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Bittersweet Ending / Tabletop Games

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  • Dungeons & Dragons: This is likely the best ending the player characters can hope for in the apocalyptic scenarios presented in the Elder Evils sourcebook. The PCs may manage to defeat the beast and Save the World, but given how each Elder Evil comes with a Sign that causes global cataclysms, there may not be much of the world left at that point. (The book does say that they are meant to be used as finales for long-running campaigns.) For example, Atropus causes a worldwide zombie plague that causes undead to outnumber the living at worst, the Hulks of Zoretha cause a Hate Plague that causes mortal beings to become enraged and fight each other, and Father Lymic freezes the world with endless night, destroying crops and wildlife and making any recovery a difficult task. What's more, two of them, Pandorym and Zargon, are not truly defeated, and the PCs must do something else to ensure that later.
  • Exalted. In second edition, the Sidereal Martial Art Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style actually has a charm that allows you to choose a bittersweet ending, forcing fate (i. e. the storyteller) to resolve the conflict in one of several different ways.
  • Magic: The Gathering: A lot of storylines end like this:
    • While the first Innistrad set had a happy ending, the Shadows over Innistrad certainly did not. While Emrakul is defeated, but the devastation wrought upon the plane is devastating; Its greatest protector is dead and will never return, its major population centers are devastated, its angellic protectors are fewer in number than they have ever been, and a host of new monsters have been added to its macabre menagerie. Not to mention that Emrakul was only defeated by her own volition, and could presumably return at any point. Finally, Sorin and Nahiri, two of Magic's strongest Big Good, hate each other so much that when Ravnica was threatened in a later set, they were too preoccupied trying to kill each other to care.
    • Theros. Elspeth has succeeded in killing the cruel god Xenagos, and returns to Heliod's temple. Then spiteful Heliod stabs her in the back, declaring that her being a planeswalker (and thus knowing more of the multiverse than him) makes her a threat. Ajani is left cradling the dead hero, while Heliod gets away with no consequences.
  • Promethean: The Created: You have spent years, perhaps centuries, as a reanimated collection of dead flesh. You've struggled to fulfill your Pilgrimage, created another of your kind, fought off the Pandorans, and fled from the hatred of humanity. Your reward? You lose all of the mighty powers you had, your durability and your strength. You are frail, weak, vulnerable. Your memories may very well evaporate. You still have to live in The World of Darkness, which is just as much of a Crapsack World as it sounds like, and now you have no defense against it. You are human. You have a soul. Your journey is complete.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade:
    • The game ends this way in the fourth Gehenna scenario, "Crucible of God". Basically, a Class 2 Apocalypse has taken place: civilization has been pulverized by the war between humans and vampires and the rise of the Antediluvians that followed; the environment has also suffered considerable damage- particularly during the Lasombra Antediluvian's reign of terror. The world is swarmed with bands of murderous psychopaths created during Malkav's reign, alongside giant ghoul animals bred by Absimiliard during his long stay in the depths of the Atlantic Sea and the hideous mutants crafted by Tzimisce Antediluvian. On the upside, Haqim turned the Middle East into an echo of Eden during the brief period in which he was alive, and during the end, Saulot might be able to call down the wrath of God on Tzimisce and bring an end to the Curse of Caine with your help, thus saving the world. In the epilogue, the surviving Antediluvians, namely Ennoia and the Shaper (who might be the Toreador Antediluvian in disguise) that managed to survive Gehenna and ascend into godhood are benevolent enough to leave humanity alone; and though you've lost your immortality and your powers, you're no longer troubled by the Beast or hunger for blood, and you can help rebuild human society with a clean slate.
    • The second optional ending to the scenario is even worse: You remain as a vampire, because God has decided to keep Caine suffering a little longer, you've been transformed into a third-generation vampire, and given the option of creating a new Kindred society alongside the emerging human nations. It's obvious that the pattern of foundation a new Enoch, total domination of Man, their uprising, PC's entering torpor/going into hiding, and their childer, who will become the Methuselahs of a new age eventually scattering to the winds after ruling for so long, etc. will continue. It's almost as if no one, not even God itself, learned anything from what happened.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Battle for Macragge: Hive Fleet Behemoth was stopped...After it consumed hundreds of world, killed billions of people, and completely wiped out Ultramarines 1st company (1/10 of their fighting force). First Companies tend to hold the veterans and elites of the Chapter. And it was just the first of many Hive Fleets.
    • The battle between Hive Fleet Kraken and the Eldar of Craftworld Iyanden. The Craftworld survived and Kraken was destroyed, but by the end, four-fifths of the population were dead note , and Prince Yriel was bound to the dreaded Spear of Twilight.
  • War Machine: Cygnar's campaign into The Protectorate Of Menoth ends on one for them. With the Protectorate launching a counter invasion. Cygnar survive but only barely, their capital and forces are devastated and they ultimately achieve nothing, while their enemies come out in a stronger position.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Even the Time of Judgment scenarios that don't involve a Wyrm victory are still bittersweet.
    • In a Last Battleground scenario in which the Perfect Metis is sacrificed as a scion to the Defiler Wyrm, the player characters must rescue his tormented spirit from the Atrocity Realm and cleanse it in the silver lake of Erebus. The Perfect Metis dies, but his soul is finally at peace. To boot, this cleansing averts the Apocalypse by forcing the Defiler to retreat into the Deep Umbra.
    • In the Ragnarok scenario in which the Wyld is victor, the Weaver and Wyrm have been stopped, but the human race and the changing breeds have been completely annihilated, and Gaia will still take centuries to heal.
    • In the Ragnarok scenario in which the Weaver is victor (and smart enough not to sever the physical world and Umbra), the human race survives, but majesty and creativity leave the world. A mundane, clockwork world is all that remains.
    • In a Weaver Ascendant scenario in which both the Wyrm and Ananasa escape their respective prisons, the two restore the fabric of reality to balance. Ananasa reweaves the cosmos in such a way as to eliminate the changing breeds and reduce some of Gaia's majesty.
    • In a Weaver Ascendant scenario in which the Garou's plan to free the original Balance-Wyrm succeeds, its struggles to free itself devastate reality and pile on top of the damage that the Waver already did. At the end, the changing breeds are all extinct, human civilization has been annihilated, and Gaia is still badly wounded. However, the Weaver and Wyrm are both restored to sanity, Gaia can begin healing, and the Stone Age survivors of the human species can begin a long climb to a more balanced civilization untainted by the Weaver and Wyrm's madness and guided by the lingering spirits of the Garou.

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