Holy Bovine
First Post
My players suffered their first total loss tonight and they're mad at me. Very mad. Which raises the question of how people deal with sore losers?
I opted not to kill them. Next week they'll be waking up in prison and by then I'll have reworked this dungeon into an 'escape from prison' scenario, which I think was kind of me considering they were beaten by an enemy who was ordered to assassinate them and by all means they should have been TPK'd.
I digress though, what does one do to help soften the blow of telling the players "sometimes you lose"? Especially when they're not accustomed to loss.
Tell it is time to put on their big boy pants and deal with it. You're not their mother or their enemy - you're an impartial judge who runs the game. Unless you went out of your way to break rules to kill them off and/or lied or left out critical information that the PCs would have had that led to the TPK you have nothing to apologize or feel bad about.