End of the world?

[F1zban]

Hi Forum,

Just a question for the community.

Assumption - A high level game will likely reach an adventure with high stakes, end of the world style stuff. Failure means apocalypse and all that.

Question - Have you ever had a party fail to save your lovingly crafted and painstakingly developed game world? How did you run it? How did you deal with the fallout?

Thanks!

NB: For the record, my answer is: I have let a world that had been built up over 10 years wither and burn. The party failed to save it, I let them, knowing it could be one of the outcomes. I've currently shelved the world with plans to use a post apocalyptic setting (Dark Sun for instance).

[NichG]

Generally when I run 'end of the world' type scenarios, the question in contest is more along the lines than 'what will the world be like after?' rather than 'will the world survive?'. Often a consequence of that is that even when the PCs have the stick-of-world-alteration or whatever, they're not always that happy with their first rushed attempt at using it. But at the same time, generally no matter who gets it, the world will still be a place where there is the possibility of some kind of game taking place.

I did have an exception to that once. The PCs won, got the stick-of-reality-alteration, and promptly used it to turn every sentient being in the multiverse into the equivalent of an overdeity with complete control over their personal reality and the ability to create new realms as they like (essentially, if someone tries to influence them, they can always solipsism themselves a new multiverse on the spot where everything is the same except that they weren't influenced). Its pretty hard to keep running campaigns in a setting like that.

[Gnoman]

The last time I ran such a campaign, it wasn't a question of if the world was going to be destroyed, it was "how bad will the world be destroyed". The forces of Good won the final battle of the era, so only about 90% of life on the continent was wiped out instead of all of it, and time was only partially broken.

[ShaneMRoth]

Generally when I run 'end of the world' type scenarios, the question in contest is more along the lines than 'what will the world be like after?' rather than 'will the world survive?'.

The last time I ran such a campaign, it wasn't a question of if the world was going to be destroyed, it was "how bad will the world be destroyed". The forces of Good won the final battle of the era, so only about 90% of life on the continent was wiped out instead of all of it, and time was only partially broken.

Powerful concurrence on these.

"End of the World" adventures are usually more accurately described as "the end of the world as we know it" adventures.

The most important thing to sort out, in advance, is what happens if the PCs fail completely. And you must be willing to live with whatever that is, or don't even bother.

[TheCountAlucard]

Never ran a game where the fate of the whole world was at stake.

On the other hand, "the end of the world as we know it" is gonna be a risk in pretty much any game I run because unless it's really easy to change someone's world, even that of four someones.

[Silva Stormrage]

Yes my party managed to fail to both end the world and save it from being ended, (They wanted to destroy everything and rebuild it under their image while someone else wanted to do essentially the same thing) they ended up failing to win the final boss fight.

The end result was the end of that campaign though since that was going to be the final fight anyway.

[prufock]

I prefer less binary conclusions to a story. There should be multiple possible outcomes, on a continuum from best possible to worst possible. Yes, you can stop the bad guy, but it isn't a "you win or the world ends" scenario. Villains have other motivations, and even their most nefarious schemes might damage the world without ending it. The outcome may not be good for the heroes, they might even die, but that doesn't mean the entire world does too.

I favour conclusions such as
- you win, but things are still messy
- you lose, but things are just messy
- lose/lose situation
- win/win situation (come to an agreement with the bad guy)
- phyrric victory
and so on.

I've had parties fail, or only partially succeed, or succeed with losses.