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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cryptos" data-source="post: 4567763" data-attributes="member: 58439">I've never really been afraid of a TPK... I'm confident in my ability to improvise if it starts going badly, and in groups I've had in the past many of them have been able to improvise, as well.The closest I've come to TPKs was back in a couple of Mutants and Masterminds or Hero System games, oddly enough.  In one situation, I did make it a bit too hard on the characters after overcompensating for what started out as an easy fight.  The players were all ground-based damage-dealing types.  A telekinetic opponent they were mopping the floor with rose up into the air, pulled a couple dozen bystanders out of a nearby office building and surrounded herself with them from 10 stories up for protection... if they tried to attack her and missed, they might have hit a bystander, but if they attacked her and hit, she might wind up dropping them all.  I recovered by letting one of the other villain's multiple personalities take over due to the strain of manipulating so many things at once, one that was less willing to hurt bystanders, giving the PCs a chance to negotiate.Another was the same characters against a feral regenerating killer (a la Sabertooth)... they were going to die until the usually quiet girl playing with us asked what was with her on the fire escape she was standing on.  I didn't see what she was getting at, so I said there was a pair of tennis shoes and some flower pots.  She asked if she could perform a stunt to leap down and phase the tennis shoes through the killer mutant's head and leave it there.  I was so surprised (and amused) that after that, I just let that end the fight, the regenerating killer dead by leaving a tennis shoe stuck through the middle of his brain.If the players don't come up with something, I'll come up with something.Generally, what I'm more worried about is that players won't pick up on plot hooks or clues, or take an opportunity that is placed in front of them to advance the story; or conversely, that they'll jump straight to something that unravels a whole plot.  Mostly, I worry about that happening in World of Darkness games.Speaking of which, I've been more worried that I was going to cause a TPK as a player than as a GM/DM/storyteller.  I antagonized the leader of a group of vampire hunters by using illusion and mind control powers to frame him for various crimes and perversions because my character was annoyed that he had sent his little minions after us.  I was just coming into the game, as it had been running for some time, and so I didn't realize there was a reason they weren't bothering to go after him.  I thought the vampire hunters were the plot, rather than a nuisance side quest type of thing that came up from time to time.  No one bothered to explain (in or out of character.)  Eventually, I escalated it to the point where I had set up the lead hunter (who was some kind of priest) so that everyone thought he was a molestor and a sex fiend, and so as revenge he took the important McGuffin we needed for the plot to his fortified cabin in werewolf-infested woods and we had to get it.  That confrontation turned really nasty.</blockquote>

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