dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
Exactly!
To be fair, I have seen DMs and adventures who were truly trying to cause a TPK or setting up a largely unavoidable situation where a TPK was nigh-inevitable, and that sucks, but the vast majority I've seen required an awful lot of bad decisions to be made for a sustained period. The Force Cage one back in 2E was in an adventure I'd run twice before, and that encounter had never killed anyone (perhaps surprisingly given the bow involved, but not really given the dude wearing it had no special defenses beyond a good AC, was a normal human, and was essentially one Hold Person or the like away from being invalidated). I've nearly caused a TPK by accident a number of times by rolling, but it's never actually happened. Closest was also in 2E when six goblins vs seven PCs had me rolling 4 nat 20s for the goblins in 1 round (and both other goblins hit) and the goblins had won initiative, so like 4 of the PCs were downed and bleeding out. Luckily the other three managed to kill the goblins. In early 4E I had 4 out of 5 PCs down in one encounter, but that was mostly due to them running face-first into a room, not good rolling. Ironically the one PC who finished off the enemies and kept them alive didn't survive the campaign.
Last TPK I had was when I ran Caverns of Thracia with Mythras, and a bunch of conversion creatures from D&D that someone made. It slowly built up too, where the wights in the chapel, and Thanatos got some, but they went back and picked up new characters, then it was merely some poor tactical choices on the bottom level vs the gnolls, dog brother, and minotaur; such as splitting up. Everyone was happy enough though about it, and didn't feel I was unfair.