Cliffhangers

[Wonton]

How often do you do them?

Are there bad cliffhangers vs good ones?

In a really suspenseful moment, can a cliffhanger keep the tension until next week (or amplify it?), or will it always be somewhat weakened by the week-long wait?

[finaldooms]

Personally,i think the wait weakens,it...the party bas more,time to think about whatmight happen and when itndoes be like,,i figured that happens

[Crake]

Yeah, I agree with finaldooms, cliffhangers in tv shows are meant to entice you to carry on watching in the following week, but in a tabletop game, you're presumably already planning on coming back the following week, all a cliffhanger does is remove the tension of the situation. In a TV show, you're thinking "oh my, how's he gonna get out of this" and excited to see what the protagonist comes up with, but in a dnd game, you're thinking "what can I do to get out of this" and, as finaldooms said, it gives them much more time to think of a solution, and over the course of an entire week, the feeling of tension will absolutely dissapate.

[NontheistCleric]

In my experience, it goes both ways. It really depends on how invested your players are in the game. If they are, all the thought they devote to what might happen will definitely increase the suspense.

If they are less so, then they simply won't bother thinking about it too hard and wait for the next session, by which time the initial impact will have worn off.

I tend to encounter more players of the second type, for what it's worth.

[Crake]

In my experience, it goes both ways. It really depends on how invested your players are in the game. If they are, all the thought they devote to what might happen will definitely increase the suspense.

If they are less so, then they simply won't bother thinking about it too hard and wait for the next session, by which time the initial impact will have worn off.

I tend to encounter more players of the second type, for what it's worth.

Honestly, I'd like to think my players fall into the first category, but between work and other social activities, as well as being given the time to consider options that they wouldn't have been able to think of in a more time constrained situation, the tension is totally lost. It's just a totally different medium, and the agency of the player vs a passive viewer does make a very big difference

[Pleh]

Yes, I usually do cliffhangers more when the table gets stuck with a scenario that offers no preferred resolution. Giving ourselves time to deescalate and think about it helps us course correct.

Not sure I really ever do it to build tension.

[NontheistCleric]

Honestly, I'd like to think my players fall into the first category, but between work and other social activities, as well as being given the time to consider options that they wouldn't have been able to think of in a more time constrained situation, the tension is totally lost. It's just a totally different medium, and the agency of the player vs a passive viewer does make a very big difference

Perhaps, but I think the thing is that whether as a player or passive viewer, people thinking of possible scenarios can only increase tension as then the pressure is not only to see what is actually going to happen, but also whether or not their own personal guesses are right.

It sounds like your players would like to be in the first category, but other, more important commitments push them into the second.

[Jakewintergreen]

I have had a lot of success doing the opposite of a cliffhanger: ending the session with a Big Reveal. The idea is that you drop some revelation on the party and now they have until your next session to process the information and/or get excited about putting that new information to use.

Of course, like all such things, it depends a lot on your play group an dynamic. I think that cliffhangers can be good in D&D, but they have to be the right type. Something like receiving news that the king that everyone thought was dead is actually alive can play a lot better than leaving the party gripping a metaphorical cliff by their fingernails.

[tiercel]

Probably not so much with the cliffhangers, if nothing else because if one is actually done really well...

well...

it's the sort of thing where the gaming session has already gone to 1:30am, and then there's a real cliffhanger...

...and your players decide no we gotta do this right now

And the next thing you know, the sun is coming up and you're already mentally recapping this as a "what the Nine Hells was I thinking?" sort of online discussion thread.

[Drakevarg]

I like cliffhangers, but for me I think of them less as a tension-building tool, and more as a memory device.

If you end your session on a DUNH DUNH DUUUH moment, it's far more likely everyone will actually remember what they were doing last session than if they were say, hanging around a tavern idly looking over the bounty board with a flagon in hand.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well, one thing that I try to do is to find some way to have some combat at or near the start of a game session. It's a really good way to get everyone pumped up and focused on the game, as opposed to having a bunch of story exposition or NPC dialogue. Combat is what really gets everyone's attention.

So with that in mind, I sometimes will end on a cliffhanger, as that's an easy way to start the next session with a fight. Of course, it depends on the timing of the event and how late we want to keep playing that day, so it doesn't always work out that way.

[Wolfem]

I haven't played D&D for very long but our DM did his first cliffhanger with us in our last session and it was unexpected.

It has me trying to figure out how we are going to get out of the situation. We only meet every other weekend so it gives me time to think it over.

In this case I think the cliffhanger has been effective but it would probably loss it effectiveness if the DM did it all the time.