Topic of the Week: Endings

Boardgames
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Last week, I took a little break from the weekly discussion because I had a lot going on what with preparations for my birthday party :slight_smile:

In any case, this week‘s topic is brought to you by me never remembering how games end and inspired by a topic @Acacia is sure to bring to you at some point („Beginnings“).

So let‘s talk endings.

  • What are the default ways games end?
    • How do you memorize the details?
    • Do you? Or are you me and have to look up the game end conditions every time you teach?
  • What is the weirdest game ending you know?
  • Do you have favorites?
  • Do you like alternate win conditions?
  • Opinions on
    • variable game length vs fixed game length?
    • playing for tempo / forcing a quicker ending?
    • king-making?

Bonus Questions:

  • Have you ever read the ending of a book before the bulk of the book?
  • What‘s your favorite showdown in any medium?
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I have accidentally listened to the end of a book before reading it later. When A Thousand Splendid Suns was Radio 4’s book of the week, I caught the ending without knowing what the book was. I was a little put out when I realised later that I knew the ending of the book I was reading…

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I’ll have a think about games, but to take these last two questions:

  • Have you ever read the ending of a book before the bulk of the book?

Never! GASP

  • What‘s your favorite showdown in any medium?

The ending of For a Few Dollars More, which I like as a movie much more than The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, although I have to say TGTBATU’s showdown is very cool too

The entire last 30 mins of The Matrix

Pretty much got to put Enter the Dragon in there, right?

As for other mediums, art is an interesting one. I’m sure there’s loads of Tolkien showdowns around:

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You win by bankrupting yourself.

I now have preferences on end game.

I prefer games with variable length over fixed. The former means that the pace and length of the game is now a factor in your strategy. Games with fixed rounds means that there’s a narrow optimal strategy of when to switch to late game phase. In Euro games, it means you know when to switch from engine-building to VP-gathering after a few plays

Fixed rounds or turns also means you can easily establish a benchmark of X VPs-per-turn/round

I also prefer instant wins over VPs. The Pax series opened my eyes on this. Pax Pamir 2nd ed switch from insta-win to VP based. Meaning that games of Pamir with high player count (which are the optimal ones) often end with clear losers. Other titles like Pax Renaissance and non-Pax titles like Inis means it’s possible to knock down the winner and for the losers to catch up. And no, kingmaking and bash-the-leader are not an issue, for as long as they are not the focus of the game.

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I feel most games I own have a very obvious ending. Usually there’s a round tracker for games that go for so many rounds, or once a deck is empty the game ends, first person to x points, etc. Otherwise there’s some objective that needs to be completed within a certain time frame, after which the game ends in a win, or a loss if you fail to do so.

I guess the weirdest endings I can think of are Inis, as there are three possible victory conditions and there can be some back and forth if people keep tying on number completed, and Spirit Island as the victory condition gets easier (in theory) the farther in the game you make it. Even then, though, that’s not necessarily “weird”, just higher complexity than other game. So no, I rarely ever need to review the rules to figure out how a game ends, it is usually pretty obvious.

I do like alternate win conditions, where something high risk can give you the win immediately or similar. Not that I can think of anything off the top of my head at the moment that qualifies, which makes me wonder if I own such a game…

I personally have no preference between a variable or fixed game length. However, a fixed game length can be easier to sell to people, as a game that lasts for x rounds or whatever, can sound better than something that has the potential to last all day.

Don’t really like kingmaking, though I understand that some games just work that way.

NEVER read the ending of a book first.

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Except when they don‘t.

Ark Nova ends when someone‘s markers on the 2 point tracks cross. Right? Yes, and no. Because everyone else except that person gets one more turn (I think. Details…)

Terraforming Mars ends when everything is terraformed. But I would have to look up if anyone else gets any turns or the round is finished or what…

Harmonies ends when after their turn there are 2 or fewer empty spots on that players board. Except the round is finished so everyone gets equal turns.

Kingdom Builder ends when one person has no more houses to place. I think everyone gets equal turns in that one. But I am not sure.

Daybreak ends when drawdown is achieved—and players survive the round and fulfill any challenge conditions. I really like the drawdown ending it feels incredibly satisfying except when we missed that one of us doesn‘t fulfill the challenge condition and that sucks. Feels tragic to lose after that. We saved the world but humanity still falls apart.

Gloomhaven ends when the scenario objective is fulfilled. Is the round finished? I haven‘t played in a while and I think it is. But I am not sure.

Various race games usually wait for everyone to come in and „place“. That one seems pretty obvious and I can‘t think of one that doesn‘t do that.

Clank! starts ending when one person returns to the Inn to claim their beer but there is a fixed number of rounds after that and I never remember how many. And someone dying also triggers the end-game I think. This is one of those ones I have to go back to the rulebook every single time.

Welcome To The Moon scenario 1 ends when one person manages to launch their rocket. I messed up that one badly recently when it is actually a pretty obvious one.

Beyond the Sun ends when enough achievements have been claimed. But I would have to look up what „enough“ is for every player count and if there are any extra turns taken once the claims are staked. This is an ending I generally like though because it can go quickly but you can also see it coming.

Games with fixed rounds are easy: just play number of rounds (sometimes until everyone passes) and done. Those I can remember usually.

In general I think I like games of variable length more. Especially those with alternate win conditions that may subvert everyone‘s plans with a surprise :slight_smile:

But I agree with @COMaestro that there are a lot of occasions where saying „it lasts 5 rounds“ really helps convince people to give something a try.

Games that allow me to manipulate the game length by playing in a certain way are more interesting to me. One example is Harmonies where you can go for more vertical builds that give a lot of points or more horizontal builds that end the game faster. With very different skill levels this can be bad though—I have been on the receiving end of this playing Mischwald with friends who had played it a whole lot more.

My favorite victory condition is winning through fear on Terror Level III in Spirit Island. Victory just slides into a round that way… when you generate the last 2 fear by removing the last city. It makes for a elegant convergent moment.

My second favorite is terraforming all of Mars solo I think. It is so satisfying when it works out, I have to play over and over.

Books: when I was much much younger I often read endings first. I don‘t do this anymore. But I still have a very difficult time with films especially, that try to keep me on the edge of the seat waiting for the big reveal. As a corollary I dislike twist endings.

I can‘t deal with the tension in longer arcs of movies especially but also drama series. I rarely if ever watch thrillers for this reason (or horror movies but that‘s also because I hate jump scares). So I spend a lot of time guessing the ending to alleviate some of the tension.

The best endings are bittersweet. Something goes right and something goes left. Tragic endings are also fine by me. But I prefer some measure of hope alongside the tragedy. Someone self-sacrificing (themselves or something important to them) for the greater good like my Baldur‘s Gate 3 playthrough is probably my favorite way to end a good story.

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That’s something I did forget. Ticket to Ride, for instance, starts endgame when one player has less than 3 trains left in their supply, after which every player, including that one, gets one more turn. I’ve totally internalized that rule, so I never need to look it up anymore, but it is an exception to the “obvious” end game trigger. Same with Concordia which has an obvious end game trigger, but each player other than the one who initiated the endgame gets one more turn.

I haven’t played any of the games you mention other than Terraforming Mars on the app, which I just did not enjoy, Gloomhaven (JotL, admittedly), and Beyond the Sun on TTS, but it was probably a couple years ago now and I don’t remember any details. So, I can’t comment on those and whether or not I would find them obvious. However, I find that game components often help indicating how things proceed at game end.

For instance, Tyrants of the Underdark has a first player marker that does not move, as there are no rounds in the game, just individual turns. This indicates to me that once the end game trigger hits, play will continue until it would get to that player again, at which point the game does end. Otherwise there would be no need to remember who started the game.

Most games that end after a number of rounds have a round tracker. Actually, I cannot think of one that I have played that doesn’t.

But then there’s things like Fantasy Realms, which ends once 10(?) cards are in the discard, or maybe it varies with number of players? I haven’t actually played it yet, so I’m not certain. So yeah, there are some outliers.

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I have occasionally become so mired in a book I’m not enjoying that I will skip ahead to the end just so I can be done with it. And I have definitely cheated the whole way through countless “Choose Your Own Adventures” and/or “Fighting Fantasy” books.

Trigun: Vash versus Knives
The final, final, final boss fight in Ghosts of Tsushima was fantastic
Dredd versus the traitor judges in Dredd (his final fight with Maw-Maw is slightly out-of-character… Dredd doesn’t care about vengeance, only justice, and his final act is that of vengeance)
Obviously, Obi-wan versus Anakin in The Revenge of the Sith is spectacular as far as laser-sword duels go, but Ahsoka’s final scene in the Tales of the Jedi is probably the best laser-sword moments ever written.
Oh, and the Songbird ending in Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom of Liberty is amazing.

I don’t like king-making. I actively dislike games where 1 player can choose who wins if they can’t choose themselves (Santorini with 3 players constantly has this problem), but games where the meta determines the winner are among my least favourite. I couldn’t tell you why, I just dislike games like Cosmic Encounter or King’s Dilemma where you can play the game perfectly but still lose because those around the table have decided you don’t deserve to win? It feels… wrong.

But that might be my general inability to properly interact with other humans? I dunno. It’s just a weird pet-peeve.

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One of my favourite game endings is Innovation. You win immediately if ever you get enough achievements. But if someone tries to draw from deck 11 (which doesn’t exist), the game ends, achievements are irrelevant, and highest current score wins. There are also various age 10 win conditions, like lowest score after a robot/AI takeover, that all have very specific fairly unlikely trigger conditions.

What this gets right is variable game length, a clear and present primary goal to aim for from the start, a secondary goal to aim for if you fall too far behind in the primary goal, and some rare and tricky twist endings to shake things up further if you get that far.

These days I see king-making as simply a function of interactive systems. If it’s not possible, the game is not as interactive as I’d like. Games where king-making is more or less possible are fine, but games where it’s impossible are much less interesting to me. Of course, this depends somewhat on how you define the term. I don’t think it needs to be defined as a last turn move by someone who can no longer win - king-making can be much longer term than that, and can be deliberate or accidental.

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I usually remember what tips the game into an end-game state, but I need to look up what happens after that (just stop, everyone including the player who did it gets one more turn, everyone except that player gets one more turn, finish the round, finish the round and play one more round).

One of my few house rules is for The Stars Are Right: officially, the moment someone gets ten points the game is over, but I find it more satisfying to say “if at the end of a round one player has more than anyone else and ≥10, they win, otherwise play another round”. It doesn’t always kick in but the game is often close and it makes winning less dependent on play order.

I tend to like an obvious game state marker rather than a number exceeding a threshold. The bowl of chits is empty, that kind of thing. (Obviously for some games this could be the same rule implemented in different components.)

A conundrum of game length: can someone come from behind to win on the last round? If they can’t, what’s the point of playing the last round? If they can, what’s the point of playing the earlier rounds? There are of course answers to this, but I think it’s a question designers should ask themselves.

I’m not a fan of kingmaking, or its near ally “A and B fight, C wins”. That’s why I’m so fond of War of the Nine Realms in which the “main” win is by defeating the enemy leader, but every wound you deal ticks you up the blood cauldron track, and if you get that to 18 you’ve also won anyway. So you can’t turtle while two other factions fight, because one of them will get a blood cauldron win before you can pick apart the remains of the victor.

In general my idea of a “good” game is on in which you’re always doing your best to achieve whatever the goal is. The more tempo matters, the more edgy I get about it.

I think the graveyard showdown in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just edges out the other for me.

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Despite having re-read books and re-watched films, I find this notion horrifying.

(Although I’ve now remembered that there have been a very small number of occasions where I’ve lost all interest in finishing a book for some reason, and just read the ending for the sake of closure so that I could abandon it.)

What‘s your favorite showdown in any medium?

I’m not sure, but the film The Raid springs to mind for fighting – and most of its fight scenes would out-match the big showdown in most other fight films, for that matter. (Conversely, I thought the bigger-budget sequel was a bit of a mess by comparison, and lost a ton of what’s actually great about the original.)

Then there’s Inigo vs Westley in The Princess Bride. That’s a different mood :).

An entirely non-violent conversation between the antagonists in Heat manages to qualify as a gripping show-down.

2001: A Space Odyssey?

Rosemary’s Baby?

Alien/Aliens/The Terminator/Terminator 2?

Die Hard?

The 2018 version of Suspiria?

Wild Tales? (which is cheating, because that’s a compilation of outrageous revenge stories, and consequently not lacking for show-downs :).

Can I count every single interaction between Sean Penn and Joaquin Phoenix in U-Turn? :joy:

Lots of things for lots of different reasons, I’m sure. I probably wouldn’t have one favourite, even if I could think of everything offhand…

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Loader fight in Aliens must count as one of the biggest cinematic showdowns, yep.

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Oh my goodness, no! Who could do such a thing?

Fave film ending? Thelma and Louise, probably. And/or The Apartment, but that film’s just perfect all the way through.

For such a great game, that I love so much, the end of Spirit Island can sometimes feel a bit anticlimactic. But that’s probably more than balanced out by the times it ends thrillingly, when victory is snatched from the very jaws of defeat (or of course vice versa…)

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I did before I was a teen. It helped me read slower.
I have always had a strong preference for characters and world building over plot I guess.

I absolutely wouldn’t do this anymore.

Unlike most of you, I can’t quite name my favorite endings because I’m not that much about endings. when i write i start with an interesting premise. my partner will always start creating stories from an interesting ending. we always had terrible creating RPG scenarios together.

it’s interesting to me to see that I’m the absolute outlier here. I had expected at least a couple people to have been like me in their early reading at least. but it seems like I’m the only (former) heretic here :melting_face::sweat_smile:

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I seem to recall skipping to the end of a book in my youth, but I cannot recall the book or the context. I have skipped ahead to verify a certain character in the Song of Ice and Fire books didn’t die at a paritcular moment and that there were further chapters with their name. I have also “cheated” at choose your own adventure books.

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I like variable win conditions. They add opportunties to pivot strategies and keeps you on your toes in not letting your opponent(s) get a sneaky win.

I like variable game lengths. When the last round is random (such as drawing the End of Game card somewhere in the last N cards of the deck), it helps add tension and a press-your-luck element to the end of the game. When the game length is player driven (Power Grid, Terraforming Mars,…) it adds a timing element that can be exploited.

Kingmaking is probably to be avoided, but also probably deserves its own thread (and may have already had it).

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OMG now that you mention that. I did that. I don‘t remember which character though.

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Arya (at least for me)

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Hmmm… if you played perfectly indeed, you wouldnt be in that position. You would be running away with the win

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If I played the game enough, I simply remember. If not, I check the rulebook, which I am eternally grateful if the have a Game Ending chapter.

I’m definitely on the wagon of variable game length and alternate win conditions.

Urrrghhhh! Yuuuuk!!

Guilty as charged, once or twice. I would read the very last line of the book when I was a lot younger. Mainly with epic fantasy or sci-fi books. Not a 100% spoiler, but it could be a mini spoiler about who survived.

There’s a few. I love the final duel in Rob Roy between Liam Neeson and the delightfully hateful Tim Roth.

The Battle between the Monoliths in Conan the Barbarian (prayer to Crom included)

The final 20 minutes of Last of the Mohicans (since they escape the Iroquois village to the cliffs) , or the cafe conversation between Pacino and DeNiro in Heat…

But my favourite ending (and I know the speech by heart) is Blade Runner scene on the rooftops. Epic.

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