RIP Vamiris – Letting Go Without an End

We have all had it happen, the terrible. A game falling apart or a campaign stopping before the end. There is no closure on the loose ends and suddenly the character you have been playing is regulated back to just stats on a page with no life. It can be hard to handle and even harder to grieve for it. Yes, grieve. We forget sometimes how invested we become in stories and in the characters we build but its hard to let go when we never got a chance to say good bye. Its one thing if the character dies or chooses to go off into the sunset of retirement. But the lack of an ending can really drive you nuts. I just recently had it happen to me again so its fresh on my mind while I begin this ramble.

Let me tell you about Vamiris. They are a trip and a half. I was joining an existing game after they’d been playing for awhile and were in need of a new player. After talking with the DM and sitting on a few sessions I asked what gaps they saw the group needing to be filled by a new person. I was told a talker, a face – someone to help navigate the high magic political intrigue parts of the campaign that the group had kind of been getting through while causing alot of chaos on the hapless NPCs. Whelp I knew the build for that pretty instantly. High charisma Bard College of Eloquence, especially at the level we were starting I couldn’t roll lower than a 21 for persuasion and 18 for deception. I had a little fun with race and chose a Dhampir, I wanted them to have a secret and plenty of history for the DM to work with however they’d like to. Meeting with the DM and learning about their campaign world we fleshed out where they were from and who they might know, what info they might already know etc. During this, we stumbled into the fact that it was hard to get info to the players sometimes and make sure they were hitting the story points. So was born a spy organization that Vamiris was a part of. At this point I was given full ability to go wild and I mean I did – secret language and symbols, the structure of the organization and some key members. I pretty much told the DM whatever they needed the players to know or get nudged towards to use me as needed. Vamiris became this charismatic nonchalant mover in high society circles that happened to know alot of things from high insight and some helpful ‘detect thoughts’ applications. They knew more than they said, sometimes cause a little drama by letting choice tidbits slip in a blase way as if they assumed everyone knew and wrapped NPCs around their finger when it was useful. At least on the surface. I had just started to show some of the cracks to Vamiris when adulting life and the need to step away for self-care by the DM (1000% supported by our group) the game ended. 

With no end how do you feel like its completed? That is a hard one to answer as it can be a little different for everyone. I am a child of the internet so I always suggest providing yourself some of that through a sort of fanfic of the campaign. What would happen to get your character to the end of the story arc that got caught off? Help tie up some of those loose ends to get a feeling that what was started was finished. Now you can’t always do all of the loose ends in the fanfic unless you go deep into the rabbit hole because some of those would probably have developed over many story arcs. But some is better than none. I’ve also gone into text-based RPs with the players from the group that ended that wanted to finish out some of those story threads to figure out where it would have gone. This is obviously more reminiscent of Gaia Online than a TTRPG as there isn’t a DM calling the shots, and rolls if they happen at all are at the discretion of the player. Often though the parts of a cut-off game that bugs me the most is that the budding interactions and relationships between characters are cut off, or that we didn’t get that grand reveal of a suspicion or character aspect. No one got to find out that Vamiris was technically undead, we didn’t get to deal with the fact that they were turned against their will and forced ‘into the family’ for some creepy Stockholm vibes, before finally running away and not looking back. Well kind of they couldn’t completely get out of their grasp but they could stay very far away under the guise of performing business for the family. Vamiris and another character who is an amputated Drow pretending to be an animated armor didn’t get to bond over hiding who they are to be more palatable to others, being what others need instead of what they want. Everyone thinks that Vamiris is a genderfluid fuck boi and care free partying high society citizen on a rousing trip paid for by daddy. To be fair they did meet them on the arm of a dignitary at a royal banquet going around smooshing with everyone possible, and then they took everyone out to party at a dance hall.

With so much left to explore how do you just stop? I honestly think about Vamiris alot since we stopped playing. I had made them a playlist on Spotify called ‘The Themby Daddy Bard You Didn’t Know You Needed’, I went back many times after session to expand on who they were and their backstory. When I do something like play a game I am all in, there is hardly ever part way for me. Vamiris was fun to explore cracks and all for the time I had. Alot of us, myself included, have a hard time just being told we won’t get to know what happened. They are a living character to me after I’ve been in their shoes for awhile. You learn what they would do, what they would want, and how they would react. So it can kind of feel like the death of a character when a game just stops before the end. Which means that you need to grieve that character. Yes you might use them in another game down the road, but they will never be exactly same as they were for the game they were originally created and played in. There will probably be alternate universe versions of Vamiris for me in the future, but its important to grieve. That means processing what it means to no longer play that character, it means moving through the steps of grief, and it means giving myself the space and grace to not be okay with it and have that be okay. Do I still get sad? Yeah of course. But I would still have joined that group to play for the time I was able to even knowing it would cut off early.

Remembering the character in a way that makes sense to you is important. When I have a campaign close out, especially a long one, I make a little shadow box for the character. Often it will have art of the character, it might have a before/after of what they looked like and I might even add a group piece. I’ll have some items in there that express the character along with a set of dice that remind me of them. It becomes a sort of in memoriam for a story and character I gave alot of time to. For a long time, like 3 years or so, I played in a Firefly game with some amazing people as an orphan mechanic. She went from being 15/16 to being 18 by the end of things and had not only created a found family with the ship’s crew but learned about her actual family too. I have like 2 – 2 1/2 notebooks full of session notes on her all about the adventures they went on and what she was thinking at the time. It seemed right to send her off in a way where she had a future and it was a little unknown, she was still becoming an adult in the scary space that exists in Firefly. But for a character I didn’t live in for very long it is hard for me to feel the same kind of closure or accepted end by doing a shadow box. It makes more sense to me in that case to get a piece of art to remember that version of the character in the snapshot and save it somewhere where it might eventually live with alternate versions. Some people retire the dice they use for the character, we all know how personal picking out a set that goes with a character can be. Others find doing a quick flashback of what is going on with the character to be that ending they couldn’t get, and a way to remember who that character was. However you go about it remembering them in your way will let you close the book on the grieving process and become ready for not just that next game but for the next version of a beloved character.

We don’t always have control but we can process the aftermath. As players, and even as DMs, we don’t always control when a game ends or a campaign fizzles out. The only thing we can do is learn how we best process and handle those situations. To learn from the things that might have caused it, if there were any, and how to best prepare ourselves for the next game. I do post mortems on everything in my life probably sometimes to my detriment, but it helps me learn that even when I don’t have control of a situation I do have control on where I go after its over. For me its always forward into the next game, the next campaign, the next adventure. Don’t let fizzled or disbanded games discourage you from enjoying the world of TTRPGs. When you find that group that goes the distance it is the most satisfying thing ever and you will have an amazing time making memories with that group. You’ll get your own set of ‘remember when’ snap shots and inside jokes that will bring you right back into the moments. You’ll find friends in the players at the table as your characters grow their own relationships. We all love adventuring, exploring, and battling the good and the bad. It is why we have chosen TTRPGs as part of our lives and its those parts of things that we have to remember when it comes the harsher endings.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.