Do TPKS end campaigns?

[HRG]

Example of a TPK being handled fairly cleverly imo:

*Beware! Spoilers for Savage Tide*

(posts 9 and 17) http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=7604727

Granted, that was early in the campaign and might not have worked as well if it had occured during the endgame (although I guess it could if everyone agrees to it just so they can finish the thing)

 

[Kaodi]

Ghostwalk?

Granted, I have never actually read the setting, but I imagine that there must be some provision in there for a Post-TPK... After all, given the description of most ghosts, how does a PC not fit as a candidate?

 

[Vegepygmy]

So my question is does a TPK mean an end to a campaign?

Necessarily? No, of course not.

If not how have you successfully carried on playing after a TPK?

Sometimes it's as easy as making new characters and picking up where the old ones left off. Other times you have to get creative about introducing the new party. And on occasion, it's just about impossible to do well, and it is better to just end the campaign.

 

[Mark]

Do TPKS end campaigns?

They certainly can. Having it turn out that all of the PCs were captured is one way around it. Having the players create family characters out to avenge the former group is another way. It's very much a matter of gaging the group and finding a solution that leads to more fun rather than less.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'd say by definition a TPK ends a campaign, assuming death is permanent and no afterlife adventures. The PCs *are* the campaign. If you keep playing in the same world with new PCs that's a new campaign set in the same world.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I've never seen a "campaign" survive a TPK. Folks make new characters and move on to some other adventure/campaign. I've seen a couple of GMs try and TPK a group and then "continue", but none of the player's hearts were in it.

 

[Verdande]

It depends on what you do to it. If you simply say, "You're all dead, wanna try again?" then that's pretty boring, and I can't blame your players for heading for the hills and trying something new.

If you say, "You all failed and the incredible evil that you were trying to stop succeeded in their plans, roll up some new characters to fight even more evil," then you could be good.

For example, your characters are racing to stop a hideous demon lord from breaching the planes and laying the smackdown on the entire world. They fail. Well, that pretty much means that the demon succeeds, doesn't it? So what happens next? Does the demon lord take over the world and enslave all of human kind?

I'd say that's a pretty interesting background. Maybe the new characters are reincarnations of the old ones, and they remember their past lives. Maybe they're totally unrelated, but brand new heroes who desire, above all else, to avenge all the enslaved and slain men and women who died to stop the demon lord. Maybe they're part of an underground resistance group.

The key is to realize that the campaign world doesn't implode just because a group of 2 to 6 heroes dies.

If it literally does implode, then you might just be out of luck, of course.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

Ghostwalk?

Granted, I have never actually read the setting, but I imagine that there must be some provision in there for a Post-TPK... After all, given the description of most ghosts, how does a PC not fit as a candidate?

This is a good idea if your players are attached to their characters and if you mix it into your campaign at the start (you'll have to fiddle with it a bit). The PCs become "ghosts" (in the sense of Ghostwalk) and can either continue (and even advance) as "ghosts," or retrieve their equipment/bodies for resurrection.

My players put a lot of work into their characters so I proposed this as a way to handle the eventual PC death/TPK. So far, so good.

 

[Uruush]

Both of our Ravenloft campaigns ended in TPKs. Just part of the package I guess. In any case, we didn't feel like continuing on with new characters.

 

[Treebore]

It depends. I usually run Ravenloft, the module, as a stand alone. When I ran it as part of the world setting, or any campaign, I establish friendships and relationships between the PC's and higher level NPC's who I can later use to believably find the PC's bodies and raise or resurrect them.

Still, Strahd can make that harder, because if your dead in Ravenloft either your now a vampire or a zombie. Or Strahd may have decided to turn you into a Spectre, or something else.

So TPK's can be a campaign ender, and likely should be. Like so many have said before, it depends.