Campaign Aftercare: What do You do When a Long TTRGP Campaign is Over?
Transcript:
You're listening to No Plot Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every
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back to Nploton Lore. This week brought to you by the other kind of dungeon master.
Hey, getting whipped. Oh, yeah.
You want You were the one who specifically used the word afterare, sir. Uh, that's true. Yes. Afterare. This
week we're talking about on you. Once all the emotional trauma is done, how do you wrap up your campaign?
How do how do you make sure that your players are emotionally sound and secure
and ready to re-enter the real world? Yeah. And you know, furthermore, is that
even really your problem? No. Okay, good episode. Um,
yeah. Well done. No. Um I mean I think it's not necessarily your responsibility
but I think as caring human beings providing closure on
the end of an endeavor is always a good thing. So I I brought this idea up because the
longrunning campaign I am in is about to wrap up in maybe one or two sessions. Um, and
it's well, frankly, it's the first true wrap-up that I have done since starting
playing D and D. Um, really? Yeah. Uh, cuz our group, like the one I
was in with you, I don't think we ever got a true wrap-up. We just kind of petered out. Um, that's true for so many of my campaigns,
though. Yeah. Yeah. Like they do occasionally have a decent wrap-up, but it it is so few and far between.
No, but with this exception, every major campaign I've been involved in has
petered out and not gotten a a good conclusion. So, um I mean I
I know what I would like out of the ending, but there's certain things that
uh I think go beyond the scope of just what's happening at the table when it comes to navigating this uh I don't want
to say conclusion, but definitely this this change in the overall relationships
that you have with the group. Um, so, so what are you hoping for there? Like
what what what is it that you would like to see from this transition from playing a big campaign to not playing a big
campaign? Yeah. So, for myself, the biggest thing is um obviously the the main arc of the
story is going to have sort of an inevitable conclusion. Um Mhm.
whe I don't know exactly how that's going to play out, but uh given the name of the game, we are going to you know
confront at very least the frost maiden herself, the frost queen. Um
and I don't know how that's going to play out because I don't feel as level like nine or 10 characters that we have
the ability to take on gods yet. But we'll see how this goes. Um,
are you taking on a god or are you taking on an aspect of the god? Because like the the aspects are usually level
appropriate. I don't know. Like we've gotten so little information about what we're
actually taking on. Like the way that she's manifested to our characters is godlike and the fact that this entire
region of the world is an eternal winter because of her seems godlike. Um, but yeah, like we we don't really know
100% what we're getting into. We've been told, "Hey, go catch the mcguffin because it'll help you take her on." But
yeah, we really are in over our heads right now. So, I'm I'm That's fair. I know
the next steps that we're going to take through the this final zone that we're in. Um but I don't know how that's all
going to resolve. Um so, I'm I'm looking forward to resolution of that. Um, I
fully expect that our individual subplots, having already been almost
entirely forgotten, will go completely unresolved. Um, and it will be up to us
as players to just sort of write a brief um afterward on
where our characters wandered off to after the party. Um,
but yeah, like I I hope and I don't expect this out of what is more or less
just straightforward published content, but I would hope that they would give some conclusion to little things that
popped up along the way that, you know, hooks that weren't explored. Um, but I don't know if they will.
I sincerely doubt it. Um, like a lot of times those hooks that aren't explored
have like little subplots and beats that you're supposed to hit and then you get returns on those in various places in
the story, but not necessarily at the end of the story if you didn't engage with those. Yeah. Earlier. And I think so what what I will ask our
DM to do is maybe go back and make some notes of stuff that we didn't explore and what could have happened just for
curiosity sake. Um, right. But that'll be doing the second flip through of the choose your own adventure book and just
like hold my thumb here and my finger here, which was Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a road I traveled a lot. So, yeah. So, that's kind of what I'm hoping for, you know, or or what I'm expecting anyways. Um, and then
something I'm hoping for is that I have a significant break until we start the
next thing. Um, okay. Yeah. I just I want to take a breather
from having this thing in my schedule so regularly to just have some time for
myself to explore other hobbies. Sure. Um going back to like the the wrap-up
for for your character in particular, have you
considered both endings? Right. like not necessarily like the the endings of like
exactly when your character bites the dust, but like if your character dies, what
are you hoping to get from that scene? And if your character survives through the whole thing, what are you hoping to
get from that scene? Like have you have you explored that at all outside of the game? Um, if he dies, this will be my second
character to die in the campaign. I'll be a little bit pissed, but it is what it is. I
maybe shouldn't be punching mages. It was it was a skeleton. It wasn't a mage
at the time. Anyways, uh I don't know. I hope that someone will um
step up to take on the responsibility of informing my wife that I'm dead. Um and
I hope that the other players have been paying enough attention to make illusions to like a traditional Jewish
burial or things like that. Um Okay. I
Yeah. And the thing is he's an old man, so it's not like a big deal if he dies.
It's just like someone's got to tell, you know, Rebecca that he's dead. Um, if he
doesn't die, I would hope to like put a tag on it to like sort of bring him back
to his original reason for joining the group and his overall goal. Uh because that was just
completely unexplored, right? Yeah. So, something that I like to do for my
wrap-ups when they happen is at the end of the thing,
I take a moment for each character and sometimes it'll be its own whole session, right? Like we'll do our own
whole session of epilogues. Yeah. where each player gets to strictly
role play. We're not doing any like mechanical stuff. We put the dice away. We're just going to go through their
character beats and like what happens post campaign with them.
Yeah. Just so that we have the opportunity to wrap up some of those story threads that didn't necessarily get addressed through
the story. Sure. Um, do you know if Keith is planning on on
running epilogs? Do you know if you're gonna do like an epilog session or like a I have it listed as like session
infinity cuz it's the opposite of a session zero. I
I very much doubt he's got a separate session planned for it. If anything, I
could see him sort of pacing it out so that the
like penultimate session leads right up to like the final encounter and then the
the final session is that encounter plus like
um postcript 15 minutes of wrap-up. I mean, yeah, kind of.
Yeah. Yeah. Um because I I think there's some value
Yeah. to taking some time for each player and like giving everybody at the table an
opportunity to shine as well as like appreciate what the other players are bringing to the table, right? Like
it's never fun to be like the sidekick in a situation where somebody's like got
main character syndrome. Yeah. But it's also nice sometimes to be able to watch one of your fellow players like do their
role playing and have a moment for themselves that like wraps everything up in a nice little bow. So, I'm a big fan
of those. Um, I hope that there is an epilogue planned for y'all. Oh,
here's here's what I would say is like I
I've sort of alluded to this before, but I have a feeling that he just would like to get this over with
and we can move on to something else like sooner than later. um in particular just cuz like
some of the group cohesion has broken down and and you know people are just
kind of tired of being around each other. Well, okay. That's fair that all of us are as tired
of being around each other as others are. But sure, but you spend as much time as you guys have been as
Yeah. You're going to start rubbing each other the wrong way a little bit sometimes. And that you get like that one person that's always on their phone
when it's not their turn. And well, that's one person who's Yeah.
[Music] But or or you get the one person who like tries to take over every scene just
because they're bored, which is me. Um, so like yeah, the those little things
start to magnify over the course of years and I can definitely see where
that would be an issue. But what what do what do you think is the next thing?
Like what do do we have an idea of where your crew wants to go with that?
So um I can say this for sure. There will be at least one roster change. Um.
Mhm. There's just you can tell pretty quickly that
certain styles of D and D don't mesh with everyone, right? Um, so it's not
that we have anything against the any particular person, but there's there's
members who are just not they don't gel with the vibe of the whole group. Um,
okay. They have a very different philosophical approach to Dn D and
personal approach to social interaction that like just
okay hasn't been the best fit over time. Um
I was worried you were going to go in a hygiene direction, but No, no, hygiene has not been an issue.
Thank god. Okay. But uh yeah, it's just one of those things where it's like yeah, this just like isn't
we don't feel it anymore. We don't feel the love. So, we're going to, you know, wish them well and not start
another campaign with them. Um, what we will do is I like obviously I I can
enforce my own desire to take a break. So, I'm going to take a break. Um, and
then uh our DM has expressed interest in trying out the Fallout RPG.
Um, which I am less interested in. Um, groups.
No, it's its own new one that was published. So, okay. Yeah. Just Yeah. The the entire Fallout system
is very feed into how GERPs do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it was the first Fallout was based on
Gersps. Yeah. Which is fine. Um, I understand he loves that universe. I I might get
talked into it, but I would also like to take a crack at DMing myself uh for the
first time in a while. Um, and I was hoping to run at least like a a
miniature Gamma World campaign. Um, it's been a while since we've
touched Gamma World at all. Um, and frankly I don't know 100% how viable it
is if you don't have like a lot of the, you know, most recent or like because
they did this weird expansion thing with the decks and the equipment that you could get. So you just buy more packs of those. I have never bought those. I just
bought the main box and the expansion. So I don't know ifine
it's probably fine. Like I don't know if it necessarily is like material for a
you know big long-term campaign, but at least something quick and relatively dirty should be probably fine. Um
and then do you guys do oneshots at all? I I have. Yeah. Uh okay.
So one of the other guys at the table who runs another game now with our DM in it. Uh he ran a oneshot. I ran a
oneshot. Um yeah, I don't know. we're we're open to that kind of stuff, which
I think honestly might be the right way to do some of it for a while, just to like take some of the pressure off. Um,
but yeah, I I I kind of want to take a break. I want to try DMing myself again. And if I do start up another campaign,
I I don't know. I I don't know if I want
to like run it myself or just play in a completely different group. I'm not really sure where my head's at right
now. Fair enough. Um, if I just start throwing a bunch of oneshots at you, um,
just just be prepared for that because that that's going to happen. I'm going to start show throwing like small onepage RPGs for like one shot ideas at
you. Um, Bear Heist surprisingly compelling.
I Yeah, I have I've read one very similar to that. Yeah, we'll we'll see. It's probably the same
one. Okay. So, do do you guys have like a plan for like a rap party?
No, not yet. Um Okay. I think what's going to happen is like because it's going to take us into maybe
October, November here. Christmas is coming right away, blah blah blah. Um there's a very good chance like nothing
at all happens till the new year. Okay. Although I could see us just
getting together in November just to like play some games and chill out. That's fair. Yeah. Um Okay. So, I have a
whole section here on like memory making and legacy that I think is just the stupidest [ __ ] but I feel like we kind
of need to talk about it. Yeah, let's do it. Um cuz like there there are other crews who do this kind of thing. And maybe
it's just that I'm an old jaded bastard and lack sentiment sentimentalism.
Um, but the idea of making like a campaign scrapbook to me is just so
[ __ ] twe, right? It's Yeah. At the risk of being hyperbolic, it's performative. Um, what
I will say is like there are groups who have been doing this stuff from day one.
Those are probably more likely to do it. But to do it like out of nowhere is yeah, just kind of goofy. There are
players that we have played with and I think you know who I'm thinking of who
absolutely would do this. Oh, I bet. Like my ex-girlfriend.
Yeah. 1,000% put a scrapbook together. Yeah. About a campaign. Yeah.
Yeah. Good. Great for her. But
uh commissioning art and of the party for like putting on walls or like
profiles or I guess if you're running like a an obsidian portal or whatever, you could do like
campaign. Don't be such a nerd. That's
all right. That this one I think is interesting because it requires a skill that I don't have and that skill is just
any kind of memory. um highlight reels
just like going through the campaign and like having like a little description of
like, "Hey, do you remember when we did that cool thing?" Which I think every group just kind of does naturally,
you know, now that I think about it, the druid in our group, I could see her just like getting distracted and doing that
for a while. Um she has that sort of artsy twist to her. Um
but yeah, no one else. This is like not reinforced by the group. We are not
like, "Hey, it would be cool." All right. And are you going to be writing a
short story andor light novel about your campaign? You'd be lucky if you get a haiku.
[Laughter] That That is one. Okay. So, I don't
think I've ever written a campaign out as a story because
they're very different formats, right, for me. Right. Like a a story has
structure that's impossible in narrative games, right?
Right. Like you you have to hit certain plot points and you have to do foreshadowing and you have to have like any amount of understanding of rising
action. And action doesn't rise in a role playing game. It just happens. Yeah. Um,
but I have taken campaign ideas, like things from my campaigns, and turned those into fiction sometimes.
I will say like now the idea of a campaign haiku actually really appeals
to me. Okay, so out of all of the twe ideas that we came up with for like a postgame
ritual, you've decided on [ __ ] poetry. You're going to make a poetry book. No, I
I the challenge to myself is can I condense three years of gameplay into
three stanzas like I don't think I can, but I'm certainly
curious to try. I I am interested in seeing this and if
you come up with a perfect haiku, it's going to be the title of this episode.
Uh, all right. Um, are you retiring your
dice? No. What? No. Don't be stupid. No.
Is anybody at your table like character specific dice people? I don't think so. There was Okay. There
was one set of dice that I bought for my first character that have been
effectively retired. So, like maybe that kind of counts, but it's really only
because um they were just kind of shitty like rounded edge dice with uh a panda
inclusion. So, like whatever. Okay. Like spent a little too much time in the tumbr. Yeah, exactly. Like I'm not saying
they're the reason my character died, but it probably didn't help.
It was It was not the dice. Josh, what are you talking about? My decision-m was flawless.
Um, okay. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how
intense has this campaign been emotionally? And because it's coming out of a a book, I'm assuming that's like
going to be in the 1 to5 range. Uh, you'd be correct. This has been
there's been a couple of like Well, has there been? Aside from my death,
I don't think there's really been many super emotional things. We've had lots of like through lines, but I think we're
not very serious people. So,
yeah, I I think there hasn't there's been Yeah, it's probably on the one maybe two scale.
Okay. because I have a tendency
to skew horror in my games a fair bit
more often than I think I want to. Mhm. It's one of those things where just like you you don't know what your influences
are until you start making art and then you look at your art and you're like, "Oh, okay.
Yeah, now I [ __ ] get it." Um, and so like there there's a a weird
amount of like body horror that happens in my games and like squicks and like
really intense fights, like verbal fights, arguments between people. Um, so
my my games tend more towards the like six, seven range on the usual and will
sometimes veer into the nine if everybody's cool with it. Yeah. Like I've never had anybody cry at
my table. Oh, one day. One day. It's the goal. I'm going to I'm
going to win Dn D by making someone cry at the table.
And I So, okay. All right. If we can put a little too much personal info onto the
table there. Um, I think the reason that there isn't a lot of stuff like that is
because of our DMs like undiagnosed autism. Um, all right.
I think social interactions are tough and they're even tougher when you're like they're tough to fake and they're
even tougher when you're completely faking them. Um, okay. Yeah. Faking the fakery.
Yeah. I think it's one of those things where like at that and like you know it was never like a theater kid or anything
like I don't know if if that kind of level of role playing is
like familiar to him or even a possibility cuz like he may just be
seeing D and D overall as like a a a
computer RPG with like extra steps um with just like with dialogue choices is
that you just kind of like plug in until they work. I don't know. Um,
none of our none of our games with him I I have I've I've not been in other games run by other people with him, but none
of the games with him have ever really had that level of like even just like
interc character RP like just doesn't happen at his tables. And I
don't know if that's because of him or because of the people that he was hanging around with when the groups were formed, but like it just doesn't happen.
Um there's been a little bit How old is Keith? Uh a year older than me.
So 41. Okay. Cuz there was a whole school
of role playing that was happening when we were young.
Okay. Right. Like I'm I'm 43, I think. Sounds about right.
Yeah, I I was 40 until I was 43. Now I'm 45. Um
so like growing up in the the 80s and like starting to play D&D in the early
early 90s, there was an entire school of people who was playing it more or less like it was a war game still, right? the
there was the whole thing with like the California art scene picking it up and
like turning it into vampire. Um like seeing the the role playinging
opportunities that lived in it and like finding drama in them and then a whole
of everybody else to the east of the Rockies that were just like I want to be a hobbit. I'm going to be a hobbit and
stab the horn. Right. And so depending on which crew you gravitated towards,
there's definitely like still some people in our age bracket who are seeing this more as just like a tactical war
game with some story tacked on as opposed to a narrative art form with some game bits
attached. Right. So I will say I think I'm pretty sure he didn't start playing at all until fourth edition with me. Um
Okay. And I the fourth edition, as much as I champion it, it definitely was more
of just a board game or a tactical war game than it was like a storytelling engine. Um,
one of his strengths in my opinion. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I I'm not faulting it for that, but I'm just saying
I don't think he's been exposed to the artsy fartsy parts of Dn D.
Now I need to play with Keith.
Yeah. Yeah. We we we need to make that happen. And I want to Oh, can Keith be the guy that I met cry? I don't want to make
Keith cry. He seems like nice. No, but like I don't even know if you could make him
cry. I'm not certain that would happen. I haven't made anybody yet. So, like, uh, the challenge is there.
Do you have to do the game on hard mode? You could pick someone who's more susceptible to crying.
Fair. Fair. But like the reason that we're getting into the the crying in the the first place is just like that there
is I think an element of like emotional afterare for some campaigns that you
kind of have to get into with like especially like
game as therapy, right? Which like I've seen quite a bit, right? like the the number of people who have
utilized the games that I am DMing as a
way to test out gender expression, right, is really flipping high. I was I was going to say like you know
the games where people discover they're trans in the middle of them like Yes.
And it's like not a fluke. No. Right. That there is a clear pattern here.
So, like in situations like that where people are discovering things about
themselves, not just about their characters, and where they're like exploring mental landscapes that they haven't
necessarily explored before, actually sitting down and like checking
in with your players and recognizing that there is grief attached to the loss
of things that people cherish. Yeah. Right. like the the the game itself, the
character, that exploration in particular, like that that experience of exploration in particular is really
really important. And I don't think that we have like we have a lot of frameworks for how to start campaigns,
right, with that in mind, but I don't think that we have a lot of frameworks for like how to end campaigns with that in
mind. Maybe I need to write them. Um, yeah. I mean, like,
okay, I will say I I think so much of Dn D is focused on the new
player experience to the point where it's like the only thing that matters is
getting people started up and making sure that that transition into the game is like flawless. Um,
right. and the the long-term players, the experienced players who are
now getting to the end of their campaign are kind of left in the wind. Um, and I
don't know if that's like semi- maliciously because they know so few campaigns actually wrap up or or if
that's just like, well, listen, we kind of it's if it's just like neglect, like we know you're here. gave
we gave the ADHD kids toys and we don't expect them to finish playing with them. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
The playing is the thing. You can't complete playing.
Well, I think maybe that's like part of it too, right? It's just like the idea of the infinite game, right? Like the
there's a thing that I saw recently about how the only landmark of success
that we have right now is forever. Right. Right. Like you run a coffee shop and a
bookstore for 5 years. You make some money doing that. You decide you're not
going to do it anymore. You close the the shop. It's now a failed business, right? Not a concluded business, but a
failed one. Yeah. And I think there's that attached
to Dn D too, right? Like one one of the notes that I have here is about do we
use the ending, right? Like the loose ends for this story. Do we use those as
seeds to continue the story on in a different campaign? And I know that there are a lot of
people who would say yes to that. They want to do like generational campaigns. looking at you, Margaret Weiss, and the
Dragon Lance Chronicles and how those went on forever and ever.
But I I think for me there is something beautiful about an
ending, right? Right. Like a proper ending. Like if there are loose ends, then they give you
things that you can daydream about about how those characters would have progressed through their life, but
there's still an end, right? A finality to it. And I think that that is something that we
maybe as a community don't value enough. Yeah. I will say like there's something that's
alluded to in the game and the documentation basically where the idea
that like your character has gone on many adventures. And I think the problem
is that the way that the idea of a campaign is presented is too
large for people to have more than one adventure. Um, you know, these things go on for
years at a time for like one like I get that not everything is like the big printed adventures, but they've really
gotten rid of a lot of the smaller stuff that was available before that was like, hey, this could be done in like three to five sessions. Um, and I think that idea
has sort of now like gone from like these are little discrete adventures you go on to like this is like your
character's entire life, you know? Um, and
the idea that like first of all, the way like progress happens within that adventure. There's only there's the
pacing can be so weird to make sure that like you have a character who's progressing, but without them just
becoming this like juggernaut too fast and then without it being like too slow so that people are just like, "Well, I
don't want to play anymore because I'm not getting anywhere. I'm just doing the same stuff over and over." But like there's ways to keep that engagement
there if you focus on the RP I think. Yeah. But it's hard to it's hard to do and
especially with new car new players like they don't know what they're doing. So getting them stuck into like the thing
that'll keep them interested is really really hard to do because they don't have like a theater class or whatever.
Yeah. So, I mean, I I think it's interesting to look at the the characters as well as just like
can you imagine if Shaq was still playing basketball professionally today, right?
Right. Like he's an old man. Yep. He He's still probably way better at
basketball than anyone I have ever met. Yep. But he had a good career. The career
ended. He moved on. and he was pretty young when he retired from professional
basketball. And I think the same is probably true for adventures. Like, can you imagine being a 50year-old man
hooking up your sword and some torches and going into a dank dungeon to stab
goblins? Thanks, but [ __ ] no. I'm going to stay home and let the kids do that. Well, the other part of the
problem though is that you looked at stuff like, you know, the Song of Ice and Fire and it's like Barrison St is
like 50 60 years old and he's still an ass kicker and you're like, "Oh, that's normal." But it's like, yeah, but maybe
he's just been like hanging out at level 20 for a long time, you know? Um,
he clearly was, right? Like he was the best swordsman that existed for a while.
Yeah. Um, and was like part of the King's Guard for most of his adult life. Like
Yeah. That's That's just a highlevel character who's still doing high level character [ __ ] past his prime.
Well, he worked for it. Spoiler alert for Icefire. Correction. Spoiler alert for the TV
show. Uh, did he not get merked in Feast for
Gross? Nope. Barrison Still is still kicking around.
Uh, which White Cloak got merckked. What's that?
I remember somebody getting merked. Anyway, anyways, we'll get to that later. Um, the point is
D&D has a weird problem where it's like people need to be progressing all the time. You can't just like be there, you
know? You can't just be the guy. Um, well, and again like the the difference
in the way that games work and stories work.
Yeah. Right. Like the stories that we are reading and watching
from like fiction, those characters have like a a place that they are in that's
based on their experiences. They have this one thing that they go through
that is the story and then they continue living their lives in a different direction. Right. Right. Right. Right.
Right. Because the story is over. Right. Like we're we're done with that event, whatever that event is. Yeah.
And I think that when you guys are done this campaign, you deserve a pizza party. That's true. I I will say I think that,
you know, we we're running into the problem of trying to tell a story using
a game. And the mechanisms for making an engaging game are not the same as those
of an engaging story. And the dissonance is what's causing the stress.
Did we just come across ludo narrative dissonance naturally? Oh [ __ ] we have another episode to do
next week on No Plot Only Lore.
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