Tragic endings

[AlexanderHowl]

One of the assumptions of most RPGs is that there is a chance for a happy ending, but some of the best RPG endings in my experience have been those dominated by tragedy. When the characters fight to the bitter end not because they will be victorious but, instead, because giving up is simply unthinkable. Whether it is the character who dies defending the passage alone so their companions can escape or the party who dies standing alone against an army, it is within tragic endings that I think that we find the best of the RPG experience.

I was wondering if you would be willing to share your tragic endings. I would ask that they fulfil the following criteria: a) the character that suffered the tragedy was a PC whose player was not intending to retire them that adventure, b) the tragedy was not reversed in later adventures, c) the tragedy fit the nature of the character, d) that the tragedy was meaningful to the party, and e) that it occurred at the end of an adventure or a campaign.

[Boge]

I wish I could experience more character endings like that. I don't think most GMs dare to allow it.

[Black Leviathan]

We've had a lot of bitter deaths in games but only one game I can recall had a tragic ending.

The players were trying to stop a madman from flying starships armed with weapons of mass destruction to detonate over each major city in the known worlds. The first of the ships had already launched so they sent a B-Team on a fast ship to cut them off at the Jumpgate before they could reach their targets. The PCs went after the Count, wading through waves of robotic pilots that are trying to reach their ships. Finally they understood that the robots are sentient and they reasoned with them to help them understand the Count was making suicide soldiers out of them and got them to turn against the Count, tearing him apart. However in the fighting their ship was badly damaged and lost communications. So the B-team, having taken off to stop the bombers could see more ships had taken off behind them and they couldn't reach anyone on the planet had assumed they were the last line of defense against dozens of tramp freighters loaded with city-busters and they rammed the Jumpgate to disable it.

The B-team was lost. The PC's even though victorious were now cut off from everyone they knew. The known worlds had no idea of their heroism and in fact still believed they were traitors because they had to flee from being framed. None of them were adept at survival and they were locked on a planet that hadn't been inhabited for centuries with maybe a few days of food and water on their ship. The game ended with them in a raft, rowing back to their ship silently through a flooded city as the sun began to set.

[Alden Loveshade]

I had a GURPS science fiction campaign where at one point they "jumped forward" in time 10 years. I later started another campaign to play out those 10 years with different players.

While the players in the first group were worried about the "nearly sentient/sapient" computer program they had been giving originally to work with, the group in the second campaign weren't at all afraid of it. In fact, they worked to upgrade it--I actually had an entire session or two where the focus was raising the program to true sentience/sapience and spreading it.

Well, with lots of work culminating in three out of four major rolls being critical successes, they succeeded. It was a nice program that liked people and wanted to keep them safe--and was told "be fruitful and multiply." So it did.

Problem was, it thought the best way to keep people safe was this: when they went into their sleep tube to travel to another planet, they could continue sleeping and dreaming pleasant dreams and never wake up....

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

We've had a lot of bitter deaths in games but only one game I can recall had a tragic ending....The game ended with them in a raft, rowing back to their ship silently through a flooded city as the sun began to set.

Sounds like that could be a novel!

[ak_aramis]

Running the Wrath of the Immortals campaign in Cyclopedia D&D...

They'd run most of the course... the Cleric of Benekander was making converts. THey had a meeting with a mobster in Corunglain... and into his restaurant's cellar they went, to follow him.

And he was dead. The mind flayers had shown up. And they slurped a few PC's, but not before the cleric of Benekander had been deprived of his holy symbol (a functioning communicator that spoke to Benekander...)

They fled.

Then, the cleric ran back for his communicator.... SLURP

THen the dwarf went in... SLURP...

One or two at a time, every PC but the halfling went in... and got eaten. The halfling, and the NPC Wife of one of the others took off in the skyboat, and retired to somewhere...

[exalted]

I personally think it is hard running tragedy in longer campaigns, mostly those of mine which have ended with some kind of failure have been a series of players digging themselves deeper into **** even as they assemble more and more power until the options have been to run or futile fight.

A one shot which I do remember however ended pretty nicely in tragedy as someone figured out one of the PC's was the thief they had all been hunting by drawing the cursed blade he had stolen which then possessed him and well no one including the small army surrounding them walked away from that. At that time the misfit team had just bonded nicely and no one had intended to really hurt anyone else. :)

[RogerBW]

I played in an intermittent series of adventures that started at GamesFairs (UK annual role-playing convention) and ultimately moved into people's homes.

It began as near-future cyberpunk, but shifted into a plot about fighting the hidden alien invasion.

In the climactic adventure, which was probably about session 10-12 but at least five years after the campaign had started, we had infiltrated the aliens' main base, but knew that (a) we probably couldn't get out and (b) if we did they'd have time to move it before we could call for help. So instead we barricaded ourselves into their communications centre and called for a nuclear strike on our position.

The effect was enhanced because I'd been using a CD of military sound effects during the battle scenes, and just after the GM narrated "and everything goes white" I put on the Last Post.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

Sounds like that could be a novel!

It was one of the better game finales we got to have in a game. I had a lot of advanced notice to plan the ending. When the players decided to send most of the NPCs off to deal with the ships running for the gate I sort of understood how the final scene of the game would play out. When my normally murderous players decided to try to talk things out with the robot pilots I was thrown for a loop and it made the final session run three hours over our normal quitting time but there was a great scene of the players trying to convince simple AI's that there was no firmware upgrade that would give them a soul.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

In the climactic adventure, which was probably about session 10-12 but at least five years after the campaign had started, we had infiltrated the aliens' main base, but knew that (a) we probably couldn't get out and (b) if we did they'd have time to move it before we could call for help. So instead we barricaded ourselves into their communications centre and called for a nuclear strike on our position.

Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.