Have you ever deliberated TPKed a party to set the stage for another campaign?

[meomwt]

We were playing Traveller last year, and the crew were trying to set course for a Jump to get away from pursuers. The Helm and Engineering both rolled snake-eyes - more than once - and the ship was, apparently, lost in Hyperspace.

The DM turned up next week with a new game, set in the modern day, and encompassing conspiracy theory, myth, monsters and odd things happening to us all (e.g. at a meeting, something killed every member of the public there and left us alone: a chase through a churchyard at night was halted after photos of the characters were found pinned to the tombstones).

At the conclusion of the campaign, it was revealed that we were actually still the crew of our Traveller ship, we had made planetfall at a scientific base in a bad way and were in a sort of group coma. So, though it hadn't been deliberate (and wasn't technically a TPK), it was a clever way to turn bad die rolls into a clever game.

 

[wwanno]

I would suggest that you skip time forward. The old PCs are now in places of power or obtained whatever they were after.
This will aid the players to percieve them no longer as their PCs, and it will make easier to accept their death.

 

[Will Doyle]

As some have suggested above, warn the players beforehand that you want to wrap up and reboot the campaign, and then horrifically murder their characters with the Ancient Evil.

I've done similar before to introduce big villains, but not with existing characters. Everyone turns up expecting to carry on the campaign, but instead receive pregen sheets and are thrown into some dire situation. Works a treat, especially if some characters can actually escape (and warn the "real" PCs).

 

[Sunseeker]

I think as the DM, you're in a bad position to gauge how much investment each individual player has in their characters. I've known (and myself had) characters in which players are highly invested, even if we've only run 2-3 sessions with them. Investment, IMO, often has nothing to do with the number of games played, but with how much energy the player has put into the creation of their character.

I would try to discuss the idea with my group first. Tell them that you think a new campaign should be started but you'd like to give some kind of conclusion to the one you're in first. Maybe poke around for some feelings on their characters "dying" and see how they'd feel about it.

Personally, I would never put my characters into a situation where I need/want them to lose. I doubt I'd be very happy about it on the receiving end either unless there was some pretty clear build-up or prelude or straight-talk from the DM about what's going on.

 

[Desdichado]

Anyone done something like this before? Deliberate TPK to set the stage for something grand and exciting?

Yes, although with pregens rather than with their "actual" characters. The concept was supposed to imitate how in, for example, many episodes of The X-files (or other horror story/movie) there was some poor sap who got killed in the beginning to establish that the "monster" (or significant antagonist in the campaign, in my case) was a real bad-ass who needed to be feared.

In backfired a little bit on me; due to a series of extremely lucky rolls, one of the pregen characters lasted for quite a while, running around playing interference on the NPC antagonist. It did deflate the degree of bad-ass-ness that was generated, but at the same time, when the players (now playing their actual PCs) ran across this particular NPC, the effect was more or less what I wanted it to be.

It worked reasonably well. Would do again.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I started a Wraith: the Oblivion game this way once, without telling the players what we would be playing. The campaign didn't really get off the ground, but I think it had little to do with the fatal car crash and more to do with players who weren't very committed to gaming.

 

[DMZ2112]

I put a party to death in order to set up a subsequent campaign, does that count? I spent the whole last arc of the previous campaign dropping hints that they were on the wrong side of things and they never caught on. So the major NPC showed up after their victory lap and explained that they all needed to die to offset the cosmic imbalance their success had created. Incredulity turned to slackjawed awe as I pointed out one by one all the signs they'd missed, and we had a great roleplaying moment when about half the group resisted and the other half willingly went to the block. My players still talk about it reverently 15 years later.

To be fair, though, the next campaign involved the petitioners who had been the failed heroes of the previous campaign, so that softened the blow, not that they knew it at the time.

 

[ardisian]

On purpose, no.

But I had a game where bad decisions and good role play led to a TPK and a powerful artifact falling into the bad guys hands. The next campaign was dealing with the results of that TPK. The players had a blast.