Can the bad guys win?

#21

One thing I always found interesting was the suggestion in the 5e campaign Rise of Tiamat that if the players didn’t beat the Dragon Queen in the climactic final battle, then you could pick up and play in a world where the evil goddess stalked the lands, playing the resistance picking up where the great heroes of yesterday fell.

I doubt anyone has actually done this. But my group did a fun thing where, to win the support of the Metallic/Good Dragons, we had to go through a ‘Days of Future Past’ style dreamquest where we were doomed to lose the final battle - a test to see at what point the mortals would sacrifice Faerun to save the World by using the divine WMD given to us by Bahamut. Was cool to have disaster play out, even if it was just ‘all a dream’.

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#22

I do play a lot of fish tanks, and one emergent behavior from that scenario structure is that I sometimes have very little control over what is happening, almost like the scenario is playing itself. This renders to the result that there is no real ending, only a lot of possibilities in a grade from fail to success from the characters’ point of view. They can totally screw things up, they can accept their fate but for the greater good, they can take a win but have others or themselves pay for it, or they can sort everything out in the end. It all depends on what the players do and what kind of responses their actions generates from other factions.

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#23

I never knew this! This is a very interesting way of having consequences of character mores appear in the world.

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#24

Lethality and failure are frequently conflated in discussions of “losing” in a TTRPG. This is natural, as character death is a default failure result of losing a combat.

If players and the GM want a campaign where the characters develop strong relationships with each other through a shared history, an unwanted character death torpedoes the enterprise. A new character means starting from scratch. A new character means contriving an outsider being immediately accepted into an established fellowship.

When losing the final conflict ends the game and the shared story, it can end the fun.

As always, discussion and consensus about the tone of the game and what people really want from their shared experience are key. If you’ve never talked about these things until a climactic showdown goes south, there may be no right answer that won’t leave someone dissatisfied.

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#25

I think the question is not “can the bad guys win”: Of course they can.
The question is: “How to write / play a satisfactory story(line)?”
My hypothesis at the moment is: To play a satisfactory game you have to give the players autonomy. Autonomy gives them the ability to do things that matter for them. They need the feeling of self-efficacy.

Even in the darkest horror zombie apocalypse where everybody will be eaten in the end, you could play a satisfactory story arc: They had tried at least doing their best.
Or in a dark and grim setting: Even if they did not free the world from evil at least they helped making lives for a handful of people better (supposing the players are the good ones).

I think the same goes for drama in movies, books etc.

Compare “The aliens landed and eradicated mankind with nuclear weapons. The End.” to “The aliens landed and eradicated mankind - but a handful of brave humans fought till the last drop of blood was boiled in a nuclear holocaust”.

The result is in both stories the same: no more humans. But in the second story they had at least the illusion of a chance.

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