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<blockquote data-quote="tabletopreloaded" data-source="post: 8962012" data-attributes="member: 7040229">Haha, so true. Jokes aside, some of the best games I've played ended with player deaths.I used to run a basic dungeon I'd homebrew when bored. I'm not particularly creative, so I dubbed it &quot;The Cave&quot; and wrote some simple rules. It was your typical dungeon with a simple twist: the map was endless. Any time you enter a new room, one party member would roll for a Perception. If you succeeded, you'd find a blinding area of sunlight along with an exit. If you failed, you weren't so lucky: the party would get &quot;lost&quot; in the cave, wandering to a lower level and unable to find their way back. Each lower level had stronger monsters, more loot, and larger rooms.But there was a catch: you never could return to a higher level. Every time you failed a check and descended a floor, the DC for a successful Perception check went up, with a lower and lower chance of finding a way out. If you happened to find one of those rare, stray beams of sunlight at a lower floor, your party could escape the Cave with sizeable fortunes. But if greed enveloped your party and you chose to plunge for &quot;just a bit longer,&quot; you risked losing yourselves forever in the maddening riches and endless hordes of cave-dwellers.The Cave was brutal. I think it had a 30-40% TPK rate anytime I introduced it into a campaign. Ultimately, I had to restrict access to it because we were killing off PCs so quickly. But I enjoyed running the Cave and they enjoyed playing it. Even as they lost themselves in the underworld of glittering gold and glistening stalagmites, we always wondered aloud whether the brave, vainglorious PCs would soon emerge as newly minted royalty or whether they were merely destined to carry their live corpses to some dank burial ground of the caverns. Either way, the whole group had a blast running it. Good times!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tabletopreloaded, post: 8962012, member: 7040229"] Haha, so true. Jokes aside, some of the best games I've played ended with player deaths. I used to run a basic dungeon I'd homebrew when bored. I'm not particularly creative, so I dubbed it "The Cave" and wrote some simple rules. It was your typical dungeon with a simple twist: the map was endless. Any time you enter a new room, one party member would roll for a Perception. If you succeeded, you'd find a blinding area of sunlight along with an exit. If you failed, you weren't so lucky: the party would get "lost" in the cave, wandering to a lower level and unable to find their way back. Each lower level had stronger monsters, more loot, and larger rooms. But there was a catch: you never could return to a higher level. Every time you failed a check and descended a floor, the DC for a successful Perception check went up, with a lower and lower chance of finding a way out. If you happened to find one of those rare, stray beams of sunlight at a lower floor, your party could escape the Cave with sizeable fortunes. But if greed enveloped your party and you chose to plunge for "just a bit longer," you risked losing yourselves forever in the maddening riches and endless hordes of cave-dwellers. The Cave was [I]brutal[/I]. I think it had a 30-40% TPK rate anytime I introduced it into a campaign. Ultimately, I had to restrict access to it because we were killing off PCs so quickly. But I enjoyed running the Cave and they enjoyed playing it. Even as they lost themselves in the underworld of glittering gold and glistening stalagmites, we always wondered aloud whether the brave, vainglorious PCs would soon emerge as newly minted royalty or whether they were merely destined to carry their live corpses to some dank burial ground of the caverns. Either way, the whole group had a blast running it. Good times! [/QUOTE]

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