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

Building a menu is moderately tedious, so we will rely on the standard menu extensions provided. Thus:

"Xerxes"

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. Include Menus by Emily Short.

Table of Amusing Matter
title   subtable   description   toggle   
"Cult Revisions"   a table-name   "Did you try... [paragraph break] banning the worship of Seth? [line break] of Dionysus? [line break] assigning all your priests to Re? [line break] assigning male priests to Cybele? [line break] assigning married priestesses to Hestia? [line break] identifying one god as another (e.g., Isis and Hecate)? [line break] identifying a mortal as a god (e.g., Alexander as Helios-Apollo)?"   a rule   
"Military Revisions"   a table-name   "Did you try... [paragraph break] allying a Greek city-state with the Persians? (try >MEDIZE) [line break] playing Athens as a land-based power?"   a rule   

Rule for amusing a victorious player:
    change the current menu to the Table of Amusing Matter;
    change the current menu title to "Things to Try";
    carry out the displaying activity;
    clear the screen.

Omitting about a half million words from this rigorous and educational but nonetheless enthralling simulation of centuries of history, culture, and religion, we will skip directly to:

Athens is a room.

Every turn:
    if the score is greater than 10000, end the game in victory.

When play begins: change the score to 10001.

Test me with "z".

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
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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