Most things end. What is one RPG loss you still feel?

I have an ambivalent feeling towards RPGs, especially when looking back. I enjoy them more in the moment; the memories fade quickly. This doesn’t mean I don’t take them seriously or want the players to have fun, just that to me, they are games; there are many other things in life more important. So this theme was a little difficult.

I suppose I could list unfinished campaigns - Eternal Lies, Cassilda’s Song. There is a bit of a completer-finisher in me that regrets not getting to the end, but then again, you need to sometimes cut your losses if the games aren’t giving you what you need.

I suppose, not really a loss, but a never-had; are the classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns, but then again, there is still time, maybe still time, to get these to the table - I’m looking at you Masks of Nyarlothotep.

I also don’t tend to get too attached to characters; in the definitions of Robin D. Laws, I’m a story gamer, in that to me, collectively creating the story and the key, memorable events is more important than getting to the next level, adding a skill or finding a cool magical item.

I’ll settle on one RPG loss we did feel in our bones. We were playing a homebrewed setting of 13th Age. We’d tracked a manifest ne’er-do-well through cities, across deserts and finally up into the mountains to a hidden cult hideout. Now our group had a problem with 13th Age. It has a great mechanic called the escalation die. After the first round, a die is placed on the table and incrementally increased each round; that number is a bonus to attacks, so, in theory, the combat swings back in the heroes’ favour the longer they can stay in the fight.

Our party relied on this a little too much, often going in hard and by the time the escalation die was pumped up, we were out of the fight: unconscious, dead or horribly outnumbered. BUT there is a get-out-of-jail card in 13th Age, but you don’t get out for free. At the end of each round, the GM asks, do you want to continue, or do you want to retreat?

We’d ignored this in the past and had gone through at least a couple of deaths in each major fight. We felt the risk here was too great, but there was a mighty debate about carrying on or leaving to fight another day. In the end, we said to our GM, we’d retreat. Now, you can do this, but as I said, it’s not free - you take a Campaign Hit.

As we agreed to this and the dust settled, the GM narrated the shimmering light gathering around our adversary, the light fading along with our nemesis. We realised we had no idea where he was; we’d committed to various patrons to bring him to justice, we’d been so, so close and now - we had to start all over again. There was a collective wail as we realised all the previous sessions were now wasted and a long, similar road of tracking and tracing this varmint lay ahead of us.

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