DMing the Bible: Denouement

Introduction:

OK. So it's been a while, and if you're just joining me ... welcome. Follow the tag links to catch the beginning and some explanations. When we spoke last Noah and his crew of amateur mariners were adrift in the boat that they had built at God's behest. This time we're going to pick up after the flood. The last few verses in chapter eight and chapter nine contain the end of Noah's adventures. Our focus for the text will be primarily on God's promises and the formation of the post-diluvian covenant. On the game side we'll look at wrapping up campaigns.

The Text:

The rains came and covered the earth, but Noah and company couldn't leave the ark right away. I think sometimes we get a little glib with flood stories; we see a big fluffy wave of blue pristine water pick up the ark, and then once the rains stop, the water recedes like a tub draining. French artist Gustave Dore etched his vision of the great flood (which you can see here), and they strike me as helpful, though icky. In August of 2005 those of us who live in America were confronted with the real grusomeness of a flood that wipes out civilization. Two and a half years later the effects of the post-Katrina flood are still being felt.

So it's really no wonder then that the p-source doesn't have Noah stepping foot on earth until a year after the rain stops. God tells Noah to head out of the boat and let the animals go do their animal things. God's instructions to “be fruitful and multiply” restores the corrupted creation; the world is given a new start. Noah builds an altar and preforms a sacrifice of an unidentified number of animals. The p-source narrator of this story points out that Noah offers some of every clean creature. This is an element of anachronism in the story. It would be a bit like my telling you about the Battle of New Orleans and explaining to you that Jackson hadn't checked his email, which is why he didn't know the war was over. The sacrificial system is established in the covenant at Sinai. Until that point animals were not differentiated clean v. unclean.

God then makes a pretty big promise. Take a look at verses 21b-22, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures , seestime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” God here is removing the curse placed on the ground after the incident at Eden; humanity may well have the capacity for great evil, but God will not scourge the planet and all the other beings with whome we share it because of our shenanigans.

As a perk for having made it through the flood, God allows humans to start eating animals which had hithertofor been a nopey-no. This comes with some instruction though. People should not eat meat with the blood still in it. This is because of what I call the threshold theory. In some Hebrew worldviews and to a lesser extent some Christian world views, places of threshhold -- that is experiences, substances or locales that emphasize the thin line between life and death, flesh and spirit carry with them a kind of power. Being too close to them carried with them risk, being too close to the presence of God was dangerous. Blood is one of those threshhold substaces; when it's inside a creature that creature is alive, but when the blood departs the creature dies. The other caveat to eating meat is that it's bad to kill humans. So Ravenous is right out, but it's more than that. God's stiff penalty for killing people is a sign that God still sees humanity as very good and creatures that are made in the likeness of God.

Then, God makes the first covenant. There are three covenants that God makes with people in the Torah, this one, one with Abraham (which I hope to get to in a couple months), and one with the people of Irael and Moses at Sinai. Covenants are one sided, God has made a promise that is not contigent on the actions of humanity. God establishes the covenant with every human and every animal that never again will God flood the whole earth. God sets as a sign of the covenant a bow in the sky, signifying that God's destructive powers are decomissioned. When we see a rainbow in the sky we can be comforted by God's steadfast promise not to wipe us off the face of the planet (since we seem to be plenty good at that by ourselves). Noah retires to pursue a hobby in vintaculture. Noah's sons and their wives get busy repopulating the earth and planting seeds of racial tension that will plague humankind for millenia.

The Game:

Your players have battled through dangers untold, fought their way into the castle beyond the goblin city, and discovered that the Big Bad ultimately had no power over them. The size of the denouement will vary based on the scope of the campaign, of course, but the very nature of calling it a campaign as opposed to the latest in your series of unrelated missions implies that there is some significance. The city/ area/ world/ plane is different now in a demonstrable way because of your PC's activities. Like Noah, PC's need a moment or two to have their adventures place into perspective. On the other hand, a DM can't say, “Well done, you guys!! Your dominance has killed off all adventuring potential for this world.” Here are a few of my suggestions for balanced Adventure endings:

• The 4 L's: Loot, Land, Leisure, and Legend. Because of the mammoth nature of their exploits, the characters have amassed large monetary rewards with which to rent happiness. Try not to limit your self to the piles of gp that accompany regular play; reach out to the others L's. Allow the PC's to be connected in a proprietary fashion with the geography of the places they have saved. These last two are more ephemeral, but can make or break a denouement. Leisure allows characters to pursue quests and projects that linger as concerns (e.g. pushy bard in town #2 that needed being put in his place, but plot drove the characters away before getting to it). Legend means that when the party shows up again in town #2, people will pay attention.
• Rock the Foundations: If you are playing in Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, you may feel like you can't shake the boat too much because of the pre-written material about political systems and power structures. There are a handful of work arounds, but my favorite is this: “Don't worry about it so much.” The second and third are nearly identical “play somewhere that is under-emphasized in the books” and “play some when that is under-emphasized.” The forth is to mess with the power behind the thrown. Chances are your PC's aren't looking to rule the roost anyway, but if they pushed out another set of advisers to become the regent's go-to guy and gals – that's snazzy too.
• Create a New Natural Phenomena: You want to show your PC's how much you care, but don't know what to get a party that already has everything? Let their last battle create a new constellation, add an aurora to the world in their honor, maybe cause desert to recede and fertile land to appear or make an oasis or hot spring. Maybe set a rainbow in the sky to remind everybody of the characters' accomplishment. Creating a natural phenomena gives players a sense of having changed the world even while you're rolling up the next Big Bad.
• Don't Reset Time: You may have wondered why I didn't include reseting time as a work around to the stable pre-built world; I didn't because I don't think it's a good idea in the long run. Just look at the increasingly insane Doctor for evidence of what happens to characters who are cut adrift of the consequences of their actions. In some cases it feels like a cop out, and in others it created a sense of futility in players. I just don't recommend it.