The promised ones – 10. A game with an end: Game-play and narrative layers.
Game Design Log #12
I love “adventure base” tabletop RPGs that are created to sustain years-long stories. They give me the space to delve deeply into different aspects of the characters. They work as good frames to explore a world in a “simulation-style” of play. They allow my friends and me to engage in a story that grows with us, that helps us grow. For me, at least, they become more easily into memories that merge and feel just as tangible as the ones of the world out-of-play.1
However, much of the time these games have no tools to guide towards an end, and when the end comes, is not propelled from the inside. It is pressure from the outside; friends that have gone, schedules that collide, and then the characters get stuck in waiting, never fully realise.
It is not that the fade-out of the lives of the characters is an uncomfortable feeling. Perhaps this feeling could be an interesting one to explore, but for the most part, even to explore this kind of end, there is no space nor tools. The game just stops, somehow abruptly.
That’s why I have given a lot of time to thinking about how to create a game that supports long play, but that at the same time has some tools for and end, or at least a “defined” end (which may be more simple).
But to build towards this tool, this end, I had to think about the structure of the game.
The game in layers
This will be a little of a spoiler because I will tell you a little of how The Promised Ones is structured. If you are thinking to play this game as a player-character, this may spoil the experience. But maybe not. Perhaps this “fear” comes from me giving too much weight to the surprise and the mystery. Perhaps what you do in play with this tool, or guide of an end, will be the more interesting part of the game. Ultimately, as in life, we all know the inevitable end, but it is how we get to there, what we do before we get there, that makes the experience meaningful.
I had organized the structure of The Promised Ones in three layers:
World arc layer: World arcs are events that advance behind the curtains while characters are devoted to their tasks. These are seeded within rumours, clues, songs, poems and tales, and at some moment in the game, players will confront these world arcs, and they will have to deal with the complications that arise from them.
In this layer, one of the most important world arcs is the expansion of the great spirit dominions. This is tied to how many souls fragments characters bring to the great spirits.
Inside this layer, it is also the evolution of the objectives of the different factions. These are tied to the actions of players, specially through their role in the tasks they follow.
Character’s arc layer: In this layer there is all that concerns the characters, all the loose threads suggested by their family and their memories (defined in character creation through their origin). Also, all the possible things that may sprout in the game, things that players will like to explore.
This layer is less structured because it is bound to the agency of the players.
However, the loose threads presented on family and memories link the world-arc and this layer. In this way, the personal story that the players are telling with their characters will feel intertwined with the world.
Tasks layer: This is the layer where most of the fine structure of the game lies. In here is where the “adventure” or “task” that guide the rhythm of play, and its core loop, are collected.
Tasks, in a simple way, are predefined adventures to be played. They also provide access to PC to specialize their characters in some skills and to develop some connections with factions and NPCs.
Their first task grants them a reason to gather, work together, and create a band of promised ones.
In here there will be seeded clues for the big mysteries of the game as well as information and clues to answer, advance, and reveal the secret of their character arcs seeded by their origins.
Where “the end” lies
Within this structure, I realised that the easiest way to guide the game towards an end, was to include it in the “World arch layer”.
This may seem like railroading, but what I wanted to try to do is to present as an end-point, or end-condition, a final conflict and not its outcome. So, how players resolve this conflict is what the end will be.
I think that this final conflict has to be somehow evident in the premise of the game, so players do not feel cheated, by being guided to a conflict that was impossible for them to foresee.
In the case of The Promised Ones, this final “world conflict” is the territorial conflict that comes between great spirits and mortals due to the expansion of the metaphysical dominion of great spirits in the material world.
This expansion will end with players deciding between their alliances with the mortal world and their born connection with the great spirits to whom they were promised.
Needless to say, this is not the only thing the end of the game will be about. As everything that players created while playing, all the connections they forged, all the threads tied to their origins (all that is still not resolved), should be pushed to an end point when a conflict of a wordly scale is on the horizon. Or at least that is how I imagine it in my most hopeful dreams about this game.
Where else “the end” can hide
This is something that I have been thinking about not only for this game, as I’m also writing a game called No Peace For The Heathen (NPH) and I’m working on a “secret project”, both of them thought for longer style campaigns.
I think that for NPH the end is not hidden, is at the forefront of the premise of the game: You all are people who suffered from the violence of invaders (conquistadors) and you all are searching for Isla Chica, a place unreachable by the bloodthirsty conquistadors (the last safe haven). So, in this sense, the end is clear, your character finds Isla Chica or dies in the process. Also, I set up some more personal quests inside the “classes”, by giving them missions they believe they have to accomplish to be able to enter Isla Chica (one of which has to be created by the player on character creation).
For the “secret project” the things are too green to say where the end hides, but I think that I will go with a mixed approach, giving “classes” some personal quests and pushing some top-layer conflict. But here there are some big mysteries in the lore, and these blank spaces seem an interesting place to hide these top-layer conflicts. But then, the trick will be making it evident and mysterious at the same time. Someone may say “surprising but inevitable”.
I think that is important to note that all this is what I feel with “adventure base” TTRPGs, which are not all TTRPGs. Sadly, the only game I have been able to play for multiple sessions, spanning years, that is not heavily adventure coded is VTM (or at least the storytellers didn’t make it feel adventure coded).