My Ending/Their Ending

[Another_Poet]

My longstanding D&D campaign just wrapped up last week. The general storyline was the PCs escorting the last survivors of their country through a pretty terrible cave system, trying to escape and find a new home. Most PCs were humans, as were all of the survivors. The BBEG was an ancient human general, also from their country, who had gone genocidal down there (so genocidal that his dwarf allies left in protest of his treatment of orcs) and become a ghost known as "the Mutilator" (or as he called himself, "the Hero").

Toward the end, the PCs discovered one of their civilian survivors was actually royalty, and took her to meet the ghost in hopes that he would finally die for good if he was given official orders from his liege.

It worked.

Now, I had this great happy ending planned out - PCs head on toward the cave exit they've heard rumours of, discover that the supposedly-wiped-out mushroom people still live happily around the beam of sunlight from said exit, and the newly crowned Queen they just escorted out gives everybody titles when they reach an allied country. That's my ending.

Here's what the PCs did.

When the Mutilator was defeated for the true and final last time, the princess offers up a resurrection oil for an NPC ally. One of the (human) PCs uses it on said ally. Another (human) PC doesn't like this, so he swears at the princess and slaps her. She orders him restrained, which one of the PCs does, and he doesn't fight it. Then she orders him tied up. Another (human) PC is worried she's going to execute him, so he pulls a weapon on her and says no way.

At this point, the elven paladin PC refuses to associate with the other PCs and says she's leaving. They refuse to let her go since she's the only one who can pilot their cool underground magic vehicle. The princess starts convincing civilians to bug out and follow her on foot, leaving the PCs and vehicle behind. Some of the PCs follow her wherever they go. Soon, unarmed civilian humans are walking with no darkvision and no magic into uncharted monster-filled caves. Weapons are out among the other PCs. Threats and fears are aired.

THE END.

* * *

What the ??????????????? was my first response. We were out of time for that session and I wondered if I should schedule one more session, even though that was supposed to be the last, just so we can sort things out.

And then it hit me.

Best... ending... ever!

I mean, satyisfying? No way. But haunting! The very minute that the evil human torturer is vanquished, infighting and power struggles break out among the last humans. They would rather kill each other than get their 11 civvies back to the surface, make babies, and enjoy retirement. They're letting their countrymen get snapped up by umber hulks while they argue over who wasted an oil they don't need. It's the ultimate "Humans are a Flawed Race" story.

In other words, my players just wrote the Bible. Or at least Battlestar Galactica! We don't even know if any of them made it out alive, and we're leaving it at that. Tolkien, your influence is still alive in the worlds of D&D.

Anyway I just thought I'd share because this has got to be the least satisfying, yet most insightful end to a campaign I've seen.

Stupid players and their stupid free will...

[Matthew]

Heh, heh. What you just described there is the difference between the Dragonlance series of modules and the Giants/Drow. Story based plots are rarely as much fun as site based adventures, in my opinion.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

Wow...

Insightful... Dark...

The GM had nothing to do with it, which really just makes it more the fault of the characters, which in turn makes it feel much more... ominous.

Might be a good idea to start your next game with this as a background, maybe the humans are all gone, maybe imprisoned by some subteranean terror being held in stasis or something. Then you can have a party of dwarves/halflings/gnomes/elves have to decide weither bringing them back is worthwhile.

Nice! Interesting ending.

[Fenix_of_Doom]

Well, your princess does sound rather stupid, I assume she knows the dangers, why would she want to leave on foot? because she got slapped? even that doesn't make sense, the elf didn't want to hang out with the party anymore(once again why?) but nothing was mentioned about the rest of the humans and as a paladin (s)he should want to help the helpless civilians right? So the princess could have dumped the party and left with the elf if she reallt wanted to.


I like your story but the motives don't hold up.

[Neon Knight]

That was awesome. I want my campaigns to end like that.

[UglyPanda]

Why did the PC object to an NPC being resurrected? Also, how did your PCs usually handle problems? Were they the kind to talk things out or did they just snap at each other until the railroading started up?

[Mushroom Ninja]

That is AWESOME! I love it when things in campaigns get messed up like that (unless it's my campaign).

[Tormsskull]

How long had these players been playing with one another? That seems like a green group IMO.

[Zid]

How long had these players been playing with one another? That seems like a green group IMO.

Or one that roleplays very, very well.

[Tengu_temp]

I wouldn't call anyone who gets annoyed that a ressurection oil gets "wasted" on an NPC a good roleplayer.

[Frosty]

I wouldn't call anyone who gets annoyed that a ressurection oil gets "wasted" on an NPC a good roleplayer.

If the character is evil/greedy, then why not?

[Starsinger]

I wouldn't call anyone who gets annoyed that a ressurection oil gets "wasted" on an NPC a good roleplayer.

Silly Tengu, NPCs don't have souls.

[Tengu_temp]

If the character is evil/greedy, then why not?

In that case yeah. But, judging from the OP, it didn't seem like that there were any such characters in the group. Maybe I'm mistaken.

[TheElfLord]

Well, your princess does sound rather stupid, I assume she knows the dangers, why would she want to leave on foot? because she got slapped? even that doesn't make sense, the elf didn't want to hang out with the party anymore(once again why?) but nothing was mentioned about the rest of the humans and as a paladin (s)he should want to help the helpless civilians right? So the princess could have dumped the party and left with the elf if she reallt wanted to.


I like your story but the motives don't hold up.

According to the OP, she wasn't just slapped, she gave a perfectly reasonable order that was disobeyed and then she had a weapon drawn on her. That's a coup. Not to mention when the Paladin mentioned leaving she was forced to stay against her will to work the vessel.

It seems reasonable to me that the Princess would consider leading the few remaining survivors on foot rather than stay with the people who have enslaved one of their group members and started a coup.

Your suggestion of the princess abandoning her people to the party while she tried to go it alone seems very irresponsible. I would contend that it is your scenario where the motives don't add up.

[kamikasei]

I don't see where the "insightful" bit comes in to it. Obviously you know your group better than us, but to me it just sounds like a planned ending descended into madness via the usual player shenanigans and you're reading way too much in to it.

edit: That was a bit harsher than I intended. What I mean is, it doesn't sound like anything insightful happened, it just sounds like the players acted like players do, everything went to hell, and after the fact you're spinning it as having this deeper meaning. As a way of looking at the campaign now that it's over that's not a bad idea for the reasons you mentioned, but it doesn't sound like at the time anyone was acting with any special insight into the human condition.

[Another_Poet]

Sorry, I should've explained better. Yeah she felt it was a coup and she knows the party members could kill her if she tried to put them down so she just felt they should go their own way. When she tried to split off she figured the paladin would come with her (and the princess is pretty badass herself) so she figured they could get to the exit together, but then the PCs blocked the paladin and the humans wanted to get away from the (seemingly violent) PCs.

Whether or not the princess actually went off on foot was never exactly resolved - not much of anything was resolved really - but she would've at least taken the civvies with her.

The reason the res oil was considered "wasted" was because the NPC was a low-level grunt. A soldier, sure, but nowhere near as stalwart as the PCs, and some of them wanted the oil for themselves as a "just in case".

ap

[Tormsskull]

Or one that roleplays very, very well.

How so? Just from the information we have it would seem like one of the players was being really immature by having his character slap the princess for no apparent reason.

The other PCs agree to restrain their friend but not to tie him up. Which easily could have been handled by a 'I'm sorry that he struck you, we'll make sure it doesn't happen again. We don't need to tie him up."

Followed by a stern talk to the immature player's character by the other players at the table. I bet the NPC princess would have responded really well.

Then, we have an elven paladin who, if like the general paladin, would be doing a great disservice by simply leaving when issues start to crop up. That sounds like much more of a chaotic attitude to me than lawful (again, maybe not a problem if this paladin isn't a general paladin).

All in all, I can't see how it would be considered GOOD roleplaying. I can see that it might have been an attempt at roleplaying, but that would require a whole lot of additional information that we don't have at this point.

[Starsinger]

The reason the res oil was considered "wasted" was because the NPC was a low-level grunt. A soldier, sure, but nowhere near as stalwart as the PCs, and some of them wanted the oil for themselves as a "just in case".

How compassionate of them.

[Frosty]

See? Greed. It was the effing end of the campaign and they wanted an extra oil of ressurection.

You should've had the party fight each other hehe. GO elf paladin!

[Another_Poet]

Yeah, they're not a real compassionae group. The paladin and (surprisingly) the evil PC sorcerer were the only ones who wanted to res that ally. The sorcerer did it before the group could say yea/nay.

The paladin didn't want to go off and abandon people, she wanted to go off with the princess & civvies but was prevented.

To answer the question above the group has been together for about 11 or 12 years. I'm actually the newest one, having been with them for 3 yrs.

The player whose character slapped the princess was definitely acting out, i think he just likes to cause problems. On he other hand his character has been very angry about having to take care of civilians the whole campaign, and couldn't believe the one of them turned out to be royal. So was he a jerk or just roleplaying? Who knows. The others did their best to roleplay based on his action and, well, it snowballed.

I will say the group tends be very RP-light and this might've been the most interesting non-combat actions they've taken in a couple of months. My wife says I am the voice of roleplaying in our otherwise hack n slash group :)

ap

[Oslecamo]

And people still wonder why Tippyland is nothing but a myth.

Like the DM pointed out, it doesn't matter that PCs are uber powerfull and have the road to utopia right in front of them. They're gonna manage to screw things up because they're not perfect, have feelings, and they commit errors like starting a fight with their best allies for a minor thing.

[tribble]

this is bleeding hilarious, i love it.

[Tsotha-lanti]

What an awful cluster**** of an ending for a game. My sympathies.

Heh, heh. What you just described there is the difference between the Dragonlance series of modules and the Giants/Drow. Story based plots are rarely as much fun as site based adventures, in my opinion.

Sounded more like a typical bunch of PCs acting like the greedy *******s that they are, especially when they aren't motivated by something more than loot and XP (like, say, a story).

[Matthew]

Sounded more like a typical bunch of PCs acting like the greedy *******s that they are, especially when they aren't motivated by something more than loot and XP (like, say, a story).

Exactly. Rather than following some predefined story along to its inevitable conclusion, the player character's make the story.

[Saph]

I don't see where the "insightful" bit comes in to it. Obviously you know your group better than us, but to me it just sounds like a planned ending descended into madness via the usual player shenanigans and you're reading way too much in to it.

I don't know, don't you think there's something kind of appropriate about it? If it had gone as planned, the PCs would have co-operated and played nice and worked together harmoniously with the NPCs, something which was obviously totally out-of-character for their aggro-ing, infighting group.

Instead they screwed things up. It ended up being like a classic survival-horror movie, where the protagonists can easily survive if they just work together, but they end up sabotaging themselves due to short-sightedness and petty disagreements.

Not my favourite genre, I'll admit, but you have to admit it sounds completely appropriate for the group. And it's better than a forced happy ending.

- Saph

[kamikasei]

Sure, assuming this wasn't a complete right-angle-turn-out-of-nowhere move for them, it's probably consistent with their usual behaviour and it was naive of the DM to expect a planned happy ending to go smoothly.

I just don't see anything "insightful" about it. Nor particularly remarkable.

[Saph]

Sure, assuming this wasn't a complete right-angle-turn-out-of-nowhere move for them, it's probably consistent with their usual behaviour and it was naive of the DM to expect a planned happy ending to go smoothly.

I just don't see anything "insightful" about it. Nor particularly remarkable.

It's not remarkable, but it's interesting because the PCs ended up doing something the Dm completely didn't expect and writing their own ending. That's half the fun of RPGs.

And I have to agree with the OP that it's got a good classical-tragedy vibe going for it. If they'd just half screwed up it wouldn't be so interesting, but there's something hilarious about a group managing to make such a total mess of things when there was absolutely nothing left standing in their way.

- Saph

[Starbuck_II]

According to the OP, she wasn't just slapped, she gave a perfectly reasonable order that was disobeyed and then she had a weapon drawn on her. That's a coup. Not to mention when the Paladin mentioned leaving she was forced to stay against her will to work the vessel.
.

What? I thought the slap was justified. The royal was acting like a brat. Trying to resurrect some nobody.
Couldn't have resurrected the bad guy and had a Vash the Stampede ending?

[Another_Poet]

@ kamikasei:

No offence taken.

Here's what I meant about insightful. If viewed as a game, of course, it's just the players being players. This was actually an unexpected turn, because they'd been working as a finely-tuned machine for most of the campaign. They had to. They signed up for a killer campaign. Encounters were typically above their APL, loot was below their WBL, there could be 6 battles per in-game day and many nights their characters didn't get to sleep. They worked their asses off with fine tactics the whole game because of how cunning and strategic their enemy was and how deadly their environment was.

If I was a better psychic I could probably have foreseen that as soon as the strategic mastermind bad guy was defeated and they had a "safe" moment, this united spirit would disappear. I think all the acting out was mostly that, a sense of "no more common enemy" and an urge to take control. Nothing more, nothing less.

That's viewing it as a game.

But if a transcript of the game were turned into a book or movie, it would have had a moral about human nature. I haven't seen a D&D game do that before (except in forced, tropish ways planned by a DM). The fact that the characters turned on each other as soon as they didn't absolutely desperately need each other says something about human nature. The in-game reasons and the players' reasons may have been different, but in both cases it was human-vs-human fighting in lieu of a perfectly attainable peace.

Anyway, it could just be my attempt to get something satisfying out of this ending, but it was fascinating to me precisely because they had worked so well together previously.

Completely unrelated anecdote from the same campaign:

Spoiler

Show

two characters got married to each other during this campaign in order to get a temporary "shared spell" benefit. One of the players asked if the D&D gods have the same view of marriage as Catholicism and many other religions, where husband and wife literally become one person. I smiled and said I'd allow it for one spell effect as long as they actually got married and at least gave each other a passionate kiss. They accepted. (The spell was lesser restoration. Yes, that's how hard these caves were.)

[quillbreaker]

I love your ending.

It can be more interesting when things don't go according to plan.