How do you avoid anti-climax in your games?

>>53351138

Add an explosion.

>>53351138
Yeah, they needed to make it a 45 minute long special with a quarter of the running time dedicated to the war on Aku, and another quarter dedicated to Jack's biggest fight ever.

>>53351138
>>>>/co/

>>53351138
Lot of foreplay.... I mean foreshadowing.

>>53351138
You just wanted to whine about Jack ending on /tg/

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It's near impossible, even if you know exactly where and when you're going to end - you can't guarantee how quickly the ending may come, or that everything feels fulfilling.

Fucking metaphor for life right there.

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>>53351138
Good pacing. That was seriously the main problem here, a lack of good pacing or proper time to develop emotional weight to anything.

>>53355825
How Any general advice on how to pace things?

>>53351138
Don't focus on an NPC the players barely met before the final confrontation.

>>53356124
My players are getting sort of dizzy with the number of recurring NPCs they suspect could be the BBEG.

Just as planned.

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>>53351214
Huh, the more you know.
>>53351554
Yeah, I don't really know; fact is that it inspired this thread, but I've noticed a lot of games also tend to end poorly as well.
>>53352698
Thanks, anon; I'll take my /tg/ question and post it on /co/, thereby breaking a bunch of 4chan rules.
>>53352707
What would be an example of how you would do this?
>>53353775
Eh, not really; I was disappointed, but, again, I've not regularly had a game finish that didn't kinda drop the ball near the end. Jack ending was just the thing that made me start thinking about that.
>>53354817
True, but is there any advice you have in regards to how to possibly make it still work? I mean, writers make books all the time, but I still think Terry Pratchett's books end with a decent climax on a regular basis, and while I know a game isn't a book, it should be possible to be replicate a decent finish on a regular basis, right?
>>53355825
And this is where I, personally, think this divulges from the Jack inspiration; good pacing is it's own subject, true, but even if that's achieved, the ending can still be flat.
>>53356124
So, you recommend 'bringing back' NPCs that the players and the DM like for the finale, or just NPCs that are frequently in the plot itself?

>>53356607
Well, with a book you have control over the whole thing and how it all flows, from start to finish. Nothing moves without your say so. It might still end poorly, but it's not for lack of control.

With an RPG, the game will shift with your players, because they are supposed to be actively making their own decisions and creating their own stories in the world. You have to be able to work with them - and occasionally with the pressures of the outside world. Even if you have years to regularly play the game, you might have missed sessions, or players dropping, or new ones coming in. This all can affect a finish.

I had a great shadowrun GM who was really good at improvising and making each session feel great. But the campaigns as a whole could feel choppy, and his endings especially were spectacular, but either a party wipe or a success squeezed into one last session.