk venture with its own dangers with no guarantee of happiness.

[DigoDragon]

They wont if they become parents because as we all know the most dangerous profession is raising a future adventurer

I had one PC accomplish that. Had a character retire and settle down after the campaign, marry an NPC he had a long relationship with, and fathered a few kids. Later on players asked me to do s sequel to that old campaign and that PC brought in the son as his character. Because his dad was a legend in certain places, he had this annoyance of being constantly compared to dad. Was fun.

[8BitNinja]

Most of my characters just die mid-adcenture. This might be because I suck, but I don't know.

[Yukitsu]

I always structure my games such that if the players are successful, they get a "happily ever after" kind of ending in the epilogue. I've noticed that I'm rather unique in my group in that regard since most DMs prefer to just run the campaign and it sort of ends where it ends, but where there is a definitive ending they tend to prefer ones that rely more on "and the adventure continues" sorts of endings.

[Linken]

Perhaps try a New Vegas style ending? You roll through the towns the PCs have visited (or heard of but didn't visit) and talk about how the PCs actions worked out for them, better or worse. Then you go onto important NPCs, then you save the best for last, the PCs. Maybe ask them 'So, A, what did your character end up doing in the end?' and so on around the table. It feels like great improv.

[Darth Ultron]

This might just be my group, but do characters ever get endings where after conquering the problem they get to live in happiness for the rest of thier lives?



Sure all the time. Must just be your group.

A lot of players retire a character after a couple games or after a major victory.

[Afgncaap5]

Happily Ever After is a relative term. It's been said that the secret to happiness is "to be almost content", after all; if a person loves the life of adventure, then continuing to adventure may well be how they stay happy.

I mean, in a fairy tale if the fair maiden and plucky lad get married and live happily ever after... I'm sure they're still gonna have issues. If they're royalty, they'll have to put up with headaches from diplomatic affairs with other kingdoms, if they're peasants they'll still have to pay taxes and make sure the crops are brought in in time. They probably even argue from time to time as all couples do. Ultimately, though, when you look at the whole of their life from that moment onward, they're happy because they resolved whatever major dilemma had been vexing them.

Happily Ever After isn't the end of life, it's the end of a story that defines them as who they are from that time on.

Incidentally: it's not a roleplaying game, but I recommend reading Geoff Johns' Green Lantern series, just so that you can eventually get to the last thing he wrote for that franchise, "The End." The conclusion is a fine way to sign off any sort of story, and I've used it in a few shorter-form adventures in my roleplaying games. Players know that their characters continue having adventures, but in the scope of "the campaign" they see resolution, just as we all knew full well that the Green Lantern comic wouldn't end jut because Geoff Johns stepped away from it.

[SimonMoon6]

Here are some "happily ever after" endings that I've been involved with:

(1) In this first game, I was a player. The GM was using a homebrew superhero system. At one point, he got bored with the game and decided to kill off all the PCs, but he showed me the badguys in advance, so I was able to come up with tactics to defeat them when they showed up. So, the GM had another plot that involved some MacGuffin that was the source of everyone's superpowers. At the end of this story, my character obtained the MacGuffin and ended up being the only person on the planet with superpowers. In my opinion, this was a happily ever after (no more supervillains ever, while I still had all my powers).

(2) In this other game, I was the GM. The game was complicated to describe, but one aspect of the game involved what seemed like the Earth being mostly destroyed, with only the PCs able to escape to a patchwork world made of remnants of other mostly-destroyed worlds. Eventually, the PCs defeated the main villain, only to find that the whole scenario had been crafted by an entity who imagined that the PCs wanted this kind of excitement in their lives (because the players were playing themselves, and these players were (of course) people who played RPGs). After explaining that this was not what they wanted, the entity allowed them to return home or stay here, whatever they wanted. Some PCs stayed on the patchwork world to continue to live their life in a fantastic world, while some chose to return home, to a restored version of Earth, where they could live completely mundane lives for their rest of their lives.

[Afgncaap5]

(2) In this other game, I was the GM. The game was complicated to describe, but one aspect of the game involved what seemed like the Earth being mostly destroyed, with only the PCs able to escape to a patchwork world made of remnants of other mostly-destroyed worlds. Eventually, the PCs defeated the main villain, only to find that the whole scenario had been crafted by an entity who imagined that the PCs wanted this kind of excitement in their lives (because the players were playing themselves, and these players were (of course) people who played RPGs). After explaining that this was not what they wanted, the entity allowed them to return home or stay here, whatever they wanted. Some PCs stayed on the patchwork world to continue to live their life in a fantastic world, while some chose to return home, to a restored version of Earth, where they could live completely mundane lives for their rest of their lives.

I think this one is extra-important to note. As Tracy Hickman put it in his XDM book (in a passage that he admits is just making use of the Hero With A Thousand Faces material by Joseph Campbell), after the players save the day and "win" you can't just end there; you have to have the chance for the heroes to return home but be changed by the experience. I mean, Dorothy's ticket home wasn't as simple as defeating the Wicked Witch of the West, and Sam and Frodo's journey wasn't over after Mt. Doom.

Some sort of event that gives a kind of "homecoming" to players might not be necessary for players to finish a campaign, but it's sort of subconsciously one that's expected. Here's one that I have planned for a campaign I've been running for years as an example (no reading if you're in that group!)


Despite the name, this isn't an Eberron story, I just borrowed House Kundarak as an international clan of dwarfish bankers and jailers.

Basically, the premise of the campaign is that the players learn about seven Coffers, designed to fit inside each other (a bit like nesting dolls) that are kept far away from each other, with the largest "large enough for three horses to stand shoulder to shoulder inside" and the smallest barely large enough for a human skull. The players learned about them, and then they decide to break into Kundarak's central bank so that they can figure out what's so valuable that not even Kundarak trusts itself with the treasure (this being their fateful decision, another crucial step for stories like this.)

They're level 3 by this point. They break in with a lead-lined box that they're hiding in, which gets teleported to the central bank, get out, fight their way through various guards and traps, and eventually reach a cavern deep underground. At the other end of a magic bridge they need to generate, they find the three deepest vaults containing the most important treasures of Kundarak, and they know which vault they need. In the little circular chamber where the three vault doors are kept is a giant dragon statue, which is an Ironwyrm Golem (CR 17) waiting to come to life if any vault is disturbed. The dragon activated as the players neared, but the players were smart enough to leap into the correct vault where they found the first Coffer of Kundarak. The dragon breath started heating up the vault door, intent on baking the players alive, but fortunately the players opened the chest and figured out that they needed to enter it.

They then learned that each treasure chest was capable of imbuing anyone who used it with a strange "energy" that would allow them to activate the next treasure chest in the sequence, and it would also teleport them to "within 100 miles of the next treasure chest." So, if someone stumbles across one of the coffers midway through the sequence it just seems like an empty (albeit well-made) box. It's only "magical" if opened in the right sequence.

The players have also been hearing about a "Frozen One" who's coming, and the suggestion that "one will face many and many will face one." When the players teleport with the final chest, they'll receive a weapon capable for "the one" (another character they've met) who's destined to stand against a horde of demons who'll be breaking into reality, while the players will be the "many" who will stand against the (frozen) one, who will turn out to be Levistus making use of such a similar tear in reality to teleport out of his frozen prison (and as the patron of treachery, Levistus is willing to side with demons if it means getting out and getting some vengeance on Asmodeus.) This weakened version of Levistus (CR 17-ish) will be beaten by the players (currently level 15-ish).

Now... when the players "win" against the BBEG (Levistus), they'll be given a full pardon from house Kundarak, and apart from some bad blood for breaking through all their security the dwarves will actually be grateful to the PCs for saving the world and wrapping up one of their oldest client obligations. The players will be invited to a party, and to protect the security of any potential further use of the Coffers of Kundarak, the players will be granted a chance to have the energy of all the coffers removed from them. And by granted the dwarves mean "forced" but they'll not present it that way.

So the players will likely think that they're done at this point, but the removal of the energy of the coffers is something I've been building to for a while. When the players have their energy removed, they'll suddenly pop away from the party to the location where they hopped into the seventh coffer, and then pop back to the sixth coffer, effectively "undoing" the teleportation that each coffer gave them. Finally, the players will arrive back at the secure vault of the bank... not too far away from the celebration where the dwarves thanked the players and removed the energy... but right in front of the Ironwyrm Golem that the players had to run from 12 levels earlier at level 3.

So... this last battle will basically rehash where the players were when the story started. But it'll demonstrate, definitively, that the characters have grown and changed. The Ironwyrm Golem will still be a tough fight, but it'll be doable. And the dwarves will go from not just thankful but even apologetic.

So... I don't know if it'll be the best "happily ever after" send off, but I think the players will like it.

[8BitNinja]

Another thing that might stop it from happening is that with other works, you can go to The End. RPGs come to a place more like "The End?"

[hymer]

In our group we're more likely to adventure ever after than settle down. We don't usually go out of our way to say precisely what happens to retired adventurers. Retirement is also not the most common end to an adventuring career. Death is.

[Vrock_Summoner]

In our group we're more likely to adventure ever after than settle down. We don't usually go out of our way to say precisely what happens to retired adventurers. Retirement is also not the most common end to an adventuring career. Death is.
Makes you wonder why people adventure in D&D, aside from the handful who have to go revenge a BBEG or whatever. Is a brief, shining period of being fabulously wealthy and influential really worth it if you're just using those resources to get involved in bigger and more dangerous adventures?

[PersonMan]

Makes you wonder why people adventure in D&D, aside from the handful who have to go revenge a BBEG or whatever. Is a brief, shining period of being fabulously wealthy and influential really worth it if you're just using those resources to get involved in bigger and more dangerous adventures?

I think it's partially motivated by having trouble fitting into society afterwards.

If for years you go around killing things, almost dying, spending loads of money on brief bouts of luxury before going back to work, you'll probably have big trouble going back to just being a normal member of society.

Plus, a brief period of fabulous wealth and respect is a hell of a lot more than ten years of begging on the street.

---

As for myself, I've only had a character of mine retire once. The other times, the game didn't end / they had no reason to go. Generally, I make wandering types who are unlikely to ever live a "happily ever after" type of life, as they'll be seeking out excitement/adventure until they die.

[Psikerlord]

In Low Fantasy Gaming RPG, PCs are expected to retire at about 12th level. In our 4e campaign, we successfully retired most PCs (except one who died) at 20th (about 3 years of playing).

[Cluedrew]

Is a brief, shining period of being fabulously wealthy and influential really worth it if you're just using those resources to get involved in bigger and more dangerous adventures?If you have nothing else, probably.

Also some might be aiming for the big prize, which is a few editions of D&D is godhood. That only applies in one system but... that system is D&D.

[Frozen_Feet]

PersonMan is right. Each adventurer is a fantastic John Rambo waiting to happen and liable to renact First Blood in Sword & Sorcery setting.

[Âmesang]

I can't recall ever having a character truly "retire" to a happy or even neutral ending; more often than not the game ends short (leaving the character with numerous unresolved plot hooks that could potentially be taken up later), or (because we're running through a pre-made adventure) we save the day but the saved day has little impact on the characters themselves; why should my drow care if giants are no longer attacking the surface world?, unless she does succeed in uniting them under the banner of House Baenre and reenacting Against the Giants in Faerûn.

(Of course had she not lost all of her material wealth due to circumstances… and had I been aware that one could purchase buildings… I could have invested five grand into a guildhall—perhaps set up her own rogue/thief/assassin clan in Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate.)


In RPGs, usually one of two things happen

1. After the whole affair is done, the king rewards the party with a rusty nickel after sustaining heavy injuries.
The Avatar can attest to that!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w59gepTvmc

[8BitNinja]

The Avatar can attest to that!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w59gepTvmc

This is exactly where I took the hyperbole (although sometimes it's completely true) from.

[GloatingSwine]

(2) In this other game, I was the GM. The game was complicated to describe

Battleworld isn't that complicated to describe.

You just call it Battleworld and let everyone google from there.

[MrNobody]

Most of my characters just die mid-adcenture. This might be because I suck, but I don't know.

This happened to me too, and once it was even an happy ending!
Pathfinder, a CE half orc dual cursed oracle (haunted and blackened) lost all his relatives and friends in a fire during a siege, almost losing his own life. He was then haunted by the spirits of his relatives that pushed him to revenge wishpering him words of hatred and not allowing the burns he gained in the fire to heal.
Well, he died. And in death he found peace! Once dead, his relatives could no.longer ask him for revenge, and the loss of body prevented him to feel more pain. He was free!!! And when his teammates tried to resurrect him the answer was: no, i'm finally fine.and happy!

[Jay R]

We don't want to play out settling down, investing the treasure, mowing the lawn, etc. So if we are still playing, then it hasn't happened yet.

"Happily ever after" is just stopping play while the characters are still alive.

I like to think that in every game that ended, my characters have settled down and are contentedly spending their enjoyable, safe retirements not risking their lives adventuring.

[SimonMoon6]

Battleworld isn't that complicated to describe.

You just call it Battleworld and let everyone google from there.

It wasn't Battleworld. I mean, okay, you might see an influence from Battleworld. But I was more influenced by the "Midnight at the Well of Souls" world. Each world fragment had its own world-rules: in some places, magic worked; in others, technology; in others, superpowers... but that's reducing things to mere basics when it was more subtle than that. There was a generic fantasy world, a fairy tale world, a Universal horror monsters world, a martial arts world, a pseudo-Roman world, a "robots have taken over" world, an opera world, a generic superhero world, a beach adventures world, a happy silly cartoons world, and so on and so forth, with each world having a genre of its own and therefore different flavors of adventures in each world fragment.

But when I said the game was complicated, I didn't just mean the world's setting. There were other complications, like how the PCs were the players themselves who were slowly gaining the abilities (powers, skills, equipment, etc) of their favorite characters from fiction as they found certain MacGuffins in each world fragment. Gaining such power was necessary as their enemies included evil versions of themselves who already had ALL the powers of all their favorite characters, which meant they had to be very careful. And taking advantage of locations where some things would work and other things wouldn't work was very important.

[Knaight]

"Happily ever after" is just stopping play while the characters are still alive.

It's a bit more than that. If you have a game about political dissidents trying to cause a revolution and it ends with them all in the equivalent of a Siberian gulag it's not a case of "happily ever after" even if they are still alive.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Let's nip a semantics war in the bud here. "Happily ever after" defines itself. It means you live for a long while, in generally a good environment and positive mood. You can cut bits out to get different versions of endings - maybe they lived "happily after," but not for very long; or maybe they lived "ever after," during their life sentence in prison - but happily ever after means what it means. (Hm, I wonder what living "happily ever" without the after means. I guess they were never unhappy before this point, either?)

Most of the campaigns I'm in have the characters living ever after, but happily is a lot more rare. Of course, this has a lot to do with my favorite types of characters to play being Guts-type avengers (who won't have anything left but rage when they've quenched their vengeance) or former villains on lifelong redemption quests (who will, uh, be busy a while).

[veti]

It seems to me that the OP is basically asking "do PCs ever retire?" To which the answer is clearly "yes".

But it's something that will vary widely between campaigns, groups and play styles. The precondition is that the PCs have to outlive the player's ambitions for them. That implies either very limited ambitions (possible if, for instance, you were told that this campaign would only last a short time), or a campaign that runs long enough, with the same characters, that players feel they've met all/enough of their personal goals.

[8BitNinja]

It's a bit more than that. If you have a game about political dissidents trying to cause a revolution and it ends with them all in the equivalent of a Siberian gulag it's not a case of "happily ever after" even if they are still alive.

That seems like a "death" scenario. Not exactly them dying, but they rot in jail, making the characters unable to play, putting them in the same state as death.

[Jay R]

It's a bit more than that. If you have a game about political dissidents trying to cause a revolution and it ends with them all in the equivalent of a Siberian gulag it's not a case of "happily ever after" even if they are still alive.

Depends on the level and direction of your imagination. One game ended while my character was about to be married, and was throwing a major politically dangerous celebration and tournament, while another kingdom was preparing for war. In my head, the tournament took place, the politics were dealt with, the war won, and Ornrandir and his bride are living in peace and plenty.

Similarly, Gwydion and his allies were about to attack Dragon Isle. In my head, they are now living large on the profits of several dragon hoards.

Darkstar and Endore have built a small keep, with their rod that repels evil creatures to a distance of 300 yards buried at its center.

etc.

If the DM wants to keep my characters captured, or poor, or threatened, he's going to have to keep running the game.

[hifidelity2]

The group I play in has had two “Happy ever afters” recently

GURPS fantasy (I was DM)
Party defeated the BBEG(s) and retired
2 got married and run a kingdom
2 got married and became rulers of the nomads (think Mongols)
1 became head of Wizards guild
1 became head of Bards guild

I have now started a new campaign in the same world set 30 ish years in the future so the PCs are now (very detailed) NPCs


In another game (D&D) something very similar happened except that approx. ½ the new characters are the offspring of the original Characters but the original Chacaters are arounds as DNPCs

[8BitNinja]

If the DM wants to keep my characters captured, or poor, or threatened, he's going to have to keep running the game.

Which may be motivation to not let the game end happily.

[GungHo]

PersonMan is right. Each adventurer is a fantastic John Rambo waiting to happen and liable to renact First Blood in Sword & Sorcery setting.

I have more than once had a "retired" character get "reactivated" by Rikard Crentos coming to look for my guy who was busy rebuilding a temple by driving nails with his forehead. "Ragnar, I want you to try to forget the war. Remember the mission. The old Cyrilos is dead." "Sir, I'm still alive, it's still alive, ain't it?"