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Listening to: Ooki na Ken – Masanori Takumi (Claymore OST)

First off, an update on the progress of The Knights’ Tale. The only chapter remaining is the last one, which unfortunately has not been completed as of yet. With homework to complete, I need to make sure that I get my priorities in order, so while I will certainly be making every effort to complete it, it may be another week yet.

Now then, back to the list!

Step 4: The Grand Quest.

By the time that you’ve thrown the villain in your faces, your party should already be coming up with strategies to engineer their defeat. Ideally, you should present them with a few of the steps yourself. If the villain is a trusted vizier, for example, showing evidence of his corruption would be one step they could use to bring him down. Having him assassinated before this would simply make him into a martyr, after all–something that wouldn’t do at all.

It’s important to keep track of your characters’ alignment when tailoring the quest, however. A party that is mostly good-aligned will react to situations much differently than a party that is neutral-aligned, and characters who tend towards law will strategize differently than the chaotically inclined. For example, during my campaign, the party was asked to bring the city of Serethon into an alliance with Valence. A good-aligned party might have tried to negotiate with the military governor, to convince him to change his mind about the stance he was taking with the war. It would likely have been time-consuming, but effective. My neutral-aligned party decided to take a much more direct route: putting a curse on the current governor, then enacting a coup to replace him with a puppet ruler more amenable to their agenda.

Remember, the grand quest always works better if it’s personal. Galdrad’s betrayal of the Valencian forces, resulting in the death of one of the party members and of Captain-General Mara–the party’s favorite NPC–gave them the impetus they needed. PCs are much more willing to go the extra mile to defeat an enemy that they have a reason to hate. While you don’t necessarily have to go as far as I did, it’s always good to have a few things to throw their way as “encouragement.”

Step 5: The Climactic Moment.

Eventually, of course, your campaign must reach the high point: the point that you’ve been building up to the entire time. This is one of the most difficult things to pull off: make it too easy and it’ll be anticlimactic. Make it too difficult, and the party will either be wiped or feel that they’ve only been allowed to win by a deus ex machina. In the same vein, completely changing the genre at the last second will subvert the entire point of the campaign. If you throw something at the PCs that can only be overcome by brute force, PCs who have been focusing on roleplaying their characters will be caught off-guard. If you throw in politics at the last moment, a group accustomed to kicking down the door won’t know what to do with themselves.

Probably the most frustrating version of this sudden genre change that I encountered was in the Knights of the Old Republic series by BioWare. The majority of both games centered around forging friendships with your party members; in the second game, this is even a major plot point. However, both games end with the player character fighting alone through a massive number of enemies, which is especially frustrating given my usual RPG play-style of putting all of my skill points into negotiation skills and talking my way out of as many bad situations as possible. Don’t repeat that mistake!

The climax of the campaign arc with General Galdrad, for instance, used the skills of multiple different party members. The necromancer was able to use one of his undead to testify at Galdrad’s trial, the knight challenged him to single combat, the warmage dealt with the demons he summoned after his inevitable betrayal, the druid tracked him through the forest, and so on…

Step 5.1: The End? (Optional.)

Once the villain has been vanquished and the party stands triumphant, it’s time to wrap things up… or not. Dropping hints throughout the campaign that the enemy they’re currently fighting may not be acting completely under their own initiative may let the party know that there may be another villain to hunt down. This is generally the way that I like to run my campaigns: the adventure continues, and there’s always another plotline for them to pursue. If, however, you’re drawing your campaign to a conclusion, make sure that you tie up the loose plot threads. Leaving your players hanging on anything when you don’t intend to continue is most unsporting!

Hope you enjoyed the conclusion of the list! Signing off, until next week!