After reading the other thread on TPKs and seeing a few DMs offer up some plot hooks that might occur instead if a TPK, I thought it might be nice to throw together a few of them for DMs in need.
Here are a few that popped into my brain: You wake up to the sound of chanting to find another group of adventurers attempting to dispell the petrification that has consumed your bodies. Unchecked, the BBEG has run wild in the world and it is now a far more desolate place than it once was. Weaker heroes seek the legendary champions of old to join them in a time of dire need.
Your body rattles and shakes as you become aware of the guarded caravan in which you ride. Shackles bind you and you immediately recognize the insignia of slave traders on the men around you. In he distance looms The Arena where you are destined. You will spend the last of your days fighting, unless you can find an escape.
As the axe blade plummets toward your head everything is suddenly frozen and you feel yourself pulled, as if by your very soul. You find yourself in an unknown place before a group of robed figures. The whisper vague notions of the future, and that your time is not yet done.
After reading the other thread on TPKs and seeing a few DMs offer up some plot hooks that might occur instead if a TPK, I thought it might be nice to throw together a few of them for DMs in need.
Your examples seem to assume that the characters lost due to being physically overcome. That's not necessary, and more than likely to cause aggravation.
The king and his assassin lie dead at your feet. You weren't fast enough to save the noble, and some spell ended the life of the assassin before he could be questioned. Those who aren't weeping are looking at you with angry eyes. Some protectors. But perhaps there's still time to save the heir apparent.
You fight your way into the chamber as the last words of the ritual are uttered. Darkness gushes out of the well like a noxious wind, to pour out over the land. The lich cackles as he ascends to demi-godhood before your eyes, leaving you to try to survive this new, blasted world, long enough at least to find a way to take the fight to your nemesis once more
Your shots go wide, and the kobold chops through the last rope, before legging it. Looks like it's the long way around.
Generally, enemy has something to take or destroy. If they do that, the PCs lose and the game continues, with consequences. Saruman won at the Redhorn Gate. The Empire won when it froze Han. Cobra won when they assembled whatever the weapon of the week was. But the stories continued, with consequences.
But, this has to be considered up front. Consider the possibility that the PCs will lose, and prepare for that. Don't expect them to win, and then have to pull their bacon out. That's not likely to be appreciated.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
So if I'm understanding this straight, it is "likely to cause aggravation" and therefore undesirable for the PCs to be in a situation where they can lose a combat situation?
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
After reading the other thread on TPKs and seeing a few DMs offer up some plot hooks that might occur instead if a TPK, I thought it might be nice to throw together a few of them for DMs in need.
Your examples seem to assume that the characters lost due to being physically overcome. That's not necessary, and more than likely to cause aggravation.
The king and his assassin lie dead at your feet. You weren't fast enough to save the noble, and some spell ended the life of the assassin before he could be questioned. Those who aren't weeping are looking at you with angry eyes. Some protectors. But perhaps there's still time to save the heir apparent.
You fight your way into the chamber as the last words of the ritual are uttered. Darkness gushes out of the well like a noxious wind, to pour out over the land. The lich cackles as he ascends to demi-godhood before your eyes, leaving you to try to survive this new, blasted world, long enough at least to find a way to take the fight to your nemesis once more
Your shots go wide, and the kobold chops through the last rope, before legging it. Looks like it's the long way around.
Generally, enemy has something to take or destroy. If they do that, the PCs lose and the game continues, with consequences. Saruman won at the Redhorn Gate. The Empire won when it froze Han. Cobra won when they assembled whatever the weapon of the week was. But the stories continued, with consequences.
But, this has to be considered up front. Consider the possibility that the PCs will lose, and prepare for that. Don't expect them to win, and then have to pull their bacon out. That's not likely to be appreciated.
I have great appreciation for the fact that you bring a different view to things. I specifically stated this was designed to help turn a tpk into a story/plot hook. So rather than coming in and posting something along those line, your post seems to just say tpks are stupid? I dont really get what your post was meant to do aside from degrade the initial direction of the thread.
If I wrong, please fill me in, because Im really not sure what you're trying to say and would rather not jump to conclussions.
Bohrdumb, just delete this thread. The TPK and character death debate, will just shift from the last thread to yours. I've considered starting a thread like this before, but it's just going to create a battle. It's a good idea your thread in theory, but people on this forum can't do it without going off topic or going at each other.
Centauri is saying the "instead of TPK" doesn't have to mean "still knocked out/beaten down." It can be looked at as a more arbitrary measure of success or defeat. In your examples, which are fine, the characters instead of being killed are knocked out, moved to another place, another situation. They wake up and the game resumes. In Centauri's there is no unconcious, they simply now have a consequence of their failure and a new goal.
I know what I'm trying hardest to do as a DM is to get the party to perceive the danger that they are in and at least feel the threat of death as a real possibility so that their actions have greater consequence. Obviously I don't want them to die, and I can certainly cook up alternative means of defeat from time to time in the manner centauri suggests, but I'm a newbie, what if I try to make an encounter threatening but I do too good a job, or things go so totally wrong that the party stands on the brink of death? I've seen centauri advocate not getting bogged down by the fight mechanics toward explaining the conditions of defeat, but I know I have a hard time getting around the result of the entire party being knocked unconscious and just explaining it away, having them all miraculously escape but fail their mission would seem cheap in some situations; if the goal of the enemy was not to kill them then fine, but it can't always work, and so I don't see a reason to dismiss the "physically overcome" sort of defeats out of hand. The players will be aggravated, well they lost, it shouldn't be inconsequential, and the frustration now makes the eventual success all the sweeter.
I came up with an idea for possible alternative to TPK because I was new and thought I might gum up the works somehow and get my party killed, seemed like a reasonable concern for an inexperienced DM, furthermore I had players with virtually no 4th edition experience and their early encounters certainly showed the potential for failure .
The essential idea was that the heroes would awaken to find themselves revived and indebted to a witch. If I determined it was my fault the players had died, then the witch would just make some vague threat about eventually collecting on her debt and make for a later plot hook, and the mission the characters were on could still be completed. If the encounter had been fair and still resulted in defeat, then they would have to pay their debt then and there, with the current quest failed, kobolds run amok, hostages experimented on, whatever the case may be. The players would then have to embark on a morally compromising quest for this evil witch before she would release them to go on with their lives. Obviously I would have to gauge how game for this sort of thing the players are, but I know my group and they would go along with it and enjoy the chance to be slightly evil knowing that the witch would eventually get her comeuppance, other groups would utterly reject this sort of thing. Perhaps much later the heroes would encounter a group of evil adventurers only to discover that they were enslaved by the witch just as the players had been earlier. I suppose at the end of the day my alternative is similar to centauri's, the mission is failed and the new path is less pleasant.
Different players would react differently, I know my group wouldn't appreciate DM fiat saving them from death or cruising along with no threat at all. I have played games where we don't ever die or lose and its boring, I want the players to feel like they can try and run away from unfavorable encounters if things have gone poorly for them. I want the players to be thinking about preventing the TPK so I don't have to, and if there is no threat then why would they ever think that? The only aggravation I've ever seen over defeat was when it was done in a cheap manner, instant death or cheesy mechanics that they did not have ample opportunity to avoid, getting stuck on the railroad tracks and run down. I have faith in the players not to poo-poo everything and I don't need to coddle them.
I have great appreciation for the fact that you bring a different view to things. I specifically stated this was designed to help turn a tpk into a story/plot hook. So rather than coming in and posting something along those line, your post seems to just say tpks are stupid? I dont really get what your post was meant to do aside from degrade the initial direction of the thread.
I did not understand from your original wording that the point was to turn a tpk into a story/plot hook, though now I realize that's what your examples were intended to do.
If I wrong, please fill me in, because Im really not sure what you're trying to say and would rather not jump to conclussions.
Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.
I was assuming that TPKs are undesireable. If they weren't, then people would just accept the outcome, and not feel a need to avoid or mitigate them. So, instead of the approach (seen as unsatisfying by some) of pulling the PCs back from death through a contrivance, I thought I'd show some examples of the approach of avoiding those deaths entirely, by making the consequences of failure non-lethal.
Centauri is saying the "instead of TPK" doesn't have to mean "still knocked out/beaten down." It can be looked at as a more arbitrary measure of success or defeat. In your examples, which are fine, the characters instead of being killed are knocked out, moved to another place, another situation. They wake up and the game resumes. In Centauri's there is no unconcious, they simply now have a consequence of their failure and a new goal.
Both are fine, just different.
A "ha ha not really" death scene can be unsatisfying, and I'd be surprised if anyone who was given one didn't at least have mixed feelings about it. Haven't we all seen movies in which the character should have died, but was brought back through incredible luck, or had their bacon saved by some other character? Haven't we all thought, at least a little, that such a character is a little less of a hero? That's the definition of deprotagonization, and it needn't be the penalty for failure. Isn't it generally preferable for the heros to succeed or fail on their own, and especially great to see them struggle on despite failure, and recover from it on their own?
I know what I'm trying hardest to do as a DM is to get the party to perceive the danger that they are in and at least feel the threat of death as a real possibility so that their actions have greater consequence. Obviously I don't want them to die, and I can certainly cook up alternative means of defeat from time to time in the manner centauri suggests,
This is the classic dilemma: the desire to threaten them with death, but no desire for them to die. This has to be resolved: either we have to want them to die (as some do), or we have to threaten them with something else.
but I'm a newbie, what if I try to make an encounter threatening but I do too good a job, or things go so totally wrong that the party stands on the brink of death?
Exactly, and if you make an authentically challenging encounter, then you must teeter on the edge of their failure, and you must be prepared for it. That's what Bohrdumb and I are both after, it's just that death and capture have some serious (for a game) issues surrounding them, and I feel that they're best avoided, unless the players are entirely bought into them.
Why wouldn't players in a game in which characters can die be bought into their characters dying? I don't know. Some just are, some just aren't. If you and yours aren't, then you have to find a failure mode you can buy into.
I've seen centauri advocate not getting bogged down by the fight mechanics toward explaining the conditions of defeat, but I know I have a hard time getting around the result of the entire party being knocked unconscious and just explaining it away, having them all miraculously escape but fail their mission would seem cheap in some situations;
It's not miraculous, unless you don't leave yourself any options. If you've knocked them all out, you've taken away most of your options. If, after every time you knock someone out, you ask "You can escape, and lose," (with whatever "escape" and "lose" mean in that scenario), then they can get away in a non-miraculous way and fail their mission. I can see how that might be dissatisfying for both players and DMs, and not actually prevent TPKs. For instance, players might just want to see if the DM will actually let them all die.
Or you can set up encounters in which the monsters don't need and don't directly benefit from the PCs deaths. Look at the examples above: an assassin squad that knocked out all of the PCs doesn't need to kill them, nor does the lich who is now a god, or the kobold who just took out the bridge. They've won. Yes, the heroes are alive to try to reverse that victory, but they might not be able to simply perform a ritual to do so.
and so I don't see a reason to dismiss the "physically overcome" sort of defeats out of hand.
Because resorting to them just because one doesn't see any other, more interesting way to hand the PCs a failure is no reason to resort to boring failure.
Bohrdumb is trying to make the failure interesting, by finding ways for the story to continue despite death. I get that, and fortunately in a fantasy game we have that option. I'm trying to do the same thing, but from the angle of avoiding death, so that when players are bought into the idea of their characters dying, it can have heroic significance.
The players will be aggravated, well they lost, it shouldn't be inconsequential, and the frustration now makes the eventual success all the sweeter.
Yes, I'm all for failure, just not boring failure. Bohrdumb's ideas aren't boring, but what if they happened a lot? Wouldn't players start to wonder how they were going to be "saved" this time?
I came up with an idea for possible alternative to TPK because I was new and thought I might gum up the works somehow and get my party killed, seemed like a reasonable concern for an inexperienced DM, furthermore I had players with virtually no 4th edition experience and their early encounters certainly showed the potential for failure Cool.
I have played games where we don't ever die or lose and its boring, I want the players to feel like they can try and run away from unfavorable encounters if things have gone poorly for them.
You're new, so you should be warned: players hate running away. Don't count on them doing it. They'd rather make it the DM's job to keep the game fun, despite defeat.
Along those same lines, don't bet on them reaching the same conclusion as you that a given fight was "fair" and that defeat was "their fault."
I want the players to be thinking about preventing the TPK so I don't have to, and if there is no threat then why would they ever think that?
Because why would someone want to end the game by killing the characters? Yeah, people can make new characters, but not those same ones. In the context of a roleplaying game, it's really a bit odd to believe that the DM would want to bring everything to a grinding halt. This is especially the case in a game based on heroics.
The only aggravation I've ever seen over defeat was when it was done in a cheap manner, instant death or cheesy mechanics that they did not have ample opportunity to avoid, getting stuck on the railroad tracks and run down. I have faith in the players not to poo-poo everything and I don't need to coddle them.
Right, don't coddle them. They can and should fail. But failure doesn't need to mean death. Yes, sometimes death is dramatic and appropriate, and the players are bought in. Then death is ok, and you probably don't even have to resort to bringing them back, because everyone's ready for it.
When players are not ready for it, they will fight it tooth and nail, and not just within the rules. I can't be the only one who has been in an argument with someone over a rule interpretation, which is intensified by the fact that a characters' survival hangs in the balance. Yeah, ok, sure, don't game with crybabies, or whatever, but let's be real: death or capture of a character has connotations that no other states in the game have. Death, aside from deus ex machina, means a screeching halt to, at best, the character and at worst, the game. This isn't chess, where you just set the pieces back up again. Death in D&D has issues, and they can get personal. Capture, without player buy in, is generally just insulting, and full of DM blocks on player ideas.
If your players are bought in, you can do anything, even a full-stop TPK. Fine. Go for it. If you can't get buy-in for that, look for approaches that they might buy into, and talk to them about those.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
This is the classic dilemma: the desire to threaten them with death, but no desire for them to die. This has to be resolved: either we have to want them to die (as some do), or we have to threaten them with something else.
I don't see why you see it so black and white as what we "have to" do
While still retaining the physical defeat. It's a reasonable approach, but how many times can one reuse it?
It's just there as the backup plan, if I had to use it, I would have to do things differently after that, but the idea is that things went wrong and at least they aren't all killed, I could see how the players handled it and have a better idea what to have prepared for the next potential calamity, so there was no intent to use it multiple times
I would respond more but getting multi-response to work on these forums is more work than I have time for just now
I have great appreciation for the fact that you bring a different view to things. I specifically stated this was designed to help turn a tpk into a story/plot hook. So rather than coming in and posting something along those line, your post seems to just say tpks are stupid? I dont really get what your post was meant to do aside from degrade the initial direction of the thread.
I did not understand from your original wording that the point was to turn a tpk into a story/plot hook, though now I realize that's what your examples were intended to do.
If I wrong, please fill me in, because Im really not sure what you're trying to say and would rather not jump to conclussions.
Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.
I was assuming that TPKs are undesireable. If they weren't, then people would just accept the outcome, and not feel a need to avoid or mitigate them. So, instead of the approach (seen as unsatisfying by some) of pulling the PCs back from death through a contrivance, I thought I'd show some examples of the approach of avoiding those deaths entirely, by making the consequences of failure non-lethal.
Centauri is saying the "instead of TPK" doesn't have to mean "still knocked out/beaten down." It can be looked at as a more arbitrary measure of success or defeat. In your examples, which are fine, the characters instead of being killed are knocked out, moved to another place, another situation. They wake up and the game resumes. In Centauri's there is no unconcious, they simply now have a consequence of their failure and a new goal.
Both are fine, just different.
A "ha ha not really" death scene can be unsatisfying, and I'd be surprised if anyone who was given one didn't at least have mixed feelings about it. Haven't we all seen movies in which the character should have died, but was brought back through incredible luck, or had their bacon saved by some other character? Haven't we all thought, at least a little, that such a character is a little less of a hero? That's the definition of deprotagonization, and it needn't be the penalty for failure. Isn't it generally preferable for the heros to succeed or fail on their own, and especially great to see them struggle on despite failure, and recover from it on their own?
I know what I'm trying hardest to do as a DM is to get the party to perceive the danger that they are in and at least feel the threat of death as a real possibility so that their actions have greater consequence. Obviously I don't want them to die, and I can certainly cook up alternative means of defeat from time to time in the manner centauri suggests,
This is the classic dilemma: the desire to threaten them with death, but no desire for them to die. This has to be resolved: either we have to want them to die (as some do), or we have to threaten them with something else.
but I'm a newbie, what if I try to make an encounter threatening but I do too good a job, or things go so totally wrong that the party stands on the brink of death?
Exactly, and if you make an authentically challenging encounter, then you must teeter on the edge of their failure, and you must be prepared for it. That's what Bohrdumb and I are both after, it's just that death and capture have some serious (for a game) issues surrounding them, and I feel that they're best avoided, unless the players are entirely bought into them.
Why wouldn't players in a game in which characters can die be bought into their characters dying? I don't know. Some just are, some just aren't. If you and yours aren't, then you have to find a failure mode you can buy into.
I've seen centauri advocate not getting bogged down by the fight mechanics toward explaining the conditions of defeat, but I know I have a hard time getting around the result of the entire party being knocked unconscious and just explaining it away, having them all miraculously escape but fail their mission would seem cheap in some situations;
It's not miraculous, unless you don't leave yourself any options. If you've knocked them all out, you've taken away most of your options. If, after every time you knock someone out, you ask "You can escape, and lose," (with whatever "escape" and "lose" mean in that scenario), then they can get away in a non-miraculous way and fail their mission. I can see how that might be dissatisfying for both players and DMs, and not actually prevent TPKs. For instance, players might just want to see if the DM will actually let them all die.
Or you can set up encounters in which the monsters don't need and don't directly benefit from the PCs deaths. Look at the examples above: an assassin squad that knocked out all of the PCs doesn't need to kill them, nor does the lich who is now a god, or the kobold who just took out the bridge. They've won. Yes, the heroes are alive to try to reverse that victory, but they might not be able to simply perform a ritual to do so.
and so I don't see a reason to dismiss the "physically overcome" sort of defeats out of hand.
Because resorting to them just because one doesn't see any other, more interesting way to hand the PCs a failure is no reason to resort to boring failure.
Bohrdumb is trying to make the failure interesting, by finding ways for the story to continue despite death. I get that, and fortunately in a fantasy game we have that option. I'm trying to do the same thing, but from the angle of avoiding death, so that when players are bought into the idea of their characters dying, it can have heroic significance.
The players will be aggravated, well they lost, it shouldn't be inconsequential, and the frustration now makes the eventual success all the sweeter.
Yes, I'm all for failure, just not boring failure. Bohrdumb's ideas aren't boring, but what if they happened a lot? Wouldn't players start to wonder how they were going to be "saved" this time?
I came up with an idea for possible alternative to TPK because I was new and thought I might gum up the works somehow and get my party killed, seemed like a reasonable concern for an inexperienced DM, furthermore I had players with virtually no 4th edition experience and their early encounters certainly showed the potential for failure Cool.
I have played games where we don't ever die or lose and its boring, I want the players to feel like they can try and run away from unfavorable encounters if things have gone poorly for them.
You're new, so you should be warned: players hate running away. Don't count on them doing it. They'd rather make it the DM's job to keep the game fun, despite defeat.
Along those same lines, don't bet on them reaching the same conclusion as you that a given fight was "fair" and that defeat was "their fault."
I want the players to be thinking about preventing the TPK so I don't have to, and if there is no threat then why would they ever think that?
Because why would someone want to end the game by killing the characters? Yeah, people can make new characters, but not those same ones. In the context of a roleplaying game, it's really a bit odd to believe that the DM would want to bring everything to a grinding halt. This is especially the case in a game based on heroics.
The only aggravation I've ever seen over defeat was when it was done in a cheap manner, instant death or cheesy mechanics that they did not have ample opportunity to avoid, getting stuck on the railroad tracks and run down. I have faith in the players not to poo-poo everything and I don't need to coddle them.
Right, don't coddle them. They can and should fail. But failure doesn't need to mean death. Yes, sometimes death is dramatic and appropriate, and the players are bought in. Then death is ok, and you probably don't even have to resort to bringing them back, because everyone's ready for it.
When players are not ready for it, they will fight it tooth and nail, and not just within the rules. I can't be the only one who has been in an argument with someone over a rule interpretation, which is intensified by the fact that a characters' survival hangs in the balance. Yeah, ok, sure, don't game with crybabies, or whatever, but let's be real: death or capture of a character has connotations that no other states in the game have. Death, aside from deus ex machina, means a screeching halt to, at best, the character and at worst, the game. This isn't chess, where you just set the pieces back up again. Death in D&D has issues, and they can get personal. Capture, without player buy in, is generally just insulting, and full of DM blocks on player ideas.
If your players are bought in, you can do anything, even a full-stop TPK. Fine. Go for it. If you can't get buy-in for that, look for approaches that they might buy into, and talk to them about those.
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