So the modern RPG usually follows a pretty settled formula: you start out unable to stop bad crap from happening, so you get some XP and level up, gradually erasing the chaos from the game. You now have control, hurray!
Well, not really. That’s boring as hell.
See, the thing that makes a plot move is tension, the pull between law and chaos. Without tension stories don’t live. So basically most Western TTRPGs, on a design level, kill themselves. We remove tension and the game deflates. Storygames are particularly bad at this, creating games where complications are tied inherently to failure… which the advancement system totally chokes out. PBTA particularly is bad at this, and can only be played for a short amount of time before the mechanics grind the story to a halt. For a genre that prides itself on mechanics generating story, this is a deadly flaw.
“Just have the GM smooth it out!” you might say. "That's up to the group to figure out!" No, that’s making excuses for bad design: a game should not need a GM to houserule or ignore the mechanics to keep playing. Period.
“These games aren’t meant to run for long!” Even if that’s true grinding to a halt isn't the same thing as an ending. Storygames don’t usually do ending mechanics… which I think a really bad idea. Endings are the hardest part of a story to get right, enough RPGs don’t have advice and mechanics to support this to where an entire book, World Ending Game, focused on ending the stories from other games.
So not only are most storygames advancing the fun out of their game, but they're going into mechanical oblivion.
Yes, trad games are usually worse about it. That should just be a given.
The irony is that it’s because we bastardized DnD.
See, we get XP from The World’s Most Banal RPG. Duh. We all knew that. But XP and level growth originally happened in a context: the random encounter. Advancement didn’t affect the chances of random crap happening to you, it just indicated how big of stuff you could handle, and even then the numbers weren’t perfect; by and large you weren’t ever the top of the pile. And therefore you were always in danger. That’s good game design!
Trophy Gold is another game that manages to thread the needle. Dungeons are made as flowcharts of possibilities that must end. Not only that, but advancement doesn’t turn you into some god on earth, but just gives you a BIT more of an edge. You could run a Trophy Gold game for years, with bite-sized little adventures that you can drop in and drop out of. And that's a really good setup!
And yes, Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death address these problems, each in their own ways.
Crescendo's solution is to make higher rolls create more chaos within in the setting. So the more powerful you get the more out of control things get in the setting, because your efforts are just so much more powerful. As the game progresses it gradually goes from deep introspection on who your character thinks he is to having to deal with his intentions not matching up to effects those intentions have. And that's the sort of thing character development thrives on! The ending of an arc of Crescendo is called The Festival, where characters discover how they have changed, in the context of a public celebration. The ending of a game of Crescendo is called The Apocalypse, where players get one last time to define their characters, and the world responds one last time... but not in the way the players expect. The game ends in a final, irrevocable, statement on the characters and their relationship to the world.
The Truth Found in Death takes the problem in a more BDnD way: by putting chaos generation into the framework of the game. In every adventure there are four times when the players have to help randomly determine where the plot goes. Nobody knows where the one-shot is going. No one. And four times in those two hours the plot jukes like this... and then ends as the characters wrap up the adventure on go on to their next thing. Which we may or may not see in a future session. Dunno. But it's done. Eventually players will be able to build and protect their own towns, which will dramatically alter gameplay for those who have stuck around long enough. By that point there will be differing levels of player interaction going on, and the game will have gone from a bunch of murder-hobos looking for adventure to a political thriller. With lots of blood. Since The Truth Found in Death is a Westmarch game I don't think it's the type of game to have an ending, per se, but each session will be totally standalone and offer its own ending.
There's a pretty big gaping hole in most RPG designs when it comes to advancement and what you're advancing to. It's not a universal problem (and ironically enough DnD not only did it first but better than most), but it's widespread and asks players to do something that full-on professional writers have a hard time doing: pacing and finishing the story. But I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass. Whenever Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death get released they have their own ways of handling advancement and endings that will help each story to be satisfying.
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