“The best way to plan a chronicle’s size is to come up with a number of sessions or months you’d like to lead it as a Storyteller, then reduce that by 20 percent.”

—Promethean: The Created, by Bill Bridges, Conrad Hubbard, et al.

Chapter 4: “Storytelling and Antagonists”

Everything ends, no matter how we may wish otherwise. Roleplaying games are no different. Sure, there are plenty of stories of twenty-year-long campaigns of Dungeons & Dragons to be heard; you might even know of or participate in one yourself. If so, congratulations! By and large, though, most games will end in a few months to a handful of years. Groups dissolve. Stories reach an end and have few other places to go. It is the way of things.

There are games out there that do not wait for the end to either blindside or creep up on the players. They often avoid the sweeping, epic scope of the “campaign” that is so familiar to Dungeons & Dragons and similar RPGs. These games are small affairs: sometimes filled with whimsy, sometimes bittersweet, and almost always with something to say.

I’m going to talk about those kinds of games for a short while. Then we’ll end.

As we must. Continue reading Fleeting Moments: RPGs That End →