Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 61 - Improve Your Cliffhangers with These 3 Strategies

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

Should you use cliffhangers to entice your players?  If so, how and how often?  Fear not.  This short episode has got all of that covered.  Give it a listen and don't forget to subscribe and provide comments and feedback!

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning into episode 61 of the Taking 20 podcast. Improve your cliffhangers with these three strategies. This week's sponsor, Jesse's Replacement Keyboard Emporium. They put in extra shifts just for you. Please check us out on YouTube and www.taking20podcast.com. You can find links to all the places to listen to the podcast there. Provide some feedback. Let us know if there's a topic that you'd like to hear more on. Cliffhangers are endings that leave readers, listeners, or participants in suspense. They're designed to entice the audience or participant

to look forward to the next episode. Peek our curiosity and almost create a small amount of anxiety. What's going to happen? Will our heroes survive? Who's the father of the baby? These are the carrots that we dangle out there. Want to know more? Watch the next episode or come to the next gaming session. Cliffhangers have been used to great effect by modern media.

Serialized podcasts and tabletop Let's Play broadcasts use them to great effect. Critical Role, Glass Cannon, Cosmic Crit, which is one I recently started listening to, love the work, guys, please keep it up. They all use cliffhangers to keep listeners coming back. TV shows would end segments, episodes, and even entire seasons on cliffhangers to get people talking about the show.

Movies with guaranteed sequels would take advantage of this technique as well. Avengers Infinity War, while at the end, the heroes face the prospect that they have lost with dire consequences for the universe. Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back had the no Luke, I am your father moment. While there was a little bit after that, that's more denouement than the big reveal, but the no I Am Your Father was a huge cliffhanger. Some movies use cliffhangers to try to set up a later movie. Like Alita Battle Angel, Alita sees the main antagonist for the first time, setting up a future confrontation. As of this recording, there hasn't been a follow-up movie yet.

Some movies use the cliffhanger ending to make the viewer come to his or her own conclusion. Like the ending of Inception, the viewer is left unsure whether or not what they're seeing is real. At the end of The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock gives no explanation for the bird attacks or how they will ever stop. I'll say this, cliffhangers do work best

when they know they can be paid off. Like a serialized podcast, you know you're going to have another episode, so cliffhangers are always safe to use. When you are gaming, you're almost guaranteed to have a next gaming session, so ending on a cliffhanger is generally safe to do. Now, don't think for a second that cliffhangers are A, new, or B, a bad thing. The word cliffhanger dates back at least to the 1930s, and cliffhangers have been around in media since at least the 1880s. In 1001 Nights, which is a collection of Middle Eastern and Indian stories, some of which date

back to the Middle Ages, those stories use cliffhangers to great effect. There are references to 1001 Nights dating back to at least 947 CE. I mean, they were published in French in 1717. The entire story revolves around a monarch. Because his first wife was unfaithful, he vowed to marry a new virgin every day and then have her beheaded in the morning before she could dishonor him like his first wife did. This goes on for a while until marriageable virgins become hard to come by. I'm sorry, that was an unfortunate choice of words. Let me try again.

This goes on for a while until marriageable virgins become hard to come in. Eventually, the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, is to be wed to the monarch. Scheherazade likes her head still attached to her body. So that night, she tells the king a new story, and then continues telling him a new story every night, and every single story ends in a cliffhanger. Over a thousand nights of tales with cliffhangers aren't resolved until the next morning. The monarch falls in love with Scheherazade and eventually agrees to spare her life. So cliffhangers aren't new. They're used in all serialization media. I mentioned podcasts earlier, but that's not where it originated. Newspapers and book publishers would publish chunks of stories in small portions.

It gave busy people time to read that little short section of the story and entice them to buy tomorrow's or next week's edition when the story continued. As media evolved to other formats, the cliffhanger did as well. The TV series Soap, which probably predates most of my listeners, ended an entire season with a cliffhanger, with two characters having an affair that was not previously revealed. That was the first big TV series to do so. Dallas, a TV show that existed back in the 80s, ended damn near every season with a cliffhanger.

I'm a DM, Jeremy. Why should I care about using cliffhangers? Cliffhangers, by their very very nature generate interest in your story because we are curious creatures. Unsolved mysteries and unresolved moments keep us interested. It adds to suspense and tension and it leaves players wanting more. More gaming time, more time with you,

more time inside your world. And it makes them excited for the next gaming session. Cliffhangers can provide a shock moment and generate further interest in the story. Full disclosure, I love using cliffhangers, and I try to drop them in every two to three gaming sessions or so. But when done too often or incorrectly, they can become a source of annoyance. Makes your gaming session seem like a soap opera plot. What do you mean my long-lost identical twin has stolen my life? What? The whole town doesn't exist and I'm just the fever dream of a jaguar who believes she's

a doctor? Yes, that's a real soap opera plot line, by the way. Oh, the whole last season was just a dream and the husband that you thought was dead is currently in the shower. But when used correctly, cliffhangers keep the tension up in your game and drive player engagement. Now, you can pay off cliffhangers two ways, dramatically or comedically. Most commonly, cliffhangers are paid off in a dramatic way. Episodes and seasons of Game of Thrones would have cliffhangers where major characters die. My wife and my brother-in-law and I watched that show religiously. After one particular gruesome character death that we didn't see coming, my brother-in-law, who does not curse very often, but he stood up and he said, fuck this show and left. Of course, he was right back

with us watching the next week. That's by definition a good cliffhanger, but you don't have to pay it off dramatically. You can also pay it off to comedic effect. Spoiler alert, by the way, for a movie that's almost five years old as of this recording, so if you're not caught up with episode eight of the Star Wars saga, go ahead and skip ahead about 30 seconds. So at the end of Star Wars episode seven, The Force Awakens, it ends with Rey handing Luke Skywalker his old lightsaber, or at least extending it out to him. Star Wars Episode VIII opened with Luke taking the lightsaber and then just throwing it in the water casually like it's completely worthless to him.

Given the build-up to that moment, the time spent between the release of the two movies was spent discussing the meaning. Where will the story go? What's Luke going to do with his lightsaber? Why did he hide away in such a remote location? This technique, by the way, of paying off a very dramatic moment comically is called subversion of expectations, and it's a powerful tool of comedy that uses our own tendency to anticipate against us. We all expected a dramatic moment when Episode 8 started, and we got...

spruce. But regardless of whether you pay it off comically or dramatically, your cliffhanger has to pay off. The best way, obviously, to do this is to know what a cliffhanger means and how you can tie it into your story. You as the DM who's using the cliffhanger

should know what that next step is and how this particular cliffhanger and this particular moment will pay off in the near future. For an example of something that did not do this well, the television show Lost. The entire run of the show was a series of cliffhangers, many of which weren't explained or turned out to be not important to the narrative. On rewatch, almost every one of those cliffhangers seems flat, boring, and uninspired.

So that brings us to my first major tip. Cliffhangers should have a purpose. They should propel the story forward, connect to or reveal information about a character backstory, or maybe be the moment where one plot thread ends and another one begins. Cliffhangers, like table salt, are powerful tools and should be used occasionally. A little salt on your food improves the taste. Too much can hurt your health and even burn your tongue. If you ever see me somewhere, ask me about the time I tried deep-fried salt-cured bacon on a stick.

That was years ago, and nothing still tastes quite right. So how do you use cliffhangers in your RPG stories? I like to think that cliffhanger endings fall into one of two categories. The PCs come face-to-face with a dangerous, possibly life-threatening situation, or a shocking revelation comes to light, threatening to alter the course of the narrative. So let's talk about each one in turn. Using a dangerous situation as a cliffhanger, that's the shit's-about-to-go-down moment. The beginning of combat is a great time for this. The player characters realize they're going to have a tough fight on

their hands. Cliffhanger. It doesn't automatically mean you have a high level baddie that steps into the battlefield. It could be one of the existing baddies that's suddenly better equipped, has better abilities on display that maybe the PCs didn't know about. Like your fighting goblin, suddenly one of them shows up with a shotgun. You're gonna pay for attacking our bog! Or one I used just the other night. The ice encasing the dead witch fractures and shatters as she rises from her throne. She looks at the PCs on the dais, eyes like laser points of blue light and bellows, Guards! Seize them! The first thing the players will do when we get together again is roll initiative

and try to slay the Witch Queen to take her crown. Beginning a combat is a great time, but it doesn't have to be the only time. Cliffhangers could be moments of shocking revelation. Something that has the potential to have a dramatic effect on the story, like a moment of great loss. The great loss can be macro in scale, like a huge disaster or war breaks out. Or it could be micro in scale,

as in the loss of a specific NPC who was special to the party. You look back and see the mayor's home explode in magical flames, snuffing out life after life as it spreads unchecked. The cliffside farming town is consumed by the magical blue flame

and you can hear screams in the distance of the dying. And we'll find out who did that next time. Or you return to your small keep to find the doors blasted off their hinges. The head of Oldus, your loyal servant, is impaled on the flagstones by a lance with a flag at the top. The flag is black

with a design that looks like it's from... someone you'll discover next week. Another good time for a cliffhanger is when the PCs finally see something they have wanted or been questing for. Balabor picks the lock and stows his tools with a flourish. As Yadra pushes open the doors, you see a scythe hovering in the air in the giant stone bowl bathed in angelic light. Well guys, it's 1am and that's probably a pretty good place to stop for tonight. As the players protest vehemently, no, we want to know what it is! Another good time for cliffhangers could be the realization of failure. The mage sets the last gemstone in the dais, an arcane crack

spread out from the central pillar. Eldritch runes float up from the floor, forming a yawning portal, crackling with supernatural energy. A mammoth-clawed hand emerges from the portal and grabs one of the runes for leverage to pull the rest of its ponderous body through the portal. The mage cackles with glee. Yes!

Ikezard the Destroyer comes! And we'll see you next week. Another great time for a cliffhanger is when new information that reshapes the narrative in some way. Like changing the timeline, almost always accelerating it. The PCs find a bomb attached to the hull of the ship that currently says 25 minutes and 17 seconds and is counting down. The PCs receive unexpected news. The Bard has received a court summons to address recompense for despoiling the Princess Zilyana eight moons ago. An unexpected person either shows up under the narrative or re-emerges into the narrative.

Through the wreckage of the destroyed orphanage comes Tina through the smoke, the waif who you found half-starved by the side of the road and had dropped her off there a month ago. Her eyes glow purple and the air shimmers around her in a protective barrier, which disappears as she approaches with a whiff of ozone. Cliffhangers are powerful. Stick that cliffhanger arrow in your quiver and pull it out every now and again. Not that. No, the arrow. Cliffhangers. Use cliffhangers. So three strategies for using them. Gradually build tension up towards the cliffhanger, use cliffhangers sparingly, and use them at the right moments.

Moments of great loss. Moments just before the PCs get what they've been searching for. Moments where they realize they've failed. And narrative-changing revelations are prime moments for cliffhangers. Pay them off properly at the beginning of next session, and these strategies are reliable go-tos that almost always work. Thank you so much for listening. By the way, I have a very special announcement to make, so listen up.

Our one-year anniversary of this podcast is next week, and I can't believe it. But I want to do something special for it. To find out what that is, tune in next week and I can't believe it, but I want to do something special for it. To find out what that is, tune in next week. Please subscribe and rate us wherever you find this fine, mediocre, somewhat okay podcast. Leave us a like or comment. I'd love to get some feedback from you.

Once again, I want to thank our sponsor, Jesse's Replacement Keyboard Emporium. One visit here and you'll have control again. This has been episode 61, Improve Your Cliffhangers with these three strategies. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.