The End of the Game

[rowyn]

Last night we played out the finale for A Game of October. After three years and three months, the campaign is complete.

The PCs pulled off a much better ending than I had ever expected. Note: if you offer players choice A and B, both of which have significant downsides, the players will inevitably insist on going with for choice C, even if you never planned on choice C. Even if you explicitly decided beforehand that choice C was impossible. Sometimes, the players will even figure out how choice C really is possible, after all.

The session ran from 6PM to 1AM, in my time zone, and at the end of it I was still too wound up to sleep. I finally fell over at around 1:30 or 2AM.

And then woke early. O_o

I feel like a zombie this morning.

But a happy zombie. Yay! Finished the game! In a suitably satisfactory and dramatic manner, even.

Tonight, I need to finish Sordid City Blues guest strip I'm doing for mister_wolf. I am trying to get my mind to churn out an idea for Nanowrimo, but so far my undead brain isn't cooperating.

Mmm. Braaaiiinnnssss ...

*lurches off to work.*

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The PCs pulled off a much better ending than I had ever expected. Note: if you offer players choice A and B, both of which have significant downsides, the players will inevitably insist on going with for choice C, even if you never planned on choice C. Even if you explicitly decided beforehand that choice C was impossible. Sometimes, the players will even figure out how choice C really is possible, after all.

Absolutely! You've done that to me a few times yourself.

That sounds like a great game! Congratulations!

[rowyn]

I thought of you often as I've been running Game of October. I endeavored to apply some of the lessons I learned from you! :)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I just learned another one: plan games so that they fit inside your preferred size of story. Less of a problem for you, O queen of the 200K+ word novel, than it is for me. I'm sorry for drooping on TB these weeks, but ... *sigh*

*hug*

[rowyn]

Yeah, well, I never got the knack for planning my games short enough, either. I've never done one that took less than a year. Game of October, which was supposed to be one IC month, still took over three years. Yowch.

My preferred size of story isn't 200k+ words; that's just what I get. NaNo is in partly an experiment in brevity for me. Bizarrely. :D

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'm pretty impressed with what I've heard of October.

Good luck on brevity!

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME! WE WON! WE WON!

Oh yes, I had a great time. It was amazing.

Oh, and Jordan's pic of Yotee, if you've never seen it.



Probably you have. I'm going to go stick it in my journal too.

[rowyn]

Heehee! No, I hadn't seen it. Very cute! I still like my drawing of Yotee. <3

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

*huggles* };)

For what it's worth, if we didn't have a working solution, I would have pushed to Close, but Brenna's idea of a Great Spirit seemed like it might be the ticket. That plus the Amplifier/Stunner combo.

Blowing the Master Spirits up at the end hadn't occurred to me, I figured it was going to be straight up devour-or-be-devoured, but it worked, so... Great!

[(Anonymous)]

Plan B is _always_ 'blow everything up'.

Preferably from orbit.

[rowyn]

And yet, Caliban was crucial to the blowing-up step!

[krud42.livejournal.com]

I'm way behind on my NaNoWriMo.

I may even start a whole different story. ':P

(Or perhaps write one in tandem with my originally planned one, and see which takes off first...)