[Shadowrun] Mistakes learned; ending a game

[Glendower]

I've never really ended a game.  What I should clarify is that I've never come to an agreement with the players to end a game, run a few final sessions, and then move on.  Usually the games either slowly drag to a halt, or are cut short to try something else. 

This has happened in nearly every game I run or play in since I was around 8 or 9.  Granted, sometimes this would be due to issues out of my control, like moving to a different city.  But mostly, it was due to a lack of interest in the current game, and just breaking it off to do something else. 

I was under the assumption that this was how all games usually went.  You'd play, you'd get bored, you'd jump into another game.  The original game sits there unfinished, and is never returned to.  The various circles of gaming I've been attached to seem to back this up.  As usual, the Forge takes those assumptions and hits them with a chair.

I run a Shadowrun game.  We play 3 hours Monday nights, usually around 7-10pm.  This game has been running for roughly a year and a half.  The game started following the game metaplot, but I made it clear that future events in the metaplot wouldn't be happening in the order it lays out, or even at all. 

I should get to the players.  Chris and Lisa are my roommates.  They play Mark, a paramilitary expert with vehicle skill, and Emmirilee (the characters call her "Em"), an Elven Mage.  Mark comes from a militia of racial supremacists.  He was shown evidence of their lies and left them, killing a few on his way out.  He struggles with racism hammered into him from when he was a youth. 

Em comes from the local Elven nation, who shunned her because her skin was pitch black in color, and a local prophecy warned of a black elf that would destroy the Elven way of life forever.  The Elven way of life, just to be clear, is racial supremacy over the lesser beings on Earth. 

The other two characters are friends of ours, named Wil and Ross.  Wil plays Mack, a Troll of unusual intelligence, and Ross plays Lyn, a dwarf sharpshooter and hacker.   Mack was once a human mathematician made a huge discovery. He was pursued  for this knowledge, and a botched kidnapping led to him almost dying in a fire, which led to his change.  His research knowledge was lost when he changed, the troll brain only remembering that it was important.

Lyn's life was marked by addiction, his father was hopelessly addicted to the drugs of the world, which eventually claimed his life.  Early on Lyn trained himself to be a sharpshooter to kill all those that pushed those drugs, and took up Hacking to find them. 

For the first six months, the game was about mission after mission.  I used a few ideas of my own, and some I've run out of the store bought modules.  They've had fun planning out their actions and running the job.  I was all right as well, but figuring out the next Shadowrun became more and more difficult.  I was starting to get burned out, and the players began doing a lot of bored tells (reading the book, stacking dice, etc).

I talked to Lisa and Chris about my misgivings when I started feeling burnt out.  They reacted with alarm.  Was I going to end the game?  They liked playing their characters, and didn't want to stop playing them.  They were hurt by the fact that I was getting tired of it, and what was unspoken (but suggested) was that by being tired of the game I was tired of them as people.  That wasn't it at all!  But I didn't want to hurt my friends.  At the time I decided to backpedal and foist it on to being tired and spouting crazy talk. 

That a year ago.  Now I had done some reading on the Forge, and made the command decision to focus on their back story.  "It's as if they ordered ham, ham-and-cheese, and cheese-and-salami. You keep giving them potato salad, and it even happens to be a lot like the potato salad they had last time." said Ron to me about another game with other players where I did the same damn thing.  That post was a sound kick in the ass, and man am I grateful!

So in the last year, it's all been about their back story.  With a VENGEANCE.  Lyn's cold-blooded killing of drug dealers was addressed, and he came to accept his father's weakness with strength in himself.  He also rebuilt the local Hacker's haven, and turned into a kind of Father figure for the up and coming Hackers.  Marks' militia group reared their head, and he struck a blow against their plans to start a race riot among the Orcs and Trolls of the Ghettos, gaining honorary membership into a local Orc gang for his work.  Mack's mathematic work was partially recovered, and it was found to be the x element that awakens a Sentient AI in complex computer systems.  Em's country was devastated in a civil war, and the rebels have asked her to help fight the old guard and establish a new, democratic nation.

And yeah, it's been fun.  Way more fun than the six months previous. Go Forge!

But now there's another issue.  They have amassed wealth and powerful contacts.  I've mined deep into the back stories, and the well is almost dry.  Once the next few games involving the Civil war in the Elven nation are complete, I've kind of run out of things to do.  It feels like I'm back at the same place a year ago, out of ideas and interest waning. 

I've spoken to Wil and Ross about this, and they are in agreement that much of their back story has been addressed.  I still haven't spoken to Chris and Lisa about this yet.  My intent is to start a new game, something in a different system that has a set ending point.  Maybe Primetime Adventures or Burning Empires.  However, again I'm at the point where I don't want to disappoint and hurt my friends, especially my roommates!

So how do I get everyone on board with ending the game?  Has anyone had these problems when ending one game and starting another?  What have you done in that kind of situation?  Is there a social obligation to keep a game running?  Is Neil Young right?

[Ricky Donato]

Hi, Jon,

It seems to me like you're creating a problem where there is none. Two of the 4 players have agreed with you that the game should come to a close. If 3 out of 5 think so, it's not a big stretch to imagine the other two are also on board. I understand your concern, because of the bad experience you had last time, but right now it really looks like this transition should go smoothly.

[Ron Edwards]

I agree with Ricky. Your reasons for wanting to end the game are vastly different in this case. Compare:

1. "Gee, hitting myself on the head with this tire iron is really getting repetitive, and the more I think about it, the less I want to do it."

2. "Wow, this cake we baked worked out really well! We got the ingredients, we mixed it, we baked it, and now we've eaten almost all of it. Hey guys, when we're done licking the frosting off our fingers, let's make another one."

I think if you present your current state of mind to everyone in the group, they'll understand exactly what you mean. In this case, the desire to close out this game is praise, not criticism.

Best, Ron

[Eric Provost]

Hey Jon,

That sounds like a kick-ass game of Shadowrun.  

I agree with Ricky.  There probably isn't going to be a big problem talking to the other two players.  But I think I might just have an idea for approaching the question super-softly.  Instead of asking "Hey, is it time to play something else?" you might ask "What loose ends do your characters still have?  What do we really need to address now?"  Putting a couple well-loved characters to bed with a bang might just seem more palatable than just letting the whole thing slip away.  And the other players might just have a few particular loose ends in mind that you don't know about yet.  Heck, they might even hit you with something that reinvigorates your interest in the game.  

If you're open to the idea, you could also let your players know that you're totally open to revisiting the characters in the future, but for now you'd really like to give something else a go.  

Eric

-crossposted with Ron

[Glendower]

I agree with Ricky. Your reasons for wanting to end the game are vastly different in this case. Compare:

1. "Gee, hitting myself on the head with this tire iron is really getting repetitive, and the more I think about it, the less I want to do it."

2. "Wow, this cake we baked worked out really well! We got the ingredients, we mixed it, we baked it, and now we've eaten almost all of it. Hey guys, when we're done licking the frosting off our fingers, let's make another one."

I think if you present your current state of mind to everyone in the group, they'll understand exactly what you mean. In this case, the desire to close out this game is praise, not criticism.

I think the main reason people quote you so much, Ron, is that you're so Goddamn QUOTABLE.  Thank you, Eric and Ricky for the confidence inspiring words.