Chapter 11: Out Of World Actions and Effects
11.5. Ending The Game

Play can end in many ways, at the writer's discretion:

end the game in death;
end the game in victory;
end the game saying "You have reached an impasse, a stalemate";

In many situations fatality would be absurd, while the idea of winning overly suggests a game, so many writers only ever use the third style of ending phrase. We can also eliminate the asterisked headline entirely by removing the rule that prints it, thus:

The print obituary headline rule is not listed in any rulebook.

The next step is to print the player's score and, if applicable, the rank he achieved. If there is no score in the game, we can prevent a score being listed here with

Use no scoring.

Or, if we want to allow a score but alter the way it is reported, we may remove or modify the print final score rule, as in

The print final score rule is not listed in any rulebook.

or perhaps something like

The chatty final score rule is listed instead of the print final score rule in for printing the player's obituary.

This is the chatty final score rule: say "Wow, you achieved a whole [score in words] point[s] out of a possible [maximum score in words]! I'm very proud of you. This was a triumph. I'm being so sincere right now."

What happens next is normally that the player is invited to RESTART, RESTORE (from a saved game), QUIT or UNDO the last command. This can somewhat undercut a tragedy, and Battle of Ridgefield shows another way to go out.

On winning endings, we may also want to let the player read some special bit of additional text; Xerxes demonstrates a simple AMUSING command to read final information, while Jamaica 1688 shows how to add completely new elements to the list of options.

Old-school adventures expected their adventurers to die early and die often. Labyrinth of Ghosts shows how the residue of such past attempts can be preserved into subsequent attempts. Big Sky Country shows how a player can be resurrected by, let us say, some beneficent god, so that a player can even die more than once in the same attempt.


358
* Example  Battle of Ridgefield
Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore.

WI
360
** Example  Xerxes
Offering the player a menu of things to read after winning the game.

WI
359
* Example  Jamaica 1688
Adding a feature to the final question after victory, so that the player can choose to reveal notes about items in the game.

WI

The options offered to the player at the end of the game are listed in the Table of Final Question Options, which means that we can add to them simply by continuing the table; what's more, the table gives us the opportunity to create a "final response rule", a rule that the game should follow in order to parse the player's input at this point.

So, for instance, if we wanted the player to be allowed to ask for notes about any of the rooms, characters, or objects in a historical game:

"Jamaica 1688"

Section 1 - Procedure

Table of Final Question Options (continued)
final question wording   only if victorious   topic   final response rule   final response activity   
"REVEAL the inspiration for something or somewhere"   true   "reveal [any thing]"   investigate something rule   --   
--   true   "reveal [any room]"   investigate something rule   --   

This is the investigate something rule:
    repeat through the Table of Footnotey Stuff:
        if the player's command matches the topic entry:
            say "[revelation entry][paragraph break]";
            rule succeeds;
    say "I'm afraid I have no revelation to vouchsafe there."

Section 2 - Scenario

The Upper Deck is a room. Lucius is a man in the Upper Deck.

The maximum score is 501.

When play begins: change the score to 501; end the game in victory.

Table of Footnotey Stuff

topic   revelation   
"reveal [Lucius]"   "Lucius is based on a historical buccaneer who sailed with William Dampier. The original did carry a Greek New Testament, from which he read aloud when the men were stranded in the jungles near Panama."   
"reveal [Upper Deck]"   "The Callisto is a simplified and tidied representation of a pirate sloop ca. 1688."   

414
** Example  Labyrinth of Ghosts
Remembering the fates of all previous explorers of the labyrinth.

WI
135
*** Example  Big Sky Country
Allowing the player to continue play after a fatal accident, but penalizing him by scattering his possessions around the game map.

WI


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