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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5318788" data-attributes="member: 4937">I see 20 TPK's coming for 1 that actually happens.  Which is to say, I don't really see any warning signs at all.   I recognize when things are going wrong and the threat of a TPK is there, but I don't know any real way to tease those potential TPK's apart from the ones that actually happen because once things start to go wrong the game is skewed such that if the PC's are lucky they'll still survive. Almost all TPK's in my experience begin with a break down in party cohesion or group communication.   a) The party splits up.b) The party members start working toward different sometimes contrary goals.  This effectively splits up the party.c) One or more party members become confused, because they are unable to assess what is going on in the game in terms of concrete game rules.  That is to say, they become use to making decisions on the basis of numbers and stat blocks that they can mentally assign to the things the DM describes and then encounter a situation where they can't easily do this.   This effectively splits the party up.c) One or more party members become paralyzed with indecision, often because they fear to risk their own character's life to provide assistance to another player's character.  This effectively splits up the party.d) A string of bad luck or bad decisions negatively impacts the party's resources as a whole.  The party nonetheless makes the decision to press on despite no longer having the resources to deal with the threat they are pursuing, because to stop now would 'suck'.   The players don't discover how little they have left as a group until after they get into combat and people start reporting that they are out or almost out of spells, hit points, potions, etc.Other causes:a) There is a miscommunication at some level between the DM and the players concerning the tropes of the game.  For example, it's common for players to make the assumption, "I don't know what is going on, but that's the most obvious dungeon in the environment.   Therefore, it's where we must go."  This often works well because 90% of the time that's how the game effectively works, but when it doesn't work well it fails spectacularly.  Likewise, 90% of the time, the villain is predictable from story elements, and any thing you encounter in a 'dungeon' is something you are supposed to kill and take their stuff.  But when those meta-assumptions fail, and the DM either fails to communicate that such assumptions might we wildly wrong in this case or equally often doesn't think that they have a responcibility to do so, then you end up with TPKs.b) The DM is so used to the players being able to handle everything he throws at them, that he doesn't actually think through the odds of getting passed some scenario he invents.</blockquote>

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