Playstyle Poll

[ad_hoc]

I believe that I have a much different experience with 5e than most others on this board. Reading between the lines it seems to me that most people here play with large groups and don't fear failing quests but rather their struggle is to gain spotlight time because of the large player counts.

For example: One major trend I see is the notion that ranged characters (or ones who can easily retreat from melee) are mostly safe/rarely attacked.

As best you can please answer:

1) Player count

2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)

3) # of TPKs in 2017 (or expected if did not play much)


Myself:

1) Player count: 4
2) % failed: 20%
3) TPKs: 2


edit: "2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)"

In the pre-made adventure lines is this the major goals of the chapters. Many of them are optional and the party will fail forward. That is the game continues even though the major goals of the chapter were failed. OotA and CoS had a lot of this but it exists in some form in all the ones I've played. In an open world/sandbox game this means failing to explore the major areas of the adventure site/complete the current quest.

In both cases the campaign continues it just wasn't a successful mission.

An example would be to find and rescue the missing supply wagon. PCs engage, find some treasure, beat up some bad guys but are forced to retreat resulting in the death of the merchants and escape of the primary villains. There was no TPK and some experience and treasure was found but the major goals were failed.

[Ninja_Prawn]

For my current games:

A Faerie Affair (which I DM)

1) 5
2) 0%, but I am gradually stepping up the difficulty. They are starting to miss some of the sidequest objectives now.
3) 0

Ansalonian Adventures (in which I am a player)

1) 4
2) 0% so far, though we miss a lot of exploration opportunities due to our characters being incompetent morons. Also our current quest is looking pretty dicey as to whether we'll all survive.
3) 0

[Mikal]

1) 5 people
2) N/A (I go open world so there's no "failure" per adventures)
3) 13 (...we played Tomb of Horrors as a one shot with newbie players. It was fun)
3 (non ToH) ) 1 (newbie players think that because the game is called Dungeons and Dragons that they should fight the Dragons ASAP. At level 3. Whoops)

[Theodoxus]

As best you can please answer:

1) Player count

2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)

3) # of TPKs in 2017 (or expected if did not play much)

Hmm...

Playing in a homebrew campaign currently on hiatus due to DM health issues, presuming to pick up sometime in January:
Players: 8
% failed: 30% that i know of - as a player, it's difficult to know what quests we might have missed.
TPKs: 1, almost. I was the sole survivor of an encounter against our rival NPC dopplegangers (basically a Linear Guild type of enemy group.)

Playing Storm King:
Players: 9 (Though last session it looked like we might be losing 2 to natural attrition)
% failed: 0% (I've contemplated running the module myself, so I know the general questlines up to about 5th level).
TPKs: 0, but we're only 3rd level and overly cautious. I will say that I did swap out my ranger for a life cleric at 2nd level, due to lack of heals in the group. We were hurting pretty badly after the first encounter, and only bad rolls on the DMs part kept us from a TPK.

Running LMoP -> ToA:
Players: 4-5 (one of my player's occasionally brings his wife).
% failed: 40% - mostly LMoP, they stuck to only the main questline, completely ignoring the townpeople's side quests.
TPKs: 2, but only because a couple of sessions, only 2 or 3 players showed up and they insisted on trying to tackle Omu on their own.

[nickl_2000]

1) Player count
2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)
3) # of TPKs in 2017

1) 4 PCS
2) 0 as far as I know. Played Murder at Baldur's Gate and chapter 1 of an upgraded Rise of the Runelords
3) 0 TPKS, in fact no character deaths (but there were some close calls).

our group trends to play their characters well for combat (in probably the worst, frankly) and we pick classes that compliment each other well to fit all roles needed.

[2D8HP]

1) Player count.
Usually 4 to 7.


2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas).
You mean the campaign ended without completing the adventure?

Most of them.

I'm currently playing Phandelver for I think the fourth time, each time before the game has flamed out.

I've played two (or maybe three?) flame-outs of Curse of Strahd, a bit of Out of the Abyss, and a bit of Storm King's Thunder.

I've also played some "home-brewed" adventures, one homebrew campaign lasted a year, which I just quit because, my Fighter 1/Rogue 4 was increasingly just a tag-along, and when the one other non-caster (a Barbarian) quit, there was no one to stand next to the antagonist that my PC would sneak attack. The game was a conga-line of increasingly surreal combat, my PC got to pick a lock once, otherwise there was little use of any Rogue abilities besides Sneak Attack.

All the other games the DM quit, except for my latest try at Phandelver.


3) # of TPKs in 2017 (or expected if did not play much).
No TPK's, but the last game I played ended on a cliffhanger, with my PC down to 0 HP, and needing to make a Death Save.

[lunaticfringe]

Count: 5

Failure %: Hard to gauge I don't run modules it's more Sandboxy & player driven. They do fail to stop things from happening, prevent disasters, and rescue victims. Gonna go with 25%ish.

TPKs: 0, almost 1. 4 permanent deaths.

[ad_hoc]

"2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)"

In the pre-made adventure lines is this the major goals of the chapters. Many of them are optional and the party will fail forward. That is the game continues even though the major goals of the chapter were failed. OotA and CoS had a lot of this but it exists in some form in all the ones I've played. In an open world/sandbox game this means failing to explore the major areas of the adventure site/complete the current quest.

In both cases the campaign continues it just wasn't a successful mission.

An example would be to find and rescue the missing supply wagon. PCs engage, find some treasure, beat up some bad guys but are forced to retreat resulting in the death of the merchants and escape of the primary villains. There was no TPK and some experience and treasure was found but the major goals were failed.

[Xetheral]

Player Count: 5-10 per session
% Failed: Not Applicable (see below)
TPKs: 0

I run a dynamic semi-sandbox, so the % of failed adventures/chapters isn't a measurable quantity in my games. Players choose their own objectives, and often change their intentions as more information is acquired. The party often doesn't get the exact results they originally wanted, sometimes due to opposition, or bad luck, or the situation being different than originally believed, but it's usually more of a complication than an outright failure.

For example, the party chose to leave the expedition camp to investigate reports of increasing goblin activity and deal with any threat. They discovered an inbound army, chose to try to parley, and arranged a meeting between the enemy commander and the expedition leaders. The meeting ultimately didn't prevent war, so the party didn't get the peaceful outcome they wanted, but I'd be hard-pressed to characterize the results of their investigation as a failure. (The expedition leaders thought they did an excellent job.)

Edit:


"2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)"

In the pre-made adventure lines is this the major goals of the chapters. Many of them are optional and the party will fail forward. That is the game continues even though the major goals of the chapter were failed. OotA and CoS had a lot of this but it exists in some form in all the ones I've played. In an open world/sandbox game this means failing to explore the major areas of the adventure site/complete the current quest.

In both cases the campaign continues it just wasn't a successful mission.

An example would be to find and rescue the missing supply wagon. PCs engage, find some treasure, beat up some bad guys but are forced to retreat resulting in the death of the merchants and escape of the primary villains. There was no TPK and some experience and treasure was found but the major goals were failed.

In an open-world/sandbox game (and even, I would imagine, in some linear campaigns) goals aren't necessarily well-defined enough to tally. With your supply wagon example, the wagon might have been destroyed and the merchants killed before the PCs even set out... in that case, they would have "failed" in the sense of not accomplishing their (impossible) goal, but succeeded in every way that matters. Or if the PCs do manage to rescue the wagon, but the merchants attack (and die) after the PCs discover it's full of stolen goods, the PCs "failed" to rescue the merchants, but I certainly woudn't consider the mission a failure.

[2D8HP]

"2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)".....
Multiple times in the 5e games that I have had the privilege to play have other players PC's run into combat, become damaged and/or unconcious, and my PC has dragged them out, but the only one suggesting retreat was my PC, other players often acting as if a conga-line of fights to the death is the only possible action. Sometimes who they fought escaped, but mostly the PC's just get healed up, and they keep trying, until the DM quits and that's the end of the game, or the time I quit, because there was little except caster combat to the game anymore.

In all cases of the adventure being a published "module" the DM quit before we finished (except for the current on-going one I'm playing), so there wasn't an opportunity for PC failure.

[Cealocanth]

I'm going to assume by "adventures" you mean "encounters", as that, along with "campaign" and "instance" are the only units I use to measure how much adventuring the party had done. I use "instance" instead of "dungeon" because a shocking amount of them are not located in dungeons. Frankly, I would just measure the number of completed campaigns, but I have had literally two campaigns in all of 2017 because I run an open world game with one main quest and a bunch of side-quests/side-campaigns a-la Skyrim.

# of Players: 4-6, varies
% of failed encounters: 10%
TPKs: 1. Party wiped back in November after I miscalculated encounter difficulty and the Wizard decided to set off literally every encounter in the instance at once. The CR label of Black Pudding is too low in the Monster Manual for what they are.

[ad_hoc]

In an open-world/sandbox game (and even, I would imagine, in some linear campaigns) goals aren't necessarily well-defined enough to tally. With your supply wagon example, the wagon might have been destroyed and the merchants killed before the PCs even set out... in that case, they would have "failed" in the sense of not accomplishing their (impossible) goal, but succeeded in every way that matters. Or if the PCs do manage to rescue the wagon, but the merchants attack (and die) after the PCs discover it's full of stolen goods, the PCs "failed" to rescue the merchants, but I certainly woudn't consider the mission a failure.

This is nitpicky.

Just because it is possible for a scenario to be impossible to solve doesn't mean that is true for all scenarios.

In my example possible solutions are: Save the merchants, save the loot, or if those aren't possible find out why eg. the merchants staged the whole thing.

If the PCs went off on an expedition with a goal in mind and then abandoned that quest that is a failed adventure. Similarly, if the PC's goal was to explore a cave and they had to leave short of finishing that exploration, then they have failed. Even if half way through they decide that their real goal is only to explore half the cave.

At any rate, the question is up for you to answer as you see fit. I realize I'm going to get a lot of different responses because different people have different definitions. The point of the thread is to find this out. We use the same language with different meaning.


I'm going to assume by "adventures" you mean "encounters", as that, along with "campaign" and "instance" are the only units I use to measure how much adventuring the party had done.

Incorrect.

I specifically avoided both 'encounter' and 'campaign'. Failing an encounter does not mean failing an adventure. Campaigns take too long and often fall apart just as much or more for out of game reasons than in.

Please reread the OP for examples. I really do mean adventure/chapter.

[Twizzly513]

I DM the following three groups:

Group #1:
1) 4
2) 0%
3) 0

Group #2:
1) 2
2) 0%
3) 0

Group #3:
1) 4
2) Probably about 70%
3) 0

[gloryblaze]

Homebrew with material drawn from OotA.

1) 6
2) ~30%
3) 4

[Xetheral]

This is nitpicky.

Just because it is possible for a scenario to be impossible to solve doesn't mean that is true for all scenarios.

In my example possible solutions are: Save the merchants, save the loot, or if those aren't possible find out why eg. the merchants staged the whole thing.

If the PCs went off on an expedition with a goal in mind and then abandoned that quest that is a failed adventure. Similarly, if the PC's goal was to explore a cave and they had to leave short of finishing that exploration, then they have failed. Even if half way through they decide that their real goal is only to explore half the cave.

At any rate, the question is up for you to answer as you see fit. I realize I'm going to get a lot of different responses because different people have different definitions. The point of the thread is to find this out. We use the same language with different meaning.

I'm not trying to be nitpicky. My only intent was to point out that tallying failures is difficult when goals are ill-defined and/or the situation is fluid and/or there is missing information. Since all of the above are usually true in my games, I don't see a meaningful way to count failures. Accordingly, I'll stick with "N/A" as my answer to the failure question.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For the one I run (all homebrew), it's the following:

1) 4
2) 0% (although they changed their goal halfway through a few times based on new discoveries)
3) 0, not even any deaths. This is on purpose as I know some players would react very sadly to losing a character. Some close calls though.

I'm more interested in how they succeed (and what the consequences are of their success) than if they succeed.

[Darkstar952]

1) 4
2) 20% - This is a very loose estimate, given that I run an open sandbox game the objectives of the group are often poorly defined.
3) 0 - I expect this to rise to 1 in tonight's session, the players foolishly split the party just as they were confronting the boss at the end of the last session.

[Saltmarsh]

1. 4 players
2. Unknown ( my brother is D.Ming )
3. None yet

[Sariel Vailo]

1)When i dm 4 to 5 running an oota with bupido being an unkillable pervert god.
2) you cant really fail oota unless u don't do anything and leave for the surface.
3)tpk none. I have had players leave.

A game im playing in. The lost mines of phandelver
I think we are doing ok never even seen that module before so.i know its from the starter set didn't buy the starter set. But i just **** around as the blade singer entertainer. I try to make people not hate the drow.

[ad_hoc]

2) you cant really fail oota unless u don't do anything and leave for the surface.


OotA is the campaign that my table failed the most in.

[RakiReborn]

Interesting questions. Let's try:

Homebrew campaign (player)
1) 4 players
2) 5-10% failed (one sidequest failed when we were against an arcanaloth at lvl8 and all but the one without darkvision failed against the banshishment spell)
3) 0, also no player deaths

Homebrew campaign (DM)
1) 4 players
2) 0% (5 sessions played, and my players went smart about it)
3) 0 tpk, 1 permanent player death (they were close to tpk certain trouble, but played it as smart as they could. Highly deathly campaign at some points)

AL adventures (player) and CoS HC (dm)
1) 4-5 players
2) 0% (not much played yet, about 6/7 sessions now)
3) 0 tpk, 0 player deaths (2x close to tpk, but we/they learned that healing allies from 0 is priority)

[ad_hoc]

My takeaways from this:

1) The people who post the most advice on this board didn't answer.
2) Most groups don't experience failures, small or large. More people failed than I expected, but I wonder how much of that is selection bias as not many people answered.
3) Again, more people play in groups of 4 than I expected, but I likely think it has to do with the same selection bias.

Something to leave others with:

Games which have failures and games which don't are very different. If people of 2 different playstyles are talking to each other there will often be disconnect because of that difference.

[-̗̀ (ↀωↀ) -̖́]

Im dm'ing the Hoard of the Dragon Queen (Almost done with the mansion) for the past year
1. Players 4 (now six)
2. 10%, they almost missed several things but always manage to finish them in the nick of time
3. 0 (But expecting one in the final chapter)

Im a nice dm so I dont make the encounters any harder, but one player has the craziest luck (I counted 7 crits, 2 of them in a row in one session), so its not very difficult so I may start increasing some of the encounters

[comicshorse]

1) Player Count : 4
2) Missions Failed : 10-20%
3) TPK's: None ( but would have been two if not for A) some very good luck B) P.C.s running like hell at the right moment)

[sithlordnergal]

Hmmm, I only started really DMing near the end of November

Player Count: 6

% Adventures Failed: None

TPK's: None so far, but they have gotten extremely close. As in "full party down and the npc ally they had with them revived them" close

Heh, and I have no idea what people mean when they think ranged characters are mostly safe. If you play a rogue or wizard that hits an enemy hard, the force is turning their attention on you. And hiding won't save you.

It was actually kind of funny. First game I ran with this group I hit the Rogue. Apparently that had never happened to him before. Cut to one major fight later, and his rogue went down like a sack of bricks. He was brought back up, but he was surprised that his damage dealing Rogue had been targeted.

[sithlordnergal]

Im a nice dm so I dont make the encounters any harder, but one player has the craziest luck (I counted 7 crits, 2 of them in a row in one session), so its not very difficult so I may start increasing some of the encounters

Lol, I'm one of those people with crazy luck. X3 I have counted before. As a DM I generally get at least 4 crits on the party, usually more. My players hate it. XD

[SociopathFriend]

1) Player count

2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)

3) # of TPKs in 2017 (or expected if did not play much)


1) Typically we have 3 players as various members can't always make it. 3-5 would be accurate.

2) Hard to answer as the DM is pretty fond of not revealing what actually happened.

3) Does it count if it's 100% brought on by the party itself? Otherwise roughly once every 2 campaigns.

[Kane0]

Player Count: 6-7 Including DM
Adventures Failed: 75% (Majority from burning out and never bloody finishing the arc)
TPKs: 1

[Laserlight]

Player in SKT
1) Player count: 5 at any one time
2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed: as a player, it's hard to tell. There were certainly areas we didn't explore, but they were tangents to the main storyline and we had no real reason to look around. The first time we got to the Hill Giants' hall (at L6, as I recall), we decided to back off, but my impression from later DM comments is that was the correct decision and we needed to pick up a couple of levels.
3) # of TPKs in 2017: none


DM for a Primeval Thule setting
1) Player count: 4-5
2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed: Heh. The first module was supposed to be "find and free a specific slave"; what actually happened was "kill our contact and almost all her household and retainers, and in consequence get heavily fined and immediately banished from the city." I'd say 1/3 to 1/2 of the session have seen them fail at something, although none of the others have been quite that disastrous. It's been hilarious.
3) # of TPKs in 2017: no PC deaths although it's been close. I doubt I'll see a TPK because this party is quite willing to flee, often striking a blow.

[LordEntrails]

3 campaigns
1) 2, 3, 3
2) ~0%
3) 0, 0, 0

[bc56]

Players: 2 (and a DMPC so the party doesn't die for lack of healing.)
Failures: 0% My players are really thorough and tactically adept.
TPKs: 0

[ErHo]

Players: 5-6
Percentage of fail: 40%
TPK: 0 (thanks for reminding me)

[Pex]

Paladin game

1) 7 players

2) Once but only because it was a DM choo choo adventure point we were never supposed to win.

3) 0, but 3 character deaths occurred with one permanent

Cleric game

1) 4 players

2) 0

3) 0 and no deaths

Wizard game

1) 5 players

2) Once, not sure if it was a choo choo or DM miscalculation of difficulty. Deus Ex Machina provided for a rematch.

3) 0 and no deaths

[Burnteyes]

Multiple campaigns, DM, Co-DM and Player. Various roles at various games in 2017.

1) Players 6-3 average=5
2) With the exception of the single TPK below, zero
3) 1 TPK Cone of Cold ("Ice" is what I call it as it iced the game forever), in a final battle, on the final day of play, after all other villains in the encounter had been defeated and that villain was low on HP. I still give the DM, my friend, a lot of crap for that TPK.

[UrielAwakened]

We play a rotating list of players. Total player count is huge but most sessions hover between 4-7 people, I'd say 5 is the average.

We failed 1 mission all year. Probably ran at least 15 quests total and we didn't really play for half of the year.

No TPKs, only 2 player death.

[Demonslayer666]

1). 5

2). This is difficult to measure and very subjective. Players have rested way more than they should have, but didn't outright fail. They let evil NPCs live, and have killed stuff they should have let live. They have failed to convince people to help, or find information. They have been duped and led astray. They haven't failed to defeat any key bosses, so in that regard, 0%. /shrug

3). 0 TPKs, several close calls.

[xroads]

5
0% - We've "strategically withdrawn" often, but always get back in there to finish the job.
0 - Though we have lost a few of our fellow adventurers and and about a half dozen mercs over the year.

[INDYSTAR188]

As best you can please answer:

1) Player count

2) % of adventures (or chapters) failed (not all major goals met/had to retreat before finishing exploration of key areas)

3) # of TPKs in 2017

I've been DMing a campaign for ~14 months and we're at chapter 14 of Out of the Abyss (the Labyrinth).

1. 3 players with the occasional help from an NPC

2. 90%, thus far we had mostly completed all campaign elements and side quests but I've been dropping them out lately to speed this up. I want to DM ToA and CoS.

3. 0, however they have decided to engage Yeenoghu at level 12 so it could be 1 next Saturday.

*edit to add we have had two pc petrifications and a dozen or so unconscious pc's and one divine intervention that actually worked at literally the last possible moment.

[BigONotation]

If no one does and there are never TPKs, how do you players know the stakes are high?

Ran a West Marches game for 9 months
1) 20 players
2) hard to gauge because of play style, let's say 25%
3) 2 TPKs

Ran LMoP for 4 different groups
1) 5, 5, 4, 4
2) 25%, 25%, 10%, 75%
3) 0, 0, 0, TPK

PotA
1) 4
2) 15% or so
3) 0

Many many one shots
1) 4
2) 25% or so
3) 25% or so

I'm not looking to TPK my players, but I let the natural consequences follow their actions. Sure they're bummed when they lose their characters, but then they understand that they actually COULD lose them with me as DM. They aren't quite so headstrong after their first TPK.