A Point about TPK's

[Catullus64]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

This was the statement over which I had a fairly long and meaningful discussion with a friend. Both the friend and myself are players in each other's campaigns. The argument I made, compacted above, requires a few qualifiers:

This is specifically to do with party wipes, not player death in general.
This is meant to be a general maxim; of course there will be extreme scenarios where the players recklessly and suicidally get in over their heads. However, my feeling is that while individual player death can enhance or change a story, a party wipe simply ends it. The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.

Further meditations on the subject would be welcome.

[Aett_Thorn]

I would argue this as follows:

1) It is the DM's job to make encounters that challenge the party. If they are not doing that, then they're not doing the job properly.

2) A difficult encounter should lead to the occasional player death.

3) Bad roles are not the problem of the DM. If you take a DM's difficult encounter that might kill a player or two, and the players get bad rolls, maybe the DM should fudge some numbers here or there, but they aren't required to. This can sometimes lead to a TPK.

4) A DM that PLANS for a TPK without good reason* isn't doing their job right either.


*For instance, the party is sacrificing themselves for the greater good, or the players all know that this will be the last session with those particular characters, etc.

[Woggle]

This is specifically to do with party wipes, not player death in general.
This is meant to be a general maxim; of course there will be extreme scenarios where the players recklessly and suicidally get in over their heads. However, my feeling is that while individual player death can enhance or change a story, a party wipe simply ends it. The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.


I would argue that this is entirely dependant on the type of game the DM is running and the type of story they are trying to tell. In many games the story is a collaboration between the players and the DM, and taking away the potential for a party-wipe goes against the spirit of the game. The DM is not writing a novel; not everything needs to be resolved, and a TPK doesn't need to be the end of a campaign either.

[mephnick]

The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

Who's the storyteller? Is that supposed to be me?

I thought I was running a game. In a game I put a challenge in front of the players and they win or lose. If I actively prevent loss then I'm not longer running a game. It's negligent for me to try and prevent it.

People complain about railroads and player agency, but then their character dies and they complain that I should have saved them. Hard pass, thanks.

[intermedial]

A core assumption in your argument is the notion that all roleplaying games are plot-driven, or story-focused.

This isn't necessarily the case in roleplaying games which are events-driven, or narrative-focused.

There are certainly cases where a TPK is a wholly and entirely the result of the player's actions. Occasionally these actions are reckless, sometimes they are not: the players take a risk or gamble, and the dice come down against them. That's not a failure, that's life. These are almost always memorable sessions that make for great stories afterwards.

On the flipside, there are times when a DM engineers the conditions for a TPK, deliberately or accidentally. These are usually not satisfying, but the context on these varies so widely I'd hesitate to ascribe a general maxim.

[Tiadoppler]

while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.

Some tables like a sandbox-y game in which player agency is the main theme, and some tables prefer a story-oriented game in which the plot is the main theme. Neither game type is 'wrong'.

In a story-based game, I've found the players find the story more rewarding if failure is an option. They aren't simply playing a linear video game with cutscenes and save points - their characters actually have to do the legwork and problem solving in order to solve the mystery/save the hostages/defeat the zombies/remake the shattered world. If they fail, if their characters simply aren't up to the challenge, then a new group of heroes might have to step up and complete the quest. Success is optional, and that makes it valuable.

In a free-form game, players have even less 'plot armor'. Yes, as a DM, I won't purposefully steer players towards an overly difficult opponent, and I may even give hints that this foe is too powerful. On the other hand, a "sandbox game" should focus even more heavily on player agency than a story-based game.


I agree completely with the sentiment that a party shouldn't have some unavoidable randomly generated ambush that happens to have triple their CR, just cause that's what the dice rolled. That's a failure of the DM: it's the DM's job to curate the world. Saying that your party cannot fail or screw up the originally planned plotline is not the same thing.



On my DM screen, I have a note I wrote to myself a couple years ago after one of my players irritated me:


The first priority is that the players are having fun.

The second priority is that you are having fun.

The third priority is telling a great story.

The fourth priority is telling a story with perfect continuity.

The last priority is telling the story you had in mind to begin with.

[Waterdeep Merch]

It really depends on what the game is.

Is your story so plot-focused that the player characters couldn't be realistically swapped out for an entirely different party and continue as if nothing happened?

Is it possible to play past the death of the entire party?

Is rolling new characters a core conceit to your game or something that should be done only once in a while, and typically due to story concerns/player desires?

How integral is any particular character, and would the game have to end if they were suddenly removed?

Is failure actually a possibility? Or would failure end your campaign in its entirety? And I mean real failure, not plot node X can't happen because Y, so we continue on to part Z without it.

And finally, would getting rescued from your failure hurt the integrity of your game so much that you'd be better off cutting it short and replaying from the beginning?

I've always looked at TPK's as powerful plot twists. Sometimes it means new heroes must pick up where the old ones fell. Sometimes the players have to play a prison escape, or even evade the grim reaper in order to return.

And sometimes, the game just ends. I've never been hurting for ideas for new campaigns, so it's not like we cease playing TTRPG's altogether just because the players' characters all died. Sometimes, you can't get a more memorable ending than absolute failure.

[Mikal]

Who's the storyteller? Is that supposed to be me?

I thought I was running a game. In a game I put a challenge in front of the players and they win or lose. If I actively prevent loss then I'm not longer running a game. It's negligent for me to try and prevent it.

People complain about railroads and player agency, but then their character dies and they complain that I should have saved them. Hard pass, thanks.

This. A thousand times this.
I can only add "Let the dice fall where they may."

[MaxWilson]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master... My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game...

Ergo, a TPK is a failure for a Dungeon Master like you. It is not necessarily a failure for other Dungeon Masters with different goals, which could include:

* A good time with friends and a memorable story to tell afterwards. A hilarious TPK, especially if it is wildly improbable or due to entertaining (and bad) choices, can be a wild success w/rt this goal. Just imagine how much more hilarious The Head of Vecna (http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm) would have been if it had also TPK'ed the party instead of only killing two of them.

* Agency and challenge. A TPK in this case is a failure of the players. It might also be a DM failure, but only inasmuch as threats were telegraphed incorrectly and/or agency was unsupported--i.e. if the players did everything right, and the dice weren't horrible, and the TPK still happened, then it's the DM's fault. But if the aftermath of the TPK is a player argument with various players blaming other players ("why did you have to push that button?" "why did you make us rest in the tunnel?") then it's definitely the players' fault, not the DM's fault.

A successful DM TPK should definitely involve the players feeling like what happened was their own dumb fault, and that they can avoid it by playing better next time.

The only kind of TPK that is always DM failure is "rocks fall, everybody dies."

[Unoriginal]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

No.

Not all campaigns are the same. Some are soft on the PCs, other are not. What is important is that everyone involved is clear about it from the start.

The first Tomb of Horror was a true meatgrinder. It was the purpose of the module, and it was presented as such.

More recently, Tomb of Annihilation re-used that principle: neither the jungle nor the people nor the dungeons are going to make the PCs any favor, and it's likely they'll die if they're not careful.

If the players are entertained, then a Total Party Kill is a success of the Dungeon Master.



The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

There is no such thing as an RPG ending happening in an "orderly manner".

The ending of a RPG scenario is much like a squid: mobile, changing, with very few hard parts and multiple things branching off the center, and likely to spit you in the face if you try to force it where you want.

It could even be said that RPG stories never truly end. We just stop talking about what happens next.





My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.


It's the PCs' story, not the DM's. A DM who write a story wanting the players to play it out as they wish/as they have established isn't writing for the players or the PCs.

The DM provides the stage, the premise, and the non-main roles. Let the PCs come up with the script.

[Catullus64]

It's the PCs' story, not the DM's. A DM who write a story wanting the players to play it out as they wish/as they have established isn't writing for the players or the PCs.

The DM provides the stage, the premise, and the non-main roles. Let the PCs come up with the script.

It is a mutual endeavor: while the PC's provide responses to scenarios, and experience the various catharses of the plot, the DM has to set up context which renders all those responses meaningful. Whether or not the players enjoy the process of gameplay and decision making is, in my view, entirely dependent on that act of establishing context for actions. When the entire party dies, there is no longer a frame for establishing context, unless that death occurs at a structurally appropriate time, i.e., the ending of a narrative arc.

I concede that the claim of my original post, "A TPK is a failure of the Dungeon Master", was needlessly provocative, but it is part of a broader claim about what makes this game most meaningful to everybody, regardless of individual preference. The game is best served when player choices are structured into a meaningful order by a single storyteller, the DM, who has the information and planning to provide such context. I view a TPK as, excepting special circumstances like a proper tragedy, a categorical denial of such order and context.

[No brains]

The ending of a RPG scenario is much like a squid: mobile, changing, with very few hard parts and multiple things branching off the center, and likely to spit you in the face if you try to force it where you want.

What a beautiful sentiment.

[KorvinStarmast]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.
Not always.

We played during a mini con at our wargames club (university). There were six groups, and we were the third one through. We did pretty well, but had a few bad rolls at bad times, and then made two very bad tactical decisions near the end with the BBEG was emerging for us to take him out, or to distract him while our one magic user (me) used the one remaining spell (Scroll, dimension door) to get the captive duke's daughter out of the castle.

But we got flanked and my MU died a horrible death, followed by everyone else.

TPK, but that whole raid was fantastic fun. 4/6 groups TPK'd, two didn't, all said an done.
Great fun all around.

A couple of years later, party of seven, all college grads, playing on a weekend. We did a crap job of scouting, walked into a pretty big fight, and then the dice went ice cold. It was surreal. All rolls in the open. And we kept believing that the dice would warm up, rather than GTFO.

We died an inglorious death.
And then we sat there staring at our dice, wondering what had happened to them.

So we rolled up new characters.

[Pex]

2) A difficult encounter should could lead to the occasional player death.



There's a difference. No DM should ever aim for a PC to die. It can happen. Never must happen. No one is doing it wrong if it never happens.

[Tiadoppler]

I view a TPK as, excepting special circumstances like a proper tragedy, a categorical denial of such order and context.

That's understandable. Some tables are up for a tragic ending for a plotline, or even a "meaningless" sacrifice that ends a campaign. If you ever watched the end of Black Adder Goes Forth, that's the best example I can think of off the top of my head. Not all tables want that kind of experience, but some do.

That's something to talk through at session 0: are you playing on hardcore difficulty? Do you want any degree of plot armor? Are you willing to have utter, abject failure as a possible ending to a campaign?


If your players answer with "we want to experience a cool story, where there are lots of heroics and we're the adventurers saving the world" and "yeah, I'd imagine that we'd be captured by the BBEG, not coup-de-grace'd by his mooks in a ditch at level 2", then a TPK could be a real failure of the DM.

If your players say "we're here for the challenge, and a gritty, realistic story" or "throw deadly encounters at us and we'll see what the dice say", then a TPK may well perfectly reasonable.


The Tomb of Horrors exists for a reason: people buy it, play it and enjoy it.

[MxKit]

As much as I (usually) prefer playing in and running games where chance TPKs aren't on the table, I agree that "a Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master" depends entirely on the style of game and the expectations everyone has for it, and will differ from table to table and from campaign to campaign.

Sometimes you have meat grinders. Sometimes you have a game where the focus is on the challenge rather than the story. Sometimes you have a world where everyone goes in knowing that death is very possible and TPKs are absolutely on the table if they **** up. A lot of the time, a TPK doesn't even have to be the end of a game, as a new group of adventurers can potentially be dropped in, maybe even to find out what happened to the first group.

I'd say that adversarial DMing is a failure of the Dungeon Master, but really TPKs being a failure of the Dungeon Master is only true in certain types of games; a bigger failure would be not establishing what type of game it's going to be before going in, tbh. I may prefer playing one character from the start to the end, but I'm not going to assume that's the type of game it is before going on, and if I find out it's not, I'll either be prepared for that or be able to pass on the game if I'm not in the mood for that.

I think neither you or your friend are wrong, I think you're just applying your own truths a bit too widely. In your games, a TPK would be a failure on your part, based on your priorities, what you're trying to do, and the type of game you're trying to run. In your friend's games, a TPK would not be a failure. When playing in his game, you and the rest of the party should know to be more careful because he will not pull punches on a party wipe if you guys do something boneheaded; when playing in your game, he and the rest of that party should be able to accept that TPKs are not in your cards. Both are entirely reasonable.

ETA:


That's something to talk through at session 0: are you playing on hardcore difficulty? Do you want any degree of plot armor? Are you willing to have utter, abject failure as a possible ending to a campaign?

If your players answer with "we want to experience a cool story, where there are lots of heroics and we're the adventurers saving the world" and "yeah, I'd imagine that we'd be captured by the BBEG, not coup-de-grace'd by his mooks in a ditch at level 2", then a TPK could be a real failure of the DM.

If your players say "we're here for the challenge, and a gritty, realistic story" or "throw deadly encounters at us and we'll see what the dice say", then a TPK may well perfectly reasonable.

Tiadoppler said it better than I did, though again I'd like to add that it's not just the players' choice during Session 0; if you have a strong preference about the style of game you want to run, that's also something you should bring up in Session 0, or while looking around for players, to make sure everyone is on board with that and aware of it ahead of time.

[willdaBEAST]

However, my feeling is that while individual player death can enhance or change a story, a party wipe simply ends it. The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

I can think of a lot of ways that having all of the protagonists die can lead to a satisfying conclusion: the party was acting as a diversion and nobly sacrificed themselves, the death of notable heroes brought a lot of attention to the BBEG and began their eventual downfall, the campaign was an attempt to subvert the concept of heroes always succeeding, the villain may have "won" but they're still trapped in a personal hell, etc.

How a TPK is perceived is going to depend greatly on your players and the story you're telling together. Some stories just end, abruptly and messily, like in real life. I think it's inconsistent to view player death as something that can enhance a story and a TPK as something that can't. A TPK also doesn't mean the campaign is over, you could have the story pick up when the children of the original party are old enough to seek vengeance for their parents.

I'm not encouraging you to TPK your party and I'm not sure if I ever will for my own games, but I think you should challenge any definitive statement about something being detrimental to the story. There's always going to be an exception, maybe not for you, but stating that a DM is negligent for TPKing is a gross simplification.

[Catullus64]

I think neither you or your friend are wrong, I think you're just applying your own truths a bit too widely. In your games, a TPK would be a failure on your part, based on your priorities, what you're trying to do, and the type of game you're trying to run. In your friend's games, a TPK would not be a failure. When playing in his game, you and the rest of the party should know to be more careful because he will not pull punches on a party wipe if you guys do something boneheaded; when playing in your game, he and the rest of that party should be able to accept that TPKs are not in your cards. Both are entirely reasonable.



I think that it's very important to try to derive broader rules and truths from one's individual experiences. While I accept that my friend has the power to set these objectives and goals when he's at the head of the table, at the root of this dissent is a dispute about which attitude towards the game is inherently more worthwhile. I accept that other people have different attitudes towards what they want out of the game, but it would be silly of me to pretend that I don't think my attitude is the best one for everybody. If I didn't think it was best to play the game, I wouldn't play it that way myself. I think one kind of roleplaying is better than the other, and want to see more people play it that way. Selfish? Yes, but an honest and straightforward kind of selfishness.

[Unoriginal]

while the PC's provide responses to scenarios, and experience the various catharses of the plot

Not sure what you mean by this, because that sentence makes no sense as it is or at least require more explanations.

Catharsis is a feeling of cleansing of emotions the audience of a work experience, or a release of emotional tension.



Whether or not the players enjoy the process of gameplay and decision making is, in my view, entirely dependent on that act of establishing context for actions.

This is a tautology. It's the DM's work to provide the world in which the players will make the PCs make decisions and actions, so of course the player's enjoyment is dependent on that.




When the entire party dies, there is no longer a frame for establishing context, unless that death occurs at a structurally appropriate time, i.e., the ending of a narrative arc.

There is no such thing as a "structuraly appropriate time" in a RPG. Characters might die at any moment where the chance to die exist, and so it's possible for all of them to die.

The concept of "narrative arc" or "structure" barely applicable for a TTRPG, because while events happen probably in the sense of a storyline, there is no way to know what will happen. Maybe the PCs will befriend the Hill Giant. Maybe the PCs will decide the king need to die so they can spook his son into signing the peace treaty. Maybe they'll spend half a session on a red herring or trying to solve a personal PC issue rather than talking to the contact who knows what's going on with the bank heist.

And nobody knows how the story will develop.


it is part of a broader claim about what makes this game most meaningful to everybody, regardless of individual preference.

What makes the game meaningful IS that there are individual preferences.


The game is best served when player choices are structured into a meaningful order by a single storyteller, the DM, who has the information and planning to provide such context.

No.

Maybe you, personally, like campaigns where the DM has a strong storyline the characters follow, but it is by no mean an universal truth nor anything more than a preference.



into a meaningful order


What does "meaningful order" mean? If, in an adventure about mysterious demon cultists performing human sacrifices in a duchy, the PCs manage to bypass some portions of the adventure because they figured the Duke was the culprit, and then decide to ally with the Thieves' Guild to expose him rather than presenting their evidence to the Lord-General as the DM planned, are they not following the "meaningful order" ?



I view a TPK as, excepting special circumstances like a proper tragedy, a categorical denial of such order and context.

Either such order and context is something that is categorically denied every times the players decide to do something not following the rails the DM has placed for them, or such order and context don't exist in a TTRPG.

[Catullus64]

Not sure what you mean by this, because that sentence makes no sense as it is or at least require more explanations.

Catharsis is a feeling of cleansing of emotions the audience of a work experience, or a release of emotional tension.

...

There is no such thing as a "structuraly appropriate time" in a RPG. Characters might die at any moment where the chance to die exist, and so it's possible for all of them to die.

The concept of "narrative arc" or "structure" barely applicable for a TTRPG, because while events happen probably in the sense of a storyline, there is no way to know what will happen. Maybe the PCs will befriend the Hill Giant. Maybe the PCs will decide the king need to die so they can spook his son into signing the peace treaty. Maybe they'll spend half a session on a red herring or trying to solve a personal PC issue rather than talking to the contact who knows what's going on with the bank heist.

...

Maybe you, personally, like campaigns where the DM has a strong storyline the characters follow, but it is by no mean an universal truth nor anything more than a preference.



To the first objection: That, too, is what I understand catharsis to be. The players experience something of the emotions of their characters and undergo a cleansing of their own similar tensions. Sorry if my wording muddied that definition.

To the second objection: Simply because the PC's make variable decisions does not mean the story has no rhyme or reason. Since you as the DM present the events to which the players will react, you still have great discretion in determining the pace at which things develop, and what consequences their actions have. In that sense, the players provide the premise of the story by acting, and you provide the resolution by describing consequences.

To the third: It is indeed my personal preference, but it wouldn't be my preference if I didn't think it was also more universally grounded, and that it had some objective superiority to less narratively controlled games.

[Drascin]

It really depends on what the game is.

Is your story so plot-focused that the player characters couldn't be realistically swapped out for an entirely different party and continue as if nothing happened?

This called my attention. My experience is that "swapping for an entirely different party" is almost invariably a diminishing of the campaign. Everything that had happened before, every NPC the players befriended, every relationship, every rivalry, poof, all that is either entirely gone or so damaged you might as well scrap it. A campaign where you could "continue as if nothing happened" sounds like a spherical cow to my ears.

In fact, as I mentioned on another recent thread on a similar topic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22741155&postcount=65), experiences with this complete break in characterization that TPKs represent were the thing that made me decide that TPKs were basically never worth it for me as a GM, and to install various rules to make the chance of death vanishingly small.

[Tiadoppler]

if you have a strong preference about the style of game you want to run, that's also something you should bring up in Session 0, or while looking around for players, to make sure everyone is on board with that and aware of it ahead of time.


Great point! DM/Player communication in general solves so many problems before they happen.




If I didn't think it was best to play the game, I wouldn't play it that way myself. I think one kind of roleplaying is better than the other, and want to see more people play it that way. Selfish? Yes, but an honest and straightforward kind of selfishness.


Disclaimer: The following is all just random, rambling opinions.

People get offended when someone says "this is the right way/that is the wrong way". That's why you're getting so much pushback about your opinion. D&D is a medium for telling stories, it isn't a genre in and of itself. Genre might be "comedy" or "tragedy" or even "hero's journey".

D&D is a somewhat reasonable game system for running stories with lots of different genres. Perhaps one game has a team of underfunded and underprepared civilians, soldiers and scholars facing off against an unknowable terror from the depths of time, and another game has a group of half-a-dozen friends who take time off their day jobs to meet and befriend anyone who might scare or threaten their village. No, D&D isn't designed as a perfect simulation of Call of Cthulhu or My Little Pony, but it can still serve as the mechanical backbone for either of those stories and infinitely many more.

[MxKit]

I think that it's very important to try to derive broader rules and truths from one's individual experiences.

Sometimes, when it comes down to subjective ideas about what's fun in a game, and there can be multiple different things that people find varying degrees of fun, there's no such thing as a broader truth. It's like ice cream flavors: I really love vanilla and chocolate and strawberry, and somebody else might love chocolate and like vanilla a lot and enjoy strawberry well enough, and somebody might only like vanilla. At that point, the latter person saying "it's a mistake to serve anything but vanilla ice cream!" is drawing from individual experience and not even the slightest bit helpful or true.


at the root of this dissent is a dispute about which attitude towards the game is inherently more worthwhile.

What's "inherently more worthwhile" is if everyone at a table is having fun with the game style that they've decided upon. There are multiple people here saying they find it fun to play in games where, for whatever reason, TPKs are on the table; I think trying to argue that they're mistaken about their preferences and/or that their preferences and their fun isn't as "worthwhile" is folly.


I accept that other people have different attitudes towards what they want out of the game, but it would be silly of me to pretend that I don't think my attitude is the best one for everybody. If I didn't think it was best to play the game, I wouldn't play it that way myself. I think one kind of roleplaying is better than the other, and want to see more people play it that way. Selfish? Yes, but an honest and straightforward kind of selfishness.

I mean, this isn't just selfish, that's not really the problem here. It's flawed logically and bordering on nonsensical. If it was just "I prefer X kind of roleplaying and selfishly wish most tables did it X way because that would guarantee I'd have the most fun I could possibly have at any table I sat down at," that would be one thing and I could even sympathize, because selfish wishes that the things we like would cater to us are common as anything. But what you're actually saying is "I know other people want different things out of their games than I do, but I still think they should want what I do out of games and that it would somehow be more fun for them if they didn't play the games the way they actually want to, because if any other style of play was subjectively for anyone else then I wouldn't have my own personal preferences." Bwuh?

[Catullus64]

I mean, this isn't just selfish, that's not really the problem here. It's flawed logically and bordering on nonsensical. If it was just "I prefer X kind of roleplaying and selfishly wish most tables did it X way because that would guarantee I'd have the most fun I could possibly have at any table I sat down at," that would be one thing and I could even sympathize, because selfish wishes that the things we like would cater to us are common as anything. But what you're actually saying is "I know other people want different things out of their games than I do, but I still think they should want what I do out of games and that it would somehow be more fun for them if they didn't play the games the way they actually want to, because if any other style of play was subjectively for anyone else then I wouldn't have my own personal preferences." Bwuh?

No, that bolded bit is pretty much what I meant.

[Unoriginal]

To the first objection: That, too, is what I understand catharsis to be. The players experience something of the emotions of their characters and undergo a cleansing of their own similar tensions. Sorry if my wording muddied that definition.

So to you playing Dungeons & Dragons is about cleaning oneself of one's violent/taboo urges?



To the second objection: Simply because the PC's make variable decisions does not mean the story has no rhyme or reason. Since you as the DM present the events to which the players will react, you still have great discretion in determining the pace at which things develop, and what consequences their actions have. In that sense, the players provide the premise of the story by acting, and you provide the resolution by describing consequences.


As players and DMs interact, a RPG session should be expected to be coherent. It's not the same thing as being structured. Not in the narrative sense, at least.



To the third: It is indeed my personal preference, but it wouldn't be my preference if I didn't think it was also more universally grounded, and that it had some objective superiority to less narratively controlled games.

Really, you're unable or unwilling to conceive how other people's preferences on a subjective topic can be as equally valid as yours ?

[Catullus64]

So to you playing Dungeons & Dragons is about cleaning oneself of one's violent/taboo urges?


Really, you're unable or unwilling to conceive how other people's preferences on a subjective topic can be as equally valid as yours ?

Question 1: Yep!

Question 2: Nope!

[Waterdeep Merch]

This called my attention. My experience is that "swapping for an entirely different party" is almost invariably a diminishing of the campaign. Everything that had happened before, every NPC the players befriended, every relationship, every rivalry, poof, all that is either entirely gone or so damaged you might as well scrap it. A campaign where you could "continue as if nothing happened" sounds like a spherical cow to my ears.

In fact, as I mentioned on another recent thread on a similar topic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22741155&postcount=65), experiences with this complete break in characterization that TPKs represent were the thing that made me decide that TPKs were basically never worth it for me as a GM, and to install various rules to make the chance of death vanishingly small.
It's not meant as a condemnation to games that aren't like this- rather, it addresses a niche. Some people really do just run a giant dungeon crawl, where the player experiencing it is all that matters. Whole party dies, no big deal. Play new characters. Old players leave and new ones come in? You can continue running it, no problem, because the existence of specific players is ultimately inconsequential. Even interactions with NPC's aren't all that important if said NPC's aren't dramatically important.

While I'm too young to have experienced it myself (aside from the occasional retro experience), this is what old school dungeon crawling meant to a lot of people. You often see it these days in roguelike video games. It's not for everyone, nor is it for every game, but it's a niche where a TPK is a perfectly acceptable thing.

[Unoriginal]

No, that bolded bit is pretty much what I meant.

Then say so and don't pretend it's an universal.


We all believe we're right, to some level, probably. I immensely dislike Pathfinder, for exemple, and I think my reasons for that are valid. Yet "Pathfinder is ****" is nothing but a subjective statement. "Pathfinder has a lot of player options for the purpose of making people search through them and it is possible to create characters that overshadow others easily" is an objective statement, and some people enjoy that about Pathfinder.



Question 1: Yep!


Well ok, then. I must say I never used D&D to purge myself of any desire to hurt people or engage in antisocial actions, but ok.


Question 2: Nope!

Alright.

So, there is no reason for anyone to respond to this thread.

You're clear you don't want to consider others' points-of-view, so the best we can do is to not bother.

[ngilop]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

This was the statement over which I had a fairly long and meaningful discussion with a friend. Both the friend and myself are players in each other's campaigns. The argument I made, compacted above, requires a few qualifiers:

This is specifically to do with party wipes, not player death in general.
This is meant to be a general maxim; of course there will be extreme scenarios where the players recklessly and suicidally get in over their heads. However, my feeling is that while individual player death can enhance or change a story, a party wipe simply ends it. The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.

Further meditations on the subject would be welcome.

I do not understand how a player's death can enhance or change a story, can you explain it to me.

[BurgerBeast]

I'll never agree with this.

Some people prefer quality.

It's no different than any endeavour. If you want to simply have fun, then go ahead. If you want to play the best D&D you can, then go for it.

But don't try to pass off having fun as the best way to play or the way it's meant to be played. That's not true for anything.

At some point, you must concede that the "fun" (satisfaction is a better term) is the net result of continuously playing D&D well. If it wasn't, then D&D would not be the pretext.

Play D&D well. Satisfaction will follow. Fun, when the word itself is not intentionally vague, is fickle and overrated.

[Angelalex242]

My thought:

TPKs are fine.

But if the players don't want the campaign to end...

"The Gods of Light bring you all back, and make it very clear you're going to be damned to the Abyss if you screw up again."

You don't have to save the player's lives in a world where the Gods can bring people back cause they felt like it.

(Also, if a cleric has the Divine Intervention ability, just rule it automatically successful in the event of a TPK. 'Roll' it behind the screen, and away ya go)

[ad_hoc]

I wouldn't want to play in a game without TPKs.

I don't really see the point. There is no real triumph.

I also don't want the DM to change things to make the story they want to tell. I want the story to be what it is. A product of everyone at the table.

A TPK is just the end of one story. It's easy enough to start another.

[Catullus64]

You're clear you don't want to consider others' points-of-view, so the best we can do is to not bother.

Apologies if I have made a pointless thread. It's true that I think my opinions are demonstrably better than everybody else's, but I'm also ordinarily quite good at pretending that they aren't for social convenience.
I simply felt compelled to answer truthfully when you asked me so directly whether or not I was willing to consider others' opinions as equally valid to my own.

Many people have claimed that fun is fun, and that whatever people enjoy is valid for that reason alone. I probably agree, but there is always that niggling little voice, whispering out of the sociopathic core of the human soul: "Everybody else isn't having as much fun as they say they are." This is just me, and maybe it's just projection to say that everybody else also thinks like that.

[white lancer]

I mean, I agree with the original point more than I disagree. There are probably scenarios where a TPK could be satisfying enough for it to be worth it, but I don't think they come up all that often. The problem with the "this is a game" argument to me is that unlike most games, you're devoting dozens and dozens of hours to the one campaign, so I would be utterly dissatisfied for it to end abruptly...so for it to work for me, the campaign would probably have to continue in some capacity, with some connection to the actions of the defeated party.

There are plenty of ways for a DM to avoid an unwanted TPK while still letting the dice fall where they may. Depending on the enemies, they could have some reason to stabilize and capture the PCs post-combat, or some form of (literal or metaphorical) deus ex machina could occur, perhaps concerning allies of the PC. And those don't have to be without consequences, either--for instance, if the enemies are taking captives, anyone who failed their three death saves before the last PC went unconscious is still dead, and they still have to find a way out of captivity. Any villainous plan the PCs were trying to stop will have progressed or even completed in the meantime, or maybe they'll have lost some gear, or whatnot. To me, failures that still allow the campaign to continue with consequences are more interesting than campaign-ending failures.

All that being said, if people want to be playing in campaigns where a true TPK is a possibility, more power to them. I'm not going to tell anyone how not to have fun--I just prefer something different.

[Pex]

If the players are told out of character a beholder lives in The Swamp Of Doom or even in character and verified to be Honest True but they confront it at level 5, players' fault for a TPK.

The 5th level party arrives in a village. The people tell them the Swamp Of Doom is dangerous. Anyone who goes in there never return. The players see "plot hook" and go into the swamp to discover the danger and end it. Entering a cave, they are confronted by a beholder who promptly kills them all. The DM self-righteously says "The villagers told you the Swamp of Doom was dangerous and no one returns. It's your own stupid fault." No way. That's the DM being a donkey cavity. It's the DM's fault.

When it's the 13th level party that goes into the swamp to confront the danger, finds the beholder, but dice luck did not go their way resulting in a TPK, that's disappointing but no one's fault. No, wait, it's the dice's fault. They should be melted and pulverized into oblivion.

[Xetheral]

I'll never agree with this.

Some people prefer quality.

It's no different than any endeavour. If you want to simply have fun, then go ahead. If you want to play the best D&D you can, then go for it.

But don't try to pass off having fun as the best way to play or the way it's meant to be played. That's not true for anything.

At some point, you must concede that the "fun" (satisfaction is a better term) is the net result of continuously playing D&D well. If it wasn't, then D&D would not be the pretext.

Play D&D well. Satisfaction will follow. Fun, when the word itself is not intentionally vague, is fickle and overrated.

What constitutes "playing D&D well" would seem to be just as subjective as any other preference....

For some people, "playing D&D well" will be about trying to win tactical combats against challenging enemies. To others, "playing D&D well" will be about playing at a strategic level where a "win" means avoiding tactical challenges. To others, "playing D&D well" means embodying your character to the extent that you start thinking in-character. To others, "playing D&D well" will be about making IC and OOC choices at the table that mazimize everyone's enjoyment. To others, "playing D&D well" is about balancing all of the above according to the personal preferences of the participants.

What does "playing D&D well" mean to you? And why should it apply to anyone else?

[Chugger]

If the players are told out of character a beholder lives in The Swamp Of Doom or even in character and verified to be Honest True but they confront it at level 5, players' fault for a TPK.

The 5th level party arrives in a village. The people tell them the Swamp Of Doom is dangerous. Anyone who goes in there never return. The players see "plot hook" and go into the swamp to discover the danger and end it. Entering a cave, they are confronted by a beholder who promptly kills them all. The DM self-righteously says "The villagers told you the Swamp of Doom was dangerous and no one returns. It's your own stupid fault." No way. That's the DM being a donkey cavity. It's the DM's fault.

When it's the 13th level party that goes into the swamp to confront the danger, finds the beholder, but dice luck did not go their way resulting in a TPK, that's disappointing but no one's fault. No, wait, it's the dice's fault. They should be melted and pulverized into oblivion.

Thank you, Pex <-- one of the few people bringing sanity to this forum!

[BurgerBeast]

What constitutes "playing D&D well" would seem to be just as subjective as any other preference....

For some people, "playing D&D well" will be about trying to win tactical combats against challenging enemies. To others, "playing D&D well" will be about playing at a strategic level where a "win" means avoiding tactical challenges. To others, "playing D&D well" means embodying your character to the extent that you start thinking in-character. To others, "playing D&D well" will be about making IC and OOC choices at the table that mazimize everyone's enjoyment. To others, "playing D&D well" is about balancing all of the above according to the personal preferences of the participants.

What does "playing D&D well" mean to you? And why should it apply to anyone else?

It’s not “just as subjevtive as any other preference.” There are at least three kinds of preference (that I can think of) that vary in degree of subjectivity.

1. Pure taste. Do tomatoes taste good? What’s your favourite colour?

These are purely matters of taste and disagreements are pointless and stupid. You can’t possibly be better at defending the truth than the person making the claim.

2. Informed estimations. Who is the best football player in the world? Which field of study is the most important?

There is room for difference in the individual’s ability to estimate the truth of the matter. There is room to disagree over the criteria that are important. It is possible to correctly claim that some views are categorically wrong (i.e. there is no reasonable criteria by which one can reasonably claim that BurgerBeast is the best footballer in the world).

3. Judgments about course of action. Which treatment would be best for Jim’s lung cancer? How might we go about building a bridge in a particular location?

These are judgments about course of action for future events, so the truly best answer can not be known until the task is attempted (and not even necessarily then). Experts are decidedly better at this than novices.

...

So, before we can get into a debate about whether the point of D&D is to have fun, it’s helpful to think about some things:

1. If a group sits down to play D&D, is there a range of activities that we could rightly claim are actually not D&D, even though the group insists that what they’re doing is playing D&D?

I think the answer is clearly “yes.”

2. Within the range of activities that are rightly considered D&D, is it possible to distinguish between examples that are truer to what D&D is than others?

Again, I think he answer is a pretty clear “yes.”

...

Just as two different groups of people can get together and play soccer, and we can say that one group is “playing better,” I contend that two groups of people can get together and play D&D, and one group can “play better.”

This is not to say that the same factors are in play, but generally such things as level of attention, seriousness, intensity, depth can come into okay.

And I don’t necessarily mean seriousness of tone. You can play a comedic game more seriously than someone else does. You can take the comedy seriously and try.

...

At the end of the day, whatever activity you select in order to have fun, the question of whether you’re having fun is an independent question from whether you’re doing the activity well. Some people prefer to do something well, because the satisfaction gained from an endeavour done well outweights the more trivial concern with fun.

“Did you have fun at the movie?” is a different question than “Was it a good movie?” And the distinction is an important one.

Edit: I’m not claiming that it “should” matter. I’m claiming that it is a real distinction and it does matter. Whether you or anyone cares is different. You can do something well and hate it. You can do something poorly and love it. They’re independent considerations.

[Malifice]

I would argue this as follows:

1) It is the DM's job to make encounters that challenge the party. If they are not doing that, then they're not doing the job properly.

2) A difficult encounter should lead to the occasional player death.

3) Bad roles are not the problem of the DM. If you take a DM's difficult encounter that might kill a player or two, and the players get bad rolls, maybe the DM should fudge some numbers here or there, but they aren't required to. This can sometimes lead to a TPK.

4) A DM that PLANS for a TPK without good reason* isn't doing their job right either.


*For instance, the party is sacrificing themselves for the greater good, or the players all know that this will be the last session with those particular characters, etc.

Would you play a video game where everytime you died, you had to create an entirely new PC and start again?

There is a reason that such games dont really exist.

TPKs should be avoided by the DM (fudging dice rolls, or 'you all wake up imprisoned...' type of thing).

[DeadMech]

Ordinarily I'd agree that TPK's especially repeated ones are the Dm's fault. It tends to be a result of one of a number of things and most of them are in the DM's control.

The DM refusing to share information is high on the list. If something is so clearly suicidal that you can't believe the players are trying to do it and you can't forsee any realistic out for the party then clearly you know more about the situation than the players do. Sometimes players do stupid things like attack the king in the middle of court or try to steal from the obviously incredibly rich and powerful caster that sells magic items but in every instance I've seen someone even think about it, when a DM tells them it's a bad idea they have backed down. But players declaring they walk into the forest after what appears to be an appropriate quest hook only to be ambushed by an impossible to beat enemy or the party attempting to find a peaceful resolution to an encounter with the highway bandits they found on the road only to end up surrounded and their wizard in base contact with the leader are not examples of what I consider fair play.

Lack of system mastery on the DM's part is the next most common thing I see. Some enemies punch well above their CR and it takes experience to pick appropriate fights for a party. Everyone remembers the first time they saw a giant crab played in 3.5. The revenant my party recently fought in 5e was one shotting people every turn and was only one out of two failed vengeful glare saves away from finishing off the airborne wizard to complete the TPK. A ghost we fought could have killed the party either by aging them on a failed save or by possessing the right PC. It didn't help in that example the DM forgot spell casting is a class feature it's not allowed to use. Had my airborne wizard tossing AOE's on my own party. The only person with dispel good and evil luckily was the Aasimar who had a method of flying so she could use it on me. The Wraith fought in that same battle could instantly kill someone at full health with a crit and a failed save with it's maximum hp reduction. Pretty sure someone went down to it but passed the save so didn't die outright. In the previous campaign a specter succeeded in one hit killing someone thanks to a crit. Turns out level 1 PC's tend to have less than 20 maximum HP. In fact some have less than the 10 average damage it can do on a regular hit.

[Beelzebubba]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

Wrong.


My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.

D&D is not a story. It's a game that generates a story.

The entire point of a game is player agency, mediated by uncontrollable external factors (dice) and structure (rules). The players choose, the dice mediate, the rules arbitrate, the DM and players narrate.

Not all stories have happy endings.

If you don't let the dice and rules mediate the conclusion, you're BSing yourself and your players. You pretend like the dice matter, that risks are real, that there is actually something at stake, but you railroad it to the script in your head instead.


Further meditations on the subject would be welcome.

I have one meditation: Games like yours have all the drama of a fixed boxing match. They only work until everyone realizes you've decided what the outcome will be ahead of time. Then it's all a lie.


Here, I fixed it for you:


A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a sometimes failure of the Dungeon Master.

Ah. Better.

[Coffee_Dragon]

The entire point of a game is player agency, mediated by uncontrollable external factors (dice) and structure (rules). The players choose, the dice mediate, the rules arbitrate, the DM and players narrate.

Not all stories have happy endings.

If you don't let the dice and rules mediate the conclusion, you're BSing yourself and your players. You pretend like the dice matter, that risks are real, that there is actually something at stake, but you railroad it to the script in your head instead.

This is a false dichotomy between Story Later and Story Before. There is also Story Now, which the OP may have been driving at, although it's not really clear to me.

OP, could you elaborate slightly on what you and your friend respectively mean by "player agency"? Do not assume they must be the same, or the same as what people will express in this thread.

[Vance_Nevada]

Would you play a video game where everytime you died, you had to create an entirely new PC and start again?

There is a reason that such games dont really exist.

They do, in fact, exist. They're called roguelikes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike), and a lot of the point of them is to see how far you can get with a character before you get perma-killed and have to start a new character.

If you choose to play DnD this way, it's fairly easy to do so. You won't get much of a story, but plenty of games of DnD have been played around the concept of "There's loot in thar dungeon" and sending a group of PCs in to get murdered, replacing them with different PCs as necessary. Not my preferred method of play, but by all means a valid one. TPKs are just a part of life there.

[LeonBH]

"I prefer X kind of roleplaying and selfishly wish most tables did it X way because that would guarantee I'd have the most fun I could possibly have at any table I sat down at,"

No, that bolded bit is pretty much what I meant.

So, why are we even having a thread about this, again?

[Vaz]

I can't help but feel that if you want TPK's, there are better vehicles than DnD for it. All the planning, all the swinginess, the time it takes to do something. You might as well just play Blackjack, or roll a D20. They get it over and done with quicker.

1, 2, or 3 character deaths are meaningful during a difficult encounter, but I think a TPK cheapens everything. If you were invested in a character with their goals and desires, then they are lost, forever.

We have a player who used to regularly turn up and just do stupid things and ended up getting killed on the reg. Brought in a new character almost 1/month. It severely detracted from the game and the stories that everyone else was being involved with. Every month, a DM had to find a way to get the guy into the party (and as the DM was actually a published short story writer, even he found it hard to not just say and you see a new guy who joins the party. It gets stressful.

Now, imagine doing Out of the Abyss. The party gets TPK'd within the first 3 chapters, sure, restart with new guys from somewhere else, or with survivors from the Velkyvelve Garrison, smarting at the escape. Imagine they get TPK'd at chapter 11, after 12 months of playing?

In the same way that there are people who extol the virtues of fumbles on a 1, there are going to be people who extol the virtues of dying. I don't have a problem with death as a resource, but ending a game for the purpose of a TPK? Gotta agree that the DM has maybe messed up somewhere.

As a DM I get so happy when players use their characters to overcome an obstacle or challenge. Sometimes they just need a helping hand because they've done everything cool, they've had fun, and now they're rewarded with having to give up that character? If the parry aren't running an ultralethal high tier party, I don't put in encounters that I expect them to fail. Its i e of the reason why a Storm Kings Thunder Campaign recently came to an end: the DM rolled for an Ancient White Dragon encounter when we were level 7. He told us what he rolled, and we insisted at the start to play it that way. What you roll is what you get. But hey, yeah, there goes 6 months of playing, for a random encounter. Wonderful.

If people want to play with 30 different character archetypes, there are dozens of games which are quicker to run and more lethal if you want to retire or kill off a character. The easiest ones are video games. It takes less effort for one. You can even play Hardcore if that strokes your boat on something lile Diablo. DnD is an awful vessel for trying new mechanics out, due to the time invested.

I've read the thread, and aside from people saying 'nuh uh your opiniom is wrong' there really been a cogent explanation that explains why TPK's are good.

[Unoriginal]

I've read the thread, and aside from people saying 'nuh uh your opiniom is wrong' there really been a cogent explanation that explains why TPK's are good.

Unless explicitly decided before the start of the game, all the PCs involved in an adventure risk to die.

Since all the PCs have chances to die, it means that it's possible for all of them to die at the same time (or close enough that it doesn't make a difference).

Failure has to be a risk in order for something to be a success. Death has to be a risk, however faint, in order to make the PCs live an adventure with success and rewards instead of just a scripted walk-in-the-park where enemies will implode from their own non-importance no matter what the PCs do. Total Party Kill has to be a risk in order to make Total Party Victory awesome and rewarding.


Now, of course, the rest is a question of presentation and opinions. Some people would enjoy a meatgrinder campaign more than others, and there is nothing wrong with that. And if a DM decides to randomly throw you against a behemoth you have no chance to beat or escape from, it can be pretty jarring. But I'd much rather play a game where an Adult Dragon risks to kill level 7 PCs than one that is, like it was said above in the thread, nothing more than a boxing match with a fixed outcome.

[ad_hoc]

Failure has to be a risk in order for something to be a success. Death has to be a risk, however faint, in order to make the PCs live an adventure with success and rewards instead of just a scripted walk-in-the-park where enemies will implode from their own non-importance no matter what the PCs do. Total Party Kill has to be a risk in order to make Total Party Victory awesome and rewarding.


This is it. Necessary for success and allows for a non-scripted game.

The idea that allowing TPKs will result in one every 2-4 weeks is silly. They happen where they happen.

A TPK after 11 months of play sounds like a memorable end to an epic campaign.

Allowing it also changes the way the game is played. This might not be apparent if a table has never played this way.

This happened a couple sessions ago -

Characters were 3rd level and were suddenly confronted by an Ogre and a Dire Wolf. They chose to jump into a chasm (casting Feather Fall on the way) instead of facing that threat. It was an unexpected move. They had no idea what was down there and how they might get back up. What they did know is that they might all die. There were stakes. They spent time making those characters and being introduced to the adventure.

[oxybe]

I remember someone saying that years ago the levels of a dungeon were akin to a measure of difficulty: the deeper in the dungeon you go, the harder the fights and better the rewards, but to go deeper was entirely your (the player's) choice. YMMV as will a person's experience, but mine with the older editions has been sorta along those lines. Sorta.

In that sort of situation, if a TPK happens, I'm fine with it. The players chose to take the extra risk and it blew up in their face. They could've stayed on floor 1 and went home with a few coppers and a few XP for their kobold-kicking troubles, but they went deeper and got murdered by a hobgoblin phalanx doing military exercises. Had they gotten the jump on those hobgoblins and filled them full of arrows from hiding, they would have left with a nice cache of weapons and slightly damaged armour, maybe a map and some war funds.

However, I start having a problem with TPKs when "Here is the adventure for tonight, play it or we don't play at all" is the mantra. If you're going to force a manticore or whatever down the players' throats and tell them to deal with it, when in all truth had they been given any options or foreshadowing they would have said no we don't want to deal with a manticore as it's above our pay grade, then yes, I fully blame the GM if a TPK happens.

Final note: If they players keep rolling nothing but 1's all night at that point and are getting the stuffing kicked out of them by kobolds, I'd probably throw them a bone and give them some sort of potential exit, but if they press on it's their funeral. I'm not a big fan of just letting raw bad luck kill off an entire party.

In short: I'd rather light a fire and let the PCs decide if it's worth jumping in or not for the coin among the coals, then forcibly light them on fire and call myself a good GM when they all die.
----------------------------------------------------------
On Roguelike videogames: do note that the strength of these games is that it gets you right back into play VERY fast. There's no faffing about with introducing your character to a group. It's largely "Here is your character, here is your dungeon, do you want to skip this scene Y/N and go!"

[jas61292]

D&D is a game. Not a story. Games have stories, but they are not stories in and of themselves, and the quality of a game is not solely dependant on it's story. Sometimes a game might have a disappointing ending, but if everything else about it was good, it was still a good game. But when the game changes itself just to fit the story, it ceases to be a game in a meaningful sense.

I'm interested in playing games, and some times people can lose at a game. That is good, because if you can't lose, where is the fun in victory?

[Drascin]

...personally, the idea that the only risk of failure is the risk of death strikes me as weird. Characters can fail at a lot of things without needing to die.

In fact, base survival is more or less the single least interesting possible stake for a fight, I find. It's the gluten-less oatmeal of fights. The best fights are always for something - pride, honor, a macguffin, protecting someone, whatever.

I mean, heck, I've GMed for straight up immortal characters. Not in the ageless sense, in the "if disintegrated and thrown into lava will reform in a week" sense. It's not particularly harder, and the fights had plenty enough stakes to engage the players.

[Mikal]

...personally, the idea that the only risk of failure is the risk of death strikes me as weird. Characters can fail at a lot of things without needing to die.

In fact, base survival is more or less the single least interesting possible stake for a fight, I find. It's the gluten-less oatmeal of fights. The best fights are always for something - pride, honor, a macguffin, protecting someone, whatever.

The risk of death isn't the only risk of failure, but if the players know that their DM will do anything possible to keep the PCs from dying, than the danger of combat is lessened.

"Oh, he'll handwave us dying, so sure, charge the dragon with the bottles of explosive liquid, see what happens."

[Drascin]

The risk of death isn't the only risk of failure, but if the players know that their DM will do anything possible to keep the PCs from dying, than the danger of combat is lessened.

"Oh, he'll handwave us dying, so sure, charge the dragon with the bottles of explosive liquid, see what happens."

I was more replying to Unoriginal's assertion that the risk of death was necessary for success to exist. I just left the tab open and forgot to click send until four hours later. My bad.

[Mikal]

I was more replying to Unoriginal's assertion that the risk of death was necessary for success to exist. I just left the tab open and forgot to click send until four hours later. My bad.

No worries! That being said, I agree then. There are many types of failure that make success worthwhile.

[Unoriginal]

...personally, the idea that the only risk of failure is the risk of death strikes me as weird. Characters can fail at a lot of things without needing to die.

In fact, base survival is more or less the single least interesting possible stake for a fight, I find. It's the gluten-less oatmeal of fights. The best fights are always for something - pride, honor, a macguffin, protecting someone, whatever.

There are many ways to fail, sure, but when it's not death, it's a failure that lead somewhere.

Fight to stop one step of the BBEG's plans and be forced to retreat? It's a failure, but the stakes are now higher and new awesome things can result from it.

Fight to catch the thief before he flees the city, and be too slow? A failure, but now you can quest to find them.

Fight for your honor and get defeated? A failure, but now you can play out the aftermath, and have a great RP where you'll either rise again or not.

Fight for your life and die, along with the rest of the party? That's it. The PCs' involvement is over. This is the scary kind of failure. The kind of failure you'll fight teeth and nails to avoid.


And it's what makes the stakes be worth anything. In a world where if your buddies survive they can theoreticaly bring you back, at least at higher levels, the possibility of a TPK is the only way you're not playing it safe.

[Drascin]

No worries! That being said, I agree then. There are many types of failure that make success worthwhile.

That said, I stand by my statement that worry about survival is the lamest, least powerful motivator in an RPG. I genuinely feel like anyone who would do this...


"Oh, he'll handwave us dying, so sure, charge the dragon with the bottles of explosive liquid, see what happens."

...is the kind of player that doesn't bother to invest enough into his character that the character dying is much of a bother. The simple fact is that under most tables, if you don't care about narrative coherence losing your character is the softest slap on the wrist possible - you just get a new character at the same level and equipped to parity to the party. The "punishment" to the player that does something silly is forty five minutes playing the chargen game, while for the GM and the other players, the "punishment" is managing to finagle a new guy into the party without breaking whatever plot the players had going there.

In fact, my anecdotal experience is that killing players often leads to more of that kind of stuff, as the rotation of characters makes it much harder for the party to really build a narrative to be attached to, and players that feel no particular attachment are more prone to do stuff like "Imma shoot a fireball at the glowing, highly reactive, highly volatile magical mutagen" (you may wonder why this is so specific, let's just say this is not a theorethical scenario, no :smalltongue:). As I've ramped down lethality up to the point of giving my players straight up plot armor openly, this kind of "stupid" stuff has practically disappeared, even with newer players.

[MaxWilson]

...is the kind of player that doesn't bother to invest enough into his character that the character dying is much of a bother. The simple fact is that under most tables, if you don't care about narrative coherence losing your character is the softest slap on the wrist possible - you just get a new character at the same level and equipped to parity to the party. The "punishment" to the player that does something silly is forty five minutes playing the chargen game, while for the GM and the other players, the "punishment" is managing to finagle a new guy into the party without breaking whatever plot the players had going there.

Note that this problem goes away if all new PCs start at low level, e.g. level 1d3.

[mephnick]

...personally, the idea that the only risk of failure is the risk of death strikes me as weird.

It's not the only risk, but it is the most likely risk.

A group of wolves isn't going to knock you out and hold you for ransom. A shambling mound isn't going to leave you unconscious and burn down the farmhouse with your girlfriend inside.

If you play a game that is mainly humanoid NPCs, sure, you can save the party by spinning a TPK with some DM fiat. If you play a game that features mostly monsters and dungeoncrawling then death is it.

[Tiadoppler]

I stand by my statement that worry about survival is the lamest, least powerful motivator in an RPG.

I agree, strongly. That said, I don't think it's bad or wrong for a table to decide as a group to run a game that focuses on RAW, open dice rolling tactical combat, or has a more serious/dramatic take on a life-or-death struggle. "War sucks" is a valid plot element for a story, even in a D&D game. If you're roleplaying a realistic character well, worrying about survival, and the survival of your family/friends, is an extremely relevant motivation.


My argument is not that TPKs are good, merely that they are not bad in all cases. They are in the general category of "campaign genre options", like permadeath, no dice fudging, and smart enemy tactics. It's a RP group's choice if they embrace and accept the possibility of failure and death, and I strongly disagree with the assertion that there is a "right" and "wrong" genre for a D&D campaign. Many, many people across the world play Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, Warhammer, MMORPGs with raids and bosses, roguelike RPGs, and games like Dwarf Fortress. Fun does not mean the same thing for everyone, and a gaming group's preferences are not "bad" simply because they are not your preferences. Some people really do enjoy the idea of "let's see if we can beat this dragon" or "how long can we hold off the orcish army".

[Capt Spanner]

I discussed this in session 0 with the last table I set up.

They said they wanted to have to fear TPK. I asked about encounters which were "unwinnable", but where it was all about escape and survival, rather than killing the monster. They seemed enthusiastic for it. I've thrown one unwinnable fight at them so far (the intention was to capture them) and they didn't seem to mind. In a few sessions they'll be running into something they obviously can't fight. I've also given them plenty of easy fights as well, where the question isn't "how do we win at all?" but "how do we win in the best way?" The fight is about not letting their outmatched opponent escape, or subduing them non-lethally for interrogation later, being subtle, or making a show of force.

As it is, I won't TPK the party unless they have a pretty good idea what they're getting themselves into. If they know a fight could end in a TPK, and choose to fight instead of circumvent the problem I'm confident that they won't complain.

[Unoriginal]

Note that most D&D fights aren't only for survival. They're more "for survival so that the PCs can enjoy the gold or glory they got/save the world/get the macguffin/accomplish our personal goals/etc".

[Pex]

I have one meditation: Games like yours have all the drama of a fixed boxing match. They only work until everyone realizes you've decided what the outcome will be ahead of time. Then it's all a lie.



Not quite. A non-TPK campaign doesn't mean it's a fixed outcome. The adventure goal can fail without requiring a TPK as a result. A non-TPK campaign also allows for an individual PC to be killed which is its own significance.

[KorvinStarmast]

When it's the 13th level party that goes into the swamp to confront the danger, finds the beholder, but dice luck did not go their way resulting in a TPK, that's disappointing but no one's fault. No, wait, it's the dice's fault. They should be melted and pulverized into oblivion. I've seen that done. :smallcool: It was a ritual melting of a d20 and a d8 that a player in our group was utterly frustrated with. It was great fun, all said and done. (The execution chamber was a hibachi, upon which the sausages had already been grilled for that evening's grub. Beer was, of course, a critical part in the ritual ...

Would you play a video game where everytime you died, you had to create an entirely new PC and start again?

There is a reason that such games dont really exist.
Hmm. Diablo II, hardcore. Diablo III, hardcore. Enjoyed both, and had chars die in both.

[Pex]

I've seen that done. :smallcool: It was a ritual melting of a d20 and a d8 that a player in our group was utterly frustrated with. It was great fun, all said and done.

I've gotten that angry with a die, once, in college during my 2E years. There was this particular d20 that did not believe in numbers higher than 10. When I failed a saving throw that one time too many I literally threw the die hard across the room in absolute anger. When I went to retrieve it it was broken and unusable. I did not shed a tear.

[Xetheral]

It’s not “just as subjevtive as any other preference.” There are at least three kinds of preference (that I can think of) that vary in degree of subjectivity.

1. Pure taste. Do tomatoes taste good? What’s your favourite colour?

These are purely matters of taste and disagreements are pointless and stupid. You can’t possibly be better at defending the truth than the person making the claim.

2. Informed estimations. Who is the best football player in the world? Which field of study is the most important?

There is room for difference in the individual’s ability to estimate the truth of the matter. There is room to disagree over the criteria that are important. It is possible to correctly claim that some views are categorically wrong (i.e. there is no reasonable criteria by which one can reasonably claim that BurgerBeast is the best footballer in the world).

3. Judgments about course of action. Which treatment would be best for Jim’s lung cancer? How might we go about building a bridge in a particular location?

These are judgments about course of action for future events, so the truly best answer can not be known until the task is attempted (and not even necessarily then). Experts are decidedly better at this than novices.

While I might quibble with your categories, I concede the point that there are varying levels of subjectivity.


So, before we can get into a debate about whether the point of D&D is to have fun, it’s helpful to think about some things:

1. If a group sits down to play D&D, is there a range of activities that we could rightly claim are actually not D&D, even though the group insists that what they’re doing is playing D&D?

I think the answer is clearly “yes.”

Ok, sure. If they (e.g.) have the scrabble board out and appear to be playing scrabble and not doing anything else, I will agree that they are not playing D&D.


2. Within the range of activities that are rightly considered D&D, is it possible to distinguish between examples that are truer to what D&D is than others?

Again, I think he answer is a pretty clear “yes.”

Here I disagree. Sure, one could construct examples where it's possible to make the distinction you suggest (e.g. a D&D/chess hybrid is less "true" to D&D than a non-hybrid), but I don't think it's true in the general case. Consider my first two examples in my last post... between a group that focuses on tactical play and a group that focuses on strategic play, I don't see how one could objectvely determine that one is more "true" to D&D.


Just as two different groups of people can get together and play soccer, and we can say that one group is “playing better,” I contend that two groups of people can get together and play D&D, and one group can “play better.”

I also disagree here. Between two groups playing soccer, it might (unlike for D&D) be possible to say one is playing more skillfully than the other, but I don't see how one can conclude that a group is "playing better" than the other. To know which group is "playing better" I think one would need to know what each group hopes to achieve from playing soccer, and then compare how successful each group has been at accomplishing that objective. (For groups with different objectives, that will often be a difficult comparison to make.)


At the end of the day, whatever activity you select in order to have fun, the question of whether you’re having fun is an independent question from whether you’re doing the activity well.

I would argue that's only true if one's objective for the activity was something other than having fun. If a group is engaging in an activity to try to have fun and failing to do so, how can they be "doing the activity well"?

[Drascin]

Note that this problem goes away if all new PCs start at low level, e.g. level 1d3.

Lordy me, if you do that you might as well kick the player out of the game. There is absolutely no chance a level 1d3 character is going to survive a level 10 encounter day without significantly more fiat than it would have taken to not kill him the first place unless he just spends the next three sessions watching and soaking experience passively like he was getting carried in World of Warcraft. So you're just putting the player in a constant death spiral until one of you is fed up.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Lordy me, if you do that you might as well kick the player out of the game. There is absolutely no chance a level 1d3 character is going to survive a level 10 encounter day without significantly more fiat than it would have taken to not kill him the first place unless he just spends the next three sessions watching and soaking experience passively like he was getting carried in World of Warcraft. So you're just putting the player in a constant death spiral until one of you is fed up.

I'd actually love a chance at playing such a low level character in a significantly higher level game like that, but I'm also a severe masochist. I get a little bored with combat when I'm not barely surviving in the face of death, and there's no thrill greater than knowing that my odds require negative exponents to properly calculate.

As a DM, though, the only times I institute the whole 'start at a lower level if you're new/die and reroll' is when I also allow new characters some way of training up to roughly match the current party. Sometimes I let players gift EXP, sometimes a training montage, sometimes an adventure that's a little on the tough side for the newbie but pretty easy for the veterans, with a multiplier thrown on top of the newbie's earned EXP to get them up to speed faster (or just straight up rubberband them to everyone else by the end of it). This way, the party and the new player can feel like they earned their place. It's not always warranted, mind you- most of the time it's easier and better to just let them have the same level/XP as everyone else. But it's worked for me in the past.

[Iados]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

This depends entirely on the nature of the TPK. Did the DM create a "rocks fall; everybody dies" scenario in which there was no hope for the PCs to survive? If so, then yes, the DM is a failure. Did the DM set up a completely unbalanced fight, like a party of four Level 1 characters taking on Tiamat? If so, the DM is a failure, and an amusingly ludicrous one at that. But there are many more scenarios in which the blame for a TPK may fall on the shoulders of the PCs, or simply bad luck.

There's an old joke that a fantasy author is just a DM without any friends. Too many people take this sentiment seriously, and view the DM as a storyteller, rather than the creator and arbiter of a world full of risk and adventure. A DM who intervenes to prevent a TPK because "it would ruin the story" is actually ruining the game. Doing so removes all sense of risk for the players, because they can rest assured that no matter how boneheaded their decisions are, their DM will always save them from certain doom. How can I get invested in any supposed threat to my party if I know that our PCs collectively have plot armor? Treating the DM as a storyteller who is charged with protecting the PCs from danger robs the PCs of agency, and ultimately railroads the entire campaign into a setting where the PCs will ultimately triumph over any and all dangers simply because they're the PCs.

The DM running the campaign I'm currently playing has the right amount of balance. He creates challenges that are formidable for characters at our level, but those challenges can be surmounted if we're clever, work cohesively, and employ effective strategies. Our party has scraped by some intense battles, and they've been made more enjoyable by the fear that we could all be defeated if we didn't rise to the challenge as a team. If our DM eased up on us to make these challenges less life-threatening to our characters, I'd be disappointed. There's nothing epic or exciting about a game in which the heroes' victory is inevitable.

[BurgerBeast]

Here I disagree. Sure, one could construct examples where it's possible to make the distinction you suggest (e.g. a D&D/chess hybrid is less "true" to D&D than a non-hybrid), but I don't think it's true in the general case. Consider my first two examples in my last post... between a group that focuses on tactical play and a group that focuses on strategic play, I don't see how one could objectvely determine that one is more "true" to D&D.

Then we're not really disagreeing. I'm not saying it's always possible. I'm saying it's often possible. I can tell the difference between jealousy and envy. That doesn't mean I can always tell in every case. But I can, generally.

In your example, if we actually had the two groups and were able to watch them, we might very well be able to do it. But without that, and based on the outline provided, no we can't.


I also disagree here. Between two groups playing soccer, it might (unlike for D&D) be possible to say one is playing more skillfully than the other, but I don't see how one can conclude that a group is "playing better" than the other.

Then you should think about it more. You can play D&D more skillfully than someone else. Some players are better than others. Experience can make you better than you are today.


To know which group is "playing better" I think one would need to know what each group hopes to achieve from playing soccer, and then compare how successful each group has been at accomplishing that objective.

No, it has nothing to do with what you want to achieve. It has to do with the point of soccer. That's my point. If you want to make friends, you can play terribly and still succeed. But you're not succeeding at the soccer. You're succeeding at making friends, which has nothing to do with playing soccer well.


(For groups with different objectives, that will often be a difficult comparison to make.)

It's really not. Professionals play better soccer than amateurs, even if the amateurs are succeeding at having fun and making friends.


I would argue that's only true if one's objective for the activity was something other than having fun.

It is. That's where the D&D comes in. You can invite your friends over to have fun. Or, you can invite them over to play D&D. Those are different. For example, if your friend complains that he didn't have fun playing D&D, you have nothing to feel guilty about. You didn't promise fun. You promised D&D, and you delivered.


If a group is engaging in an activity to try to have fun and failing to do so, how can they be "doing the activity well"?

You're using circular reasoning.

If you play specifically to have fun, and then don't have fun, then you've failed at playing properly.

I'm saying that you don't tend to do things like this for fun. You do them for satisfaction.

Sports make for a good analogy in this regard. How can you lose 8-0 and have fun? Well, you often don't. But you go back. Why? Because you're not looking for fun, in that sense. You're looking for satisfaction. Satisfaction actually depends on having a bad time some of the time.

[Tanarii]

A Totatl Party Kill is a failure of the party. They chose to overextended themselves, or take on more than they could chew.

Of course, this assumes the DM does not custom tailor your content and adventures to a specific single party, and that the party chooses what to do. Which is 100% of the time the case in my campaign. So YMMV. :smallbiggrin:

The OP statement might be true under a specific set of limited circumstances:
- one set of players, one party, that adventures together in lockstep and does not change, known to the DM in advance
- the DM chooses the adventure for the party, or creates custom content for the party
- the party has little or no agency to prevent the TPK combat encounter in advance, plus no agency to attempt to escape or run away from the combat encounter after it begins.

[white lancer]

A DM who intervenes to prevent a TPK because "it would ruin the story" is actually ruining the game. Doing so removes all sense of risk for the players, because they can rest assured that no matter how boneheaded their decisions are, their DM will always save them from certain doom. How can I get invested in any supposed threat to my party if I know that our PCs collectively have plot armor? Treating the DM as a storyteller who is charged with protecting the PCs from danger robs the PCs of agency, and ultimately railroads the entire campaign into a setting where the PCs will ultimately triumph over any and all dangers simply because they're the PCs.

Do the players think that the DM is ruining the game by keeping some or all of them alive? Or are they just happy they get to continue playing with their characters? I think different groups will wind up on different sides of this, which is why I'd be cautious with absolute statements like that one (or the ones the OP has made). I've played in a low-difficulty campaign for a long time now, and while I'd prefer the difficulty be a little stronger, I've never felt like the campaign was "ruined" because of it. I still have fun playing that game with those people even if the chances of my character dying are astronomically low.

Two more points on this. 1) Protecting the party from a TPK does not mean the DM prevents individual party members from dying, or that the party will always defeat their dangers as opposed to fleeing or getting knocked out or failing. And as people have mentioned here, there are other ways of keeping the stakes high and allowing the party to fail (e.g. while the party is recovering from their near-TPK, the village they've previously defended gets destroyed or a favorite NPC dies). 2) Players who do obviously stupid things because they have "plot armor" are in most circumstances not playing their character anyway--no one in their right mind is going to charge right down a dragon's throat just to "see what happens." A player who is going to metagame in that way is better suited to the style of D&D that is more game-centric and will probably not mind as much if there is a TPK.

[ad_hoc]

1) Protecting the party from a TPK does not mean the DM prevents individual party members from dying, or that the party will always defeat their dangers as opposed to fleeing or getting knocked out or failing. And as people have mentioned here, there are other ways of keeping the stakes high and allowing the party to fail (e.g. while the party is recovering from their near-TPK, the village they've previously defended gets destroyed or a favorite NPC dies).

While true, it does remove the risks.

There is no question about whether the PCs should be courageous and try to save the village. Of course they will try to save the village, all that will happen if they fail is that the village won't be saved.

There is no opportunity for courage because the consequence for failure is the same as not trying.

I like there to be different levels of success and failure. On the one end we have complete fulfillment of goals, on the other we have the TPK. The party needs to decide how far they push to complete their goals.

If they push it hard enough then they likely need some ingenuity. The things people come up with when death is on the line make for good gaming. Just how far into the dungeon should they really go?

[Drascin]

While true, it does remove the risks.

There is no question about whether the PCs should be courageous and try to save the village. Of course they will try to save the village, all that will happen if they fail is that the village won't be saved.

There is no opportunity for courage because the consequence for failure is the same as not trying.

...but the village not being saved IS failure! It's worse failure than a character dying, by a mile and a half! :smallconfused: Like, if there was a scenario where "the village is saved but all the characters die" was a possibility, that would be considered a success! A paid for success but a success nonetheless!

All dying does is make characters not able to see and react to the consequences of their failure or success. "Welp, we failed, but since we're all dead and the campaign is over, nobody cares. Let's start thinking a different campaign".

[white lancer]

Well, it removes one risk, and I definitely understand if some players feel like they need that risk in order to have fun with D&D. That's just not how I see it.

Worth noting that I've never played in a campaign where a TPK was ruled out as a possibility, and I haven't ruled it out to the players in the one I run (or even really ruled it out to myself--I figure I'll cross that bridge if we get to it). I think that in most campaigns where the DM is planning on preventing a TPK, the players aren't aware of it to begin with and thus will still have the fear and sense of risk that comes with that. Maybe if the DM actually does intervene to prevent one, that risk will dissipate...but then, there's always the possibility that his mercy was a one-and-done thing. As a player, I wouldn't take anything like that for granted unless the DM saving us was a recurring thing.

[Jamesps]

As an example of how a TPK can serve a story:

Consider a survivalist game. The end of many survivalist stories involves the death of the characters involved. A TPK would be a natural end point in this sort of game/story.

[Unoriginal]

...but the village not being saved IS failure! It's worse failure than a character dying, by a mile and a half! :smallconfused: Like, if there was a scenario where "the village is saved but all the characters die" was a possibility, that would be considered a success! A paid for success but a success nonetheless!

All dying does is make characters not able to see and react to the consequences of their failure or success. "Welp, we failed, but since we're all dead and the campaign is over, nobody cares. Let's start thinking a different campaign".

Not saving the village might be a failure, but it's a failure things can grow from. Even if the PCs just go "welp, we failed, too bad, let's go elsewhere", the adventure is still progressing. Which is still the same thing as if the PCs didn't attempt to save the village at all, minus maybe a few ressources.

If the PCs can't die, it lowers the stakes. They're never actually putting their own neck on the line

[Tanarii]

All dying does is make characters not able to see and react to the consequences of their failure or success. "Welp, we failed, but since we're all dead and the campaign is over, nobody cares. Let's start thinking a different campaign".
Why is the campaign over just because one party of characters died? There's a pretty big assumption in that statement. It assumes there is only group of players. It assumes the one group of players only has one party of characters. It assumes just because there is one group of players with one group of characters, they cannot create new characters in the campaign and deal with the consequences, if any, of the first party of characters deaths.

[white lancer]

Not saving the village might be a failure, but it's a failure things can grow from. Even if the PCs just go "welp, we failed, too bad, let's go elsewhere", the adventure is still progressing. Which is still the same thing as if the PCs didn't attempt to save the village at all, minus maybe a few ressources.

If the PCs can't die, it lowers the stakes. They're never actually putting their own neck on the line

In my mind, failures that things can grow from are way, way more interesting than simple death (and oftentimes more interesting than success, especially total success). Having the surviving characters absorb and process the consequences of their failures allows for a lot of interesting moments and arcs and character decisions by the players, none of which are allowed by a permanent destruction of the whole party. And again, no one is saying that individual PCs can't die or be lost.

When you watch a TV show, you know the main character can't die (in almost all circumstances). They have plot armor, and everyone's aware of that. That doesn't lessen the tension of the moments where they're in the heat of the main conflict, and it doesn't lessen the blow when they have to face the consequences of their failures. And yes, D&D is a game and not a TV show. But it's also a game that's very, very different than most games that people play. Most games don't have a storyline, or dozens to hundreds of hours of prepwork and playtime, along with the emotional and personal attachment that comes of all that. Most games are zero-sum, with winners and losers, and exist purely on the mechanical side of things. D&D, on the other hand, has the ability to have shades of gray in victory and defeat. I think dismissing D&D as merely a game misses a large part of what sets it, and other TTRPGs, apart from most games.

I'm not arguing that TPKs are inherently bad--if that's how you want to play, go right ahead. But I very much disagree with the notion that there has to be a threat of a TPK in order to make D&D fun and satisfying. I don't mind losing a character from time to time, and I even hate how cheap death is at higher levels of D&D (which I think is part of why the TPK is regarded as a tool--if individual character deaths can be rectified so easily, it loses its bite). But for me personally, while I'm sure there are some forms of TPK that I would find satisfying, most others would leave me feeling like I just took part in a shaggy dog story.

[willdaBEAST]

When you watch a TV show, you know the main character can't die (in almost all circumstances). They have plot armor, and everyone's aware of that. That doesn't lessen the tension of the moments where they're in the heat of the main conflict, and it doesn't lessen the blow when they have to face the consequences of their failures. And yes, D&D is a game and not a TV show. But it's also a game that's very, very different than most games that people play. Most games don't have a storyline, or dozens to hundreds of hours of prepwork and playtime, along with the emotional and personal attachment that comes of all that.

To me this is actually a problem. I think LOTR is a great example of the author becoming way too attached to their characters. He really couldn't have offed one hobbit? Only a traitor dies and that immediately follows his act of redemption. I'm not saying stories like that can't be well told or engaging, but imo it makes them feel like Disney movies. I was initially really excited about Attack on Titan because it seemed to break standard expectations (the protagonist died!) and while there was a plot reason to back step, it quickly became obvious only secondary characters were going to be the ones to die and that killed investment for me. One of the reasons I became so invested in ASOIAF is that it felt like anyone could die, no matter how noble or integral to the plot. I think the show missed a powerful opportunity to have Cersei kill Tyrion in the latest season. For me it would've been devestating.

I guess in my mind, TPKs become tied to the priorities of the campaign. Is it about world building between the players and DM, or is it about a specific group of adventurers? If the players are deeply invested in the overall world of the game, TPKs become less of a campaign ender, there's more they can explore through other perspectives. If specific character development and complicated relationships are the focus, a TPK could suck the air out of the game. My personal opinion is that there needs to be a real threat of failure and death for meaningful stakes to exist. I also strongly dislike the idea that as a DM that I'd artificially bail out my players (although I certainly have, all 5 of my players are new to DnD and Barovia is a terrible place).

[Drascin]

Not saving the village might be a failure, but it's a failure things can grow from. Even if the PCs just go "welp, we failed, too bad, let's go elsewhere", the adventure is still progressing. Which is still the same thing as if the PCs didn't attempt to save the village at all, minus maybe a few ressources.


Yes, and that's a good thing. A failure from where you can get characterization and RP opportunities is better than a failure from which you can't. And in terms of consequences, a failure you have to actually live with is far more impactful than a failure where you can just shrug and pulll out the next character.

I mean, I'm not really talking theorethically here. I've had TPKs, on both sides of the screen. Most of them are not remembered. The ones that are, are not remembered as great failures, they're remembered as hilarious f*uckup moments. They're 8-Bit Theatre anticlimaxes that we laugh at, basically wet fart endings that are funny to remember in their silliness. "Remember that time we couldn't manage to roll above a 7 for three rounds and we all got murdered by an owlbear?". Because TPKs don't happen in epic setpiece battles. TPKs happen when one of the sides miscalculates or lady luck is being a jerk.


Why is the campaign over just because one party of characters died? There's a pretty big assumption in that statement. It assumes there is only group of players. It assumes the one group of players only has one party of characters. It assumes just because there is one group of players with one group of characters, they cannot create new characters in the campaign and deal with the consequences, if any, of the first party of characters deaths.

The campaign has a very good chance of being straight up over because if the campaign has been personalized to the characters instead of a predetermined plot, a massive chunk of NPC interactions and narrative points just went poof. Any friends the players had met, will not know the new guys. Any rivals and enemies they had, will have no idea who these new people are. Any long-term plans they had are gone. They could make new characters, but chances are the new characters have nothing to do with the previous ones, so if they run straight into the party-shaped hole in the narrative and immediately set to try to continue what the party was doing we run into the risk of hitting a layer of sheer metagaming that makes most people I've played with uncomfortable.

Now the players and GM have to take a decision. We have to make an entirely new set of characters and character relationships and motivations wholecloth: Do we want to make it a sequel to what we just played, or do we wanna try something new entirely? And in my experience, RPG groups tend towards the neophile. Absent GM pushing to continue in order to please not waste all his planning and hard work, most players I've met (myself included) have preferred to try a new story if we're going to have to just make everything up wholecloth anyway. Or play in the same world but a new campaign way later, ala a generational story like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, starting an entirely new thing twenty years later.

[Pex]

As an example of how a TPK can serve a story:

Consider a survivalist game. The end of many survivalist stories involves the death of the characters involved. A TPK would be a natural end point in this sort of game/story.

D&D games generally aren't survivalist games. It's possible to play one but not the general premise. A survivalist D&D game is most often a one-shot where the whole point is to see how long you survive. For games like Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu TPKs are expected and the fun is figuring out how to get there appropriately for the genre, for those who like those game systems. (I don't.)

A TPK in a D&D game is something that can happen but shouldn't be used as measuring stick to determine worthiness of a campaign.

[white lancer]

To me this is actually a problem. I think LOTR is a great example of the author becoming way too attached to their characters. He really couldn't have offed one hobbit? Only a traitor dies and that immediately follows his act of redemption. I'm not saying stories like that can't be well told or engaging, but imo it makes them feel like Disney movies. I was initially really excited about Attack on Titan because it seemed to break standard expectations (the protagonist died!) and while there was a plot reason to back step, it quickly became obvious only secondary characters were going to be the ones to die and that killed investment for me. One of the reasons I became so invested in ASOIAF is that it felt like anyone could die, no matter how noble or integral to the plot. I think the show missed a powerful opportunity to have Cersei kill Tyrion in the latest season. For me it would've been devestating.

I guess in my mind, TPKs become tied to the priorities of the campaign. Is it about world building between the players and DM, or is it about a specific group of adventurers? If the players are deeply invested in the overall world of the game, TPKs become less of a campaign ender, there's more they can explore through other perspectives. If specific character development and complicated relationships are the focus, a TPK could suck the air out of the game. My personal opinion is that there needs to be a real threat of failure and death for meaningful stakes to exist. I also strongly dislike the idea that as a DM that I'd artificially bail out my players (although I certainly have, all 5 of my players are new to DnD and Barovia is a terrible place).

I mean, I, too, am interested in TV shows/books where even important characters can and do die. That's one of my few complaints with Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, for instance--they had a hard time crossing that line because they were primarily aimed at kids (though they at least managed it more often than normal kids shows). But shows/books where truly "Anyone Can Die" are a myth IMO, because some characters are always going to be more central to the narrative than others. In ASOIAF, how many POV characters have actually died? The list is short, and the ones that did die did so after (or in the process of) serving their narrative purpose. That's for good reason--if Daenerys keeled over randomly before reaching Westeros, the fandom would be incensed because we would have spent all that time with her for no payoff. Even GRRM follows most narrative conventions. Now, that's not entirely relevant for D&D TPKs, since it's a story told by multiple people and not just the DM, but I've always been of the opinion that deaths in fiction are more interesting due to how they impact the surviving characters, not solely because of the possibility of death itself (and I think we see that play out in ASOIAF). An individual or even multiple character deaths will accomplish that, but a TPK will not.

But yeah, it's probably down to preference. I prefer to focus on characters rather than the plot/world, both as a player and as a DM, because that's what D&D gives me that most other games can't. But I still disagree that the possibility of complete failure has to be present in order for players to feel the stakes. That hasn't been the case in my games, and it's not the case in the streamed D&D campaigns I've watched like DCA (where a final TPK is probably off the table, but the players still clearly feel very invested).

[Luccan]

Yes, but only because if everyone is unconscious and not yet dead, you don't have to declare they all die. Being taken prisoner, being found by potential allies or even waking up later with some kind of drawback (perhaps they suffer a somewhat debilitating injury that holds them back until they can truly spend time recovering, likely with magical assistance). A TPK that is not the result of party stupidity seems unlikely if you consider those alternatives. On the other hand, a DM is not responsible for the dice and if your players die in succession (like dropping and failing death saves one by one), that's not your fault. Basically, the only time it's really the DMs "fault", IMO, is when the players are no longer able to do anything but roll death saves. Because at that point it's basically DM fiat as to how the game continues, whether with the old characters or new.

However, if the type of game you're playing is one where you expect characters to die often and you just continue, then a TPK isn't necessarily a problem. Additionally, those suggestions I had above? Some players won't like one or two or all of those. Being taken prisoner usually means at least temporary loss of equipment. Lots of players don't like being saved by NPCs (and even if they don't mind, they'll probably want it to be done well. Don't have the Lord-General suddenly charge in to save the PCs and make them look bad). And of course, some will just feel that death, even TPK, is an acceptable outcome. Adventuring is a dangerous profession, after all.

[Unoriginal]

In my mind, failures that things can grow from are way, way more interesting than simple death (and oftentimes more interesting than success, especially total success). Having the surviving characters absorb and process the consequences of their failures allows for a lot of interesting moments and arcs and character decisions by the players, none of which are allowed by a permanent destruction of the whole party. And again, no one is saying that individual PCs can't die or be lost.

It doesn't matter that other kinds of failure are more interesting, at least not for the point of the discussion.

No one WANT a TPK, unless it's a designed meatgrinder (or the DM is a jerk and wants to kill the PCs just because).

The point is that if the TPK can't happen, the stakes are lower.

You said it yourself: from other kinds of failure and their consequences, the story can develop and grow. Which mean that TPK is the one thing to truly fear for the PCs.



When you watch a TV show, you know the main character can't die (in almost all circumstances). They have plot armor, and everyone's aware of that. That doesn't lessen the tension of the moments where they're in the heat of the main conflict, and it doesn't lessen the blow when they have to face the consequences of their failures.

Actually, it *does* lessen the tension. That's why that kind of stories always have to trick the audience into forgetting the plot armor is there.




I'm not arguing that TPKs are inherently bad--if that's how you want to play, go right ahead. But I very much disagree with the notion that there has to be a threat of a TPK in order to make D&D fun and satisfying. I don't mind losing a character from time to time, and I even hate how cheap death is at higher levels of D&D (which I think is part of why the TPK is regarded as a tool--if individual character deaths can be rectified so easily, it loses its bite). But for me personally, while I'm sure there are some forms of TPK that I would find satisfying, most others would leave me feeling like I just took part in a shaggy dog story.

A TPK may, sometime, feel satisfying. But usually, it's not, and for good reasons.

The point is that, for those reasons, people will do a lot to avoid it. Which helps the sense of danger.

If your party is fighting Frost Giants and everyone but two guys gets downed, it ruins the tension if the players go "it's ok, we're not going to get TPK."

If a whole group goes Leeroy Jenkins in a kobold den, it ruins the tension if they think "it's ok, we're not going to get TPK."

People usually want the story of the characters they made and grew attached to to continue, even if it's on a perilous path. If your DM is guaranteeing that, why would you worry?

Sure, you can absolutely have fun playing D&D in a campaign where TPKs can't happen. Hell, you can have fun with a RPG where PCs won't ever die. I'm not saying the contrary. But that doesn't mean the TPK as no reason to exist.

On the other hand, I have to point out something: while TPKs are often not satisfying, it doesn't mean they're not *entertaining*. A well-done TPK will be memorable for the good reasons, and leave you hungry. Hungry to do better, hungry to play more.

[MaxWilson]

Would you play a video game where everytime you died, you had to create an entirely new PC and start again?

There is a reason that such games dont really exist.

You mean like... every arcade game ever?

[PhoenixPhyre]

The threat of a TPK (especially a random one) does not inherently provide tension. It can, or it can make people refuse to invest in their character and thus decrease the player's emotional attachment and immersion. When DMs go too far to the meat-grinder, the easiest response is to treat the characters as playing pieces, not characters. This leads to the "I'm playing Bob2, brother of Bob1" mode and, in my experience, greatly increases the risk of pure murderhobo/sadistic fantasy/unpleasant play.

When I started with my long-running group, I asked them how they felt about character death. The response was strongly negative, and so the difficulty hasn't been high. But strangely, they're still very engaged in the campaign, even the one (the newest player) who was most strongly against losing her character. They care about the world very much, they care about the NPCs, they care about the effect they have on the world. Now, they'd understand that if they did something real stupid (like yelling in the sleeping Dire Yeti's ear at level 2...true story. Short version--he died horribly) they're going to die. But I'm not looking for opportunities to kill them, nor am I constantly pushing the difficulty. Because that's not what motivates them.

There are many valid motivations/sources of fun in TTRPGs. Some play to overcome challenges. Some play to experience events. Some play to have the biggest numbers. Some play to make silly voices. Some play for sociality. Most are a combination of those (and other) motivations. A DM's job is to engage everyone they can, and help those that they (for whatever reason) can't engage find a home elsewhere. The prime directive in all of this is the fun of the whole table, themselves included. All ethical means are on the table to do this.

[Luccan]

You mean like... every arcade game ever?

Except arcade games don't make you create a new PC. At most, you choose a new, predetermined character. I think it's fair to say the point was about videogames that require actual time investment in creating new characters. I don't agree with Malifice that TPKs should never happen, but I think its pretty easy to figure out their point.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Except arcade games don't make you create a new PC. At most, you choose a new, predetermined character. I think it's fair to say the point was about videogames that require actual time investment in creating new characters. I don't agree with Malifice that TPKs should never happen, but I think its pretty easy to figure out their point.

I always thought it would be kind of funny to play a hyper deadly campaign that made use of video game-style save points. Like, record everyone's character as they are, make a note of their progress, allow the whole party to go back to it if they TPK.

I've only retconned events in a game once (and it wasn't a TPK), but I don't see why you couldn't in the event of everyone dying. "Well guys, you lost here. We'll start again from the beginning of the day, with everything you just played as a prophetic dream sent by the gods. Be more mindful this time."

[MaxWilson]

...if you do that you might as well kick the player out of the game. There is absolutely no chance a level 1d3 character is going to survive a level 10 encounter day without significantly more fiat than it would have taken to not kill him the first place unless he just spends the next three sessions watching and soaking experience passively like he was getting carried in World of Warcraft. So you're just putting the player in a constant death spiral until one of you is fed up.

This turns out not to be the case. And the low-level characters gain levels pretty quickly under those circumstances. By the time they are 3rd-5th level they are no longer fragile, and by the time they are 8th level they are the party experts at something. The biggest spread I've had was when there were some 13th or 14th level PCs in the same party as newly-minted 1st or 2nd level characters. I can think of one case in particular where a low-level character (5th level NPC Sorcerer in this case, with Con 4 and only about 12 HP) got unavoidably insta-killed by a Fireball that a higher-level or higher-Con PC would have survived without issues, but that was a fairly extreme case. I was using vanilla 5E death saves at the time, and vanilla 5E is very, very reluctant to kill PCs off even temporarily, much less permanently. Most of the (N)PC deaths that occurred in that campaign were the result of poor decisions, not low levels. For the most part every PC that died at level N would still have died in exactly the same way at level N + 5.

And it's not like lower-level characters have nothing to contribute, either. A 13th level Barbarian potentially has a LOT to gain from having a 5th level wizard around, and vice versa: Haste, reconaissance (Find Familiar or Invisibility), Feather Fall, flight, crowd control (Fireball, Web), terrain manipulation (Mould Earth). The wizard's Fire Bolt cantrip may not be quite as powerful as a 13th level wizard's Fire Bolt would be, but it's not negligible. The two PCs may not be equal level but they can be equal partners during a mission. The 5th level wizard is not an XP leech.

[BurgerBeast]

Do the players think that the DM is ruining the game by keeping some or all of them alive? Or are they just happy they get to continue playing with their characters? I think different groups will wind up on different sides of this, which is why I'd be cautious with absolute statements like that one (or the ones the OP has made).

No. You're completely wrong here. We're not talking about what the players want. We're talking about playing a game well.

Just imagine applying the same reasoning to something else. We'll go with soccer, since that's been the flavour of the day.

Do you think the other team is ruining the game if they always let your team win? Or are you just happy to keep winning? Different people will feel differently, right? Who cares how they feel? The truth is that it's not really a game if you're guaranteed to win. Calling it a game would be a lie.

The point is that some people don't care about the game. They just care about having fun and/or not losing. Other people care about the game, and so they don't care about having fun and/or not losing. There's a phrase for this: Respecting the game.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that you care about having fun and not losing but you also care about the game. That's eating your cake and having it, too.

There has always been a group of people (probably the majority, in fact) that would prefer to play in a lower league just so that they can win more games... but these people are not winners. They are losers. Worse, they are cowards. They are too afraid of the truth to even risk the possibility of losing. In this sense, they are never really playing, at all. They're pretending to play so that they feel better because they're too cowardly to risk losing. The tragedy is that they can never truly win, because they're too afraid to truly play. They're also bullies masquerading as victims, because they play weaker opposition on purpose in order to feel better about themselves. They beat up weaker opponents in order to feel better, and they hide behind their cowardice as an excuse. They are disgusting and deserve no respect.

If you're not truly playing, then you're not playing well. You're just going through the motions. You're bush league. Give yourself a pat on the back and remember to pick up your participation ribbon on the way out... your mother probably loves you, but nobody else does. Nobody else can, because respect is a precondition for love (unless the love is unconditional - as a mother's is), and nobody can respect you if they know the truth about you (which is that you're a bully who uses cowardice as an excuse).


I've played in a low-difficulty campaign for a long time now, and while I'd prefer the difficulty be a little stronger, I've never felt like the campaign was "ruined" because of it. I still have fun playing that game with those people even if the chances of my character dying are astronomically low.

Again, who cares how you feel? The game is either better or worse, regardless of how you feel. Leave your feelings out of it and have some respect for D&D.

[MaxWilson]

I always thought it would be kind of funny to play a hyper deadly campaign that made use of video game-style save points.

I've done this: allowed players to roll back horrible events by charging them "karma points", which the DM can then use on the bad guys' behalf in the future to make the players' lives harder (either with villainous rollbacks of e.g. lucky criticals, or plot-level events like "bad guy's spies have improbably stumbled upon your hideout and sent word back to their master"). It works out okay. It certainly encourages players to take more risks, although it can create arguments between players who feel that other players are spending karma recklessly (one player got his character killed twice in a single day by a roc, trying to steal a roc's egg so he could tame it; he could have gotten killed even more except that he succeeded on the third try--another player was TERRIFIED of what the DM was going to do with those two karma points).

In the process I also learned a lot about how much 5E PCs can handle without suffering a TPK. In 5E, a PC party may look almost dead in terms of HP/etc., and they may be definitely weaker than their remaining enemies, but that doesn't mean they are going to TPK, because that's when they change their tactics and pull out things like consumable or limited-use magic items. (A Horn of Valhalla saved them from at least two TPKs. That item is STRONG.) In my experience, a good rule of thumb for 5E is that 3-4x Deadly fight is pretty much a tossup unless the PCs fight smart; a 6x Deadly fight is one they are more likely than not to lose, unless they fight smart; and a 10x Deadly fight requires smart tactics to beat. My games are combat-light, but with a wide range of difficulty when combat does occur, so I got to see everything from super-easy fights to super-deadly ones--and as mentioned above, I was surprised how many things that I initially thought would be super-deadly, weren't.

Anyway, there might be better ways of implementing save scumming in a TTRPG, but this way does work.

[Theodoxus]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

100% agree. Rarely, but sometimes, I don't know how many HP a character has left, and I'll roll more damage than they have HP to deal with. If it's the first KO of a fight, and they have some kind of healing, I'll let it play out as intended. If they don't, I'll end the fight with the next successful attack against the big bad. If there's a lot of minions, they'll break morale and run, usually leading to a lot of OAs and general death.

I have complete control over my side of the fight. Sometimes the dice are against the party and I'm rolling hits and crits with uncanny frequency. A light fight could easily turn quite deadly. Other times, I overtune a fight - toss one to many spells; get a lucky Hold Person to stick, or a monster deals just a little to much damage every hit... I commonly whittle my critters HP down mid fight. Or break morale a little faster than I had originally planned. I try not to Deus ex machina, but have been known to divinely intervene where appropriate.

Just as easily, I can call forth a grip of fireballs, or meteor swarms. I can Rocks Fall, if I want. It's all in my power. So, outside of a suicide pact and all the players wanting to end a campaign through TPK, it's all on me if it happens or not.

This has lead to a large number of PPKs. Partial party kills. A couple weeks ago, running ToA, the party had managed to ally with the red wizards. However, they didn't solidify that alliance, so when the party and wizards encountered a small patrol of yuan-ti, the players ran in and melee'd - the wizards, not wanting to deal with either - fireballed the lot, killing the yuan-ti and 2 of the party, and knocking the party druid out of his wild shape. At first, the dead players were quite miffed that I'd done that - but after OOC explanation that they hadn't actually had anything in common but the desire to get to the tomb, and that the wizards didn't actually need their help in that regard, there was no compelling reason for them to not take that action.

I killed 2, let 2 live and we went on with the adventure. I could have easily killed them all. It was 100% in my power. And it always is. Now, 2 sessions later, all 4 players are a bit more cautious in the play - both in combat, and it social situations. Trial by fire and all that.

[FreddyNoNose]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master.

This was the statement over which I had a fairly long and meaningful discussion with a friend. Both the friend and myself are players in each other's campaigns. The argument I made, compacted above, requires a few qualifiers:

This is specifically to do with party wipes, not player death in general.
This is meant to be a general maxim; of course there will be extreme scenarios where the players recklessly and suicidally get in over their heads. However, my feeling is that while individual player death can enhance or change a story, a party wipe simply ends it. The ending of any story is extremely important, and the occurrence of that ending in a disorderly manner, with the principle characters all dying without any proper resolution to the story's conflict, is simply something that the storyteller should want to avoid at all costs, and given the near limitless in-game resources at his disposal, he should be able to prevent it unless he is negligent.

My friend raised many objections to this claim, and I do understand the motives behind these objections: principal among his objections was the centrality of player agency, a concept which he holds the possibility of TPK's to be in service of. I would respond that while allowing player agency is perhaps the most useful tool in creating an enjoyable story, agency is not the end for which I create a game, and the premature cessation of the story, no matter how active the players were in that result, is destructive of the end of a complete, personally experienced story.

Further meditations on the subject would be welcome.

That is one viewpoint and I don't share it. I don't coddle players and if they are being stupid, foolish or rash, they earn what comes. Player agency is just another BS term that I don't agree with. You takes your chances and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

[KorvinStarmast]

No. You're completely wrong here. I snipped the rest of your rant. I was once reported and kvetched at by a mod on these forums, the accusation being of raising a "badwrongfun" flag. Well you just did precisely that.

Are you serious about what you posted, or are you trying to get a reaction out of people? I note an utter lack of blue font, which usually indicates a humorous or tongue in cheek comment.

[Unoriginal]

I snipped the rest of your rant. I was once reported and kvetched at by a mod on these forums, the accusation being of raising a "badwrongfun" flag. Well you just did precisely that.

Are you serious about what you posted, or are you trying to get a reaction out of people? I note an utter lack of blue font, which usually indicates a humorous or tongue in cheek comment.

Did you do the same for OP? I mean, they said several times they considered their way the only legitimate way.

Is that a "badwrongfun" flag?

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've done this: allowed players to roll back horrible events by charging them "karma points", which the DM can then use on the bad guys' behalf in the future to make the players' lives harder (either with villainous rollbacks of e.g. lucky criticals, or plot-level events like "bad guy's spies have improbably stumbled upon your hideout and sent word back to their master"). It works out okay. It certainly encourages players to take more risks, although it can create arguments between players who feel that other players are spending karma recklessly (one player got his character killed twice in a single day by a roc, trying to steal a roc's egg so he could tame it; he could have gotten killed even more except that he succeeded on the third try--another player was TERRIFIED of what the DM was going to do with those two karma points).

In the process I also learned a lot about how much 5E PCs can handle without suffering a TPK. In 5E, a PC party may look almost dead in terms of HP/etc., and they may be definitely weaker than their remaining enemies, but that doesn't mean they are going to TPK, because that's when they change their tactics and pull out things like consumable or limited-use magic items. (A Horn of Valhalla saved them from at least two TPKs. That item is STRONG.) In my experience, a good rule of thumb for 5E is that 3-4x Deadly fight is pretty much a tossup unless the PCs fight smart; a 6x Deadly fight is one they are more likely than not to lose, unless they fight smart; and a 10x Deadly fight requires smart tactics to beat. My games are combat-light, but with a wide range of difficulty when combat does occur, so I got to see everything from super-easy fights to super-deadly ones--and as mentioned above, I was surprised how many things that I initially thought would be super-deadly, weren't.

Anyway, there might be better ways of implementing save scumming in a TTRPG, but this way does work.
This is kind of cool. I'm thinking of borrowing elements of it for my Arthurian game, in the form of the Wheel of Fortune. You may spin it, but know that the gods are watching. And they do not like it when you tempt Fate.

[MaxWilson]

This is kind of cool. I'm thinking of borrowing elements of it for my Arthurian game, in the form of the Wheel of Fortune. You may spin it, but know that the gods are watching. And they do not like it when you tempt Fate.

Yeah, that's basically how I spun it: the PCs suffer occasional interventions from mysterious extra-dimensional entities (the players), and sometimes get nightmares or premonitions of future disasters (rolled-back events) that they are then able to avoid. But there are interventions in the other direction as well...

[Unoriginal]

No. You're completely wrong here. We're not talking about what the players want. We're talking about playing a game well.

Just imagine applying the same reasoning to something else. We'll go with soccer, since that's been the flavour of the day.

Do you think the other team is ruining the game if they always let your team win? Or are you just happy to keep winning? Different people will feel differently, right? Who cares how they feel? The truth is that it's not really a game if you're guaranteed to win. Calling it a game would be a lie.

The point is that some people don't care about the game. They just care about having fun and/or not losing. Other people care about the game, and so they don't care about having fun and/or not losing. There's a phrase for this: Respecting the game.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that you care about having fun and not losing but you also care about the game. That's eating your cake and having it, too.

There has always been a group of people (probably the majority, in fact) that would prefer to play in a lower league just so that they can win more games... but these people are not winners. They are losers. Worse, they are cowards. They are too afraid of the truth to even risk the possibility of losing. In this sense, they are never really playing, at all. They're pretending to play so that they feel better because they're too cowardly to risk losing. The tragedy is that they can never truly win, because they're too afraid to truly play. They're also bullies masquerading as victims, because they play weaker opposition on purpose in order to feel better about themselves. They beat up weaker opponents in order to feel better, and they hide behind their cowardice as an excuse. They are disgusting and deserve no respect.

If you're not truly playing, then you're not playing well. You're just going through the motions. You're bush league. Give yourself a pat on the back and remember to pick up your participation ribbon on the way out... your mother probably loves you, but nobody else does. Nobody else can, because respect is a precondition for love (unless the love is unconditional - as a mother's is), and nobody can respect you if they know the truth about you (which is that you're a bully who uses cowardice as an excuse).



Again, who cares how you feel? The game is either better or worse, regardless of how you feel. Leave your feelings out of it and have some respect for D&D.


BurgerBeast, you can't "win" at Dungeons & Dragons. The DM isn't an adversary to beat, especially given that if a DM desires to win, they WILL. Given that they have total control over what exist in the campaign aside from the PCs.

The only way to "win" at Dungeons & Dragons is to spend an enjoyable time with your playing buddies, or at least to have an entertaining few hours playing your character.

That you call people losers and cowards for playing the game as intended speak volume about the respect you actually have for D&D.

[white lancer]

Actually, it *does* lessen the tension. That's why that kind of stories always have to trick the audience into forgetting the plot armor is there.

I mean, sure, strictly speaking a situation where the characters involved can't die has a different tension than one in which the characters can. But my point is that you can have tension without the threat of death. Nobody who watches Doctor Who expects the Doctor to get taken out in a random mid-series episode, but there's still plenty of tension with each episode. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if one particular form of tension is removed or lessened (and I think that's where we differ).

And note that I'm not arguing against characters dying. For me and the groups I've played with, the threat of that is tension enough. I just don't want to grind the momentum of the game to a halt or end the campaign altogether with a TPK, so if I can realistically prevent it, I probably will.


A TPK may, sometime, feel satisfying. But usually, it's not, and for good reasons.

The point is that, for those reasons, people will do a lot to avoid it. Which helps the sense of danger.

If your party is fighting Frost Giants and everyone but two guys gets downed, it ruins the tension if the players go "it's ok, we're not going to get TPK."

If a whole group goes Leeroy Jenkins in a kobold den, it ruins the tension if they think "it's ok, we're not going to get TPK."

People usually want the story of the characters they made and grew attached to to continue, even if it's on a perilous path. If your DM is guaranteeing that, why would you worry?

Sure, you can absolutely have fun playing D&D in a campaign where TPKs can't happen. Hell, you can have fun with a RPG where PCs won't ever die. I'm not saying the contrary. But that doesn't mean the TPK as no reason to exist.

On the other hand, I have to point out something: while TPKs are often not satisfying, it doesn't mean they're not *entertaining*. A well-done TPK will be memorable for the good reasons, and leave you hungry. Hungry to do better, hungry to play more.

I mean, if that's the players' reaction to those situations, I think there are bigger problems with that game than just guaranteeing no TPKs. Most players I think would react more along the lines of, "holy crap, we just lost two party members!" and the players who lost characters would certainly be feeling the impact. Added to that, as I mentioned earlier, most DMs are probably not going to outright guarantee anything--I certainly haven't. I do find that tension to be useful, even if the actual TPK is not in most cases. But even if I didn't make use of that tension, I haven't guaranteed that all of the characters will survive, or that they will succeed, or anything at all like that. I would simply be guaranteeing that the campaign will continue in some form until we've decided to end it, which I don't think is a major loss.

And as I said, I'm not saying that TPKs have no reason to exist--I'm not the OP. Some games will be better off if they're a realistic option, and I do expect that there are some that are well-done and memorable as you describe. And realistically, if my players make some monumentally stupid decisions, I expect I'll have no choice but to complete the TPK.

[white lancer]

BurgerBeast, you can't "win" at Dungeons & Dragons. The DM isn't an adversary to beat, especially given that if a DM desires to win, they WILL. Given that they have total control over what exist in the campaign aside from the PCs.

The only way to "win" at Dungeons & Dragons is to spend an enjoyable time with your playing buddies, or at least to have an entertaining few hours playing your character.

That you call people losers and cowards for playing the game as intended speak volume about the respect you actually have for D&D.

This exactly. Soccer is a zero-sum game--one team wins and the other one loses (or there's a draw, but either way the result is zero). D&D is not. There are no real-life stakes in D&D, so there's zero reason that you have to play it the same way everyone else is playing it. Play it the way that you like.

And that's all the indulgence I'll give to this frankly absurd viewpoint.

[Contrast]

Snip

TIL I'm a disgusting cowardly bully for choosing to spend my social/hobby time joking around with my friends rather than more serious endeavours. :smallconfused: My apologies Mr Beast, I'll try to be more respectful when I play in future. :smallwink:


100% agree. Rarely, but sometimes, I don't know how many HP a character has left, and I'll roll more damage than they have HP to deal with. If it's the first KO of a fight, and they have some kind of healing, I'll let it play out as intended. If they don't, I'll end the fight with the next successful attack against the big bad. If there's a lot of minions, they'll break morale and run, usually leading to a lot of OAs and general death.

I do think this is a bit far though. A difficult fight becomes very unsatisfying when the DM suddenly realises someone is close to death/in a difficult spot so just has the encounter end. I've had an experience before where a DM thought I was getting annoyed because my character kept on almost dying so kept on fudging to keep me alive, where I was actually annoyed that they kept on fudging to keep me alive when I should have died. I didn't want the character dead but there needs to be some danger or why are we bothering with the dice at all.

[BurgerBeast]

BurgerBeast, you can't "win" at Dungeons & Dragons. The DM isn't an adversary to beat, especially given that if a DM desires to win, they WILL. Given that they have total control over what exist in the campaign aside from the PCs.

I never said that you can win at D&D. I said that you can play well. Whether one wants to admit this or not, it remains true.


The only way to "win" at Dungeons & Dragons is to spend an enjoyable time with your playing buddies, or at least to have an entertaining few hours playing your character.

It is precisely the opposite of my point. Saying this (that the point of D&D is fun/enjoyment) ad nauseum won't make it true. It's a terrible attitude and it is disrespectful to the game.

I know that there is a discrepancy between what you are saying and what you are meaning to say, but that's my deeper point. There are better ways to say what you mean to say, and saying it the way you're saying it has the opposite effect to what you're hoping. The reason I enter into these debates is because we probably agree over the end result, but the language we use fails to serve its purpose (on both ends).


That you call people losers and cowards for playing the game as intended speak volume about the respect you actually have for D&D.

I am saying that the attitude that leads to that way of thinking/playing is the attitude of losers and bullies. I am not calling anyone a coward, or even a bully for that matter - at least not any more than others are saying I'm too stupid to understand the point of D&D. (And by the way I don't personally care if anyone calls me stupid, anyway. Sticks and stones.)

But I'll say this again: the point of any activity cannot be as simple as "having fun." If it were, then the activity would never enter the conversation. As soon as the activity enters the conversation, the activity itself becomes relevant.

"Having fun," on its own, is pointless. Literally pointless. As in, there is no point at which to aim.

When you introduce a task, you then have the ability to direct your efforts. You have a point at which to aim. The combined efforts of attempting to arrive at the point are often fun, and so we take on tasks with the hope that they will provide fun.

But fun, in this regard, is a trivial concern. As cheesy at it may sound, D&D has a lot more to offer than just plain fun. Reducing it to fun is a disservice. This is what I mean when I say it's disrespectful.

[BurgerBeast]

TIL I'm a disgusting cowardly bully for choosing to spend my social/hobby time joking around with my friends rather than more serious endeavours. :smallconfused: My apologies Mr Beast, I'll try to be more respectful when I play in future. :small wink:

Except that's not what I said.

I said that if you do this, and also claim that it is the right way or best way to play, then you're a cowardly bully.

Have fun however you want. But don't claim that clowning around with friends is the best way to accomplish anything. The entire point of this type of fun is to not accomplish anything. And that's great.

What's wrong with: "I play a little D&D with my friends, but we don't take it very seriously because we're more there to socialize and enjoy each other's company."?

Why do the special snowflakes have to insist that they get to say: "I only play to spend time with friends and enjoy each other's company but we also take the game very seriously."?

Because they are liars, that's why. And they are best at lying to themselves. And they get together with other people who are good at lying to themselves and they tell bigger lies, together. And then their whole life becomes a lie. And they insist that they are doing it right.

I say: WRONG.

Go ahead and do whatever you want. Just don't lie about it, publicly, and then get mad when people don't accept your lies.

[BurgerBeast]

This exactly. Soccer is a zero-sum game--one team wins and the other one loses (or there's a draw, but either way the result is zero). D&D is not. There are no real-life stakes in D&D, so there's zero reason that you have to play it the same way everyone else is playing it. Play it the way that you like.

And that's all the indulgence I'll give to this frankly absurd viewpoint.

And that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that any endeavour - any endeavour - can be taken seriously and done well or it can be taken lightly and as fun.

But that doesn't make the point of the endeavour fun.

"What is the point of the endeavour?" is an independent question.

---

You can decide that you want to have fun. And you can choose to use D&D to do so. But that doesn't make the point of D&D "having fun."

There has to be more to it. Because otherwise there is no difference between D&D, soccer, puzzles, computer games, movies, and yoga. You can do any of those things for fun, and the point of them is fun, so they're all the same, right?

Of course not. There are qualities of each that provide meaning that goes well beyond having fun. And the differences in those qualities are what make some of those activities more well-suited to some groups of people or circumstances and less well suited to other groups of people or circumstances.

People don't pick activities merely on the basis of what's fun. They pick based on the differences between them, sometimes plain and sometimes nuanced, in an attempt to estimate which activities will provide the most enjoyment.

[Unoriginal]

... alright, for the sake of fairness, and because there is a chance I've misunderstood what you wrote, BurgerBeast, I have three questions to ask:

How does one "play well", according to you? How do you define that one "take the game seriously" ?

If someone decides to play a Dragonborn Rogue because they think they'll enjoy this character, are they "lacking respect for the game" ?

[PhoenixPhyre]

... alright, for the sake of fairness, and because there is a chance I've misunderstood what you wrote, BurgerBeast, I have three questions to ask:

How does one "play well", according to you? How do you define that one "take the game seriously" ?

If someone decides to play a Dragonborn Rogue because they think they'll enjoy this character, are they "lacking respect for the game" ?

Or the Tiefling Druid that I've got in one group, or the high-CHA/low-STR paladin (wielding a scimitar) in another?

[Rynjin]

Re: All the arguments that certain games are "event driven" rather than plot driven...a TPK is still a failure of the Dungeon Master.

It doesn't matter what KIND of game you're running, an unexpected TPK is always a failure.

If you're running a plot driven game, inadvertently ending your own plot is a failure.

If your game is scenario or event driven, then your job is to craft an interesting scenario; over-tuned encounters are not interesting.

As a GM you control everything. When designing an encounter, you eyeball how hard you want it to be, and design accordingly. Missing that mark is a failure the same as if a dart thrower misses their target.

"Let the dice fall where they may" is a philosophy I personally ascribe to, but it's irrelevant to this discussion. As a GM you determine how much the dice even get to impact the outcome. You can design an encounter that is effectively unwinnable, effectively impossible to lose, or anything in between those extremes.

Any time the outcome of an encounter does not fall within your set of planned outcomes you have failed, and planned TPKs are extraordinarily rare (ad even rarer are the scenarios where using them is not a failure of the out of game responsibilities of a DM; the social aspect too many overlook).

[BurgerBeast]

... alright, for the sake of fairness, and because there is a chance I've misunderstood what you wrote, BurgerBeast, I have three questions to ask:

How does one "play well", according to you?

I don't know the answer to that question. But it's a question I take seriously. The fact that I do not know the answer doesn't have any bearing on the claim that the answer cannot be "to have fun" so far as I can tell, though.

I think it would have to involve things like respecting other players, cooperating and considering the challenges presented, trying to find efficient solutions... but all of these seem like worse answers than "Take it seriously. Focus. Try." Those seem to be enough, to me.

I mean, suppose you're trying to coach a practice or teach lesson, and people are clowning around. You could say "come on guys, let's focus and take this seriously. Let's try, here." And I think they'd get it.

I think it's the same with D&D. "Come on guys, we're trying to accomplish something here (no matter how trivial). Let's pay attention and try to get some things done."


How do you define that one "take the game seriously" ?

I hope the answer above gives some insight. It's a difficult question to answer. The players should listen carefully to the DM, try to pay attention to the situations presented, and try to resolve them efficiently given the available resources.

In the long run, this will produce the most enjoyment, I think.


If someone decides to play a Dragonborn Rogue because they think they'll enjoy this character, are they "lacking respect for the game" ?

No, not at all. That's got nothing to do with what I am trying to convey.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't know the answer to that question. But it's a question I take seriously. The fact that I do not know the answer doesn't have any bearing on the claim that the answer cannot be "to have fun" so far as I can tell, though.

I think it would have to involve things like respecting other players, cooperating and considering the challenges presented, trying to find efficient solutions... but all of these seem like worse answers than "Take it seriously. Focus. Try." Those seem to be enough, to me.

I mean, suppose you're trying to coach a practice or teach lesson, and people are clowning around. You could say "come on guys, let's focus and take this seriously. Let's try, here." And I think they'd get it.

I think it's the same with D&D. "Come on guys, we're trying to accomplish something here (no matter how trivial). Let's pay attention and try to get some things done."



I hope the answer above gives some insight. It's a difficult question to answer. The players should listen carefully to the DM, try to pay attention to the situations presented, and try to resolve them efficiently given the available resources.

In the long run, this will produce the most enjoyment, I think.


That bold part is a strong YMMV. I have had groups where clowning around and shenanigans were the thing that brought most enjoyment. I've had ones where thematic, but inefficient solutions were the most fun--I have a warlock whose goto is telekinesis.

There is no global right way to play. The goals vary tremendously between groups. What they want out of it, and what they consider fun differ strongly. This is very different than a competitive game, where the object is to win (while playing by the rules). Here, the rules are a framework to facilitate a wide variety of things that might be fun. If you judge RPGs by the standards of soccer, you get nonsense. And vice versa.

[Unoriginal]

"What is the point of the endeavour?" is an independent question.


What is the point of D&D according to you, then? And don't say "it's to play well", because doing something well isn't the point of the activity, merely the level of quality you end up with. The point of building a house isn't to build well, it's to have a house at the end, for exemple.




You can decide that you want to have fun. And you can choose to use D&D to do so. But that doesn't make the point of D&D "having fun."

D&D is entertainment. The only "point" of entertainment is to have fun a certain way.




There has to be more to it. Because otherwise there is no difference between D&D, soccer, puzzles, computer games, movies, and yoga. You can do any of those things for fun, and the point of them is fun, so they're all the same, right?

They're different things that all have the same point, with a few added points for particular activities like "staying in shape", "learning new things" and the like(if you're doing it professionally, the point of "making money from it" is also present and can surpass and even completely remove the other points).



There are qualities of each that provide meaning that goes well beyond having fun. And the differences in those qualities are what make some of those activities more well-suited to some groups of people or circumstances and less well suited to other groups of people or circumstances.

So? If someone enjoys watching movies, and someone else enjoys reading books, it doesn't change that both of them do that for the purpose of their entertainment.


People don't pick activities merely on the basis of what's fun. They pick based on the differences between them, sometimes plain and sometimes nuanced, in an attempt to estimate which activities will provide the most enjoyment.

They pick activities on the basis of what is fun for their tastes. Different paths for different persons, same goal.







Re: All the arguments that certain games are "event driven" rather than plot driven...a TPK is still a failure of the Dungeon Master.

It doesn't matter what KIND of game you're running, an unexpected TPK is always a failure.

If you're running a plot driven game, inadvertently ending your own plot is a failure.

If your game is scenario or event driven, then your job is to craft an interesting scenario; over-tuned encounters are not interesting.

As a GM you control everything. When designing an encounter, you eyeball how hard you want it to be, and design accordingly. Missing that mark is a failure the same as if a dart thrower misses their target.

"Let the dice fall where they may" is a philosophy I personally ascribe to, but it's irrelevant to this discussion. As a GM you determine how much the dice even get to impact the outcome. You can design an encounter that is effectively unwinnable, effectively impossible to lose, or anything in between those extremes.

Any time the outcome of an encounter does not fall within your set of planned outcomes you have failed, and planned TPKs are extraordinarily rare (ad even rarer are the scenarios where using them is not a failure of the out of game responsibilities of a DM; the social aspect too many overlook).

...sorry, but you're contradicting yourself.

As you said, a DM can design that is effectively unwinnable, something that is effectively impossible to lose, and anything between those extremes.

This "anything" would then have to be defined as "something where it's possible to win or lose, to varying degrees, but that the DM hasn't made unwinnable or impossible to lose"

Which means, that, by your own definition, a party getting a Total Party Kill in a situation that is neither unwinnable nor impossible to lose, but where both victory and defeat are possible is perfectly within the "outcome of an encounter does not fall within [the DM] set of planned outcomes" that you've talked about.

Ergo, unless the encounter was designed to be impossible to lose, a TPK cannot be a failure form the DM, since the encounter was either "unwinnable" or "anything in between those extremes", in which a TPK is still among the set of planned outcomes (however unlikely).

[MaxWilson]

Re: All the arguments that certain games are "event driven" rather than plot driven...a TPK is still a failure of the Dungeon Master.

It doesn't matter what KIND of game you're running, an unexpected TPK is always a failure...

Any time the outcome of an encounter does not fall within your set of planned outcomes you have failed, and planned TPKs are extraordinarily rare (ad even rarer are the scenarios where using them is not a failure of the out of game responsibilities of a DM; the social aspect too many overlook). *snip*

And for DMs who always expect that a TPK could happen any session, no TPK is unanticipated or outside the set of planned outcomes?

It's interesting you mention the social aspects of being a DM. D&D culture tends to conflate the roles of "adventure content designer", "rule referee", "player-gameworld-interface", "monster advocate", and even "game host" and "provider-of-pizza" all into one gigantic role as "the DM," but it doesn't have to be that way. You could, for example, automate the majority of player-gameworld-interface (especially during combat) and monster advocate, so that combats mostly run themselves with the DM injecting himself only to resolve hard calls (like "does the building collapse just because I Fireballed an ogre standing next to a load-bearing wall?") and introduce new content ("that was a pretty loud Thunderclap you used to kill those orcs--you hear shouts in the distance and the sound of feet running somewhere inside the building--what do you do?"). Rules refereeing can be done by consensus, and social responsibility for everyone having fun can be equally shared between all emotionally-mature participants.

No agenda. Just thought I'd mention it.

[willdaBEAST]

What's wrong with: "I play a little D&D with my friends, but we don't take it very seriously because we're more there to socialize and enjoy each other's company."?

Why do the special snowflakes have to insist that they get to say: "I only play to spend time with friends and enjoy each other's company but we also take the game very seriously."?

Because they are liars, that's why. And they are best at lying to themselves. And they get together with other people who are good at lying to themselves and they tell bigger lies, together. And then their whole life becomes a lie. And they insist that they are doing it right.

I say: WRONG.

Go ahead and do whatever you want. Just don't lie about it, publicly, and then get mad when people don't accept your lies.

Why is this so important to you? You call out participation trophies and snowflakes, but you seem to be incredibly sensitive about this topic. I can't help but feel like there's a lot more simmering beneath the surface that is motivating you here. You seem to have an agenda.

Personally, I like to do things well and devote a lot of of time and effort into trying to master whatever I do, but I also recognize outside of a structured league or competition, I can't identify that as the ideal approach. In my case I play pick up basketball (not soccer) and I come across plenty of people who will scream and howl at teammates when they make a mistake. Some times it's because the raging person has no self-awareness (they're terrible at bball), some times the person who made the mistake is an extremely casual player ("I want to get some exercise and have fun") and some times it's because the raging person thinks they're in the NBA playing game 7 of the finals. You can't force anyone to conform to your personal definition of the activity. You can find likeminded individuals and agree upon the goal or expectations, but that doesn't make other groups wrong.

You're railing against people being hypocrites, while being a hypocrite yourself.

[BurgerBeast]

Re: All the arguments that certain games are "event driven" rather than plot driven...a TPK is still a failure of the Dungeon Master.

You don;t seem to understand the argument, here, at all.


]It doesn't matter what KIND of game you're running, an unexpected TPK is always a failure.

Well, you've changed the statement to "an unexpected TPK" instead of just "a TPK." Even still, they're not always a failure. Is the game designed so that TPKs can happen? Yes. So, TPKs can happen, by design.


If you're running a plot driven game, inadvertently ending your own plot is a failure.

Again, inadvertently. The point it that you can run a plot driven story using a system that doesn't present the possibility of a TPK. D&D presents that possibility. This strikes me as a failure of game choice, not a failure of the game nor the DM.


If your game is scenario or event driven, then your job is to craft an interesting scenario; over-tuned encounters are not interesting.

Yet, more dangerous encounters are more tense and therefore more interesting. So there is always the interplay between increasing the tension and increasing the risk, however small, of a TPK. The game provides the possibility. What do you think? That this was an accident?


As a GM you control everything. When designing an encounter, you eyeball how hard you want it to be, and design accordingly. Missing that mark is a failure the same as if a dart thrower misses their target.

Wrong. You don't control player choices and you don't control the dice. You can plan for everything else, but not these. So these things can lead to unexpected occurrences. This is by design.


"Let the dice fall where they may" is a philosophy I personally ascribe to, but it's irrelevant to this discussion. As a GM you determine how much the dice even get to impact the outcome. You can design an encounter that is effectively unwinnable, effectively impossible to lose, or anything in between those extremes.

It's totally relevant to a conversation about the outcomes that are determined by dice. Sorry. you lose that tilt.

Question: What exactly is "between those extremes?"

Answer (edited for clarity):

Chance of TPK: impossible to lose 0% ---> 25% ---> 50% ---> 75% ---> 100% unwinnable


Any time the outcome of an encounter does not fall within your set of planned outcomes you have failed, and planned TPKs are extraordinarily rare (ad even rarer are the scenarios where using them is not a failure of the out of game responsibilities of a DM; the social aspect too many overlook).

This is what happens when you completely ignore the game rules. You're not supposed to be able to plan every outcome. That's what computer games are for. D&D is specifically designed for the purpose of handling unplanned outcomes via the human brain inside the DM's skull.

You apparently have no idea what the purpose of D&D is, as contrasted with video games, for example.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Re: All the arguments that certain games are "event driven" rather than plot driven...a TPK is still a failure of the Dungeon Master.

It doesn't matter what KIND of game you're running, an unexpected TPK is always a failure.

If you're running a plot driven game, inadvertently ending your own plot is a failure.

If your game is scenario or event driven, then your job is to craft an interesting scenario; over-tuned encounters are not interesting.

As a GM you control everything. When designing an encounter, you eyeball how hard you want it to be, and design accordingly. Missing that mark is a failure the same as if a dart thrower misses their target.

"Let the dice fall where they may" is a philosophy I personally ascribe to, but it's irrelevant to this discussion. As a GM you determine how much the dice even get to impact the outcome. You can design an encounter that is effectively unwinnable, effectively impossible to lose, or anything in between those extremes.

Any time the outcome of an encounter does not fall within your set of planned outcomes you have failed, and planned TPKs are extraordinarily rare (ad even rarer are the scenarios where using them is not a failure of the out of game responsibilities of a DM; the social aspect too many overlook).
Hmm. You know, while I'm pretty firmly in the camp of 'TPK's aren't always a bad thing, it depends on the game', I can kind of get behind this. If your game is the sort where a TPK can happen, it makes a lot of sense to plan accordingly. Prepare plenty of filler fights, make sure the numbers won't off the party before they get to a good point, and allow these TPK spots to exist in more specific scenarios where the TPK can either lead to a different outcome or end the campaign with a proper story beat.

My thought here is, you let hard fights be hard. Never unfairly and never unwinnable. Then you put these in the most dramatically appropriate places, your designated TPK spots. They're your final bosses, your critical story points, your unavoidable, cataclysmic events. Failing these tells an interesting story, something to remember, before your group figures out what game to play next.

Basically, deliberately letting the game end early if the players just aren't good enough to get a different ending. But making it's a place where you can give a good epilogue.

[Unoriginal]

I don't know the answer to that question. But it's a question I take seriously. The fact that I do not know the answer doesn't have any bearing on the claim that the answer cannot be "to have fun" so far as I can tell, though.

I think it would have to involve things like respecting other players, cooperating and considering the challenges presented, trying to find efficient solutions... but all of these seem like worse answers than "Take it seriously. Focus. Try." Those seem to be enough, to me.

If you don't know the answer, then don't call people bullies and cowards for providing their own answer just because it doesn't fit your idea.



I mean, suppose you're trying to coach a practice or teach lesson, and people are clowning around. You could say "come on guys, let's focus and take this seriously. Let's try, here." And I think they'd get it.

A lesson has a goal beyond entertainment, and not meeting this goal can lead to troubles, not to mention frustration in the coach/teacher and troubles for them.




I think it's the same with D&D. "Come on guys, we're trying to accomplish something here (no matter how trivial). Let's pay attention and try to get some things done."

People clowning around rather than paying attention to the game can be annoying yes, but that still a question of how you get your fun vs how they get their fun.



I hope the answer above gives some insight. It's a difficult question to answer. The players should listen carefully to the DM, try to pay attention to the situations presented, and try to resolve them efficiently given the available resources.

In the long run, this will produce the most enjoyment, I think.


Good. You've established the way you, personally, get to have the most fun while playing D&D. And it's not wrong, but it doesn't change that it's just a set of conditions that let you have the most fun out of the experience.

Yes, I find it nice when people pay attention to what the DM says and the situations, and not start doing stupid things because lolrandum. But it's not the same thing as not playing the game for fun.



No, not at all. That's got nothing to do with what I am trying to convey.

Thanks for answering, still.

[BW022]

A Total Party Kill (TPK) is a failure of the Dungeon Master. ...

Sure. The DM can always prevent a TPK (have the enemy capture the PCs, have some good NPCs arrive and raise the party, have a god teleport in and blast the enemies away, etc.), but the question is really... should she?

As a general rule, sure. Encounters can go for stink for all sorts of reasons, poor planning, missing PC, surprise, etc. It's generally hard to make a balanced encounter. Sometimes you design encounters expecting the PCs to run, sometimes you have players having an off-day and not pick up on a clue, etc. As a general rule, as a DM, I'll do almost anything to avoid killing the entire party or even individual PCs in campaigns with limited resurrection potential. Simple reason... when the group dies... the campaign ends. Time and effort is lost and we have to start again.

However... there are times when its fine to TPK a party. For example,

End of the Campaign. You've reached the end of the campaign (people are leaving, you've reached your agreeable level, the group wants to start something else, folks are obviously not enjoying it, etc.). So you put in a heavy unscaled combat. If the win... epic way to end the campaign. If not, good try. This is a case where taking extraordinary means to keep them alive isn't going anyone any good as it only cheapens the 'victory'.

Players are abusing the notion. Players say something like... "I know we are only third level, but let's attack the dragon because BW won't kill us. We'll wake up unconscious or something." They start using your friendship and aversion to not killing them as armour against sane actions. At this point, I'll happily kill them so that they realize in future games there is some line I won't permit. There is obviously a grey line if they don't come out and say it. Obviously, DM has to make a decision if the players are just not thinking or having an off day, vs. intentionally using your don't kill rule against them.

Tournaments or One-Shot Adventure. Sure, not big loss if they are killed.

[Tanarii]

The campaign has a very good chance of being straight up over because if the campaign has been personalized to the characters instead of a predetermined plot, a massive chunk of NPC interactions and narrative points just went poof.
You responded to my point by reiterating the exact same assumptions : that there is only one group of players, with one set of party members, and that its for some reason impossible to roll another group of adventurers to deal with consequences of the first groups death. Ill throw in another assumption: that the PC didnt have any henchmen or followers that might try to retrieve the bodies and get them raised or resurrected.

That's a large set of assumptions that are required for a TPK to end a campaign, regardless of who is responsible for it happening.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You responded to my point by reiterating the exact same assumptions : that there is only one group of players, with one set of party members, and that its for some reason impossible to roll another group of adventurers to deal with consequences of the first groups death. Ill throw in another assumption: that the PC didnt have any henchmen or followers that might try to retrieve the bodies and get them raised or resurrected.

That's a large set of assumptions that are required for a TPK to end a campaign, regardless of who is responsible for it happening.

But those assumptions hold in the majority of modern play, I'd bet. Your West March style is the outlier here, and has been for decades.

[BurgerBeast]

If you don't know the answer, then don't call people bullies and cowards for providing their own answer just because it doesn't fit your idea.

I never did that.

First of all, I said that people who participate in an activity without taking it seriously (i.e. only doing it for "fun"), which can be contrasted against actually trying (i.e. trying to do it well as opposed to simply have fun doing it), and who then claim that their approach is better are liars. It's akin to the motto "anything worth doing is with doing well."

Again, there are a more-or-less infinite number of things you can do that are fun. Why pick D&D? Whatever your reason is for picking D&D instead of some other activity - that would have something to do with the point of D&D. That would be worth doing well. And if you don't think it is, then you're not really taking the D&D seriously, which is fine with me.

But if you are not taking it seriously, and you claim this is a better way to be than people who take it seriously, then you're lying to yourself.

I see no problems there. Feel free to point any out.


A lesson has a goal beyond entertainment, and not meeting this goal can lead to troubles, not to mention frustration in the coach/teacher and troubles for them.

I don't care about the frustration of the teacher or coach. I care about the "goal beyond entertainment." That's my point. D&D either has a point beyond "fun" or it is trivial. I think it has a point beyond fun. I think reducing it to "meant to be fun" is a misunderstanding of its real value.

The evidence lies in the answer to the question: "Why are you playing D&D instead of doing some other fun activity?"

There are things that D&D offers that are unique and different. It's more than just fun. And insofar as those things are worth doing, they're worth doing well.

Sidenote: Guardians of the Galaxy was meant to be fun. But the creators spent some time trying to make it a quality movie. They weren't simply clowning around. They attempted to make the movie a good movie (within the context of what it was). They didn't write it off as "who cares - we're just here to have fun." And they didn't judge the quality of the movie on whether they had fun making it - they judged it on its actual quality.


People clowning around rather than paying attention to the game can be annoying yes, but that still a question of how you get your fun vs how they get their fun.

It has nothing to do with being annoying. It has to do with where the fun is coming from. If the fun is coming from clowning around, then it's not coming from the D&D. You're not playing D&D when you're clowning around.


Good. You've established the way you, personally, get to have the most fun while playing D&D. And it's not wrong, but it doesn't change that it's just a set of conditions that let you have the most fun out of the experience.

No, you're missing the point. when you're doing these things, you're playing D&D, and it can be fun. When you're clowning around, you're not playing D&D. You're clowning around, and that can be fun, too.


Yes, I find it nice when people pay attention to what the DM says and the situations, and not start doing stupid things because lolrandum. But it's not the same thing as not playing the game for fun.

You lost me in that double negative. All I'm saying is:

Clowning around can be fun. Playing D&D can be fun. But clowning around is not playing D&D.


Thanks for answering, still.

No problem.

[Rynjin]

...sorry, but you're contradicting yourself.

As you said, a DM can design that is effectively unwinnable, something that is effectively impossible to lose, and anything between those extremes.

This "anything" would then have to be defined as "something where it's possible to win or lose, to varying degrees, but that the DM hasn't made unwinnable or impossible to lose"

Which means, that, by your own definition, a party getting a Total Party Kill in a situation that is neither unwinnable nor impossible to lose, but where both victory and defeat are possible is perfectly within the "outcome of an encounter does not fall within [the DM] set of planned outcomes" that you've talked about.

Ergo, unless the encounter was designed to be impossible to lose, a TPK cannot be a failure form the DM, since the encounter was either "unwinnable" or "anything in between those extremes", in which a TPK is still among the set of planned outcomes (however unlikely).

No contradiction at all; you have simply conflated "possible" and "intended" outcomes.

For example, when you're playing baseball, the trajectories for where the ball will go are effectively infinite within the constraints of how far the hitter can possibly smack the ball. Places the ball can end up include over the fence, anywhere inside the fence, in the stands, or in the mitt of one of the players, among others.

While "in the mitt of an opposing player" is a POSSIBLE outcome, it is not a DESIRED or INTENDED outcome; should you hit the ball directly into the first baseman's mitt, you have failed.

As a DM when you design an encounter you're essentially calling your shot, or hedging your bet by expecting one of a few outcomes. If the outcome is not one of those things you wanted to, expected, and planned to happen...you dun goofed.


You don;t seem to understand the argument, here, at all.


Well, you've changed the statement to "an unexpected TPK" instead of just "a TPK."
It's not a change of argument at all, I'm just addressing the OP and arguments found on the first page of this thread in counter to it.


Yet, more dangerous encounters are more tense and therefore more interesting. So there is always the interplay between increasing the tension and increasing the risk, however small, of a TPK. The game provides the possibility. What do you think? That this was an accident?

Incorrect; more dangerous does not automatically mean more tense. More tense means more tense.

An encounter that is too dangerous can end up being boring (the outcome is already clear; you will lose and therefore it is just a long boring slog to that inevitable outcome) and a more dangerous encounter can simply be...boring. An encounter with a dozen orcs is potentially dangerous...but also usually quite boring.


Wrong. You don't control player choices and you don't control the dice. You can plan for everything else, but not these. So these things can lead to unexpected occurrences. This is by design.

...No, you can absolutely plan for player actions and dice. You know exactly what actions a player is CAPABLE of taking, so can include those in your plans, and choose whether or not they are viable actions in the context you have set up.

Likewise,you control the context. The terrain, what (and who) populates it, the larger world beyond this encounter...this is all your domain as the DM. It can all be planned for.

As for the dice, while 5e is (to its detriment) more reliant on random chance being a factor than anything else, you can still run simple probabilities. What chances do your enemies have of hitting? The players'? What are either sides' DPR? Etc., etc.

Using this, you can generally plan exactly how long the combat should last if all goes well for the players, and how long it should last if all goes poorly, with an average scenario somewhere in between.

With practice, you can eyeball all of this...but if you eyeball it wrong, and the party TPK'd when you didn't want them to...you dun goofed.

[Tanarii]

But those assumptions hold in the majority of modern play, I'd bet. Your West March style is the outlier here, and has been for decades.
Every non-official play game ive ever played in, its been possible at any point to roll a new party and continue the campaign, dealing with any fallout of the first parties sudden demise. Which often has resulted in something terrible happening in the world, because they also generally failed to stop it in the process of dying.

[Unoriginal]

No contradiction at all; you have simply conflated "possible" and "intended" outcomes.

For example, when you're playing baseball, the trajectories for where the ball will go are effectively infinite within the constraints of how far the hitter can possibly smack the ball. Places the ball can end up include over the fence, anywhere inside the fence, in the stands, or in the mitt of one of the players, among others.

While "in the mitt of an opposing player" is a POSSIBLE outcome, it is not a DESIRED or INTENDED outcome; should you hit the ball directly into the first baseman's mitt, you have failed.

As a DM when you design an encounter you're essentially calling your shot, or hedging your bet by expecting one of a few outcomes. If the outcome is not one of those things you wanted to, expected, and planned to happen...you dun goofed.


You said that a DM could design an encounter that is impossible to lose, an encounter that is impossible to win, or an encounter that is in-between those two extreme, correct?

Something that is in-between those two extreme is something that can possibly be either won or lost, correct?

So, if a DM design an encounter that can possibly be either won or lost, it means that they *intend* to leave the possibility for either success or failure, correct?

Ergo, the only way that one can have dun goof an encounter because said encounter ended with the failure of the PCs is if they intended for it to be impossible to lose and it didn't work.

Which means that the only way for a TPK to be a failure of the DM is if the DM didn't intend to include this possibility in the encounter.

[BurgerBeast]

It's not a change of argument at all, I'm just addressing the OP and arguments found on the first page of this thread in counter to it.

Well congratulations. You've proved to the forum goers that unintended TPKs are not good. I'm sure some people thought otherwise.


Incorrect; more dangerous does not automatically mean more tense. More tense means more tense.

I never said it automatically means more tense. It generally means more tense. The fact that you can point to a single, extreme counterexample doesn't change this. In general, as risk of death increases, tension increases.

Nice try though. You can act as if I thought guaranteed death is actually tense. Have fun with that straw man.


An encounter that is too dangerous can end up being boring (the outcome is already clear; you will lose and therefore it is just a long boring slog to that inevitable outcome) and a more dangerous encounter can simply be...boring. An encounter with a dozen orcs is potentially dangerous...but also usually quite boring.

Well, those are a couple of fun non-sequiturs. Thanks.


...No, you can absolutely plan for player actions and dice. You know exactly what actions a player is CAPABLE of taking, so can include those in your plans, and choose whether or not they are viable actions in the context you have set up.

Sure, pal. The player literally has infinite options. Go ahead and plan for those.


With practice, you can eyeball all of this...but if you eyeball it wrong, and the party TPK'd when you didn't want them to...you dun goofed.

No. You will not know if you goofed. You will not know unless you do the analysis. Sometimes the 1% happens. Sometimes the 0.5% happens. If you design an encounter with a 99.5% chance of no TPK, and the party TPKs, and you then say: I goofed and it's my fault, you could be wrong. The game may actually be designed in a way that some of the encounters are meant to result in TPKs. Especially at lower levels.

[PhoenixPhyre]

How high does the risk of a TPK have to be to actually matter (if it does)?

Let's do a little math.

The only fights that should pose TPK risk are deadly ones (by definition). A TPK in a non-deadly fight is a mistake on the DM's part (again by definition).

Assume that there's half as much chance to kill N+1 PCs than N, so the probability of N deaths is C/2^N, where C is a constant to be determined. This seems reasonable (if a bit generous). If C = 1, then there's a 50% chance of killing 1 PC in any given deadly fight.

Now assume that a party of 4 PCs goes into a deadly fight. THe half-life is the number of fights until there's a 50% chance of a TPK having happened.



C
TPK chance per fight
half-life


1
6.3%
11


0.5
3.1%
22


0.25
1.6%
44



Assuming nothing other than deadly fights, that's pretty low level (2 deadly fights per adventuring day, ~1-2 days in T1, 4-5 in T2). That's like level 10 at 1% chance. If you use non-deadly fights at all, then you can go to higher levels by tanking the chance of a TPK.

So what's a meaningful chance per fight? 5%? 1%? 0.1% 0.01%? Or is it purely placebo effect (as in it could be 0%, but as long as there's the illusion of a chance, it plays its role)?

Edit: And note--the DMG's guidance assumes that you're mostly doing medium with fewer hard, easy, or deadly fights. So I'd say that the median conforming chance is <<<<< 1%.

[Rynjin]

You said that a DM could design an encounter that is impossible to lose, an encounter that is impossible to win, or an encounter that is in-between those two extreme, correct?

Something that is in-between those two extreme is something that can possibly be either won or lost, correct?

So, if a DM design an encounter that can possibly be either won or lost, it means that they *intend* to leave the possibility for either success or failure, correct?

Ergo, the only way that one can have dun goof an encounter because said encounter ended with the failure of the PCs is if they intended for it to be impossible to lose and it didn't work.

Which means that the only way for a TPK to be a failure of the DM is if the DM didn't intend to include this possibility in the encounter.

I'll be quite honest, I'm not sure whether you or Beast have every GM'd, because between "players have infinite options, therefore you can never plan for anything" and not understanding how basic encounter design works (hint: design has intent behind it; you don't just slap a bunch of stuff on the board and hope it works, you can absolutely hedge your bets against multiple outcomes), it seems this conversation is completely pointless as long as either of you continue to argue from a point of ignorance.

[Unoriginal]

I'll be quite honest, I'm not sure whether you or Beast have every GM'd, because between "players have infinite options, therefore you can never plan for anything" and not understanding how basic encounter design works (hint: design has intent behind it; you don't just slap a bunch of stuff on the board and hope it works, you can absolutely hedge your bets against multiple outcomes), it seems this conversation is completely pointless as long as either of you continue to argue from a point of ignorance.

I am a DM, thank you very much. And your condescention isn't going to mask the hole in your argument.

I'll repeat my question, hoping you'll answer:

If you are designing an encounter you do not intend to be impossible to win or impossible to lose, it means you are intendind to design an encounter where it is possible to either win or lose, yes or no?

[Vaz]

Urgh, **** this thread.

[Pex]

That is one viewpoint and I don't share it. I don't coddle players and if they are being stupid, foolish or rash, they earn what comes. Player agency is just another BS term that I don't agree with. You takes your chances and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Naturally. Who cares what players think or want. If only the game could be played without them.

[Tanarii]

The only fights that should pose TPK risk are deadly ones (by definition). A TPK in a non-deadly fight is a mistake on the DM's part (again by definition). Pretty sure I've never seen a party TPK themself with Deadly fight within the adventuring day past ... oh lets say 3rd level.

When parties TPK themself IMC past the first two levels, its either far more than a Deadly encounter they chose to face, or more commonly they're pushing well over an adventuring day.

In the first two levels its sometimes just awful luck of the dice. But them's the breaks. I don't cheat with the dice.

[BurgerBeast]

I'll be quite honest, I'm not sure whether you or Beast have every GM'd, because between "players have infinite options, therefore you can never plan for anything"...

Who said you can't plan for anything?

I said you cannot plan for everything. This was in response to you claiming that one not only can, but must.


...and not understanding how basic encounter design works (hint: design has intent behind it; you don't just slap a bunch of stuff on the board and hope it works, you can absolutely hedge your bets against multiple outcomes),...

Oh, no! I can't just plunk random things on the board? Thank you o wise one! Now that I realize this, I'll stop right away!

Come on, Captain Straw Man... you're better than that.


...it seems this conversation is completely pointless as long as either of you continue to argue from a point of ignorance.

Well, to be fair, the conversation becomes pointless when you re-write every argument that is presented as a pointless argument, and then counter it with the most generic information available; information that more-or-less everyone already knows.

It's really not a conversation at all, at that point. It's just you rattling off truisms.

[Coffee_Dragon]

D&D games generally aren't survivalist games. It's possible to play one but not the general premise. A survivalist D&D game is most often a one-shot where the whole point is to see how long you survive. For games like Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu TPKs are expected and the fun is figuring out how to get there appropriately for the genre, for those who like those game systems. (I don't.)

There are those who'd say this is completely backwards: that in a game such as D&D where the magnitude of player agency corresponds closely or entirely to character effectiveness, survival becomes the only possible mode of play, blanketing all other concerns by logical consequence. Whereas if you can get players to relax their white-knuckled grip on survival - whether by guaranteeing it will hold, or through the understanding it will not hold, but that it doesn't represent the totality of their stakes at the table - they will be free to explore different themes without having to percolate them through this one overriding imperative.


The threat of a TPK (especially a random one) does not inherently provide tension. It can, or it can make people refuse to invest in their character and thus decrease the player's emotional attachment and immersion. When DMs go too far to the meat-grinder, the easiest response is to treat the characters as playing pieces, not characters. This leads to the "I'm playing Bob2, brother of Bob1" mode and, in my experience, greatly increases the risk of pure murderhobo/sadistic fantasy/unpleasant play.

I think there is something to this - a slope towards apathy if not necessarily "sadistic fantasy". I also suppose there is a correlation between thinking TPK is a natural part of play and not really thinking character distinction or investment is that great or important. Reading a couple of much-lauded OSR modules recently left me with the impression of an attitude towards PC death and dismemberment ranging somewhere between indifferent and insistent.

(ETA: Come to think of it, "sadistic fantasy" are not words that strike me as a totally inappropriate characterization of those modules.)

[Asmotherion]

A good TPK can become a lot of things, from a multiclass opportunity, an adventure hook point, to even a Campain Starter.

Example to all 3:

Multiclass oportunity:
Character A wants to Multiclass into Fiend Warlock. He has informed me, as a DM beforehand. However he has no proficiency in Arcana or Religion. Character B wants to multiclass into Paladin. Character C wants to multiclass into Divine Sorcerer.

After they manage a few rounds with an unbalance encounter (without previous notice), they are eventually killed. For thematic reasons, let's say it is a powerful fiend.

After the encounter, the fiend proceeds to tempt the Warlock (telepathically) to be "you can die here, or sell me you soul. Nobody has to know. I sence greatness in you".

The Divine Sorcerer on the other hand could be contacted by a celestial in his mind telling him "now that you are so close to death, I finally found you my child. Take my power, stand up and save them".

And finally, the Paladin, after experiancing this "Miracle", The Divine Sorcerer flashing Celestial wings that heal them, and the Fiend teleporting away seemingly banished, (In reality because he succesfully got what he was after; the soul of the Warlock) begins his path towards Devotion, thus becoming a Paladin.

Adventure Hook:
The party wakes up in the inn. They have a simple task, posted on the board outside of the Inn; 100gp to see if someone is using the abandoned mansion to smuggle weapons. After greeting the Innkeeper, he tells them "So, I hear you head for the odd jobs, right? I'd stay out of there if I were you."

They ignore him, and go there nevertheless. After a wile, they encounter a Ghost. After a fight, the ghost overpowers them, and TPKs them.
(...)
The party wakes up in the inn. As they go down in the stairs, the Innkeeper greets them "So, I hear you head for the odd jobs, right? I'd stay out of there if I were you."...

Campain:
Remember how there is a condition about resuretion spells that requires a soul to be "Free and Willing" to be resurected? I am not saying more about it, as this is the project of my new campain, but I think it is just as amusing as the rest of them.

[MaxWilson]

Now assume that a party of 4 PCs goes into a deadly fight. THe half-life is the number of fights until there's a 50% chance of a TPK having happened.



C
TPK chance per fight
half-life


1
6.3%
11


0.5
3.1%
22


0.25
1.6%
44



Assuming nothing other than deadly fights, that's pretty low level (2 deadly fights per adventuring day, ~1-2 days in T1, 4-5 in T2). That's like level 10 at 1% chance. If you use non-deadly fights at all, then you can go to higher levels by tanking the chance of a TPK.

Higher chance of TPK equates also to faster advancement, and fewer fights to reach 10th level. It's not at all clear for example that doubling the number of monsters in every encounter would lead to lower probability of reaching high levels. It may just mean less table time. (That's what I've seen happen in practice. Really fast advancement (and wealth accumulation) when players engage with threats that are much higher level than they are. The fact that they can do this and survive just goes to show that vanilla 5e is designed to be super-easy mode.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Higher chance of TPK equates also to faster advancement, and fewer fights to reach 10th level. It's not at all clear for example that doubling the number of monsters in every encounter would lead to lower probability of reaching high levels. It may just mean less table time. (That's what I've seen happen in practice. Really fast advancement (and wealth accumulation) when players engage with threats that are much higher level than they are. The fact that they can do this and survive just goes to show that vanilla 5e is designed to be super-easy mode.)

The 2 deadly fights per day model is what tracks both the DMG guidelines and the expected adventuring days per level (averaging 2.4/level). I actually plotted it out. The half life is really really fixed--11 deadly fights if there's a 50% chance of killing a PC per deadly fight and there are 4 PCs.

By construction and explicit, intentional design, TPKs (and PC deaths) are supposed to be a rarity in this edition. That's by design. Thinking that death == challenge (especially that the only source of challenge is constant fear of death) is not consistent with how this edition functions. Meat-grinder campaigns are best run in other editions, and went out of fashion a long time ago in the mainstream. You can do it here, but you're bucking the system doing so. Because of this, when you try to tell others how to play, you're the outlier here. Your expectations are out of the norm.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I will be a bit more mathematical to my last point:

Using the thresholds for a deadly fight, doubling the difficulty while doubling the XP results in the same average level--you go twice as fast, but you die twice as often. That's built into the model.

Using threshold-deadly fights as the benchmark and using the breakpoints as set, you reach the following tiers after a certain number of fights:

T2 (level 5) at 18 fights
T3 (level 11) at 59 fights
T4 (level 17) at 84 fights,
and level 20 at ~98 fights.

For you to have a 50% chance of reaching level 20 under this model and only fighting deadly fights, you'd need a constant of 0.12 (so a 0.75% chance of a TPK per fight).

[MaxWilson]

The 2 deadly fights per day model is what tracks both the DMG guidelines and the expected adventuring days per level (averaging 2.4/level). I actually plotted it out. The half life is really really fixed--11 deadly fights if there's a 50% chance of killing a PC per deadly fight and there are 4 PCs.

Come again?

I didn't say anything at all about the number of fights per day, only about the number of fights until you level up. Harder fights = fewer fights. You can't possibly disagree with that, can you?


By construction and explicit, intentional design, TPKs (and PC deaths) are supposed to be a rarity in this edition. That's by design.

...isn't that what I said? Vanilla 5E is super-easy-mode by design. We are saying the same thing here.

I agree though that 5E isn't a really great system for running a challenging and immersive campaign. AD&D is better in most ways, especially for Combat As War, since 5E goes out of its way on many levels to ensure that attrition of any resource is never a serious problem and that PCs never suffer any permanent negative consequences for anything that does not kill them permanently. While you can run 5E in Combat As War mode, it winds up involving lots of house rules, and overall 5E is better for casual games and Combat As Sport.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Come again?

I didn't say anything at all about the number of fights per day, only about the number of fights until you level up. Harder fights = fewer fights. You can't possibly disagree with that, can you?



...isn't that what I said? Vanilla 5E is super-easy-mode by design. We are saying the same thing here.

I agree though that 5E isn't a really great system for running a challenging campaign. AD&D is better in most ways.

Meaning I was only caring about fights, not levels. Back calculating says that it's irrelevant--the model is linear in that regard. You get more XP, but you die faster. A game with no deadly fights will hit higher levels faster because you don't have to start over periodically.

My point is that your definition of challenging is non standard. In my opinion, you haven't justified even a bit why you think that only the constant threat of death is a challenge. It sounds like old Nintendo games--a fake challenge based on gotcha mechanics and random chance. No thanks.

[MaxWilson]

My point is that your definition of challenging is non standard. In my opinion, you haven't justified even a bit why you think that only the constant threat of death is a challenge. It sounds like old Nintendo games--a fake challenge based on gotcha mechanics and random chance. No thanks.

Okay...

We apparently still agree on the substance of the matter here, that 5E goes out of its way to avoid killing PCs or permanently harming them in any way, but you don't like the words used to describe that substance. You don't want to call that "easy"--perhaps you'd rather call it "friendly" or something--but in any case everyone who's ever played 5E knows that that is what it is. In 5E, if a party TPKs before reaching 20th level, many DMs will consider that a failure on their part and will strive to avoid a repetition next time.

That says quite a lot about the type of game 5E is. It's more suitable for escapist power fantasies than for Gygaxian dungeon crawls. No serious person can disagree with that characterization.

[Xetheral]

Every non-official play game ive ever played in, its been possible at any point to roll a new party and continue the campaign, dealing with any fallout of the first parties sudden demise. Which often has resulted in something terrible happening in the world, because they also generally failed to stop it in the process of dying.

Whereas I've never ran or played in a campaign where substituting in a new party into an existing campaign would even make any sense. The closest one could come is running a game with a new party in the same world at the same point in time that may involve the same geopolitical situation... but I'd be hard-pressed to define that as the same campaign. It would seem much more like a sequel.

[MxKit]

To tl;dr rephrase something I noted before, because I think I've thought of a better way to put it:

If the players would feel actually let down, sincerely disappointed, and like their enjoyment of the situation is less than it would have been had they not TPK'd, a TPK is a mistake.

If the DM would feel let down, sincerely disappointed, and like their enjoyment of the situation is less than it would have been had the party not TPK'd, a TPK is a mistake.

If the game is story-focused and the players and DM feel like what just happened is a fizzled-out disappointment or a joke that impacts their enjoyment of the narrative, because their party just got bad-luck TPK'd by an ooze and some giant rats in the tunnels on their way to fight the Big Bad and they feel like that's the least satisfying thing that could possibly have happened, a TPK is probably a mistake.

If, however, the level of disappointment is the same level as losing when playing a board game, like a kind of "aw, that sucks, oh well, let's roll up new characters," and especially if the DM and players all know that this is the group's preferred style of play ahead of time, then a TPK is probably not a mistake. And I'd venture to say that in most cases, a TPK at the "climactic" moment of the campaign isn't a mistake.

To tl;dr it even further, if the players and/or DM would actually flat-out rather not TPK, and not in an "I'd rather not lose at Candy Land if I could win!" way, a TPK is a mistake, but if they don't care or find it fun, then it's not.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Okay...

We apparently still agree on the substance of the matter here, that 5E goes out of its way to avoid killing PCs or permanently harming them in any way, but you don't like the words used to describe that substance. You don't want to call that "easy"--perhaps you'd rather call it "friendly" or something--but in any case everyone who's ever played 5E knows that that is what it is. In 5E, if a party TPKs before reaching 20th level, many DMs will consider that a failure on their part and will strive to avoid a repetition next time.

That says quite a lot about the type of game 5E is. It's more suitable for escapist power fantasies than for Gygaxian dungeon crawls. No serious person can disagree with that characterization.

It's about presentation. You're smuggling in the assumption that having TPK risk is inherently a good thing. You haven't justified that at all. You're purely assuming your conclusion, in a very condescending, belittling, and elitist way. It's like the "hardcore" MMO fans complaining about "dumbing things down" by letting those nooobs actually have a chance without spending hours and hours grinding through content over and over for random drops and min-maxing their characters.

I don't find having to reroll new characters constantly to be fun. It breaks immersion in any kind of believable world, it promotes what I consider bad play (apathy toward characters, apathy toward the setting, metagaming by throwing disposable characters at the wall to learn more for next time, etc), and it means you see the same stretch of content over and over again. It also tends to be fatal to group cohesion. A TPK is a failure. Maybe not on the DM's part, but on someone's part. And random TPKs (where the dice just go against you, as they sometimes do) are particularly bad.

Gygaxian dungeon crawls haven't been a thing since Dragonlance. And, in my opinion that's a good thing. Fake difficulty (difficulty because of bad mechanics) is pointless except for bragging rights. That doesn't make "escapist power fantasies" (a particularly loaded term) what remains. What remains is actual roleplaying in its purest form. Getting into a character, believing in them, making choices for them as them (not using them as merely disposable playing pieces), getting into a world, exploring places, themes, ideas, and vistas that you'd never see in real life.

[MaxWilson]

It's about presentation. You're smuggling in the assumption that having TPK risk is inherently a good thing. You haven't justified that at all. You're purely assuming your conclusion, in a very condescending, belittling, and elitist way. It's like the "hardcore" MMO fans complaining about "dumbing things down" by letting those nooobs actually have a chance without spending hours and hours grinding through content over and over for random drops and min-maxing their characters.

I don't find having to reroll new characters constantly to be fun. It breaks immersion in any kind of believable world, it promotes what I consider bad play (apathy toward characters, apathy toward the setting, metagaming by throwing disposable characters at the wall to learn more for next time, etc), and it means you see the same stretch of content over and over again. It also tends to be fatal to group cohesion. A TPK is a failure. Maybe not on the DM's part, but on someone's part. And random TPKs (where the dice just go against you, as they sometimes do) are particularly bad.

Gygaxian dungeon crawls haven't been a thing since Dragonlance. And, in my opinion that's a good thing. Fake difficulty (difficulty because of bad mechanics) is pointless except for bragging rights. That doesn't make "escapist power fantasies" (a particularly loaded term) what remains. What remains is actual roleplaying in its purest form. Getting into a character, believing in them, making choices for them as them (not using them as merely disposable playing pieces), getting into a world, exploring places, themes, ideas, and vistas that you'd never see in real life.

Whoa, sensitive much?

I like running/playing in a harder game than you do. If I'm going to roleplay a character, I want to roleplay them doing something hard. I want to be immersed in the life of Harry Dresden on his worst day, like Skin Game, when he's going up against five bad guys who are all more powerful than he is and who are going to kill him if he doesn't fight smart. I don't want to play Harry Dresden on the day when he fights a bunch of small fry who are no match for him. I want the most likely outcome of straightforward, unskillful play to be, "You fail." I want failures and victories to be learning experiences for the players as well as the characters. I want the game to be hard enough that failure is always a real possibility. Otherwise you might as well just skip over that adventure without rolling any dice at all.

In short, I like being challenged more than you apparently do. You're curiously defensive about that fact. I suspect I'm having more fun than you are.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Whoa, sensitive much?

I like running/playing in a harder game than you do. You're curiously defensive about that fact.

I strongly dislike elitism and condescension, especially when it's unjustified and not backed up with either facts or with clear "this is just my taste, YMMV" markers. I try to mark all my subjective issues that way. I also find the "harder games" as you put it to be mostly difficulty for the sake of difficulty--adding on mechanics that slow things down, distance the players from their characters, and promote bad play. They're fake difficulty and get in the way of what RPGs do best. If you want difficulty and challenge with a purely neutral arbiter, go do PvP in a shooter or play a wargame. RPGs aren't built for that anymore, which is a feature in my mind. Note that Gygaxian dungeon crawls went out of fashion real fast. Basically, outside of Gygax's own table, they died by the time AD&D came out. Because most people don't find that type of play fun.

You still haven't answered the question--for a proper challenge as you'd define it, what should be the chance of killing a PC per fight? 1%? 10%? 50%? The differences are huge. If you want any possible chance of getting to high levels, then the chance has to be indistinguishable (at least to me) from noise. That makes the "no TPK = no challenge" position one of fake difficulty.

That, or you could dispute my model. One true-seeming prediction is that the best way to avoid a TPK is to have more bodies. Doubling the number of PCs (or disposable henchmen) increases the parties half-life (even at 50% chance of someone dying) to 178 deadly fights (up from 11). It also drastically slows things down and requires huge fights to maintain the same difficulty level. But that's how AD&D worked--bring lots of people, plus a bunch of disposable meat shields. I consider that a total waste of time for the real players.

Edit: and your edit doubles down on the condescension and elitism. I think we're done here. Have fun telling others that they're having badwrongfun. Especially when you're in the strong minority.

[Tanarii]

Whereas I've never ran or played in a campaign where substituting in a new party into an existing campaign would even make any sense. The closest one could come is running a game with a new party in the same world at the same point in time that may involve the same geopolitical situation... but I'd be hard-pressed to define that as the same campaign. It would seem much more like a sequel.
That's the same campaign. You're just defining campaign weirdly. :smallbiggrin:

Same DM. Same Players. Same world, same part of the world, starting exactly when the last party died, working with the same general issues happening because of the first part failed at completing whatever they were doing. Even if it's just "failed to clear out the Cave of Chaos", that's the same campaign.

Maybe if you insist on using campaign to mean "adventure path" it might not be. Like "oh we had almost finished Storm Kings Thunder and we died, and the replacement party is too low level to save the region. Guess we'll have to start a sequel adventure path campaign about a plucky group of heroes kicking the Giants out."


Note that Gygaxian dungeon crawls went out of fashion real fast. Basically, outside of Gygax's own table, they died by the time AD&D came out. Because most people don't find that type of play fun.
I call BS on this one. I run 5e as T1 Dungeon Delve and T2 something like West Marches. I advertise it as a more old-school lethal game, even though that's now more primarily on the players choices. And it draws because of that. Way more an AL does on the nights I run at the gaming stores.

There are still plenty of players looking for "harder" RPG gaming challenges out here.

[MaxWilson]

You still haven't answered the question--for a proper challenge as you'd define it, what should be the chance of killing a PC per fight? 1%? 10%? 50%? The differences are huge. If you want any possible chance of getting to high levels, then the chance has to be indistinguishable (at least to me) from noise. That makes the "no TPK = no challenge" position one of fake difficulty.

I wasn't aware that you'd asked me that question.

For a proper challenge, the chance of player failure when players do everything the obvious, straightforward way should be in the neighborhood of 40-60%; when they do things intelligently, it should be somewhere around 0-2%. For example, a gladiatorial fight between a PC and a monster should probably feature a 5th level PC and a fairly dumb CR 4 or CR 5 monster (e.g. Chuul or Earth Elemental). Otherwise it's fluff, not challenging and not impactful.

Not everything in a game needs to be a challenge--a 5th level PC can fight a CR 1/2 orc for fluff reasons, e.g. to earn money or to gain a reputation as a good fighter or just because it's fun to feel powerful. But don't kid yourself into thinking that fluff is challenge; and a game without frequent challenges is not worth my time to run or to play in.

That's the answer to the question you should have asked. The question you did ask doesn't have a smart answer because it's not a smart question.

[Pex]

Whoa, sensitive much?

I like running/playing in a harder game than you do. If I'm going to roleplay a character, I want to roleplay them doing something hard. I want to be immersed in the life of Harry Dresden on his worst day, like Skin Game, when he's going up against five bad guys who are all more powerful than he is and who are going to kill him if he doesn't fight smart. I don't want to play Harry Dresden on the day when he fights a bunch of small fry who are no match for him. I want the most likely outcome of straightforward, unskillful play to be, "You fail." I want failures and victories to be learning experiences for the players as well as the characters. I want the game to be hard enough that failure is always a real possibility. Otherwise you might as well just skip over that adventure without rolling any dice at all.

In short, I like being challenged more than you apparently do. You're curiously defensive about that fact. I suspect I'm having more fun than you are.

How do you define failure? It sounds to me you define failure as character death. So as to not burn the man of straw focusing on character death, what is failure to you? I accept character death as a possibility, but it is not the only thing that defines a failure and frequency of it should never be used as a measuring stick of playing the game properly. The frequency of PC death is fine for a player's personal taste of his fun of playing, but it's not a definition to declare someone is playing the game in an inferior way for preferring a different frequency.

[PopeLinus1]

My rule of thumb is two divide the adventure in two three parts.

The Begining: Turn TPK’s, wether caused by by bad luck or poor tactics into captures, or last-minute rescues,

The middle. Poor tactics should be able to cuase TPK’s, But luck should still be able to save them. If they have good tactics, but horrible luck, then have them be captured or saved, often in a way that ties back to the begining.

The End: At this point, bad tactics or bad luck could realistically cuase TPK’s. This is when the stakes are the highest, and the players should feel the risk of a TPK at this point. It shouldn’t be unnecessarily hard, but TPK’s should be a threat they are concerned about.

[willdaBEAST]

My rule of thumb is two divide the adventure in two three parts.

The Begining: Turn TPK’s, wether caused by by bad luck or poor tactics into captures, or last-minute rescues,

The middle. Poor tactics should be able to cuase TPK’s, But luck should still be able to save them. If they have good tactics, but horrible luck, then have them be captured or saved, often in a way that ties back to the begining.

The End: At this point, bad tactics or bad luck could realistically cuase TPK’s. This is when the stakes are the highest, and the players should feel the risk of a TPK at this point. It shouldn’t be unnecessarily hard, but TPK’s should be a threat they are concerned about.

I like this escalation of danger, it makes sense to me thematically. A BBEG who is being hounded by pesky adventurers would probably become more ruthless after being thwarted several times and especially when the party becomes a legitimate threat. I do think it makes sense to clearly convey this to the players though, otherwise they could get accustomed to being bailed out in the beginning and middle, then stunned when their characters die for real.

[Vaz]

Whoa, sensitive much?

I like running/playing in a harder game than you do. If I'm going to roleplay a character, I want to roleplay them doing something hard. I want to be immersed in the life of Harry Dresden on his worst day, like Skin Game, when he's going up against five bad guys who are all more powerful than he is and who are going to kill him if he doesn't fight smart. I don't want to play Harry Dresden on the day when he fights a bunch of small fry who are no match for him. I want the most likely outcome of straightforward, unskillful play to be, "You fail." I want failures and victories to be learning experiences for the players as well as the characters. I want the game to be hard enough that failure is always a real possibility. Otherwise you might as well just skip over that adventure without rolling any dice at all.

In short, I like being challenged more than you apparently do. You're curiously defensive about that fact. I suspect I'm having more fun than you are.

I'm not sure what is hard about dealing more damage than the party. Sure they might not kill the beast, but then the party rocks up with either a resurrected DM fiat party to have another go, or play with a bunch of characters who may or may not have a reason to fight the same opponents. One of my games had the party fighting Ogremach. In that the party got wiped. The campaign ended there. Why? Because of the Party Wipe. There could have been another respawned party, or the DM resurrected all the guys, but at that stage, you're just looking at refighting a fight until you win anyway?

In 3.5, there was a Save Point Trick, where you could respawn the day before your death at a cost of maybe 30pp. It was cool from a TO perspective, but the only time it saw use was when the DM allowed me to do it, under the proviso that he'd allow me to retain the knowledge based on the day just gone, but that monster fights would turn into learning exactly what it was we were fighting over the course of several combats, and we had to avoid a TPK every so often, learning the mechanics of its attacks. I.e, we went into a Fight with a Great Wyrm Black Dragon who was immune to Shivering Touch and breathed Lightning, rather than Acid, and had to learn the rate at which it would attack.

This became boring, as we fohght the same monster multiple times.

In 3.5, spells were a lot more readily available, until it became a thing that Death was just a resource, especially with Crafted Contingencies, and access to Eternal Wands with Fast Healing, so you started each fight at full health, and death simply took away some downtime, or a single readily available spell slot, and an action in a fight. We soon realised that death actually meant nothing. Either come back with the same or different characters, or don't come back at all, those are the two choices.

If you are coming back with the same, then what was the point of dying? If they are coming back different, did the party need to die? Did the party really have to die so that some people can change their character? If the party want to change their character why do they have to wait to die, can they not just retire?

If they aren't fighting the same opponent, then what was the point of the opponent there in the first place?

There is no valid reason for TPKing a party within this thread. There is nothing gained from TPKing a party, according to this thread.

[Xetheral]

That's the same campaign. You're just defining campaign weirdly. :smallbiggrin:

Same DM. Same Players. Same world, same part of the world, starting exactly when the last party died, working with the same general issues happening because of the first part failed at completing whatever they were doing. Even if it's just "failed to clear out the Cave of Chaos", that's the same campaign.

Maybe if you insist on using campaign to mean "adventure path" it might not be. Like "oh we had almost finished Storm Kings Thunder and we died, and the replacement party is too low level to save the region. Guess we'll have to start a sequel adventure path campaign about a plucky group of heroes kicking the Giants out."

I am fully prepared to believe that we define "campaign" differently. :) I'll try to elaborate on where I think we differ:

For me, a campaign is the path (used generically, not as a reference to a preplanned adventure path) the party makes through the game world, defined by the PCs actions, the places they go, and the interactions they have with each other and NPCs. Individual characters may come and go, but the path is still continuous. By contrast, if you replace all the characters, the path is necessarily discontinuous, making it, by definition, a new path. Under my conception, replacing the entirely party thus results in a new campaign.

I get the sense, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that for you a campaign is almost exactly the inverse: it's the world, and events, and NPCs through which the party makes a path. Accordingly, one campaign can have mutiple co-existing paths, and thus multiple parties.

To use a methaphor, for me a campaign is like a particular tunnel carved through bedrock (as chosen by the players). For you, a campaign is like a specific set of bedrock through which multiple tunnels can be carved (again as chosen by the players). Importantly, so long as there is only one tunnel, the end result looks identical in both approaches, and so in most contexts we can both use the word and mean approximately the same thing.

Is this a good analogy, or am I misunderstanding what "campaign" means to you?

[Tanarii]

Is this a good analogy, or am I misunderstanding what "campaign" means to you?Close enough. And I can see that by your definition of campaign, if the party experiences a TPK and there are no henchmen or allies or whatever to recover their bodies and have them brought back to life, it'd be the end of the campaign. By definition.

That does, of course, as I said earlier require one group of players with one group of PCs. But as PhoenixPhyre pointed out I'm an exception to the general rule on that front. Other than official play, of course.

But I'm still gonna call y'all weirdos. For thinking that way about campaigns, or it being a 'normal' way to play. Even if it's more normal than not nowadays. :p

[Darth Ultron]

As a KILLER DM that does TPKs often, I say: Do Both.

I'm all for the freedom of Let the Players Get their Characters Killed.

BUT

I also like to finish the Story.

It's simple enough though: just have the players make new characters and continue the story.

For a nice fun twist: advance the timeline and have the players make the children of their characters.

Another fun twist: have the souls of the dead characters come back in new bodies (so 'new' characters, but with all their old memories). Even more fun, have everyone 'switch' character types: Elmon the Wizard is now Elmon the Barbarian.

Another even more fun twist: advance the timeline and have evil win. Then have the new characters, legacy characters or the reincarnated characters travel back in time to try and save the day.

[MaxWilson]

Another even more fun twist: advance the timeline and have evil win. Then have the new characters, legacy characters or the reincarnated characters travel back in time to try and save the day.

Very nice! Consider this stolen.

[MaxWilson]

How do you define failure? It sounds to me you define failure as character death. So as to not burn the man of straw focusing on character death, what is failure to you? I accept character death as a possibility, but it is not the only thing that defines a failure and frequency of it should never be used as a measuring stick of playing the game properly. The frequency of PC death is fine for a player's personal taste of his fun of playing, but it's not a definition to declare someone is playing the game in an inferior way for preferring a different frequency.

It depends on the scenario and the character. Character death is almost always a failure mode--there are rare exceptions where you can succeed despite dying, but they are rare--and other failure modes could include not getting what you're looking for (possibly because you had to cut and run due to fear of dying), failing to protect NPCs you wanted to protect, failing to stay out of jail, failing to advance your social standing...

Whenever you, as a DM, construct an adventure hook, there's always something you implicitly or explicitly offer the players as bait for taking the hook. If on the other hand the players aren't taking an adventure hook but are exploring a sandbox, they create their own hooks--there's something they're seeking in the sandbox (could be as simple as loot and XP, or more complex) or they'd be pursuing an adventure hook instead. If the players don't get what they're after, that's failure.

Does that answer your question?

[Chugger]

It's cruel to beat dead horses into the ground. Seriously, folks. It's also against forum policy to troll (isn't it? someone please tell me it is). Of course I could just try ignoring this post, but ... yeah, that poor equine is six miles down by now. Six miles! Do we really have to keep punishing it?

[Luccan]

It's cruel to beat dead horses into the ground. Seriously, folks. It's also against forum policy to troll (isn't it? someone please tell me it is). Of course I could just try ignoring this post, but ... yeah, that poor equine is six miles down by now. Six miles! Do we really have to keep punishing it?

Who do you think is trolling who? Also, it's quite common for threads to continue long after the OP has stopped caring, with people arguing back and forth. That isn't against forum rules.

[ad_hoc]

My rule of thumb is two divide the adventure in two three parts.

The Begining: Turn TPK’s, wether caused by by bad luck or poor tactics into captures, or last-minute rescues,

The middle. Poor tactics should be able to cuase TPK’s, But luck should still be able to save them. If they have good tactics, but horrible luck, then have them be captured or saved, often in a way that ties back to the begining.

The End: At this point, bad tactics or bad luck could realistically cuase TPK’s. This is when the stakes are the highest, and the players should feel the risk of a TPK at this point. It shouldn’t be unnecessarily hard, but TPK’s should be a threat they are concerned about.

This is similar in practice to how my games go, though I won't do the 'last minute rescue'.

Levels 1-4 characters are apprentices. The PCs are probably running away from anything big and scary. I don't fudge things but at this tier I will give out advice, mostly in the way of informing players about their characters' classes though it might also involve giving hints about relative strength of foes. This is the time for learning the game.

Level 5 is when characters come into their own. They have their abilities. They have more control over their environment. Threats are getting more dangerous. At this point I am hands free, the players do what they like. The adventures are what they are.

Levels 9-11 is the end game. How many successes the characters had along the way will determine how difficult the coming challenges are. If they had many successes they will have more magic items, allies, and information about the coming challenges. The characters might be horribly outmatched. There is great glory in victory but also great risk of death.

This works both for adventure paths and sandboxes.

There was a comment (or perhaps many) about how TPKs make players have less attachment to their characters. I think the opposite is true. If they have a character who has survived long enough then they will care about that character. That character will have a history and accomplishments. They will try their best to have the character survive. This encourages ingenuity and out of the box thinking. Heroic acts are truly heroic too.

[Pex]

But I'm still gonna call y'all weirdos. For thinking that way about campaigns, or it being a 'normal' way to play. Even if it's more normal than not nowadays. :p

Hello pot! I'd like you to meet kettle.

[Drascin]

You responded to my point by reiterating the exact same assumptions : that there is only one group of players, with one set of party members, and that its for some reason impossible to roll another group of adventurers to deal with consequences of the first groups death. Ill throw in another assumption: that the PC didnt have any henchmen or followers that might try to retrieve the bodies and get them raised or resurrected.

That's a large set of assumptions that are required for a TPK to end a campaign, regardless of who is responsible for it happening.

The unspoken assumption I had was, yes, that there is one group of players. What, do your campaigns often change player groups entirely? I would be willing to bet money that over 90% of games are things played by groups of friends, where the group is far more constant than the campaigns played by them.

The other assumption I had I did explicit there, though. Namely, that the campaign is to a large degree shaped by the players and their aims.

The rest kind of were less assumptions and more logical consequences of assumptions 1 and 2. If you have a campaign that is primarily shaped by the interactions, actions, and objectives of your players, and then these interactions go boom, then by necessity the campaign is diminished, because a large part of what made it interesting is now gone. If you make a new party with new characters, the new characters won't know all the NPCs the old PCs befriended or made rivals of, will not have the history with the villains the previous ones have, all the plothooks that were set up to interact with the old PCs stories and temepraments are now irrelevant.

Or, of course, as you say, you could have someone resurrect them all, or do a Knights of the Dinner Table and just have Khazmur II the dwarf, the exactly identical son of Khazmur I the dwarf who Khazmur kept exactly up to date on everything he did. But at that point, well, to reiterate what I said in my first posts I wonder exactly what is the point of killing PC instead of just knocking them out like I do and avoiding all the dog and pony show?

[Pex]

It depends on the scenario and the character. Character death is almost always a failure mode--there are rare exceptions where you can succeed despite dying, but they are rare--and other failure modes could include not getting what you're looking for (possibly because you had to cut and run due to fear of dying), failing to protect NPCs you wanted to protect, failing to stay out of jail, failing to advance your social standing...

Whenever you, as a DM, construct an adventure hook, there's always something you implicitly or explicitly offer the players as bait for taking the hook. If on the other hand the players aren't taking an adventure hook but are exploring a sandbox, they create their own hooks--there's something they're seeking in the sandbox (could be as simple as loot and XP, or more complex) or they'd be pursuing an adventure hook instead. If the players don't get what they're after, that's failure.

Does that answer your question?

So if you accept that character death is not the only means of failure, then it's only subjective to you you play a harder game than others because of a higher frequency of character death, and being "harder" doesn't make it "better player" (My words), but it is no more a challenging game than what others may like, those who place more emphasis on attempting to achieve adventure goals and stories such that a TPK ruins it or end it if ruin is too strong a word.

[Tanarii]

Hello pot! I'd like you to meet kettle.:smallbiggrin: :smallwink:


The unspoken assumption I had was, yes, that there is one group of players. What, do your campaigns often change player groups entirely? I would be willing to bet money that over 90% of games are things played by groups of friends, where the group is far more constant than the campaigns played by them.
Yes. My campaign is multiple sessions a week with different players in various sessions, with different PCs per player. And the players bring Pcs together for just the session, so each session often has a different mix of players and PCs.

Whenever I make a post to counter the assumptions of people about ways to play based on the assumption that it's just a single group of players with a single group of PCs with no henchmen / followers, my intent is to point out that's not a required premise. In fact, it can't be a required premise for playing the game, because for the last two editions WotC has pushed official play. Which that assumption just doesn't work for.

The intent is to show that anything derived from this not-required premise is not something inherent to playing the game. For that matter, there are often a huge bundle of other assumed premises in any assertion, and this is just one. But this is the one that jumps out at me, because of my situation.

The problem is, as so often happens in Internet forum discussions, countering a premise is often taken as a statement on my part that "not-always-premise" is in fact "always-not-premise". And the back and forth will get me invested in my own argument. (Or I'll start off making that mistake myself, in my initial post.)

But other than official play, and maybe some large college or game store based gaming organizations, I fully acknowledge that the general norm is probably one group or players with one group of characters.

[Drascin]

:smallbiggrin: :smallwink:


Yes. My campaign is multiple sessions a week with different players in various sessions, with different PCs per player. And the players bring Pcs together for just the session, so each session often has a different mix of players and PCs.

Whenever I make a post to counter the assumptions of people about ways to play based on the assumption that it's just a single group of players with a single group of PCs with no henchmen / followers, my intent is to point out that's not a required premise. In fact, it can't be a required premise for playing the game, because for the last two editions WotC has pushed official play. Which that assumption just doesn't work for.

The intent is to show that anything derived from this not-required premise is not something inherent to playing the game. For that matter, there are often a huge bundle of other assumed premises in any assertion, and this is just one. But this is the one that jumps out at me, because of my situation.

The problem is, as so often happens in Internet forum discussions, countering a premise is often taken as a statement on my part that "not-always-premise" is in fact "always-not-premise". And the back and forth will get me invested in my own argument. (Or I'll start off making that mistake myself, in my initial post.)

But other than official play, and maybe some large college or game store based gaming organizations, I fully acknowledge that the general norm is probably one group or players with one group of characters.

Not going to lie, I tend to generally forget "league play" exists. It basically is... not a thing at all in my entire country, and therefore I can't help but feel that thinking about it when talking about RPGs in general is a bit like being in a discussion about cars and bringing up this guy (https://www.dasolar.com/images/pages/michigan-solar-car1_2.jpg) - yes, it is technically a car, but come on, who has one of these? :smalltongue: Maybe it's more common where you are?

So yeah, any and all arguments I make are made from the position of what I have generally considered the "standard use case" of the game, ie a semi-constant group of friends or acquaintances around a table. If your use case is very unique, my experiences will probably be about as inapplicable as those of a diver talking to an airplane pilot :smalltongue:.

[Tanarii]

Maybe it's more common where you are? I'm in a major U.S. City, I frequent (and run games from) three gaming stores basically adjacent to college campuses, and I'm on a privately maintained large email distro that organizes official play single session (DDEX) games run in people's homes throughout the metro area.

So yeah, it influences my view on things. Playing in a private group of personal friends campaign over a long period of time (more than 3 months without falling apart) is kinda like driving a 1979 Stingray to me. It's a beautiful thing to see if you can keep it going, but rare and takes a lot of dedicated effort, and it's definitely old fashioned. :smallbiggrin:

[Jakinbandw]

I really don't understand why people think TPKs are a good thing in the first place. Yay, you can lose a character you worked for a week on, and then played for a year. I've been in 3 TPKs and each one came without warning because the DM decided things were to easy for the players so they put in a challenge that the players could not prepare for, or escape from that killed the entire party.

It's not any fun to just randomly have a character killed because the DM wants things to be harder. It doesn't make it fun for the players as each time it happened it caused the entire group to dissolve. None of the 3 different times it happened were with the same players. All the other players I talked with we unhappy with being killed by the DM.

And 2 of the times there was a TPK the rules were bent so that the NPCs had an advantage against the players. In the name of realism.

So I find it hard to understand people that want 'realistic games' where they can get killed at any time by the gm having a bad day. I assume some people like them, but I don't know why so many GMs brag that they run that style of game. It's like bragging that you a sadist. Most people aren't into that.

[Pex]

I really don't understand why people think TPKs are a good thing in the first place. Yay, you can lose a character you worked for a week on, and then played for a year. I've been in 3 TPKs and each one came without warning because the DM decided things were to easy for the players so they put in a challenge that the players could not prepare for, or escape from that killed the entire party.

It's not any fun to just randomly have a character killed because the DM wants things to be harder. It doesn't make it fun for the players as each time it happened it caused the entire group to dissolve. None of the 3 different times it happened were with the same players. All the other players I talked with we unhappy with being killed by the DM.

And 2 of the times there was a TPK the rules were bent so that the NPCs had an advantage against the players. In the name of realism.

So I find it hard to understand people that want 'realistic games' where they can get killed at any time by the gm having a bad day. I assume some people like them, but I don't know why so many GMs brag that they run that style of game. It's like bragging that you a sadist. Most people aren't into that.

Those DMs get high on the power trip. They feel self-righteous and superior of how hard* their games are. It takes a superior player than the normal rabble to do well in their games. They are the elite.


*My use of the word "hard" is in no relation to my discussion with MaxWilson.

[Darth Ultron]

So I find it hard to understand people that want 'realistic games' where they can get killed at any time by the gm having a bad day. I assume some people like them, but I don't know why so many GMs brag that they run that style of game. It's like bragging that you a sadist. Most people aren't into that.

Well, in a 'realistic' game you can loose. A LOT of stuff in real life is like that.

And sure you can have ''other'' types of loss.....but you do note how pointless they are as, even if they happen, the reaction is more of an ''eh, whatever, so what''. But note Character Death is always a Big Huge Deal....like it's Special and much more important then all the other types of pointless loss.

Some people don't like character death, and they want to game to be more like a cartoon. Where, like in a cartoon, the monster with a sword just ''knocks down the character'' but does not ''stab or cut them with the sword''. And that is fine for their type of game.

But it's not about the DM having a ''bad day'', that is silly.

[Pex]

If character death is commonplace enough for a DM to brag about it then character death in that game isn't impactful. There's no need for a player to be invested emotionally with his character since it'll just die eventually. It's a glorified meeple on the playing board of the mind and grid. The player who enjoys such a game gets his fun in how long his character survives. The longer it lives the more he can boast about it himself.

[ad_hoc]

I really don't understand why people think TPKs are a good thing in the first place. Yay, you can lose a character you worked for a week on, and then played for a year. I've been in 3 TPKs and each one came without warning because the DM decided things were to easy for the players so they put in a challenge that the players could not prepare for, or escape from that killed the entire party.

It's not any fun to just randomly have a character killed because the DM wants things to be harder. It doesn't make it fun for the players as each time it happened it caused the entire group to dissolve. None of the 3 different times it happened were with the same players. All the other players I talked with we unhappy with being killed by the DM.

And 2 of the times there was a TPK the rules were bent so that the NPCs had an advantage against the players. In the name of realism.

So I find it hard to understand people that want 'realistic games' where they can get killed at any time by the gm having a bad day. I assume some people like them, but I don't know why so many GMs brag that they run that style of game. It's like bragging that you a sadist. Most people aren't into that.

There are plenty of replies in this thread that give reasons. They have nothing to do with realism, punishment, making it harder, or increasing randomness.

We make characters at the table. It takes about 30 minutes (maybe an hour), not a week.

We also play for the fun of the session itself. I am reminded of Brent Spiner of Star Trek when he was asked about how he felt about Data dying. He said 'there are no more movies, every character is dead'.

What is important is the story and the fun that was had creating it.

[Darth Ultron]

If character death is commonplace enough for a DM to brag about it then character death in that game isn't impactful. There's no need for a player to be invested emotionally with his character since it'll just die eventually. It's a glorified meeple on the playing board of the mind and grid. The player who enjoys such a game gets his fun in how long his character survives. The longer it lives the more he can boast about it himself.

This is only true for Bad Players. Really any player of any game that says ''if I might loose, I might as well not try'' can just not even bother playing the game.

I find that good players, that when they fear their character might die, play harder, faster, and better...and do everything they can to prevent it. It gives the game a lot more meaning.

[MaxWilson]

So if you accept that character death is not the only means of failure

Sure.


then it's only subjective to you you play a harder game than others because of a higher frequency of character death

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but there are people on this thread who clearly do not view a 50% chance of failure as acceptable. The OP considers TPKs a failure on the DM's part, and Phoenix Pyre posted a bunch of math which makes it clear that he doesn't find a 50% chance of the PCs losing a combat acceptable either. (The chance of a TPK will always be smaller than the chance of PC failure or PC death, but I defy you to reconcile the tiny probabilities in Phoenix Pyre's table with anything approaching a 50% chance of the monsters winning a given fight.)

It's abundantly clear that I like a harder game than Phoenix Pyre does or the OP does. Beats me whether you like a harder game as well--do you? Do you like scenarios where, if you just do the obvious straightforward thing, there's about a 50% chance that you'll lose the treasure/get the hostages killed/get arrested/die?

Judging by posts in this forum, that isn't a very popular playstyle for 5E DMs or players. Maybe you're an exception. Are you? It's not MY subjective judgment that will make this call; it's YOUR subjective judgment of whether you'd find that kind of game enjoyable.


and being "harder" doesn't make it "better player" (My words), but it is no more a challenging game than what others may like, those who place more emphasis on attempting to achieve adventure goals and stories such that a TPK ruins it or end it if ruin is too strong a word.

I don't care who's the "better player" (whatever that means) but I do care about running a game I'd enjoy playing in, and/or playing in a game that's hard enough (and novel enough) to be interesting. Otherwise, why play at all?

[Vaz]

Sure.



I'm not sure what you're saying here, but there are people on this thread who clearly do not view a 50% chance of failure as acceptable. The OP considers TPKs a failure on the DM's part, and Phoenix Pyre posted a bunch of math which makes it clear that he doesn't find a 50% chance of the PCs losing a combat acceptable either. (The chance of a TPK will always be smaller than the chance of PC failure or PC death, but I defy you to reconcile the tiny probabilities in Phoenix Pyre's table with anything approaching a 50% chance of the monsters winning a given fight.)

It's abundantly clear that I like a harder game than Phoenix Pyre does or the OP does. Beats me whether you like a harder game as well--do you? Do you like scenarios where, if you just do the obvious straightforward thing, there's about a 50% chance that you'll lose the treasure/get the hostages killed/get arrested/die?

Judging by posts in this forum, that isn't a very popular playstyle for 5E DMs or players. Maybe you're an exception. Are you? It's not MY subjective judgment that will make this call; it's YOUR subjective judgment of whether you'd find that kind of game enjoyable.



I don't care who's the "better player" (whatever that means) but I do care about running a game I'd enjoy playing in, and/or playing in a game that's hard enough (and novel enough) to be interesting. Otherwise, why play at all?
What does killing the party solve from you? If the game ends, the game ends. Well done you, you ended the game. If the game continues, what is the point of killing the party?

[MaxWilson]

What does killing the party solve from you? If the game ends, the game ends. Well done you, you ended the game. If the game continues, what is the point of killing the party?

Why roll dice in combat if there's no chance of failure? If failure can only happen in non-combat domains, why not skip straight to the post-combat aftermath? If combat is not important, why am I playing a D&D variant in the first place anyway instead of GURPS or Shadowrun?

Killing the party isn't important, but allowing the party to be killed makes not being killed an important part of the game. What value does disallowing TPK provide? None for me, as a player or a DM.

YMMV.

[MaxWilson]

Here's another illustration:

One interesting scenario could be if, perhaps due to a previous PC failure, the kids in their hometown got captured by slavers. The slavers are too numerous for fighting them to be a good idea. The PCs could use some of their hard-earned gold to buy the kids out of slavery, or they could try to sneak them out with stealth or illusions, or they could try to rally the townspeople to take back their children (with the goal of getting enough backup for the PCs that taking on the slavers in combat does seem feasible).

In order to make this scenario work, you want the slavers to be at least as tough as the PCs. If you're designing this scenario for, say, four 5th level PCs (ignoring for now the question of sandbox vs. railroad and how likely it is that four 5th level PCs is what will actually wind up in this scenario), you might want two dozen bandits, half a dozen hobgoblins, a hobgoblin captain, and a hobgoblin Devastator (or 7th level Evoker). If the PCs try to tackle that head-on, they are perhaps 50-65% likely to lose, and possibly to die. If you make the scenario easier, e.g. six groups of a half-dozen bandits conveniently scattered all over town and out of communication with each other, then there is no reason the party shouldn't just take the straightforward approach and kill all the bandits one group at a time, and then "have a boss fight" against the hobgoblin captain. They will never have any reason to try any approaches involving diplomacy, trickery, stealthy, or magic.

Boring. Running that adventure is a job for a computer running MMORPG software, not for a human DM, in my opinion.

[Jakinbandw]

Well, in a 'realistic' game you can loose. A LOT of stuff in real life is like that.

And sure you can have ''other'' types of loss.....but you do note how pointless they are as, even if they happen, the reaction is more of an ''eh, whatever, so what''. But note Character Death is always a Big Huge Deal....like it's Special and much more important then all the other types of pointless loss.

Some people don't like character death, and they want to game to be more like a cartoon. Where, like in a cartoon, the monster with a sword just ''knocks down the character'' but does not ''stab or cut them with the sword''. And that is fine for their type of game.

But it's not about the DM having a ''bad day'', that is silly.

We aren't talking about a character dying. That can happen and the game can continue on. This thread is about the entire party getting wiped out. No continuing the game, all story threads unresolved. No seeing what happened to the small town you were sending your money too, likely in most cases the world ending as well, or falling to an oppressive regime. The end of a campaign with no closure, and knowing that everyone you cared about in the campaign world is doomed.

And yeah, I disagree, every time I have seen a TPK it was a DM having a bad day. Last time for example it was sending a party of 4 lvl 3 characters against 2 cr 7 monsters and a lvl 9 Eldritch Knight. No chance to escape because the Eldritch Knight had misty step and locked us in the room. This was done without any warning that it would happen, completely out of the blue. The DM then told us that it was our fault for losing because we weren't good players.

I don't know what to call that other than the DM having a bad day. The other two times were similar instances.




There are plenty of replies in this thread that give reasons. They have nothing to do with realism, punishment, making it harder, or increasing randomness.

We make characters at the table. It takes about 30 minutes (maybe an hour), not a week.

We also play for the fun of the session itself. I am reminded of Brent Spiner of Star Trek when he was asked about how he felt about Data dying. He said 'there are no more movies, every character is dead'.

What is important is the story and the fun that was had creating it.

You obviously don't put much effort into your characters at your table, but that isn't true for most players. There is where you plan who you are going to play, look up reference material from theme songs to art, write a backstory with hooks that your DM can work with, condense the backstory down to a half page cliff notes so your DM doesn't go crazy, collab with the other players so that you have shared history and collab to create interesting interactions between the two of you based on your history. There is also the checking to make sure that your character has a proper amount of CharOp so that everyone is roughly on the same level and none of the players are going to outshine the others, sometimes resulting in 3-5 different drafts and you and your friends work to get things to fit just right. And it doesn't even slow down play because most groups meet once a week so you can do this all before your first session.

[ad_hoc]

You obviously don't put much effort into your characters at your table, but that isn't true for most players.

We put a lot of effort into our characters, in play. I would bet that the 30-60 minute mark for character creation is the experience of the vast majority of 5e players.



There is where you plan who you are going to play, look up reference material from theme songs to art, write a backstory with hooks that your DM can work with, condense the backstory down to a half page cliff notes so your DM doesn't go crazy,

It only exists if it is in the game. The background including personality traits et al. cover's the character's back story prior to level 1. There isn't much to do there. The important story is what happens in game. Levels 1-4 are for apprentices.



collab with the other players so that you have shared history and collab to create interesting interactions between the two of you based on your history.

This doesn't take long.



There is also the checking to make sure that your character has a proper amount of CharOp so that everyone is roughly on the same level and none of the players are going to outshine the others, sometimes resulting in 3-5 different drafts and you and your friends work to get things to fit just right. And it doesn't even slow down play because most groups meet once a week so you can do this all before your first session.

This really isn't needed. We use 2 approaches to cover this at my table.

1. No duplicate classes
2. The DM will point out if they think a choice will not work out the way the player wants it to.

That's it. That's all you need.

[Jakinbandw]

We put a lot of effort into our characters, in play. I would bet that the 30-60 minute mark for character creation is the experience of the vast majority of 5e players.



It only exists if it is in the game. The background including personality traits et al. cover's the character's back story prior to level 1. There isn't much to do there. The important story is what happens in game. Levels 1-4 are for apprentices.



This doesn't take long.



This really isn't needed. We use 2 approaches to cover this at my table.

1. No duplicate classes
2. The DM will point out if they think a choice will not work out the way the player wants it to.

That's it. That's all you need.

So in a 3.5e game you don't mind if one player is a monk and another is a cleric with nightsticks?

[MxKit]

You obviously don't put much effort into your characters at your table, but that isn't true for most players. There is where you plan who you are going to play, look up reference material from theme songs to art, write a backstory with hooks that your DM can work with, condense the backstory down to a half page cliff notes so your DM doesn't go crazy, collab with the other players so that you have shared history and collab to create interesting interactions between the two of you based on your history. There is also the checking to make sure that your character has a proper amount of CharOp so that everyone is roughly on the same level and none of the players are going to outshine the others, sometimes resulting in 3-5 different drafts and you and your friends work to get things to fit just right. And it doesn't even slow down play because most groups meet once a week so you can do this all before your first session.

I wouldn't even like to play at a table with a significant risk of TPKs most of the time (not with D&D; something like Call of Cthulhu is another matter), I prefer games that prioritize roleplay, and I like making character backstories (a LOT), but I still think this is silly.

Planning who I'm going to play and coming up with a cliffnotes backstory with hooks doesn't take that long. Maybe longer than ad_hoc's 30-60 minutes, most of the time, but certainly not by too much. "Reference material" like songs and art (which I tend to think of as fanmixes and moodposts, not reference material) don't need to be done before session one at all, because those come after character building for me, and I also like having an idea of what the character is like in a bit of actual play first (sometimes the two vary, whether slightly or significantly).

It also really doesn't take long to collab if everyone's decided they want their characters to have shared history, and it takes little to no effort to make sure characters aren't on super different levels in 5e. Hell, it's even possible to have duplicate classes and not have the players feel like one is outshining the other, without going to great lengths to make multiple drafts and agonize over whether you've walked some optimization balance line compared to everyone else's optimization balancing acts.

Now, I still agree with the basic idea of "yay, you can lose a character you worked for a week on, and then played for a year." I don't think it takes anywhere near a week, but even "I made a character and wanted to play them for longer than I got to, playing them for a few months made me feel attached and I'd rather still be playing them than making a whole new character" is bad enough—for me. That's why I personally don't want to play in games like that. But that doesn't mean every DM who ever plays a game where TPKs are possible is "DM having a bad day, takes it out on players" or "DM power trip, decided the characters were gonna die and that was it" or that any players who enjoy games where TPKs are possible just didn't care about the game or their characters or the story enough.

I'd rather play the same character through the entire game arc, but that's not true of everyone. That's exactly why the DM and the players all need to make sure they're on the same page. If I was potentially interested in a game, and the DM said "I'm planning on running a realistic 5e game where a TPK is a definite possibility," I'd just decide not to play in that game, but that wouldn't make the DM wrong for wanting to run that style of game, and it wouldn't make the players who did join and have fun with that style of game wrong either. I'm glad those groups have their fun, it's just not the same kind of fun I have. Just like a player who wants more of a risk of TPKs would be happier not playing in the styles of games I prefer; neither "side" is wrong, we just want different things out of the game.

[Pex]

Sure.



I'm not sure what you're saying here, but there are people on this thread who clearly do not view a 50% chance of failure as acceptable. The OP considers TPKs a failure on the DM's part, and Phoenix Pyre posted a bunch of math which makes it clear that he doesn't find a 50% chance of the PCs losing a combat acceptable either. (The chance of a TPK will always be smaller than the chance of PC failure or PC death, but I defy you to reconcile the tiny probabilities in Phoenix Pyre's table with anything approaching a 50% chance of the monsters winning a given fight.)

It's abundantly clear that I like a harder game than Phoenix Pyre does or the OP does. Beats me whether you like a harder game as well--do you? Do you like scenarios where, if you just do the obvious straightforward thing, there's about a 50% chance that you'll lose the treasure/get the hostages killed/get arrested/die?

Judging by posts in this forum, that isn't a very popular playstyle for 5E DMs or players. Maybe you're an exception. Are you? It's not MY subjective judgment that will make this call; it's YOUR subjective judgment of whether you'd find that kind of game enjoyable.



I don't care who's the "better player" (whatever that means) but I do care about running a game I'd enjoy playing in, and/or playing in a game that's hard enough (and novel enough) to be interesting. Otherwise, why play at all?

The percentage number doesn't mean anything to me. That's not to dismiss Phoenix Pyre's opinion of the matter, but rather I don't think of the game in those terms. Not only do I channel Han Solo in not wanting to know the odds, I don't know the odds in the first place for any of the actual math involved in the game. In other words, all statistical analyses of anything about the game, regardless of edition, is irrelevant to me such as percentage chance to hit an AC using Power Attack in 3E or Great Weapon Master with Advantage in 5E.

What I care about is DM attitude and actual play. If a DM boasts of his PC death count, I don't want to play with him. If a PC dies at least once a session or every other session or often enough I notice (personal subjectiveness), I don't want to play with him. Such a DM plays against his players, not with them. He wants to kill off PCs. He gets his jollies killing off PCs. I refuse to play with adversarial DMs. If it means anything, in all my years of playing since 2E, I've only been in two TPKs, once in 2E and once in 3E. That 2E DM was and still is my favorite DM I ever had. He was that rare 2E DM I played with who was not a "tyrant". :smallwink: The DM of the second TPK is my second favorite DM. He was my DM in my Golden Age of D&D playing, 12 wonderful years playing with the same group. Unfortunately that second TPK was an on purpose end the campaign fault of the DM conspired with another player/his wife. He was chewed out on that, but I still wouldn't change those 12 years of playing except perhaps the last year and a half when the quality was worsening as the DM was burning out.

[ad_hoc]

So in a 3.5e game you don't mind if one player is a monk and another is a cleric with nightsticks?

This is a 5e board.


I wouldn't even like to play at a table with a significant risk of TPKs most of the time (not with D&D; something like Call of Cthulhu is another matter), I prefer games that prioritize roleplay, and I like making character backstories (a LOT), but I still think this is silly.

What is 'significant' to you?

In my group we have had 3 TPKs since the release of 5e as well as a couple single character deaths. Now, not all of that time saw regular play. At most we saw a TPK once every 8 months of regular (every 2 weeks) play. It could very well have been more or less often but by my count that sounds about right (and is likely to be less often now that everyone knows 5e and the rhythm of the game).

[tensai_oni]

Time to link the Angry GM? Time to link the Angry GM (http://theangrygm.com/ask-angry-resting-in-5e-and-why-its-fine/).

Tl;dr version: challenge isn't deadliness. An encounter can be fun and challenging even if nobody's in a serious risk of dying. Too many game masters are obsessed with deadliness but for some reason, many players enjoy encounters even if they're "easy". Funny that.

Oh yeah, and tweak encounters and challenges to suit preferences of your players, but that goes without saying. It goes without saying so much, that people usually only tell to do it to others with a different preferred playstyle, while assuming theirs is correct and doesn't need any adjustments.

[MaxWilson]

Tl;dr version: challenge isn't deadliness. An encounter can be fun and challenging even if nobody's in a serious risk of dying. Too many game masters are obsessed with deadliness but for some reason, many players enjoy encounters even if they're "easy". Funny that.

Challenge is the degree to which player skill matters.

[MxKit]

What is 'significant' to you?

In my group we have had 3 TPKs since the release of 5e as well as a couple single character deaths. Now, not all of that time saw regular play. At most we saw a TPK once every 8 months of regular (every 2 weeks) play. It could very well have been more or less often but by my count that sounds about right (and is likely to be less often now that everyone knows 5e and the rhythm of the game).

That's a hard question because my mood does change on it occasionally... Most of the time, I think if a DM is clear about not wanting to hold off TPKs until near the end of the campaign at least, it's not something I'd be interested in myself. For a comparison with Lost Mines of Phandelver, I wouldn't mind a TPK against the Black Spider, and wouldn't mind a TPK being possible in Wave Echo Cave; I also wouldn't mind the DM making it obvious that really stupid decisions would make us subject to a TPK if we're really boneheaded about them, such as rushing to fight a green dragon at lv3 and not retreating when we realize that's a bad idea, for example.

But most of the time, if a TPK was allowed to come earlier than the end area for reasons other than lethal stupidity... Like the Redbrand hideout, the forest section, or Cragmaw Castle, I wouldn't like it. I'd personally prefer that the same party, or at least parts of it, that started out invested in trying to help out this town and find the dwarves to be involved in eventually doing so, rather than a whole new party coming in and going "and this group is now trying to do the exact same thing you were before." It's definitely possible to do the latter, but I wouldn't enjoy it much. And TPKing in the goblin caves near the very start of the adventure wouldn't make me feel motivated to make a new character and start the campaign over again, personally; I'd just get discouraged.

So I guess my personal sweet spot is usually that the DM allow TPKs if the players are really, really boneheaded about things—things that can't really be waved off as "the DM didn't communicate well enough and they didn't realize it was a stupid move"—but otherwise it not really be a thing until the campaign is in its final stretch anyway, so that it can feel like a satisfying ending to me. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a slightly different game where TPK possibility ramps up earlier, even way earlier, than the climax, especially ones where bringing in a whole new party can not only be seamless but feel gripping, tense, and interesting, but for the most part I prefer "unless you really **** up, you're not going to completely flame out until the end of the game, or near it" in 5e.

(I like other possibilities in games, but not really in D&D 5e games. More Call of Cthulhu, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Little Fears, and Don't Rest Your Head.)

ETA: So I tl;dr'd but didn't directly say: I'm not sure if the games you've played in would have satisfied me, but that's mostly a "me" thing, because it's not so much about how many months between TPKs for me and more at what point in the game they happened and whether any of them were in any of those games that would be an exception to me in the satisfaction department. And now "to me/for me" looks like a meaningless phrase... to me. :smalltongue:

[Jakinbandw]

Challenge is the degree to which player skill matters.

How much skill does it take to roll a 10? Or do you Bieber that a player isn't skilled they shouldn't leave things to chance? Because despite everything, luck is a major part of the game and sometimes even a moderate encounter can put a player into death saves because the DM is rolling high and the players low.

[Vaz]

Why roll dice in combat if there's no chance of failure? If failure can only happen in non-combat domains, why not skip straight to the post-combat aftermath? If combat is not important, why am I playing a D&D variant in the first place anyway instead of GURPS or Shadowrun?

Killing the party isn't important, but allowing the party to be killed makes not being killed an important part of the game. What value does disallowing TPK provide? None for me, as a player or a DM.

YMMV.

Failure doesn't have to come from death. Death ceased to be an issue the moment the game continues in some capacity. Either they respawn, or the players choose new characters and roll up. HP damage is the bluntest, most mediocre, blandest way of forcing failure on a party.

If there is someone who is going to abuse the "DM won't let my character die" mentality, they are going to abuse other aspects too. And so there character will end up dying because of ther own stupidity, but everyone else actually gets to play DnD, while the fiy who though that his character was invulnerable because DM is nicey nice suddenly finds themselves watching people roll dice for 20 minutes without him. Kinda sucks. Then they learn to play, or leave.

[tensai_oni]

Challenge is the degree to which player skill matters.

Correction: Challenge it the degree to which player actions matter. A challenging encounter is one where there are interesting solutions, and interesting consequences to those solutions (be they positive or negative). Deadly peril is not a requirement, neither is combat for that matter.

In another of his articles, the Angry GM postulated that combat isn't an encounter at all. Rather it's a solution to an encounter, because one or both parties involved decided that the best course of action to take in the encounter is to beat the other one to a bloody pulp.

[Tanarii]

Challenge is the degree to which player skill matters.
I thought you knew, player skill is just a myth promoted by Gygax to justify gotcha traps.

[MaxWilson]

Correction: Challenge it the degree to which player actions matter. A challenging encounter is one where there are interesting solutions, and interesting consequences to those solutions (be they positive or negative). Deadly peril is not a requirement, neither is combat for that matter.

You're still missing a critical component: skill.

If I offer your PC three identical boxes, of which you can choose only one, and two of the boxes contain nothing while one contains a Wand of Fireballs and thousand gold pieces, your actions (which box you choose) matter a lot--depending on what you do, you may or may not get a bunch of loot. But that isn't CHALLENGING because it's just a guessing game.

If there is something (non-obvious) you can do that increases your odds of picking the correct box, THAT's challenging. For example, if you know that the person showing you the box always tries to tempt you into switching boxes by opening one of the boxes you didn't pick and showing you that it had nothing, and then asking you if you want to switch, you can exploit that fact to increase your odds of picking the right box to 2/3 instead of 1/3. (Once you understand the math, implementing the correct strategy ceases to be challenging, because it's now obvious, which illustrates another point: you must always be creating fresh challenges as the players master the current challenges.)

Challenge is the degree to which player skill matters. A related concept is agency, which is the degree to which player intentions matter. More formally, agency is “the feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to take actions in the [virtual] world whose effects relate to the player’s intention”. More details here: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/10/on-theory-defined-player-agency.html

[Vaz]

Completely ignored the point that death itself is meaningless of the game continues. And if the game continues regardless, why bother going to the effort of killing your players? All it means is that the entire party's connections are gone.

And then you get things like the random encounter tables throwing Ancient Whites at 6th level parties IIRC.

[BoringInfoGuy]

I wouldn't even like to play at a table with a significant risk of TPKs most of the time (not with D&D; something like Call of Cthulhu is another matter), I prefer games that prioritize roleplay, and I like making character backstories (a LOT), but I still think this is silly.

Planning who I'm going to play and coming up with a cliffnotes backstory with hooks doesn't take that long. Maybe longer than ad_hoc's 30-60 minutes, most of the time, but certainly not by too much. "Reference material" like songs and art (which I tend to think of as fanmixes and moodposts, not reference material) don't need to be done before session one at all, because those come after character building for me, and I also like having an idea of what the character is like in a bit of actual play first (sometimes the two vary, whether slightly or significantly).

It also really doesn't take long to collab if everyone's decided they want their characters to have shared history, and it takes little to no effort to make sure characters aren't on super different levels in 5e. Hell, it's even possible to have duplicate classes and not have the players feel like one is outshining the other, without going to great lengths to make multiple drafts and agonize over whether you've walked some optimization balance line compared to everyone else's optimization balancing acts.

Now, I still agree with the basic idea of "yay, you can lose a character you worked for a week on, and then played for a year." I don't think it takes anywhere near a week, but even "I made a character and wanted to play them for longer than I got to, playing them for a few months made me feel attached and I'd rather still be playing them than making a whole new character" is bad enough—for me. That's why I personally don't want to play in games like that. But that doesn't mean every DM who ever plays a game where TPKs are possible is "DM having a bad day, takes it out on players" or "DM power trip, decided the characters were gonna die and that was it" or that any players who enjoy games where TPKs are possible just didn't care about the game or their characters or the story enough.

I'd rather play the same character through the entire game arc, but that's not true of everyone. That's exactly why the DM and the players all need to make sure they're on the same page. If I was potentially interested in a game, and the DM said "I'm planning on running a realistic 5e game where a TPK is a definite possibility," I'd just decide not to play in that game, but that wouldn't make the DM wrong for wanting to run that style of game, and it wouldn't make the players who did join and have fun with that style of game wrong either. I'm glad those groups have their fun, it's just not the same kind of fun I have. Just like a player who wants more of a risk of TPKs would be happier not playing in the styles of games I prefer; neither "side" is wrong, we just want different things out of the game.
Out of the entire thread, this is the one post I can agree with 100%.

Not the specifics of how you like to play. But the basic premise of respecting styles of play other than your own.

D&D is a game designed for a group of real people to create a party of fictional characters who face imaginary danger in a make believe world.

Beyond that, everything is pretty much a matter of taste and preference. This is why there are so many optional rules built into the base game. Outside the actual rules, there are stylistic choices on how to handle just about every aspect of gameplay.

I’ve played for many years. It did not take me long to figure out what styles I liked and did not like. No one needed to teach me my preferences.

And I fully expect other people - intelligent, reasonable people - can find their own preferences. Some will match mine. Some will not. But I will respect that any group that sat down to play, enjoyed the session, and is looking forward to the next session is doing it right.

Whether I personally would enjoy playing with that group is irrelevant.

To think otherwise is arrogance bordering on narcissism.

[MaxWilson]

Out of the entire thread, this is the one post I can agree with 100%.

Not the specifics of how you like to play. But the basic premise of respecting styles of play other than your own.

Really? You think this is the one post in the entire thread that mentions respecting playstyles other than your own? Wow.

[BurgerBeast]

Out of the entire thread, this is the one post I can agree with 100%.

...

And I fully expect other people - intelligent, reasonable people - can find their own preferences. Some will match mine. Some will not. But I will respect that any group that sat down to play, enjoyed the session, and is looking forward to the next session is doing it right.

For the life of me, I can't understand how anyone can say this seriously.

Suppose, for a moment, that you're a DM who is interested in becoming better. You would like to have a way to assess the quality of each session in a way that allows you to make adjustments and improve.

How in the hell does "did everyone have fun?" inform that? It doesn't. Not only does it present both false positives and false negatives (i.e. sometimes people still have fun even when the D&D sucks, and sometimes people have a terrible time when the D&D is pretty good, because there are other factors that affect whether people have fun), but it is focused on outcome instead of process.

In general, if you wish to truly get better at something, you have to understand it. Then you have to focus on improving at the important things, which requires identifying the important things and finding a way to measure them. Then you have to be sure that you are not distracted by outcomes since it is process that leads to long term success.

Focussing on fun is a terrible idea, because it is an outcome and not a process. How the hell can you know if someone is going to have guaranteed fun next session? You can't. But you can focus on providing options that generally lead to more fun for more people. That would be a successful whether it worked or not.

Second, fun is not even necessarily tied to the root causes of satisfaction that bring people back to the table. You could actually manage to provide a fun setting in successive sessions and find that people grow tired or bored of your games. That's because "fun" is a shallow aim. "Fun" is not reliable. Things that are fun can become things that are not fun, and sometimes very quickly.

Third, fun is a matter of taste. You should never base the success or failure of a goal-directed behaviour on the taste of others. Some people will always hate D&D because they don't like the game. If they try it and don't have fun, it might be because they don't like D&D (i.e. not because it was a bad adventure or bad session or bad DM). Some movies will be hated by some audiences - and that's fine. That doesn't make them bad movies. It may just be that this audience doesn't like this kind of movie (or doesn't like movies at all, ever).

[BoringInfoGuy]

Really? You think this is the one post in the entire thread that mentions respecting playstyles other than your own? Wow.
No, this was not the only post about respecting other game styles. I did not mean to dismiss other posters making similar arguments. I apologize.

So why did I point out this one? Because most of the time, when someone says “You need to respect other styles” it is only because the style under attack is their own. While I can agree with the attacked defending their style, I also wonder if they would speak out against someone attacking a style they do not personally like. In this one post, I saw someone do exactly that.

That is why I said this was the one post I 100% agree with. If others also said “My preferred style is like the OP, but I don’t agree that other styles are bad,” then I missed it.

Still, I see how that distinction was not made in my previous post, so I again apologize for effectively but unintentionally dismissing your posts and others.

[Psikerlord]

I agree with the OP's friend. Game before story every time.

[MaxWilson]

No, this was not the only post about respecting other game styles. I did not mean to dismiss other posters making similar arguments. I apologize.

So why did I point out this one? Because most of the time, when someone says “You need to respect other styles” it is only because the style under attack is their own. While I can agree with the attacked defending their style, I also wonder if they would speak out against someone attacking a style they do not personally like. In this one post, I saw someone do exactly that.

That is why I said this was the one post I 100% agree with. If others also said “My preferred style is like the OP, but I don’t agree that other styles are bad,” then I missed it.

Still, I see how that distinction was not made in my previous post, so I again apologize for effectively but unintentionally dismissing your posts and others.

All right. Thanks for elaborating your position. That makes sense.

[PopeLinus1]

I like this escalation of danger, it makes sense to me thematically. A BBEG who is being hounded by pesky adventurers would probably become more ruthless after being thwarted several times and especially when the party becomes a legitimate threat. I do think it makes sense to clearly convey this to the players though, otherwise they could get accustomed to being bailed out in the beginning and middle, then stunned when their characters die for real.

Yeah, the change could hit them hard. But... if I bail them out with, say allies, than as the situation escalates, than those allies could get destroyed! Same goes for being captured. As they pose more and more of a threat, they become execute on site. It’s not a perfect rule, but this is D&D. I get more triple nat-20’s then I do perfect rules.