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Ending a session right before a big battle is a powerful trick for lazy dungeon masters. It builds in your next strong start. It adds excitement for the next session. It gives you time to plan out that big battle. And it gives you some breathing room for the rest of your next session. Today we're going to dig deeper into the advantages and disadvantages for ending before big battles.
Knowing What Comes Next
We'll start with a few advantages for ending a session before a big battle.
First, you know exactly where your next session is going to begin. We call this a strong start and it's a great way to get your players into the game quickly. Starting a game with a fight is an easy way to get peoples' attention but it's particularly powerful if the players know the battle is coming ahead of time.
Second, it adds excitement and drama to the next session. Ending before a big battle offers a great cliffhanger that keeps your players excited for the game to come.
Third, ending before a big battle gives you more time to prep that battle. You know exactly where your next game is going to start and you know it's going to be a big deal. This gives you time to set up a cool map, tweak some monsters, consider how you can turn the dials to tune the battle. All of the tricky bits of preparing a boss battle won't go to waste because you know it's going to happen.
Fourth, because you're starting with a big battle and such battles take time, you don't have to prepare as much for the rest of the game. It gives you a bit of a break.
Finally, ending before a big battle is much better than trying to shoehorn in a big battle right at the end of a session when energy is low, time is tight, and your players are thinking abou going home. Instead, we end early (often not a bad thing) and get their excitement right at the beginning of the next session.
Disadvantages
The biggest disadvantage for ending before a big battle is when not all of the players can make it to your next game. People are busy and with four to six players at your table, its not unlikely that someone can't make it. It can be a drag for players to miss out on a big fight like this because it got pushed to the next week.
There isn't a great way to deal with this, unfortunately, other than either rescheduling or running a one-shot instead of the big fight until everyone can make it. The most likely way to deal with it is to accept that not everyone can make it to the boss fight.
Another problem is figuring out where the story heads after the fight. Often such boss fights happen at the end of a major arc of the story. Where the characters head next may be anyone's guess. We might use this opportunity for a downtime session in which the characters rest, recouperate, train, study, and prepare for the next leg of their journey. If your game is short enough, you might end that session with their big decision about where to head next.
Finally, ending right before a big battle can get repetitive if you do it too often. Just like starting with a fight for your strong start, ending before a big fight all the time can get stale. Keep this technique handy when the opportunity presents itself but don't do it all the time.
A Great Tool For Lazy DMs
Ending before a big battle has some tricky bits to it but it stands as a fantastic tool to help keep your players excited and give you a bit of a break in your preparation for the next game you run. Keep it in your lazy DM bag of tricks.
Related Articles
- Starting Strong
- Ending Campaigns
- Running Wars, Big Battles, and Massive Combat in D&D
- Building Set-Piece Battles
- The Tyranny of the Grid
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Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.