Another TPK - Sigh.

[Sunderstone]

Roll the dice and read them as they fall. Or, Take 10 and see what the sentry on duty gets for his/her Listen skill check. Spot checks in the dark are tougher than one might initially think. Also, not only did the ogres have the firelight and tracking going for them, it would be extremely easy to argue the smell of smoke would be a giveaway.

Maybe next time the players will light a camp and fill it with straw figures “sleeping” and lay in ambush nearby. Maybe next time they will move a further away and have a cold camp. Odds are the players will have learned from the scenario.

I agree with you totally on this but no matter how you slice it, swrushing believes that INT 6 = throwing all caution out the window and charging hell-bent with revenge and being too slow upstairs to follow a simple order of "wait" when given by their leader whom they also might fear. (woot! run-on sentence!)

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

What would you have done?

Sounds to me like you where going to lose sleep over it no matter what you did... At least you chose to run the game the way you want too and for that you still have your integrity.

As for what you can do… Can you get smarter players cause that was really freaking dumb... (I wish I could say that nicer but wow... oh wow.)

 

[ForceUser]

Sounds to me like you where going to lose sleep over it no matter what you did... At least you chose to run the game the way you want too and for that you still have your integrity.

As for what you can do… Can you get smarter players cause that was really freaking dumb... (I wish I could say that nicer but wow... oh wow.)

Cut 'em some slack. Like Hjorimir said, they're new to D&D. It IS a challenge to go from DMing a group of players as or more knowledgable than myself, to a group of (mostly) complete newbies. I count on my two experienced gamers to nudge the others along. I let them make suggestions to the new players (Don't cast that spell, cast this spell. If you move here you can get a flank. Etc.) all the time. The experienced players are generally pretty astute, and I think it's important to allow them to help the others. It takes some of the burden of instruction off me as a DM, and it allows the newbies to have veteran players help them not make dumb mistakes. And I often interpret the rules in the best possible light for the newbies. In contrast, with my old group of vets, the gloves are OFF. No free rides and they know it. They still kick butt, because they are well versed in the system.

My players had plenty of opportunity to choose their path. They chose poorly. It sucks, I'm bummed, but life goes on. My big concern is that this will be the third campaign (two TPKs total, guys, not three) with these players. We've been playing D&D together for almost a year. Despite that, most of the "newbies" still ask me which die to roll for an attack. Or how many squares they can move. Or how many times per day they can cast a particular spell. Sometimes its hard to remember that the rules ARE complex, and I've been gaming since 1987. I take for granted just how much I know about the system. Going forward, we're going to start at 1st level again. And I'm going to take pains to communicate their environment to them in as much detail as I can manage. Hopefully they'll make wiser decisions.

 

[Spatula]

Over in another part of the battle, there were a pair of little guys -- halfling bard and halfing fighter/rogue, both of them lower level because they were new characters. I considered ruling that the bad guys would want to capture them instead of killing them, but in the end, it just didn't seem fair. I had my melee grunts wade in and grapple them, and then my rogue monsters did sneak attacks to finish them off.

You do realize there was an actual reason for the uruk-hai to capture the hobbits instead of killing them. ForceUser's TPK occured because he didn't see any reason for the ogres to want to kidnap the PCs.

 

[takyris]

You do realize there was an actual reason for the uruk-hai to capture the hobbits instead of killing them. ForceUser's TPK occured because he didn't see any reason for the ogres to want to kidnap the PCs.

I realize that the Game Master in that session decided that the uruk-hai had a compelling reason to capture the hobbits instead of killing them. That's all I realize. I don't recall hearing Aragorn shouting, "Don't worry, as we all know, the uruk-hai only want to capture the hobbits. Hobbits, try to weigh them down and increase their carrying load! We'll catch them when they get fatigued!" The PCs in that game didn't know anything about this "The bad guys have a compelling reason to capture and not kill" theory of yours.

The Game Master, had he not been telling stories to his kids, might have decided that the ol' uruk-hai thought, "Dude, we can always just tear their heads off and search the bodies later for that whatchamacallit the boss wanted." Or "The boss described exactly what the hobbit we want looks like, so we're free to kill the other ones." Or "My uruk-hai senses do not detect the ring on this one, so he must not be the one I want. I'll eviscerate him and eat his internal organs while he watches, then."

Oh, no, but the big boss didn't give his minions specific instructions? He just told the monsters that they had to capture the hobbits alive, like the idiotic bad guy in an action movie who, when the hero is surrounded by 12 ninjas with uzis, says, "Stop, I want him alive!" for no reason other than to gloat and introduce the hot chick that the hero is going to seduce, turn from the path of darkness, and use as an assistant in his escape from the bad guy's lair?

Why on earth would a great and powerful dude like that deliver such idiotic and self-hindering instructions?

Because the GM decided that it would result in something other than a bunch of low-level halfling deaths, that's why.

The GM is not a helpless watchmaker who can only watch the wheels turn in the machine he has created. The GM can decide anything he wants at anytime he wants. If ForceUser can decide that Int6, Wis14 means "Capable of setting up big nasty ambush in an optimal fashion," he can also decide that the ogres have a compelling reason to capture the heroes.

- Maybe the ogres must avenge their fallen sentry by torturing the heroes to death instead of just killing them.
- Maybe leaving a head on a pike has earned the ogres' respect, and they want to capture the heroes, show them they mean business, and then offer them a position in their band.
- Maybe the ogre leader is afraid to use Call Lightning in the woods because it could start a fire and harm the forest (he is a druid, and druids sometimes think like that).
- Maybe leaving a head on a pike has fulfilled an ancient ogre prophecy, and the ogres now think that the heroes are their chosen saviors.

After two TPKs, as a GM, it might be good to start thinking about whether the tough love approach is really doing the job as far as training the new guys.

Now, all that said, I don't think ForceUser was doing a bad job -- it was a judgment call, and he stuck with it. That's good. I respect that. But it might be good to talk about stuff with the folks and figure out how to not let this happen -- with the acknowledgment that these new inexperienced players are probably going to make another mistake at some point in the future, no matter how much they promise not to.

I still feel that ForceUser played his ogres a bit smarter than their CR indicates as appropriate, but that's an intangible -- tough to tell if one isn't there to see it. And from the sound of it, there were some bad rolls, too -- the wizard missing twice with a scorching ray could very well have turned the tide. I mean, if the Ogre Druid goes down from those rays hitting (as they really should have, oddswise), then the other ogres must lose a lot of their strategy and get shaken up. Since the GM ruled that the presence of the Wis14 ogre made them smarter and more tactical, the loss of that leader would have had to throw off their morale, shake them up, and make them make mistakes, right?

Hope I'm not hitting that point too hard. I'm not saying I don't ever play monsters smart. I just give them higher Int scores when I do.

 

[Sunderstone]

I still feel that ForceUser played his ogres a bit smarter than their CR indicates as appropriate,

<snip>

Since the GM ruled that the presence of the Wis14 ogre made them smarter and more tactical, the loss of that leader would have had to throw off their morale, shake them up, and make them make mistakes, right?

Hope I'm not hitting that point too hard. I'm not saying I don't ever play monsters smart. I just give them higher Int scores when I do.

Why do people think that a 6 intelligence isnt capable of following a simple order like "wait"? We once had a Barbarian with a 5 intelligence in an old 1st edition campaign. The rest of the party made the attack plans while giving him orders when it came time like "wait" and "attack".

The other thing was as a DM it was his choice to make one a leader and a little more clever. I dont see anything wrong with that. Even if he gave him a higher INT score and did the same thing, would it be any different other than a higher EL rated encounter?
Sometimes players run into higher EL creatures, If they defeat it, they get better experience points. If they lose they get bad results.
The party could have taken alot of other precautions before bedding down for the night as others have stated. They didnt. The party even could have set up an ambush for the rest of them at their cave before bedding down, They didnt do that either.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

Tacky: My problem (as opposed to "the problem") with those given examples is that they come from works of fiction. "The GM" in those situations was not a GM, but instead a writer...

Now, I know there are some who'd prefer the GM as storyteller game, but by and large, that's not what people look for.

Personally, I think fudging (or any last-minute TPK dodging) is a form of railroading -- in that you're categorically interfering with the PCs' freedom to be stupid and end up dead.

It may sound odd, but I want that freedom as a player. YMMV. Best thing ForceUser can do is figure out how his players feel about dying, whether it should generally be a remote possibility (the result of terrible luck or screw-ups even more fantastic than their latest), or the more ever-present threat it currently appears to be. (The ogre mission he described, even taken well by the players, did sound like an inherently dangerous one, though not "overly" so.)

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Cut 'em some slack. Like Hjorimir said, they're new to D&D.

Cut 'em some slack. Like Hjorimir said, they're new to D&D.

My comments really had no bearing upon their understanding of the mechanics, to be honest I read your post and replied with my honest comments.

Cutting of creatures head and leaving it where its friends and family can find is an interesting move... Might be evil, but that for another thread, and it would be an interesting tactic if they thought it threw like setting up an ambush via a camp a half mile away...

but doing it and then walking a half mile away, lighting a fire in the middle of the night, and letting yourself get ambushed isn't a issue with mechanics its an issue of not thinking, or not having common sense... (IMHO)

I’m not the smartest guy in the world but I know that’s not something I would ever do in real life, and I’m not much, if any, of a woodsman… (me not being a woodsman is a fact..)

 

[Spatula]

Why on earth would a great and powerful dude like that deliver such idiotic and self-hindering instructions?

Because (a) he didn't know what the ringbearer looked like, and so couldn't provide a description, and (b) he didn't want any of the uruk-hai to get their hands on the ring, because if that had happened there's no way it would have made it back to him.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

My comments really had no bearing upon their understanding of the mechanics, to be honest I read your post and replied with my honest comments.

I don't the slack he wanted to do was related to mechanics, either... There's a lot of stuff that, when you're new to the game, you just don't think about... You don't realize that it matters. Most new players have to be reminded of the fact that their characters need sleep, food, light... It's not that they're stupid and don't realize people need food to live, it's just that they haven't gotten into the habit of thinking of the game world as real -- even enough to bother using or even thinking in terms of "common sense."

New players, I've found, generally play the game like the closest analgues they know -- books & video games. In either case, things like "where do we sleep" are generally just overlooked... Now, players do generally recognize (and latch on to) the new freedom that this system affords, and so you see some inventive moves being taken (like the head delivery)... What they aren't as quick to notice are the new responsibilities the system requires. Like having to consider being attacked at night, for one thing. Or that visibility could come into play -- et cetera. Common sense concerns, from one perspective -- but simply not relevant territory, as far as most characters are concerned.