Cliff Hangers

Catching up on my pay TV series. Am I the only one who thinks HBO and Showtime are just soft porn 24 hours a day? Anyway- I thought, Should I use cliff hangers? Most of my gaming sessions end something like this: OK, you killed the big, nasty, evil guy at the end, you discovered the treasure and you head back to town. See you all next week and we’ll split up the treasure and figure out your training/use of character points. (With our point based system, character points are like experience and allow for the learning of new or improved skills.) But what if I started using cliff hangers? I’ve used them, though never intentionally: You open the door and see sixteen alchemically enhanced orcs ready to kill you. This fight will take way too long, so let’s call it for the night. I think they’d be more annoying than helpful. I’ve never really had to motivate my players to come back to play, so I guess I’ve never really needed to bait them. Plus, with schedules, someone always misses a session or two, so they’d be pretty disappointed that they got the lead up but not the climax. However, there is a reason that the TV shows and movie serials all used them. Along these lines - If you have never read Tarzan, do! It was written as a magazine serial and the action holds you! So this is less of a blog post and more of a request for information. Take it as a possible suggestion (try using cliff hangers at the end of the night’s gaming) if you want, but share if you know how well (or poorly) they work.