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| These guys were prophets. |
Man, that’s such a weird word. Triumph. It’s weird because
when I hear it, I bring two things immediately to mind: a famous card trick
invented by Dai Vernon (and one of my favorite tricks to perform) and conversely, my least-favorite Devo
song “Triumph of the Will” from the album Duty Now for the Future. I know I’m supposed to think about overcoming
adversity, but I don’t.
So, trying to bore down on what I am supposed to be talking
about, I came to this conclusion: D&D games aren’t about winning. They are
about triumphing over the forces of darkness.
Maybe not all the time, but certainly when it comes to those
big, long, multi-level campaigns with a giant bad guy and massive conclusions.
“Win” is a decisive term. It sounds final. It implies that
the game is over.
“Triumph,” on the other hand, is still positive, but it’s
more open-ended. It implies that the battle is over, but not the war. The
forces of darkness have been beaten back, but only just. I usually envision the word "momentarily" in front of triumph.
In a campaign world with consequences that influence and
drive games forward, having your players
triumph instead of win is essential if you want to maintain that verisimilitude
of authenticity. The bad guys are banished, but never really destroyed. You can
kill villains, as long as you want them to stay dead. The major forces that
move the world always come back.
This is probably my personal life bleeding over right now.
Sorry about that.
In my home-brew world, I like to have the events at the end
of a major campaign spiral out and affect everything around, and then push
those new developments forward ten, twenty, thirty years and see what it all
looks like after that. The next game will be set in that approximate time
period, as the new characters will be dealing with the consequences of the last
set of characters. They triumphed, but the battle continues down the line.
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