When PCs fail.

Well, we just finished a 4 year long run of the Dead Gods adventure last night. I added a lot of content in between each scenario in the adventure, which is why it took so long. This was the biggest and most epic adventure I've DMed. I'm pretty bummed out though. The PCs failed to finish the last chapter as heroes and they did not "save the day".

As DM, I could have probably done some things to 'give the players a break', but this was supposed to be the big finally. So at the time, I was thinking that whatever they choose to do, I will not deviate from the events that are supposed to be happening behind the scenes.

I did everything I could to let them know they needed to be prepared, even to the point that I thought I might be annoying them by reminding them to buff, use their resources, and to work together as a team to win the day. They seemed very confident & sort of dismissed my advice (it seemed). When the time came, they did not do anything to improve on their tactics, and it took my NPCs only 2 rounds to send their PCs fleeing for their lives.

This last event was on a time frame. The master was on his way and the PCs knew this. So they knew they had to defeat the BBEG and take (or destroy) the artifact before his master arrived. The problem was, they left the major artifact that they came to retrieve (or destroy) in the room that they fled, which allowed the enemy to simply walk over, pick it up, and hand it to his master once he arrived.

So they expected to flee, lick their wounds (in their defense, they did get their butts handed to them), and then come back and try again. But the time frame did not allow for this. The BBEG did not care about the PCs; he only cared about getting the artifact for his master. So when they fled, all he had to do was pick it up and that's that (game over).

I guess they had a decision; focus on their survival, or try to stop the BBEG from taking the artifact. Obviously their survival was more important (not a problem, but not heroic either), and they really didn't give any thought about what happens to the artifact if they flee. So they made their choice, they lived, but they failed big time.

This is the first time I've seen such an epic fail before. So now I get to sort things out and figure out where to go from here. I honestly can't think of anyway for them to redeem themselves. So I think it will have to be chalked up to the bad guys won the day, and the PCs will just continue on with their lives (and the adventures I've been preparing). If anyone has ideas or advice for me, let me have it. I honestly don't know if the way I handled things was good or not. I also don't blame the players, they made a choice that they thought was best. And as far as they were concerned, they were prepared for the fight.

What are your thoughts about allowing the PCs to fail a mission? Does it happen in your campaigns? Do you think it's better to fudge things to help them succeed?

I feel guilty whenever a PC dies (heck, one died in that last fight due to a freak teleporting accident as they fled). But I feel guilty in a totally different way seeing as how it's 4 years later and everything they did was a at a loss.

Oryan77 said:

What are your thoughts about allowing the PCs to fail a mission? Does it happen in your campaigns? Do you think it's better to fudge things to help them succeed?

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It happens. I think it is okay for PCs to fail a mission. Sometimes the dice are against you, sometimes the party didn't prepare enough, etc. It can be disappointing to fail, bit to know that success is guaranteed upon reaching the conclusion of the campaign takes some of the fun out of it in my opinion.

We had a long running campaign, not four years, but still a pretty solid campaign that had one of the final battles go awry and resulted in a TPK. We *still* talk about that campaign! But we still think of the campaign as a whole as a great experience and not as time wasted.

Oryan77 said:

What are your thoughts about allowing the PCs to fail a mission? ... Do you think it's better to fudge things to help them succeed?

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If they can't fail (or succeed) then why are they at the table? You could simply get characters from them and write the novel, then let them read it when you finish.
Player choices have to matter, or you've just invalidated the players and the game.

Oryan77 said:

Does it happen in your campaigns?

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All the time. And they all know it happened. I make it very clear when they've screwed the pooch and what the consequences of their failures are.
In your case they let Orcus, Abyss lord of undeath, regain all the tools he needed to regain and exceed his full power.
At this point you have two choices:
1) Let the bad guys win. This will be very, very, very bad for the people of the setting but that's the bad part of being the characters upon whom the fate of the world rests. Sometimes you suck it up and the world is hosed.
2) Give them a second chance. They screwed up, got their butts kicked, and the bad guys have what they need. But it doesn't work yet, and requires a (ritual / sacrifice / McGuffin) to activate (or whatever). Let them find out about this opportunity and choose what they will do about it. If they screw this one up then you get to fall back to #1, but at least it will be a suitably epic battle.

Regardless, you can't give it to them. They have to earn the result, good or bad, or you'll have invalidated the last four years far, far more than if they fail and the campaign ends (or putters along in growing darkness).

Good luck.

It happens in my campaigns; thankfully complete failures are pretty rare. I let the consequences play out and the player characters get to make choices for their new environment.

Sometimes they decide to try to right the situation. Other times they consider it untenable and move on. A few times it has completely altered the campaign setting -- effectively the PCs endure a "fall of civilisation" event and focus shifts to survival/rescue/rebuilding.

I don't know the scenario and the likely outcomes from the BBEG's boss getting the artefact so I can't help with detail, just moral support. The PCs live, the world continues to turn (or at least the PCs can reach a new one?) and their story hasn't been finished yet.

I'll paraphrase (i believe) Raven Crowking here: If you don't want the world to get destroyed, don't have the PCs try to save it.

Failure sucks, and can be a let down on both sides of the screen. Assuming nothing was done "wrong" (rules mess ups, misread flavor text, poorly designed encounters) you kind of have to stick to it, though (consequences mattering and all).

But I do commend you for carrying on. Too many times you read about groups that abandon the campaign or even split up over a major failure or TPK. If the world and campaign are robust, though, there's no reason to do that. Keep on keeping on, as it were: new heroes answer the call, or the old heroes have a whole new set of circumstances to deal with -- and maybe, just maybe, a shot at redemption.

Personally, I approach my job as DM when planning the game as this: The PC's will rarely, if ever fail. The only time that they risk actually failing (as in "good try, game's over, you lost" as it seems what happened with your group) is at the absolute end of the campaign. Because of the style of game that I like to run, I tend to do very "yeah, if you fail, the whole country/world/Material Plane is gonna go to the dogs and be utterly destroyed" plots, which has the final encounter/adventure/what not, and they may fail that.

Now, beyond that ending the PC's will not fail; they may die (usually multiple times), they may have some major set-backs, they may cause a ton of collateral damage and destruction, but ultimately they will not fail, as they are the stars of the show. And this is not to say that they always are successful with side quests and the like, simply that I always have a Plan B, C, D, and E ready for them, so that they don't simply fail everything if they miss one little thing, or they fail to defeat one little foe, or something along those lines.

Granted, I have no idea as to what your campaign (or premade adventure as it looks like) was like, so I can't comment too specifically on it, but does this BBEG getting his hands on this artifact result in world-ending catastrophe? If so, did the PCs know this? If so, well, you lose some and you win some and at least you had a good ride. However, it seems like it isn't quite so final with your group, so how does their failure impact the world? Does the BBEG begin to scour the face of the world, and drain it of its energy? Does he ascend to godhood and proceed to wreck havoc on a cosmic scale? Or does he just have a really cool new toy to play with? In my eyes, all of these things would be considered and weighed in order to see what direction the PCs go now.

sounds like a great segue to DarkSun. Or more likely Ravenloft. The world should get grimmer. Cherished NPCs should die, lose their livelihoods, become corrupt or give in to despair. Safe locations should no longer be safe. Anyone who knew of the PC's mission and its failure should hate and revile them as the cowards who could have saved the world, but saved their own skins instead. People who lost loved ones should ask "why are you alive when my family is dead? It should have been you that died!"

Then a glimmer of hope appears. Orcus is solidifying his hold, but there is a rumour of a weakness in his defenses. Someone from the past still remembers the PCs as heroes and believes they just might be able to turn things around. Campaign part 2 begins.

Well, what are the consequences of the BBEG's victory? Is the BBEG out to conquer the world, or destroy it, or what?

If he's out to destroy the world, you're in a tight spot. You might want to see if you can cobble together some kind of Hail-Mary option for the PCs where they make one final desperate play at a terrible cost (I suggest making it a suicide mission)... if you can figure out a way to do it without it being obvious you're giving them a do-over. If you can't figure out a way to do that, then the campaign ends and the world burns. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

If the BBEG is out to rule the world, you have more options. Here's what I would likely do: Come up with some kind of MacGuffin that can bring about the BBEG's destruction. Send the PCs on a fairly short, but brutally punishing, adventure arc to create this MacGuffin. The BBEG's minions will harry them at every turn.

The last encounter, where they actually create the MacGuffin, takes place in a special location; say, a mystical temple which a PC spellcaster had to raise out of the sea by magic. At this point the PCs are under siege, with enemies attacking from all sides and most of the easy-out escapes (teleportation, et cetera) blocked. If they come up with a clever way to escape and use the MacGuffin, good for them; otherwise, the final battle concludes with a TPK and the temple sinking back below the waves as the one who raised it perishes.

Then start the next campaign a few hundred years later, in a hell-world under the BBEG's iron fist, where a handful of 1st-level PCs are fighting the BBEG's low-level minions. After a few small-scale victories and adventures, they stumble across the legend of an artifact created long ago by a handful of heroes that can bring about the BBEG's downfall...

(Bonus points if you manage to keep the players from realizing the two campaigns are set in the same world until they find the MacGuffin.)

*Shrug* Sorry Frodo - Sauron got the ring back. Let's play Midnight.

The Auld Grump

Yar. Unfortunate failure makes the most sense to me. Don't rob them of their failure -- they earned it just as they would've earned a success. But re-spinning the whole scenario to begin a new campaign gives them a chance to steal a new victory from the jaws of this defeat.