It's rare for an RPG game to end in complete failure. It's almost as rare, in fiction. Blake's Seven infamously finishes a four season run with the entire cast gunned down. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid doesn't show you precisely what happens to Butch and Sundance, but it's made plain by the context of the scene. The Wild Bunch go out in a hail of bullets, and Cross of Iron ends on a similar note - but that's Sam Peckinpah for you.
However there are few Peckinpahs out there. The audience prefers victory, or at least a Pyrrhic Victory, a Maltese Falcon where the hero walks away scarred but victorious. I've discussed fail states before, and suggested that failure should not always equal extreme penalty.
What happens when the campaign ends in a fail state?
Cthulhu-style horror games have a word for that: Purist. In that style of game death is considered the desirable end, because it best encapsulates the kind of horror the game strives for. A final diary entry, a message on a phone machine, perhaps a few scratches on the wall are all that's left of the intrepid soul who went out into the dark to find out what was bringing chaos into this ordinary world.
However if you're not running Purist Cthulhu, you might not want to end the game with a splat. Yet your Night's Black Agents crew might find themselves on the wrong end of the Kalashnikovs, or helpless and unarmed in the vampire's lair. Or your Bookhounds might suffer one reverse too many, and lose the store to the bank. Or your Parisian surrealists may never escape the dream. Whichever your fail state is, that's where you end up.
What then?
The trickiest thing about this kind of failure is, it often comes unexpectedly and quickly. The scene that ought to have been a breeze turns out to be a complete disaster. The mook gets off one lucky shot. The police arrive at the worst possible moment. The absinthe went moldy. Whatever it may be, it happened, and now you have to deal with it.
My advice would be to throw it open to the players. Put the facts plainly, and ask if that's how they want the game to end. They have to say yes or no; there's no maybe on the table.
If no, then as Keeper/Director/what-have-you, it's your job to find a way out. The players can offer suggestions, but you're the one in the chair.
The most likely solutions include:
Cavalry to the Rescue: Some third party arrives in time to pull the characters' fat out of the fire. This doesn't mean they're friendly; they can be rivals, even enemies. They might throw the characters in jail, or interrogate them, or whatever it may be. The important thing is, they don't kill the characters, and the characters probably get to keep some or all of their equipment.
Left 4 Dead: The characters are presumed dead, probably stripped of any valuables and gear, and abandoned. Any McGuffins are either taken, or overlooked by the attackers and can be recovered. Characters with abilities like NBA's Preparedness can have items stashed somewhere safe, so it's not a total loss. Otherwise it's time to crawl off the battlefield and lick wounds.
Morale Failure: The opposition get scared and run away, presumably because something more dangerous is nearby. The ghouls pause in their ghastly buffet, then scatter - because a shoggoth is too close for comfort. The mooks hear police sirens and run for cover. The characters are probably just as threatened by this new development as the opposition are, but at least now they have a chance to run.
Environmental Change: This is the trickiest to pull off, because it depends on specific circumstances. Say the mooks ambush the agents as they fly to some forgotten hellhole on a Douglas DC-3. In their eagerness to overwhelm the agents, the mooks accidentally shoot the pilot and now the plane's about to crash with everyone on board. The mooks bail out with the only parachutes, or panic, leaving the agents to save the day. Or the ghouls, in their eagerness to devour the investigators, don't notice that flood waters are about to sweep the sewers. Those fuel tanks are about to blow. The swarms of rats someone summoned up are now uncontrolled and don't care who they eat.
The point behind all these solutions is, they don't let the characters off the hook. They lose, and that means they suffer consequences. Maybe it's straightforward Health or Sanity/Stability loss, or maybe some gear's gone, or maybe they have to get the McGuffin back. Whatever that loss is, it's the price they pay for rescue. It's important to get player buy-in; if they just give up when the McGuffin goes missing, then it's probably better to let them keep the McGuffin, or at least have a reasonable chance of getting a new one. However once you have that buy-in, let the good times roll.
The players might say Yes, this is how it ends. What then?
Consider Blake's 7. In that climactic scene, two things are achieved. First, everyone dies on-screen, but in such a way that, if necessary, their survival could be justified. Injured, apparently dead, but not actually dead. The only exception to that is Blake himself, and that because the actor playing Blake really didn't want to do it any more and insisted on a death scene that left nothing to chance, so Blake gets shot multiple times.
Second, the most important plot question - whether or not Blake was a traitor - is answered.
Readers, filmgoers and players have this in common: they can live with an unhappy ending, but not an unsatisfactory one. There has to be an answer to the questions raised by the plot. Blake is not a traitor, but Avon kills him anyway because, in that moment, Avon thinks he is. Avon, and the audience, have their answer - and then guns go off.
Say this is a Dracula Dossier game in which the 1970s agents are trying to find out who the Edom mole is. Guns blaze, bodies drop, and in the last few moments before death the mole's identity is revealed. Maybe the agent's mentor leans over their bleeding body and whispers, "it was me." Or maybe they see the mole accepting a pay-off from the leader of the opposition.
Again, this is a situation where the players should have input. If they really want the mole to be X, then let it be X. Give them proof, or allow them to justify their suspicions. If the Dreamhounds want to know their art lives on, allow a final coda in which their paintings hang in the Musée d'Art Moderne, perhaps in the act of being stolen by Vjeran Tomic. Or Nyarlathotep gathers up their souls and whispers ghastly truths, before scattering them into the endless void.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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