Poll: Do You Like Bad Ends?

[Zeebop]

Plenty of stories have branches that just...stop. But what do you think of branches that lead to not just an end, but a bad end? One wrong move, and the story is over, click back and try another path. What do you think about that?

 

[SeriousBrainDamage]

They are needed and welcomed.

In those scenarios where you have a female chapter getting defeated, they could be an interesting way to explore different sexual events that didn't fit in the regular body of the story.

The simple "you died" message is also fine, but if it is that short then it would be better if the story could allow for a link back to a previous chapter without having to redo everything from the start.

 

[Haoro]

Not really for me. I don't like sad endings to stories, it makes me feel bad when characters I've been following have something horrible happen to them they can't escape or get away from. I don't really go for the CHYOA format with lots of choices and endings where you're supposed to replay the story over and over anyway.

 

[Almax]

I think it depends on how it's done. In a Somburliss story, where "bad end" just means "go back one choice after you read this fun chapter", I think they're really great and add a bit of fun for people who want to see different stuff. I don't super like it when it's more the sort of "abandon all of your past choices and restart again" bad end, though.

I feel like some people who do Game Mode stories feel like they need to punish the readers who don't succeed at the objective, like real games do by sending you back to a checkpoint, but WAY overdo it and force you to start the whole story over. People are here to have fun, and being forced to scroll and click through twenty chapters again, without reading them because they're identical to last time, just to have another try isn't fun or challenging. Especially when the bad end was a "pick-a-door" style bad end, where you really had no control over it and getting the right answer isn't rewarding.

So, I'd say that bad ends can be good, but they need to be easily rewindable/not needlessly punishing. I think sometimes people can forget what readers are here for, and end up following aspects of similar-but-not-the-same media a little too closely. The same goes for actively punishing people who read your Game Mode story out of Game Mode, or being weirdly mean to them with author's notes, which I've seen a few times. Even if you don't wanna take time and go out of your way to make it accessible and understandable for people out of Game Mode, you don't need to be mean!

 

[Impregmaniac]

I've never played around with Game Mode, but I embrace the Bad Ending. I even made a Bad Ending at the start of one of my stories!

For one, it's an Ending. Not all stories need to go on and on and on.

Second. Not all endings need to be good. Especially in a bleak setting or tone. In another thread, I put up an idea of an abusive household, and even the one 'good' ending would have had a miserable outcome.

 

[ajoseph]

I am not a great fan of HEA endings. The genre I am into is centered around dominant women who have the power to shape the lives of people for their own enjoyment at the expense of their victims. So HEA ending generally signals to be a defeat of such characters. Which is not what I want to read.

 

[RejectTed]

I'm mostly yes for bad endings. They can be fun what-ifs or extensions of the stories theme and it's better to wrap up a thread instead of just leaving the reader hanging. I don't want the ending to be too dark though. I much prefer it if it's something like the main character being embarrassed, getting their comeuppance, or just not succeeding.

 

[MidbossMan]

All depends on how it's done. For game stories, I'd very much second the opinion that I'd want to avoid anything that forces the reader to start all over. The longer the branch, the more vital that becomes. I don't think it respects the reader's time in the average case to loop back to start, but beyond that, the average reader is just going to hit previous chapter and undo the choice anyway, unless you routed them down the max number of possible page rewinds. It's much cleaner to loop back to a choice or hub, or, if possible, even let them continue with whatever the failure is (like a loss on their record or whatever is appropriate). It's worth doing the legwork up front to decide how you're going to make that happen.

As for bad ends themselves, my personal preference would not be something that's super dark, but I know some people love that, so it's all up to taste. You can do bad ends that are sexy, comedic, what have you, and those would be my preferred type.

 

[DoctorWhat]

Plenty of stories have branches that just...stop. But what do you think of branches that lead to not just an end, but a bad end? One wrong move, and the story is over, click back and try another path. What do you think about that?

Depends on the extent of how bad things are. I don't like something that just abruptly stops, like the character dies or whatever. Bad ends I'm not too in favor of cuz I, like others, are not in favor of downbeat endings.

 

[thosearemysecret]

I've written a handful of bad endings and each time it made people sad. I only know this because people who never commented before went out of their way to leave a comment about how sad it made them.

 

[Zeebop]

At least it shows folks were invested in your story!

 

[bastian]

I’ve done it a few times in my stories and I think it can be interesting if done sparingly. It’s pretty much how old choose your own adventure books worked.