Never TPK'd

[Ramien Meltides]

I won't lie to you... dying sucked.

You know what would've been worse, though? Knowing (or even suspecting) that the DM cheated (most call it "fudging") to keep us alive when by rights we should've been dead.

The DM rolled everything out in the open, so it was cool. We groaned about the dice, but the dice were the only things we could blame

 

[Lord Zardoz]

My Answers to your questions

1. Are there any other non-TPK DM's out there?

I suppose thre are other non TPK DM's out there. However, I am not one of them (I have had at least one TPK). How do you define a TPK DM anyway?

Is it a DM who ends up rolling ungodly well and lets the dice fall as they may?

Is it a DM who sets up very difficult fights where a TPK is a very possible outcome (could happen with average rolling)?

Is it a DM who has 1st level characters face wizards who cast Circle of Death?

I am of the ilk that sets up very difficult fights.

2. If you are a TPK DM, what's the deal? Why? How does it work?

The deal is this. In most of the campaigns I run, the player tend to spend a great deal of time outside of dungeon situations. This means that they typically have ample opportunity for rest between fights. Fights where the the CR is "DMG appropriate" to the party (Encounter level 5 vs 4 5th level charcters) will always be won by a party if they can rest in between.

Such fights work when the players are in a dungeon, or when they happen in rapid succession. Outside of statistically anomolous dice rolling (refer to jdavis post above), the first few fights are easy. But having 3 or 4 "DMG Appropriate" fights is time consuming. Combat tends to take up the greatest amount of time of all possible activities in a D&D game. 5 fights with Orcs in one day is hard to explain outside of a dungeon.

If your always having fights that the PC's will win, then why have any fights at all? Such things simply end up either impeding the story, or being anti-climatic. I want my fights to be worthwhile events within the game. I also dont want to spend 90% of my game running fights where the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

So instead, I create an in game reason for the enemies to be adequately prepared for the players. If an Orc tribe loses a patrol of 5 warriors, they wont send 5 more to investigate in my games. Here is an example.

In my games, Orcs use watchers who stay back and watch the fight. When it becomes obvious that the Orcs are losing, they flee. This keeps the fight quick. Even if the players kill all the orcs, the watcher can usually escape easily, especially if he was a few hundred feet away, and stayed hidden. The watcher and any who escape report back to the tribe. The next fight (often a day later) report back to the tribe. The tribe will then get together a larger force of orcs, throw in a few champions (orcs with character levels), and / or bring along a couple of Ogres. They will then set an ambush for the players. For me, this means that the Orcs will have prepared cover and concealment, and there will be a few traps around.

Now, when the players get into this fight, it is still winable, but they have to be careful. If the party flees after a few rounds, I will usually let them, especially if they put a dent into the enemy force. If they stand, and fight, and lose, then they suffer for it. Loss of gold, equipment in some situations. Other times they may be taken prisoner. It depends on the situation.

Either way, the party gets a challenging and entertaining fight, and I only need to run two fights in one session instead of 5 to do it.

I should also point out that I never run a campaign with some 'pre-ordained' prophecy storyline where the players are 'chosen ones'. In those campaigns, a TPK tends to severly break the storyline. In my campaigns, the villian drives the story, but if he kills the party, then new heroes are perfectly welcome to take up the challenge.

The one TPK I remember most happened when my players got a bit stupid (way back in 2nd edition). They took out a humanoid patrol belonging to a very vicious Orog warlord named Rourc. The players tied a survivor to a tree, and gave him a message for his master. They challenged the warlord to an 'honorable' 4 vs 1 combat. Of course, the warlord was not the honorable sort. The players had their 4vs1 with the warlord in the middle of the army camp. They had their arses handed to them by an ILLUSION of the warlord (dropped two players from full hp to zero in one round each!). Then when they finally got past the illusion, the real warlord, got out of his tent, Laughed at the players, called them idiots, then had his army help him kill them. Most of the party was later raised.

If a group of players is stupid enough to awaken a sleeping dragon, then its time to practice extreeme darwinisim. There are some fights I will let the party flee from. Fights against "Final Villians" and fights created by PC idiocy are no holds barred.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[jdavis]

I won't lie to you... dying sucked.

You know what would've been worse, though? Knowing (or even suspecting) that the DM cheated (most call it "fudging") to keep us alive when by rights we should've been dead.

The DM rolled everything out in the open, so it was cool. We groaned about the dice, but the dice were the only things we could blame

I wasn't implying that that is what should of happened, I was stating that is something that happens alot. When I DM I never make any role the PC's can see and I try to not even let them know I am rolling for most things, If you say "make a spot role DC 20 and nobody suceeds then nobody saw anything but the players know they missed something and whether they mean to or not act with that in mind. I like to keep a list of the characters frequently used rolls and do it without them knowing, that way if they didn't see anything they didn't even know they missed it.

As far as fudging the rules to stop a campaign from ending on a TPK well it does happen (and I will repeat if a DM does fudge any roles or goes easy on PC's to stop a TPK, it is imperative that the PC's don't know, or even suspect for that matter). I'll give a quick example of a TPK that ended a campaign very badly. I will keep it short and general. The party was in the middle of a campaign arc that had them trying to prove they were innocent of murder and to find a stolden artifact (which they were accused of stealing.) The characters had been around for almost a year before hand and had finished a campaign and started this one (thus old and well loved characters with highly fleshed out backgrounds). This campaing had gone on for a month, the DM had written nearly a hundred pages of information and had planned for every possible occurance. Well it turned out that he took a break one weekend and let somebody else run a side adventure, it was supposed to be a short easy little adventure to give him a break. To make a long story short the whole party got wiped out by a random encounter with giant spiders. So the party is dead the campaign is dead everybody is mad because they spent alot of time on there characters and they were killed by a random encounter, these were fairly high level characters. No big ending, the campaign came crashing to a halt, you couldn't plug in new characters and you couldn't start again, it was a total loss, months of planning and preparing were down the drain all because the other guy couldn't of fudged on freaking role and let at least one of the party get away and go for help, we had resurection scrolls on the ship, all we needed was for the bodies to be recovered and we could of went on but no the campaign ended because of a big spider(and yes it was the guy running's fault, he messed up the encounter by making it almost imposible to win). The DM tossed the campaign and soon after stopped gaming all together.

I don't believe in any way that the battles should be fixed or that the characters should always win, I actually try to kill at least one character in every fignt I run, but I don't try to kill them all, even then it can happen but sometimes it is better to fudge a little and save a campaign than to let a party be eaten by giant spiders for no freaking good reason. If a party is stupid and brings it on themselves well that is thier fault, kill them maybe they will learn, but if it is just bad rolling or a DM mistake in preparing an encounter I don't see a problem in finding a way to stop the TPK and if the DM is good you will never know anything odd happened at all.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The dice decide when a PC must die, not me. Sometimes the big read 20 is angry and the only thing that will appease him is a TPK. I beg and I plead, I get down on my knees and weep for thier lives. But the big red 20 knows no mercy, no kindness, nothing but pain!

 

[Pielorinho]

About thirteen years ago, I had a TPK. I forget the specifics -- only remember that the PCs went up against a ruined castle full of bugbears, and lost.

Since then, I've gotten much better at judging encounters. I very occasionally scale an encounter downward in the middle of action, and very occasionally scale it upward in media res; but most of the time, things work out fine.

Interestingly, last session of my game could easily have been a TPK -- except that I was running a published adventure which deliberately created an almost-TPK in order to advance the plot. It went through nicely.

Generally, PC death is rare in my game. PCs level up rarely, and losing a level is A Big Deal, so I try to keep death a real, but rare, threat. There are other consequences for less-than-total victories in battle: escaped enemies can torment the PCs from afar, can work against them politically, can infect them with magical curses, and so forth.

Daniel