Alternate Ending: We let the characters stay.

[BlackWolfe]

I don't think he's trying to do either of those things, if it makes you feel better. Rick is responding, I believe, to the flood of silly fics we got in the last 10 minutes of the deadline. Many of them were lots of fun to read, so we're not complaining.

We did make it clear, over Twitter I believe, that multiple fics per writer would be accepted on the final assignment, but nobody sees everything. *shrug* It happens.

Yeah, the point of my joining in the last-minute twitter and microfic spam was to be silly and hopefully make you guys laugh. Sadly, if something happens on Twitter while I'm unconscious, I don't often check peoples' accounts to see what they've said when I get up. So, if I'd seen that information sooner, I probably would have written one or two more stories.

I will say that it didn't occur to me to use the Cabal specifically because they hadn't been refictionalized. Well, except Moriarty, but I (a) wasn't confident in my ability to write someone like him and (2) reeeeeally don't like that guy.

[Adell]

About the meta...
I like to think that my decisions were backed primarily in my own morals, though it's impossible to say for sure what I would have done with different information... I know that a lot of us were tied up with the conviction that meta, the characters couldn't stay, so not-sending them back would equal losing. Still, I can't think how Mr. A could contradict that belief without going straight out of character, and short of Mr. A saying so, most of us probably wouldn't have believed another character's affirmation that it would be possible-- didn't believe other characters' affirmations that it would be possible.
So I guess I'm not really saying much here, other than, man, we're stubborn. I am impressed with all your patience at dealing with us.

I never really understood the "couldn't stay" argument. I mean if the arg ended with characters still here (which as far as I can tell, it did), and the gms just said "they're over here" what's there to argue exactly? Yeah they aren't REALLY in the real world of course, but does that really matter, why would that effect the outcome of the arg? There's a reason it's called an "alternate reality" game :p

[Connor Fallon]

About the meta...
I like to think that my decisions were backed primarily in my own morals, though it's impossible to say for sure what I would have done with different information... I know that a lot of us were tied up with the conviction that meta, the characters couldn't stay, so not-sending them back would equal losing. Still, I can't think how Mr. A could contradict that belief without going straight out of character, and short of Mr. A saying so, most of us probably wouldn't have believed another character's affirmation that it would be possible-- didn't believe other characters' affirmations that it would be possible.
So I guess I'm not really saying much here, other than, man, we're stubborn. I am impressed with all your patience at dealing with us.

I never really understood the "couldn't stay" argument. I mean if the arg ended with characters still here (which as far as I can tell, it did), and the gms just said "they're over here" what's there to argue exactly? Yeah they aren't REALLY in the real world of course, but it does that really matter, why would that effect the outcome of the arg? There's a reason it's called an "alternate reality" game :p

That's the thing. Even if we got sick of upkeeping the blogs, we could just have the Witch say "I've decided I hate blogs. Blogs are stupid. I'm going to go live in a cabin in the woods somewhere." And canonically, she would be. And it would be no problem. =)

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

I was thinking more along the lines of: Mr. A has insisted that if they stay, reality will break. And it would be an anticlimactic ending to say "Reality has ended. New reality? Y/N".
So either Mr. A would have to go completely out of character to say that no, it's quite possible to keep characters here with reality remaining intact, or we get hung up on meta a little too stubbornly.
Still, that's all academic now, so with elephants.

[Adell]

I was thinking more along the lines of: Mr. A has insisted that if they stay, reality will break. And it would be an anticlimactic ending to say "Reality has ended. New reality? Y/N".
So either Mr. A would have to go completely out of character to say that no, it's quite possible to keep characters here with reality remaining intact, or we get hung up on meta a little too stubbornly.
Still, that's all academic now, so with elephants.

I think it's more like he'd have to admit that he was ultimately wrong about characters needing to leave, since reality has in fact survived with the cabal remaining here. But I get what you're saying, since you were under the belief that them staying was a bad ending as opposed to an alternate ending.

[Rick Healey]

Actually, the fair question to ask is, was he wrong, or was he lying?

[Pixelmage]

Actually, the fair question to ask is, was he wrong, or was he lying?

That's true.
But I personally don't think we should get that answer at all. For a great variety of reasons, the narrative is better if we don't know. Much as I hate to admit it, because I'm really curious about that. xD

[Adell]

Actually, the fair question to ask is, was he wrong, or was he lying?

That's true.
But I personally don't think we should get that answer at all. For a great variety of reasons, the narrative is better if we don't know. Much as I hate to admit it, because I'm really curious about that. xD

It is also interesting to note that he never actually said "it'll definitely end" as far as I remember, he only ever said there was a possibility of it. So even in this instance he wasn't "wrong" it's more like, the players chose to believe the probability instead.

[narrativedilettante]

Actually, the fair question to ask is, was he wrong, or was he lying?

This question drives me crazy. But it probably shouldn't be answered. It should keep driving me crazy.

[Val Reznitskaya]

This question drives me crazy. But it probably shouldn't be answered. It should keep driving me crazy.

That is seriously not a thing I ever expected someone to say.

[Rick Healey]

It might not be what I'd initially expect someone to say... but it does show someone who gets it.

[BlackWolfe]

It might not be what I'd initially expect someone to say... but it does show someone who gets it.

It gives us something to chew on, like a tiny cut on the inside of your cheek. You gnaw it and gnaw it and it drives you crazy and it'll never heal.

And then one day, it's gone, and you miss it.

[Dryunya]

My reasoning was defined by 2 facts:

1. In-game: if we let the characters stay, reality ends. Actually, "probably" ends, but with my risk assessment I assumed it does.
2. Meta: leaving the characters requires maintaining their blogs, as well as faking the other news they may generate (Erik was quite successful, and couldn't just fade into obscurity, and the witch is a green Mad Scientist). That's impossible to uphold, so they must be gone by the end.

There was one more fact that, for some reason, didn't make it into the reasoning list: the GMs can't make the world end. That means that, technically, we can make the characters stay with no consequences. When I realized that, this fact and #2 have destroyed each other - that is, Meta didn't show any definite way. So I stuck to my risk assessment. That didn't really alter my initial course. Except that that probably meant that the decision was made by me in character.

We even had plans for each variation of that alternative (for example, what happens if Juliet was sent back but Romeo stayed). But to steal a quote, nobody gets told what could have happened.

Wait a second, I thought they were bound to each other and could only be refictionalized together.

And since we're talking about the bad endings, what would you do if we really, really sucked? Like, all flipped out and left, or didn't write a single decent Cthulhu fic? Were there any definite "lose conditions"?

[Rick Healey]

There was one more fact that, for some reason, didn't make it into the reasoning list: the GMs can't make the world end.

Ahem.

We can't make the real world end.

However, metafictionally, the world of The Wall Will Fall is not the real world; it's a fictional world that played out with the real world as its setting.

We were (and still are, technically, although to invoke it now would simply be Diabolus Ex Machina) quite capable of ending the fictional world of The Wall Will Fall. What artifacts of this fictional world that would have echoes in this real world (read: archives of blog posts and the like), that's something to muse on, but not something that we'd give firm confirmation or denial of.

Now, again speaking metafictionally, it's not something that we, as puppet masters and the authors of the world of The Wall Will Fall, wanted to do. It would have admittedly been a remarkably unfulfilling ending. It would have been unsatisfactory for us as much as it would have been for you. But keep in mind that there's a huge gulf between something that we wouldn't want to do and something that we couldn't do.

We even had plans for each variation of that alternative (for example, what happens if Juliet was sent back but Romeo stayed). But to steal a quote, nobody gets told what could have happened.

Wait a second, I thought they were bound to each other and could only be refictionalized together.

It would have taken some seriously good work to pull it off, admittedly. Among other things, there had to be some way to break their bounds irrevocably... but you guys were on your way to pulling that off, weren't you?

And since we're talking about the bad endings, what would you do if we really, really sucked? Like, all flipped out and left, or didn't write a single decent Cthulhu fic? Were there any definite "lose conditions"?

I believe I've essentially answered this one above.

[Tom]

Although it is possible, in a game like this, to get an unsatisfying ending, we would have probably continued to nudge you until you did the things necessary to get a satisfying one. (Which we did.)