Cliffhanger
We’ve all been there. There story is exciting, the action is intense, everyone is fully invested… And the GM is getting sleepy. So in the spirit of cliffhangers everywhere, allow me to regale you with my own exploits in the deep places of the world. Is it time for another tale from the table? Does Wizard suck at pull-ups?
So no shit there we were, almost through the Halls of Hunger and just a few Draconic Sigils away from besting the challenge. Unfortunately, the 10th Sigil had some shenanigans attached:
“The Tenth Secret Sigil: Any character who bears this sigil–either on his or her body, or by carrying any object it is drawn upon–is affected as follows: A non-evil creature becomes evil (other aspects of alignment, such as chaotic or lawful, remain unchanged). This alteration is mental as well as moral, and the individual changed by the magic thoroughly enjoys this new outlook, does not make any attempt to return to his or her former alignment–actually viewing the prospect with horror and avoids it in any way possible. The creature returns to his or her normal alignment when separated from the sigil.”
So when the party’s Shaman returned from this latest test to the Cursed Feasting Hall, he seemed a grim and somber figure. The rest of us figured that was normal. Shaman had just endured some traumatic shit, having murdered a gold dragon in cold blood. It was the Chamber of Ruthlessness after all. Killing the dragon had been the only way to pass the challenge.
“Someone had to do it,” we said, trusting fools that we were. For none of us had seen the Secret Notecard that that the Shaman now bore, or the dreadful curse it had laid upon him.
Gotta hand it to the guy: He played it straight. No one made an IRL Sense Motive check until it was far too late.
It was the next adventuring day, and we had reconvened before the Dimensional Vestibule. We’d always teleported as a group before, but this time the Shaman disappeared. The rest of us were confronted with Chamber 10 again. There lay the corpse of the ill-fated gold dragon. There upon the floor was the Tenth Sigil, formed from the rivulets of its lifeblood. For some reason, we hadn’t advanced to the gauntlet’s next challenge.
“Wait a damn minute,” said our Alchemist, pulling his copy of the Tenth Sigil from his formula book. “It’s not the same! See how this line is off? Shaman gave me a fake!”
Lucky for us, the now-Evil Shaman was unable to pass through Chamber 11 alone. He had to offer up a “fitting portion of his chattel” to be sacrificed, and did not own enough expensive magic items to get the job done. He would have to get them from some other source. And there was only one convenient source of priceless treasure.
The confrontation came in the Cursed Feasting Hall. When we reappeared, Shaman was already waiting for us.
“Why the deception?” we asked.
“The Scepter of Ghaal,” he said. “Give it to me.”
“What? No way! That thing’s a minor artifact. We are NOT revisiting the Wealth By Level argument we had back on Level 12.”
“Fear not,” he said. “The argument won’t last long. GM? I maze the Alchemist.”
The room fucking exploded. Cries of alarm. Accusations of betrayal. Helpless wails of, “I had no choice!” from the unhappy Shaman player.
“Roll initiative!” shouted the GM over the general din. And then continued: “…Next time. On the next exciting episode of The Halls of Hunger!”
There have never been bluer narrative balls. The party was pumped. We wanted to know what happened next. Couldn’t we at least see the initiative order so we could make proper plans?
Happily, there was an upside to all this. The GM agreed to delay posting the session summary so players who’d missed would walk into the PVP cold. The eventual resolution was its own ball of wax, but the tension of the buildup was spectacular. It was the finest cliffhanger I’ve ever been a part of… And now it’s your turn.
For today’s discussion, hit us with your all-time best cliffhanger! What was the moment, why did you have to stop early, and how did you pay it off? Shout out all your best between-sessions nail biters down in the comments!
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We’re playing a version of Planescape set in Pathfinder’s cosmology plus Sigil, with some of our characters (including mine) being Golarion natives.
A job in Qadira forced us to decide whether to allow an ancient device that would enact a benevolent, retroactive Wish that would rewrite centuries of history to go off (at the cost of erasing its user from the timeline), or to try and abort it somehow.
I can totally picture the PCs sharing a DRAMATIC LOOK. Theme music swells. Then we smash cut to the end credits.
Our GM had to study for an exam the next day. I agreed to fill in, and he gave me his notes.
Our twelfth level party was in a war, dragons vs outsiders. We had completed a mission, and were about to leave when we were confronted by a figure on the way out. They tried to convert us to join the outsiders, but we rejected them.
The figure accepted our decision, and revealed themselves to be a Solar. Initiatives were rolled, the battle was fought. A single character out of 5 was conscious at the end, the solar unconscious, but regenerating. Potions were applied between stabbings, and we finally ended it.
That’s when I read the final line in the GM’s notes. “The PCs ascend to godhood.”
The GM’s phone started blowing up about 5 minutes later.
I would have SO MANY questions. Great cliffhanger. 😀
Just a couple sessions ago as of writing, our DM had us head to a possibly cursed forest to deal with whatever evil had set up shop there. We make our way to the center of the forest, where the druid speaks with the huge tree in the center that – unlike the rest of the woods – looks very dead. The tree actually *moves*, brushing the druid’s cheek with a branch and-
Session end, cause it’s 1am.
NOOO! WHAT HAPPENED!?
Alt text seems to be missing again.
Ironic
Speaks of cliffhangers and blueballs, proceeds to lead us to sudden dropoff and aqua spheres…
Stupid argle bargle transcript textbox… IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE ALT TEXT TEXTBOX. ARRRGH!
Do you know what a heavy metal cover looks like? (music genre, not the sci-fi/fantasy/horror anthology magazine). Generally speaking, I think I can go on the assumption, that even if you don’t know heavy metal as a musical style, you understand the tropes and cliches of an album cover from one of the many bands. Whether a classic late 60’s or into the 70’s, a more hair metal variant from the 80s, or some of the newer iterations of the 90’s and beyond, the general themes are fairly common and they are usually pretty “rad” (yeah, I am that old).
Our quest in this classic fantasy land (Forgotten Realms) had taken us unto the frozen wastes of the north, past the great Spine of the World mountains and into the arctic snowscape that includes Icewind Dale and further parts unexplored (because it is too damn cold up there!).
A land of frost giants and white dragons and creatures and peoples accustomed to the snow and ice… (can you hear the Led Zeppelin already? I can… )
We needed to get back across the mountains, but not through the same pass we had previously crossed, a more dangerous pass, barely a pass at all, deep into the tundra on the northern side, glaciers seeming to climb into the sky around us, the weather whipping up a blizzard soon and what do we see at the base of the path leading us over?
DM: “You stand at the entrance to the path you must cross to get to your destination. The wind whips up the snows around you, howling in rage like the barbarian among you as you see coming from the ice and mist, as tho from nowhere, a frost giant. Not one, but two, three… six, a dozen emerge.
Looking closer you can see these frost giants are not normal, but undead zombie frost giants! They are closing in around you on all sides and a strike of lightning booms with thunderous roar behind what can only be the leader of this group. A massive frost giant, as undead as the rest, but weilding a mighty tree as a staff and with unnaturally glowing blue eyes. It smiles it’s unholy grin toward you all specifically, and says in a voice above the wind, ‘Your journey ends here little ones.’
Everyone roll initiative.”
our group stood small and unimposing, with our barbarian wielding her newly attuned intelligent and evil sword, brandishing in defiance against the horde of giants before us… we weren’t even double digit levels, but we were ready to face down this threat because this was the only way through to the next path on the adventure!
And then we ended!
On the plus side, the mental image of our group standing against the undead frost giant horde was EPIC and reminded me of a metal cover (and more than a few songs, including Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin was linked in our party Discord during the week leading up to the fight.
Oh, and to not give anyone reading this the same level of adventurer blue balls XD Half the party fell, more than once, but no one actually died, and we figured out to kill the necromancer frost giant which ended the rest of them in classic kill the queen and the drones are done fashion 🙂
It was an epic cliffhanger I will never forget because the visual alone was so perfect, but also the fight the next session was equally epic in return.
(oh, and that intelligent evil sword would literally come back to bite us… as one would expect from that kind of magic item. And it was great fun to explore!)
My first metal show was Dragonforce opening for Killswitch. I might be familiar with the genre. 😀
Glad to heard that you made it back FROM THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW in one piece.
I have to admit I never had that happen. I’ve had insomnia since I was a preteen and back then staying up 72 hours wasn’t that big a deal. I always paused where the group wanted to quit for the night, even if it was in mid-exposition.
Being in the military, you can’t just call in sick. You have to go to the doctor and get put on quarters (in other words “stay home”). So there were a few times where we had to stop the game in order to throw our bodies into the showers and get to work on time. Ah, being young and indestructible. I really, really hate getting old.
I appreciate the image of “throw our bodies into the showers.” Like Jazz being escorted out of Uncle Phil’s mansion, only with more Axe Body Wash.
One of my favorite adventures from Dungeon magazine is Leonard Wilson’s “The Ghost of Mistmoor” (#35, May 1992). I’ve modified it and rewritten it and updated it to new editions over the years; one campaign even turned the manor into their new base of operations.
My favorite run, though, was as a D20 Past adventure with a Victorian “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” type band of ghost-hunters and seekers of the unknown. Investigating rumors of mass hysteria at a tavern and a haunted manor house, the team discovers a genuine mystery regarding the recent brawl in an otherwise quiet village. They then explore the house fully (as far as they know) and find that a pair of thieves are scaring away interlopers Scooby-Doo style while they hunt for a legendary treasure rumored to be hidden on the grounds. Mystery solved, right gang?
Yeah, that’s when the storms trap them all there for the night and the *real* hauntings begin. –CUE THE SESSION BREAK–
I love that you can still find these things. I really need to sit down and read through ’em one day.
https://annarchive.com/files/Dungeon%20Magazine%20%23035.pdf
We didn’t make that much cliffhangers, on the personal i find them kinda obvious. Like they aren’t to hook people but to bait them. I prefer to end with wham lines and let the sudden realizations mature before the next session 😀
Care to explain the difference between a cliffhanger and a wham line?
My ex ran a series of interwoven campaigns. The starter one gets your PCs to an epic favor from the gods showdown with a giant ancient evil trapped in a mountain, using armies instead of individuals, and as you limp to the finish line a dramatic death flail swipes at the PCs and *end scene*
and then you play an ENTIRE SECOND CAMPAIGN of another group that ends up there, same place, soldiers in the armies of the first set of PC, and when you reach that moment all the players have to decide if their second campaign characters save the lives of the first ones, or if you let your original PC die and have your second character take up their artifact swords and carry on (magic mountain demon-god-abomination-thing place prevents anyone dying here from being ressurected by magic, and everyone knows it going in)
There’s 5 more campaigns in the set, and I was priveleged to have a group play through all seven. We took like a week and a half off vacation together and had marathon sessions to burn through some of the shorter ones, but overall we spent years on those games. some others had epic moments but nothing beats FINAL BIG BAD SHOWDOWN, PAUSE BUTTON, WHOLE OTHER CAMPAIGN before getting the end of your cliffhanger. (not counting games that never resumed of course)
Well holy shit that sounds awesome. Were they all homebrew?
I know he was using maps from some existing thing, but other than that as far as I know it was all homebrew world building stuff. One of the campaigns also had the Xenomorphs from the Aliens franchise? That one had the option to be run on Shadowrun rules instead of DnD which was neat. Whatever setting the maps were from was Very Old and I think only maybe one person out of our extended gaggle of gaming friends ever even heard of it. My hazy memory suggests DnD 2.0 setting but we were running in 3.5 (and as such ‘spontaneous casting’ like sorcs/favored souls was an epic level thing and you could not play one to start. Bards were prepared casters). Something Something hollow planet also. Marble reflected or absorbed magic depending on if it was divine or arcane.
He ended up starting work on his own system too but then we had Bad Breakup of Largeness, and I haven’t heard/seen him in years, or spoken to basically anyone I knew from back then because “I was the bad guy” or whatever. Joke’s on them I’m happily married now 😛 Shame though I did like the system we were playtesting.