What makes your season finales special?

The topic says it all, really: what do you put into your season finales to make them special?
As a matter of fact, our group is slowly reaching one of those, and I was kind of wondering what I could do to make it even better ... I mean, season finales are often some of the best episodes in the series, but what are the standard ingredients for them? Do people go "all right, this one is a real good one, we'll keep it for the finale", or do they "so, in a few episodes' time will we have the finale, we'd better get creative!".

What's your technique?

Ending all plots and subplots whether the players want them to end or not. :cool:

Let me rephrase that:
I try to wrap up any ongoing conflicts, season-arcs, loose ends etc. or at the very least bring them to a point which I can later build on should I want to add another season to the game.

This usually means a lot of old favourite NPCs (mine especially :D ) show up again, there's almost always some big fight involved (if not my PCs will make sure there is) and the stakes are higher than usual. Trusted NPCs might turn 180 degrees (by dying for example ;) ), hated NPCs might turn up surprisingly (by not being dead). PC death is not impossible, though rather unlikely.

Resolving or at least tying together all the sub-plots and resolving the major story arc. Yea, I tend to do story arcs that extend across multiple episodes.

The grand resolution of a major event, especially if it culminates in the loss of life (of a PC/major NPC) and/or their vessel.

Common sense stuff, actually. :)

I agree with Joe and Don. Resolve as much as you can, keep pressing the "cool" buttons, and leave the players satisfied the season is over, but also leave them wanting more, so that they'll come back for next season's first show. :)

My old Athena campaign ran three seasons. The first season closer was a big two-parter my co-GM ran, and it introduced a new alien threat but also wrapped up a lot of stuff from the first season. It had great role-playing moments, and some stellar action.

The second season closer was a cliffhanger that I ran, the first of two parts. I closed up a lot of plot details from the second season, but left the characters in the lurch. They were very anxious to get back to it. :)

The third season was the last for the campaign, and my co-GM ended it with the crew's ship getting destroyed defending the Federation from the alien threat he intro'ed back in season one. One of the PCs died, one of them went to places undiscovered (a la Wesley with the Traveler) and the rest of the crew made it back home to get the kudos of the Federation. :)

A big cliff-hanger.

Three words...

"Mr. Worf... Fire!"

:D

All is said: I tend to do the same thing.

Our finales worked like this:
S1 finale was Wolf 359.
S2 finale saw a heroic PC sacrifice herself.
S3 finale saw the return of the PC's arch-nemesis god-like aliens coming from the Andromeda galaxy.
S4 finale saw the end of the big conflict that lasted the first four seasons.
S5 finale ended with a PC giving his love interest to the head of S31 - only to discover s31 had fooled him :)
S6 finale saw the end of the drugs traffic the PCs were hunting for s5 and s6.

(aaargh, we resume playing thursday with s7's premiere, can't wait!! :) )

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poster

Player character sacrifice.

By the end of my seasons, some players want to try something new for the next one, but don't want their characters to become NPC's or die like some redshirt. They tell me and I put it into the episode as some big heroic act.

If the PC's have a ship, I sometimes make it seem as if the ship may be destroyed and I always remove at least one major NPC through death.

Everything is obviously tied together so there's a feel of an overarching storyline.

Personally I hated all the cliff-hangers on TNG. The first half was usually good and got you all jazzed and then the conclusion sucked dirty swamp water...

Need I say more than "Data's Head" :(

I think there is great potential in these episodes, but outside of DS9 I felt the potential was rarely realized.

Nemesis.

But that's because my players are on a Federation/Romulan outpost during the Dominion War. The first two seasons I have planned are going to have self-contained conclusions.
The first will be from the fact the borg used the outpost as a listening post years and years ago and will wake up.
The second I'm not entirely sure, but it will probably involve the end of the Dominion War and a last ditch effort of the Dominion to take down any nearby Federation outposts.

The third, however will be the fun of Nemesis. There will be the fun thing of the Romulans suddenly turning around and betraying the Federation, followed by the "oh... er... we didn't mean to do that, it was just our mad leader".

I am triyng to have big mad finales but anticlimactic season openers, just like the series'. :D

Charlie E/N

Difficult to say really. It depends on pace, threat, epicness and coolness.

Ask yourself 'what is better' for everything that can happen in the episode. Which cliffhanger is better? The crew are trapped on the saucer section, and the big bad enemy battleship is staring them down... To be continued....
Or: The crew are trapped on the saucer section, and the big bad enemy battleship is staring them down. Sudedenly, a phaser blast bursts against the enemy ship from off screen, To be continued....?

So ... thus far, there seems to be two options:
- Nice climactic cliffhanger.
- Tying most ongoing arcs together.

Obviously, it'd be difficult to do both, wouldn't it? Either one focuses on building up the tension until the climax, or one focuses on resolving things and bringing answers, but trying to do both would probably lessen the effect of each one.

All right, then, back to the crucible ;). Thanks everyone for the help :).

I've personally LOVED the cliffhanger season endings ever since 'The Best Of Both Worlds'. However, trying to introduce them into an RPG session while still keeping them both entertaining and shocking is a major headache for any Narrator (I know from experience during the running of an old FASA campaign). So instead of doing a cliffhanger for the end of Season One of my campaign, I instead took my inspiration from another season finisher - 'The Neutral Zone' - and my other favorite SF show, 'Babylon 5' and used the final episode to set things up for the next Season.

In my campaign (set onboard the USS Dauntless, a Nebula Class vessel), my PC's repeatedly encountered an unknown alien starship during its' patrol mission in the Draconis Outback. This alien ship seemed to be equipped with some form of 'sleath' technology capable of fooling sensors. In the final episode of Season One, the aline starship was revealed as being a new Tzenkethi design - except that the level of technology used in its construction seemed at least 100 years ahead of known Tzenkethi science. Thus, a premise (and a new Threat Race for the PC's) was established.

How did the Tzenkethi make such a technological leap so quickly? Are they recieving outside assistance (the Cardassians maybe)? What are the Tzenkethi up to within the Outback? These (and more) questions will be answered in Season Two ... or not as the case my be.

It varies for me depending on the campaign and the initially planned length. For major campaigns I tend toward cliffhangers for the majority of seasons. For mini-campains, I tend toward keeping them self-contained.

One thing with closing story arcs and loose ends during a climactic cliffhanger, keep it to the smaller ones or ones that deal specifically with a personal thing for a PC as it really adds flavor without distracting from the buildup and can even add to it.

The PC finally comes to terms with his loved one and their relationship is starting to heal and now here they are facing death or possible self-sacrifice and losing what was just regained. Cliche I know but it works.

Regards,
CKV.

Well I have had several season endings now and I loved most of them more than the season openers. My favorite to date was a real mind bender.

The players had to go back in time on the USS Asimov (constitution refit used as a museum around Alpha Centauri which they had to get fully running in secret and then make off with) to thwart the plans of a race not unlike the shadows who had sent agents from the future to destroy key people and places so that the "Shadows" could win their war with the governments of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. The players succeeded, eventually, and after sending the Asimov and thier wounded back to the proper time they hijacked a K'tinga to finish the job on a rogue planet that was temporaly out of phase where an allied races colony ship had crashed long ago. the allied race protected a much more valuable ally who the players awakened. The agents of the "shadows" had followed of course and an epic ground and space battle ensued that ended with the great enemy defeated by the slimmest of margins and after several comrade NPCs as well as one PC had given their lives for victory. The conclusion occured when the crew limped back to theri proper time, on a ruined K'tinga, and the "Shadow War" was over. Time had been altered slightly, because I kept track of their moves and actions, in reference to what is canon and what has happened in between cannon timelines and my setting. They were heroes, but they could never really tell anyone cause noone really remembers things the same way anymore.

It was action, it was drama, it was horror and sometimes it was comedy. But as the ending came and went everyone looked like they had just gotten off a roller coaster as they looked at me and asked when the next season began.