They came back the next week, and the week after that. After a month of weekly sessions, Death pulled me aside.
âHey,â he muttered, shuffling his skeletal feet a bit and rubbing his arm. âI donât want to be That Guy, but this game does have an end, right? Iâm having a blast, but this is still technically work for me, and I have to file reports, especially with all the loopholes I had to pull on to get a multi-session game approved in the first place.â
âOh, yeah, for sure!â I told him. âThereâs lots of ways for it to end. âYour characters could all die, we could finish the story weâre telling together, or our group could even just stop playing.â
Satisfied, he took his place at the table, but for months thereafter, he would cock his head at me every time I ended a session with excitement to play again. All I could do was shrug.
The weeks turned into months, turned into years, and Death stopped his reminders that our game, like everything else in the world, would eventually have to die. He told me, once, that he was determined to see this through to the end because my absurdly long game would make for a good story, but I think he had grown attached to his gnome cleric. Her magic was from the Life domain, and his grin always seemed just a touch wider every time he healed someone.
Half a decade after we began, my players were as seasoned as their level 20 characters, and I was running out of curveballs that would challenge them, so I wrote an end to the campaign. I spent months on it, carefully tying up every loose plot thread I could think of and giving all five members of the party the best resolution I could muster. Three of them got married to each other.
There were tears flowing from every eye that wasnât an empty socket as I narrated their proverbial rides into the sunset, before finally I folded my screen, looked at each of them in turn, and said âThe end. Death, you can take my soul now.â
He froze, and the demons around the table turned as one to stare at him.
Then, slowly, he cocked his head the same way he used to. âBut you won,â he said. âThe object of the game is to tell a story with your friends, and you did.â
âBut so did you!â I cried! âAnd everyone knows that when Death wins a game, he gets your soul.â
Deathâs grin spread wider than it ever had when he saved someoneâs life in-game. âDidnât you just finish pouring it into a game that you shared with me?â
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