I love the summer, but it has a negative impact on gaming and blogging because I'm always doing other stuff. The Worldgod campaign is moving along and hopefully this next Sunday will be the last session (or likely the 2nd to last) of the Island of Storms hopefully leading to the Final Chapter (assuming the players decide that way).
This brings up the question of Player Agency vs. GM Fiat. In the end, regardless of other arguments, a good GM can lay down some GM Fiat that completely ignores Player Agency without anyone complaining about being sent off to ride the D&D Railroad. The game needs to be fun and, in this case, needs to come to conclusion. We've been playing the Worldgod Campaign for 7 years and are ready to move on, but not without and the Epic End of Days so richly promised by the overall story that has been uncovered.
There is a level of metagaming involved here. The players KNOW they are playing a game. The players also KNOW that they want to wrap this up to move on to the next thing. The players KNOW they want to the campaign to end like a badass tiger made of lightning ridden by Odin shooting radiation out of every hole and battling a double unicorn hatedemon. Or whatever. Point being, the campaign has gone on too far to simply let a TPK or a series of bad decisions derail the entire thing.
So now a campaign that was sandboxy and do-your-own-thing has a few adventures left that could end in failure, but even the failure needs ot be epic.
As a GM I think I can pull this off without the players feeling cheated and still letting them do what they want their characters to do. My biggest concern is that I can't and the longest campaign I've ever pulled off will die with a whimper and not a bang.
Now ... if the party can get through the tunnels inhabited by demon spider that taunts them and worships their previous party member (an evil spider witch) then figure out how to slay a legendary dragon that is already clearly dead then they can decide to move to final confrontation, let it all go, destroy the world, battle the insurgents in Sigil, or whatever. Point being, only one last adventure after this. Fingers crossed.
