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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4761349" data-attributes="member: 54707">Simple often works.You know anyone in an unfamiliar situation or environment can really screw up unintentionally, and sometimes pack mentality prevails when it shouldn't.That's a real dangerous dungeon though, which in many ways is just designed to kill. However there are a few actions you could encourage in your players.I encourage my players to develop Tactical and Exploration Ready Actions. These are simply sheets with prepared actions in case such and such happens. If X occurs then they do Y.Say half the party is reduced to 25% of hit points or less (assuming you use hit points) what do they then do? Continue the fight, beat a strategic retreat, seek to parley, allow some people to be captured for later rescue and have the others escape for tactical reasons, etc? That way they have some idea of how to react to dangerous situations gone bad.An Exploration Ready Sheet suggests actions they can take towards an unfamiliar environment or encounter. Does one party member jump through the devil's mouth and then agree to return within ten minutes? If he doesn't return then what does this mean for the others?What about magical probes, like sending a magical eye through the portal, or sending an inanimate object?I encourage my players to sit down and using prior expense generate "Action and Encounter Ideas" and then to write them down and codify them so that they have a list of prepared actions and reactions to both dangerous and unfamiliar situations. Ready Action and Reaction sheets save a lot of time, confusion, and misapplication of effort. They don't have to follow those regenerated ideas but at least they have action idea resources and training already available to them which lessen the chances of making future mistakes. After all you can't correct prior death due to mistake but you can prevent future death by reducing mistakes. As for you, simply do your best, or even ask your players, if they think that in some way you were deficient in your job. They may tell you the truth, or at least the truth from their point of view, which may or may not be accurate. But in any case you can learn something. And of course you must be scrupulously honest in assessing your own actions to create good criticisms of your own behavior in case something needs to be changed. Then again don't do their job for them or you'll end up being more mommy than DM. It is their job to be clever in dangerous and unknown situations, not yours. Sometimes an exploding cigar is just an exploding cigar and it's the fault of the guy who lights it up for not asking why Fidel Castro suddenly wants to vacate the room right before you light up. Your players should just always assume dangerous and unknown things might just suggest dangerous and unknown things. If I were walking along and saw a huge, grinning, devil's mouth of a gateway I might just think that implied something. That somebody did that for a reason. So you can't do their thinking for them. You cab however encourage them to be well-prepared, and maybe to look hard before they leap. But as far as TOH is concerned, it's an intentionally rough piece of work. Probably my very favorite store bought module but a rough piece of work. Even good and powerful characters are likely gonna die. However there will be a lot less dying if they are well prepared. Good preparation reduces a lot of unnecessary misfortune, suffering, and foolish miscalculation.But you know preparation is also their job. It's something they should naturally want to do as a survival mechanism.As far as I'm concerned it isn't so much a question of what is the fault point, as it is of avoiding the fault point. Unless of course as you implied they simply wanted to die. And there is not a lot you can do about that except ask them, "Do you wanna replay this or move onto something else." They'll probably tell you exactly who they feel and you can deduce the reason from there.</blockquote>

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