Is PC defeat an acceptable end to a campaign?

[woodenbandman]

So suppose the PCs go from level 1 to level 20. At around level 6 or so they become privy to a world-spanning plot to destroy Heaven and invade it with demons or something like that. They fight through dungeons, armies, cities, and into the mouth of hell itself, they defeat legions of demons, and they meet the final boss... who kills all of them after a long-fought battle.

Now, assuming that the battle was a fairly difficult challenge and the dice fell in the way that the PCs lost, and they weren't Destined to lose from the start, what do you do? Do you retcon it and give them a do-over? Or do you treat this as the beginning of a new campaign?

Is victory the only acceptable outcome to a long campaign?

EDIT: by the way, this is all completely hypothetical.

[shadow_archmagi]

Depends on the party!

[AslanCross]

If the players feel really bad about it, I'd probably let them do that encounter again, though with the disclaimer that I have to make the boss somewhat stronger to make up for them knowing its tricks.

On the other hand, being ready for an epic ending, even if it is sad, can become a memorable story. I'm pretty sure there are great stories where the hero doesn't make it.

Perhaps the success or failure in a campaign shouldn't be based entirely on a single fight, but on what the PCs have done all throughout the campaign. Stopping the BBEG's doomsday device is saving the world; killing the BBEG is just giving him his just desserts.

[Reynard]

So suppose the PCs go from level 1 to level 20. At around level 6 or so they become privy to a world-spanning plot to destroy Heaven and invade it with demons or something like that. They fight through dungeons, armies, cities, and into the mouth of hell itself, they defeat legions of demons, and they meet the final boss... who kills all of them after a long-fought battle.

Now, assuming that the battle was a fairly difficult challenge and the dice fell in the way that the PCs lost, and they weren't Destined to lose from the start, what do you do? Do you retcon it and give them a do-over? Or do you treat this as the beginning of a new campaign?

Is victory the only acceptable outcome to a long campaign?

It all depends on the way they lose. If they're all hit by no-save-you-die spells during the final combat, then yeah that's not a good way to end. The same if they're killed by mooks because of bad dice rolls.

If the final battle is a long, hard, tension filled fight, filled with drama, heroics, and other such business, and if the PCs would be happy to die trying to put whatever dent they can into the BBEG's plan so that someone else has more chance against him, then there's no problem.

[druid91]

Have them become ghosts.

There actions seem like they would have set back the baddies for a while. The heroes use this time to find a worthy heir to their strength. Then have them make plucky young kids who are remarkably like younger versions of the heroes. Each gets a ghost version of the original for an advisory/cohort, as well as 3/4 of the originals ability.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

On the other hand, being ready for an epic ending, even if it is sad, can become a memorable story. I'm pretty sure there are great stories where the hero doesn't make it.

Perhaps the success or failure in a campaign shouldn't be based entirely on a single fight, but on what the PCs have done all throughout the campaign. Stopping the BBEG's doomsday device is saving the world; killing the BBEG is just giving him his just desserts.

Good stuff here.

Another thing to keep in mind.

Make sure that the characters' defeat isn't the players' defeat as well. The players have expectations and goals, and while tragedy comes around when those goals can't be met, make sure that those expectations and goals aren't entirely crushed.

You could even make a promise. Maybe their weapons get sealed and preserved upon their deaths, so that the Big Bad can't touch them. Those weapons have been tailored to destroy the Big Bad, waiting for another band of heroes to recover and wield....

New campaign hook, anyone?

[Oracle_Hunter]

Defeat is certainly a proper end for a campaign. The trick is to make it a defeat the Players are happy with.

Provided it's not a TPK, ask the survivors what they do in the epilogue. Everyone likes a chance to narrate an ending to a big ol' campaign - even if it's a Bad End.

If the Players are really sore about losing (unlikely, but possible) say "well, that story is over. Would you be interested in trying to Right What Was Wrong in another game?" If the Players really care about the original campaign, they'll probably pep right up.

The only unacceptable ending is one where the Players had no say in the final outcome.

[nedz]

My first two long running campaigns both ended when the party (different players BTW) chickened out of the final confrontation with the BBEG. Psychlogical victory for the bad guys I suppose.

I had another one end when the party jumped into a Disintigration Chamber and pressed the button. After they all made their saves they tried again: TPK. Apparently they were convinced it was a teleportation chamber, they weren't even under any kind of threat.

Campaigns have a lifespan and they end how they end. Final PC defeat or victory are unimportant, what matters (IMHO) is their integrity in closure.

[Funkyodor]

We had a similar situation, and the DM had a novel solution. He passed out some low level NPC sheets and we started playing differient characters that had memory flashes of another life, our defeated PC lives. After we helped drive off some low level bandits, we remembered who we were. Loki intervened and offered us another chance. Same original races & stats, levels, not alot of gear, but one key difference. We were in the past, before the big bad got real powerful, but he still had all his henchmen. We decided to confront the big bad and all his henchmen before he got super powerful because we knew where they would be. The place our original characters first experienced him. We went, most of us were victorious, and after reading the DM's notes we realized why Loki would do this. It diminished the experiences of our original characters whose deities received lesser souls when they eventually died. After Loki brought us back, he got our souls. Part of the bargain he didn't tell us. It was a good "retcon" that wasn't.

[woodenbandman]

An idea: What if they (the PCs) all died, but their goals were accomplished. Say, for instance, the army of heaven came in after them and destroyed the demon guy, and instead of them becoming heroes, they become legends.

I guess death doesn't necessarily equal defeat.

[Akal Saris]

That's a really cool idea that your DM had, Funky! I like it a lot =)

Personally, I think that PC defeat is an acceptable end to a campaign as long as the PCs enjoyed it.

I'm running a D&D 3.5 game right now that the PCs know is headed towards their oblivion. It's set in the past of our shared campaign world, where the PCs were witness to (and partly responsible for) the near-instantaneous destruction of a city amid a horrible undead invasion. In that game, the PCs were level 14 or so, while in this one they are level 1's who are just discovering the evil overlord's plots as they pursue a typical low-level quest. Meanwhile all of them are having weird psychic trauma moments or seeing visions from the future, and each day in-game moves the counter one day closer towards Doomsday (now 11 days away!).

I'm curious what the PCs will do when it gets close enough - will they stay to try and fight the BBEG and prevent the catastrophe, or try to flee the city?

[druid91]

Also I would like to say that, unless your adventurer happens to be immortal, an awesome death is usually more memorable than the "Fading away" of old age.

[Frozen_Feet]

Short answer to the topic tittle: YES!

Long, tangentially related rant:

I come from Gykaxian line of GMs - I rarely hold any investment towards any particular ending. I don't assume or expect PC success - they aren't there to lose, but they aren't there to win either. I don't fudge rolls for the players. If dice tell a character is going to die, the character will die.

This, I've made clear to my players as well. I tend for heavy use of improvization and randomization - as such, I'm often as clueless about what's going to happen as my players.

As a result, I've managed to kill PCs completely by accident. One memorable example happened when using a pre-made module, which I hadn't read through beforehand. One of the players fell into a river, and failed his save to clutch hold of the bank. I told him "oh well, your character will likely float to the ocean. We'll continue his story on your next turn." After going through a round with the other players, I resumed that character's fate and looked where the river was taking him. A quick check to the map told the river went through several rooms, but overview of said rooms said nothing about a chance to get out of the stream. When I got to the last one, it said "the banks are made of solid metal, too smooth and high to grab a hold off. The river flows to a pit of lava."

Lava? Oops.

Occasionally, these kinds of things end with someone watching others adventure from the sidelines, and likely not having much fun. However, this hasn't proven to be detrimental to my group or games, quite the opposite! Tangible threat of failure has made my players think much more of their actions and feel for their characters more; in addition, they're used to "Bad endings" and can draw enjoyment from both victories and losses.

Of course, part of the reason why this has gone over so well with my group is because my current group is very new to the hobby - they don't have preconcieved notions about how "everyone should have fun" or "how DMs and players should work to build a story together". In could say they haven't been "spoiled" by prior lenience.

[Crow]

I believe that PC defeat is acceptable, yes, when the PC's bring it upon themselves. Our most recent (level 1-10) campaign ended in such a way. The BBEGirl was using her influence as a member of the royal family to rally nobles to an evil cause. So when the PC's finally discovered proof that the BBEGirl was really an imposter (who murdered the actual noble), they said (and I quote);

"Well that's really nice, but there isn't really anything we can do with this information right now."

So maybe I am a bad DM, and this isn't enough to get a player's gears turning, but I would expect it would trigger *something*. Instead, they seemed to be waiting for me to spoon-feed the next quest to them.

So I decided that their inaction led to the BBEGirl succeeding in her plans, and we switched over to our other (concurrent) epic campaign.

[druid91]

Short answer to the topic tittle: YES!

Long, tangentially related rant:

I come from Gykaxian line of GMs - I rarely hold any investment towards any particular ending. I don't assume or expect PC success - they aren't there to lose, but they aren't there to win either. I don't fudge rolls for the players. If dice tell a character is going to die, the character will die.

This, I've made clear to my players as well. I tend for heavy use of improvization and randomization - as such, I'm often as clueless about what's going to happen as my players.

As a result, I've managed to kill PCs completely by accident. One memorable example happened when using a pre-made module, which I hadn't read through beforehand. One of the players fell into a river, and failed his save to clutch hold of the bank. I told him "oh well, your character will likely float to the ocean. We'll continue his story on your next turn." After going through a round with the other players, I resumed that character's fate and looked where the river was taking him. A quick check to the map told the river went through several rooms, but overview of said rooms said nothing about a chance to get out of the stream. When I got to the last one, it said "the banks are made of solid metal, too smooth and high to grab a hold off. The river flows to a pit of lava."

Lava? Oops.

Occasionally, these kinds of things end with someone watching others adventure from the sidelines, and likely not having much fun. However, this hasn't proven to be detrimental to my group or games, quite the opposite! Tangible threat of failure has made my players think much more of their actions and feel for their characters more; in addition, they're used to "Bad endings" and can draw enjoyment from both victories and losses.

Of course, part of the reason why this has gone over so well with my group is because my current group is very new to the hobby - they don't have preconcieved notions about how "everyone should have fun" or "how DMs and players should work to build a story together". In could say they haven't been "spoiled" by prior lenience.

You sound like an awesome DM. Sometimes you don't need to make an awesome story. Sometimes all that needs to happen is monsters be slain and PCs be eaten.

And epic deaths are so much more satisfying if you earn them.

[Jack_Simth]

So suppose the PCs go from level 1 to level 20. At around level 6 or so they become privy to a world-spanning plot to destroy Heaven and invade it with demons or something like that. They fight through dungeons, armies, cities, and into the mouth of hell itself, they defeat legions of demons, and they meet the final boss... who kills all of them after a long-fought battle.

Now, assuming that the battle was a fairly difficult challenge and the dice fell in the way that the PCs lost, and they weren't Destined to lose from the start, what do you do? Do you retcon it and give them a do-over? Or do you treat this as the beginning of a new campaign?

Honest TPK in a tough fight? Reasonable (if unwelcome) way to end a campaign. Fast Forward a large amount of time, and you have a post-apocolyptic campaign setting to work with.

If a PC or two retreated and survived, check:
Did the loss of that exact fight mean the BBEG reached his goal?
Yes: you fast forward a few hundred/thousand years, figure out some consequences to the game world of how it went, and start a new campaign there, where you're plucky young adventurers overthrowing the regime (almost nobody actually wants to destroy everything, seeing as how they live there, so there's usually going to be something after to work with).
No: Then you ask the surviving if they'd be gathering allies for another go at it. If yes, great! The players for the dead PC's roll up new characters (a level or two lower), and answer an ad to save the world. If not, oh well, go with 'yes' above, or a completely independent campaign.

Is victory the only acceptable outcome to a long campaign?

Not if you're honest.

[Callista]

Yes, you should allow the PCs to be defeated. But I would suggest you should always give the PCs a way to take the enemy down with them. This is, after all, the end of the campaign; and you want a good story just as much as you want honesty. If you can give them an item that'll just nuke everything around, the last man standing is bound to use it if the only alternative is a TPK. (A command-word triggered contingent spell that kills the caster and everything within a thousand feet should work. Something with the flavor of Exalted Fury, only more useful.) A pyrrhic victory is just so much better than a TPK--you don't mind that the PCs are dead, because so is the BBEG.

Of course, there's nothing that says you can't bring in a new party to try to succeed where the first group failed. On many occasions, the kind of evil that takes level-20 PCs to bring down is the kind of evil people start to believe can't even be resisted. A group of PCs striking a blow--despite their failure--is enough to inspire others to get off their butts and give it a try.

[Trekkin]

In my experience, defeat is a matter of degree, and the best endings come from defeats and failures just that little bit less complete than expected.

960 villagers at Masada.
300 Spartans at Thermopylae(and 10000 other guys, but the point remains).
3 astronauts on Apollo 13.

The point is that if you want PC defeat to be good, leave them an out. Drop the net on them, yes, have all the doors and windows seal and the BBEG start crowing at them about how they're all doomed--and make sure he exaggerates. Then trust their desperation to find a way out. Whether it succeeds or fails, they still proved him/her wrong about their fate and won compared to the expectations of the game world. THAT makes it not only acceptable, but enjoyable: that little 'but' to which the players can point and say that even if they didn't win, they were pretty cool to get this far.

The only RPG example I can think of that isn't a long, rambling story is the short story at the front of SR4 Core. The run fails, people die, and in the end no one really wins, but the runners get just the tiniest hint of a win out of it at the end.

[Grelna the Blue]

I can tell you what I did in a similar instance about 20 years ago.

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My campaign had been going something over a year but was going to end in only 5-6 months anyway (people were going to be graduating and moving on) so there wasn't really time to start over. The party shouldn't even have fought the BBEG in the first place. He was a Sauron type who they'd decided to attack head on (against GM advice, I might add).

When I realized that no matter what I did they were determined to go the distance (despite a number of strong hints) and I foresaw a campaign-ending TPK in their near future, I had to come up with something. So I thought back to the time the party mage had on his own initiative approached and volunteered his services to a superpowerful and not very nice NPC (a Khelben Blackstaff type but Soul Shifted into an Efreet Lord body) with no love for the BBEG. It had been several levels before and at the time I'd just had the low level mage "adjusted" so that he was no longer capable of seeing/finding the wizard's tower, but I realized I could use that incident to retcon the party's motivation and keep the campaign going.

I decided that the party would never have decided of its own accord to do something this stupid and suicidal if it had not been influenced by an outside force, namely the NPC. Not only that, the NPC had given the party mage a Succor item that would teleport him in once the party had gotten close to the BBEG. However, he'd warded the item from protection and made the mage forget he had it.

The party finally awoke, far too late, to the huge mistake they'd made, but they were already within the enemy's keep on the Demiplane of Shadow. No BBEG worth his salt would have just let them get out alive at that point. And it was then, while they were talking about retreat, that the mage said he suddenly "had a feeling" they should keep going. He'd never had "feelings" before, so they continued on and when they faced the BBEG there were a few very short rounds of combat (which actually went a bit better for them than I had thought they would because I'd forgotten they still had a scroll of Protection from Magic) before it all started going south. At that point, the mage suddenly "remembered" that he had an item that would help.

It was still a TPK, as the titanic battle between the two spellcasters leveled the place. However, at the beginning of the next session the party awoke. They'd been in stasis in an extradimensional space, which was now about to collapse. With them was a message stating that they'd been most useful tools and hence had been rewarded with renewed life and some magic items, but now knew too much and were being placed where they could do no harm. When they escaped the extradimensional pocket, they found themselves on another world, with a sun the apparent size and color of a blood orange directly overhead.

They eventually discovered that this was their own world some 200,000 years in the future, in the 81st Age of Men (their own time had been the 3rd Age, said ages being the epochs between the infrequent occasions of the near-destruction of humanity by the gods). Although the Dark Sun setting had not yet been released, when it was I joked about my game being monitored, as the similarities were truly uncanny.

This allowed the campaign to continue until people graduated, but simultaneously warned the players not to get too cocky overconfident with BBEGs again. They had a lot of fun in the future, despite the fact that most of the time they had to hide their vast fortune of metal gear (weapons, armor, tent stakes) to avoid armies marching just to get it.

I don't know how much of that specific example, if any, could be adapted to someone else's campaign, but picture this:

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After a party's defeat at the hands of a BBEG they could awake in a grim and distant future to find that a Wish or Miracle scroll or a godly boon had been expended to retrieve/revive the only group of heroes that had ever come close to hurting the BBEG in the hopes that they might succeed, if only given one more chance.

[Anxe]

It happened in my last campaign. The PCs lost more due to infighting than the final BBEG, but they lost nonetheless. We decided it was still a fitting end to the campaign. The consequences of their failure affected my campaign world and now they have to deal with the son of the BBEG in the next campaign. The loss gave the players a meaningful connection to my campaign world almost as much as a victory would. The next campaign will have an element of payback for them in it.

[Ernir]

I sure hope it's acceptable. I'm running a campaign right now that has gone from 1-16 so far, and I have no idea how it's going to end. They might die, they might kill the BBEG, and the world might end.
Which means how many possibilities?

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Answer: 8 that I can see!

1. The PCs die, they manage to kill the BBEG, but the world ends anyway.
2. The PCs die, they manage to kill the BBEG, but they manage to save the world.
3. The PCs die, they don't manage to kill the BBEG, the world ends. Ouch.
4. The PCs die, they don't manage to kill the BBEG, but they do manage to save the world.
5. The PCs don't die, they manage to kill the BBEG, but the world ends anyway.
6. The PCs don't die, they manage to kill the BBEG, and they manage to save the world. Whoo! \o/
7. The PCs don't die, they don't manage to kill the BBEG, and the world ends.
8. The PCs don't die, they don't manage to kill the BBEG, but they manage to save the world.

I think the players are doing their best to end up with #6, but I don't think any of the possibilities is unacceptable unless I somehow make it unfun.

[pendell]

I'm not as tough as some of those here; but I agree with the consensus; losing IS an acceptable campaign outcome.

I have little experience, but I would prefer to modify my style depending on the players. If we're learning a new gaming system, or playing with young kids, maybe putting them in Tomb of Horrors and playing it dead-straight isn't appropriate.

OTOH, if you're prepping for a tournament or if you're playing with highly skilled players who want a challenge, why hold back?

But even when I'm being nice, I'm still willing to kill the characters and end the game in utter, total defeat. It's not a game if there's no possibility of losing. If the player's achievements are to have any meaning, there must be the possibility of failure.

So losing must be on the table at all times. If the characters are guaranteed to win, what's the point of putting any effort into the game at all? Just sit back and let the plot train carry you to inevitable victory.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Eldariel]

Well, theater was basically founded upon two types of plays: Tragedies about rulers, heroes and overall people of stature; and comedies of simple folk. As such, I find a tragic end to an epic story all the more fitting. So in my books, defeat is definitely fine. Maybe even preferable, as long as it was epic and worthy of a song.

[MickJay]

One GM I know had the party (in WoD, Werewolf game) bringing about the Apocalypse (which the players thought they were going to prevent). They were given a prophecy at the beginning which explained what has to happen before the Apocalypse can occur, and during an over year of gaming, one way or another, they actually contributed to some of these things happening, as well as made the final move themselves, and only realized that when the hell was (literally) breaking loose. The final step was, of course, killing of the BBEG (they missed the clues indicating that his death would be a bad thing). Definitely a memorable end of a gripping campaign.

[kyoryu]

Depends on the game, I'd say.

If you're playing a more narrative-based game, where the PCs have effectively had plot armor the whole time, stripping them of that plot armor for the final confrontation may be a bit... abrupt?

For a more sandboxy- or worldy- type game, it's absolutely fine. In those types of games, character success is generally never assured, and character death/failure is generally a much more likely possibility throughout the campaign, anyway. At the extreme of old-school, players may have multiple characters anyway, so the loss of a party isn't even really the "end" of the campaign.

It's really all about what expectations you've set for the players.

[prufock]

One option that I'm going to attempt in the upcoming end to one of my campaigns is a conditional defeat. That is, give them a choice; neither choice has a wholly good nor wholly bad outcome.

In any boss fight there may be losses, so even success is not necessarily unmarred. Should you have a TPK or otherwise? If it's awesome, yes, if it's lame, no. Follow the philosophy of "do it for the story."

[HalfTangible]

Start a second compaign that begins shortly after the TPK, in a world where the demons and devils succeeded. The heroes then work to save any surviving celestials and bring the devils/demons down.

[0Megabyte]

Is PC defeat acceptable?

Yes. If it's awesome. If it's fun, or fitting. This question doesn't seem, to me, to count the situation where the PC's die in the course of completing their plan, or sacrifice themselves to save the world, or die one by one the way many stories tend to go.

But dying in battle against the villain, just totally losing? Yes... if it's done right.

[Tengu_temp]

"Oops, you died during a fight you were supposed to win, game over" is one of the most disappointing letdowns that can happen during a game. If the death of the PCs doesn't feel like it still accomplished something, or at least dramatic and tragic, if it doesn't create an ending to the story the players are satisfied with - then you, the DM, did poorly. You might have made something everyone will enjoy, and ended up with a table filled with disappointed players instead.

I don't believe in stuff like "an honest DM will let a PC die if that's how the dice roll" or "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose", and especially not "earn your right to have fun". This is roleplaying, not a video game. It's about storytelling first and foremost.

[true_shinken]

I don't believe in stuff like "an honest DM will let a PC die if that's how the dice roll" or "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose", and especially not "earn your right to have fun". This is roleplaying, not a video game. It's about storytelling first and foremost.

While I agree with this, the death of PCs makes for a very good downer ending and is a nice spark for a new campaign as well.