What normally happens after a TPK?

[Chainsaw]

I find myself surprised that a little more than half of the respondents simply start something new. What do you do with the work you have put into the current setting?


RC

Back in my middle and high school days, we never really had much of a setting because adventures were dungeon-centric and we rarely had people make it through more than 1-2 without total annihilation. I suppose every session was sort of like a tournament. Toward the end, maybe 10th-11th grade, we had one campaign with outdoor adventures. It required a bit more of a setting. Never had a TPK there. I was more skilled as a DM (less likely to accidentally overpower) and they were more skilled as players (not afraid to run).

 

[billd91]

Interesting. The only assumption seems to be that campaign = mission/story/quest, not campaign = adventures in a setting. Very narrow view, that.

Campaign has a lot of different meanings, not necessarily limited to just mission/story/quest-related topics. It could be the adventures in a setting of a particular collection of characters, particular group of players, based on the same starting hook, whatever. Any number of those could be deranged by a TPK.

 

[Mark]

Me, I reuse just about everything. Even if it needs a new coat of paint. Once a feature is in the campaign milieu, I get to use it again in some form or another.

I couldn't imagine just tossing out good hard work. There's always a way to rework material that doesn't get used (and often stuff that does!).

 

[jdrakeh]

I voted Other; I don't think we've even started over in the same setting. I think we've mostly gone and played in entirely different game systems.

Usually, this has been my experience, as well. A TPK just seems to sour people on the current game/setting. We'll probably revisit it again, but not for a while.

 

[firesnakearies]

I'm surprised to see how many people consider a TPK the unequivocal end of their campaign. I haven't seen a single person in this thread even suggest that perhaps the game, with the same characters, could go on. I guess I'm too used to video games, or perhaps I'm too unwilling to scrap the large amount of work that I put into a game (and that I ask my players to put into their characters, as well). If they should happen to lose, and all die . . . well, I'm going to figure out a way for the story to continue, for them to come back and have another chance.

In my view, the campaign should only end when people can't or don't want to play it anymore. I won't let the outcome of a single encounter dictate to me that I have to end my game. Resurrection exists for a reason. Will there be consequences to their failure, and a price to pay? Oh yes, of course there will. But I'm not ripping up any character sheets and calling it "game over". Maybe that cheapens death. I don't care. I want the game to go on, and my players most likely do, too. We can figure out a story for why that happens, just like the writers of novels, movies, and shows do when they need to preserve their protagonists despite apparent doom.

I think that TPKs should be rare, but if they do happen, it should ultimately only be a serious (but temporary) setback for the PCs, rather than The End.

 

[Corinth]

Total Party Kill = Game Over.

 

[Thadeous]

TPK = roll with it.

I think a TPK should be able to go either way. If you have a large amount of time invested in the story and the world a TPK can allow you to show the players a different view of things.

If you have little invested or no one really cares about what has happened so far the start over.

If you really have the players hooked on a story then keep it going with new characters. I would never give story which had my players really hooked just because I have a principal about tpks

T.

TPKs can be fun

 

[Vegepygmy]

I haven't seen a single person in this thread even suggest that perhaps the game, with the same characters, could go on.

I guess you didn't read this post, then: http://www.enworld.org/forum/5195887-post43.html

 

[Lanefan]

Oy. The Forgotten Realms is one, single "setting." Do all of the adventures ever played in that setting constitute one, single, unequivocal "campaign?"

No.

BUT, do all the adventures ever played in that setting under the same DM represent one campaign? Probably. I'd leave that decision up to each particular DM.

Sometimes, a single campaign can run under several different DMs at different times, though this would be tough to pull off well.

As I understand it, thousands (I'm pulling this number out of a hat) of different DMs have created their own, unique campaigns set in the Realms; and the outcomes for one DM's campaign might well (and probably do) contradict the outcomes of another DM's campaign in the same setting -- yet they are all "adventures in a setting," so must be the same "campaign" if your second equivalency is correct.

You need to factor in the DM.

For my own games, I define the campaign by setting provided there's any interaction between the various parties. My current setting/campaign has no less than 4 active parties* in the field, each with characters who have already adventured with characters in at least 2 of the others. And though those parties are currently playing out 4 different and mostly-distinct story arcs, as far as I (and the players) are concerned it's all one campaign.

* - lest you think I'm running 4 games a week and thus have *no* life at all, I run two of the parties each week with the other two on hold; and occasionally we switch 'em up. This also means I can gleefully TPK at least one if I want, because there's backups waiting in the wings!

That said, before this one myself and another DM ran what we consider to be 5 major campaigns. He has managed to interweave his three such that there's a growing case to be made that they are in fact all the same great big one (which, as an aside, would now be in its 29th year if true). A lesser case could be made that my previous two are also involved, given the amount of interaction between my campaigns and his over time. We have, however, thus far by choice kept them as five distinct campaigns.

Lan-"then again, maybe I don't have a life"-efan

 

[Psychotic Jim]

TPKs don't occur that often for my groups, but when it's happened we've usually started a new campaign. We haven't really explicitly addressed this though, so we might not start over if there are special circumstances.

Hmm, I can think of once time in all my years of gaming that a TPK didn't end the campaign. It was a Heroes Unlimited campaign. Due to earlier campaign developments, the characters had acquired parts of the same divine soul. We were testing out some variant called shot rules (they were nasty!), and the villains took out the PCs. The divine soul that the PCs were all part of was condemned to Hell/Hades, so they all woke up burning in the Pit. The heroes had to claw their way up from Hell to get back to the living world.

In this lone special case, the TPK end the campaign due to two things- 1) the lethality/wonkiness of the called shot rules we were trying out and 2) it served as a challenging goal and character development.

There's one other option I've been pondering but haven't tried out yet. I'm thinking Dark Sun's character tree idea might not be so bad for any D&D game. For those unfamiliar, in Dark Sun (2e at least) death was so expected that you would generate a "character tree" of 3-4 characters IIRC. These characters all were supposed to have some common origin in their backgrounds to bind them together (e.g. fought as slaves in the same gladiatorial arena). This was so that one character could replace another if the first should die. IIRC, a player could also switch between the characters in alternating adventures. As I recall, the "dormant" characters received 50% of the exp of the active characters.