Party headed for a TPK?

[molonel]

Some of us don't bring Characters into an adventure. We place plot hooks and let the players take them. Sometimes the plot hooks are meant to be taken now and some are meant for later.

That "some of us" would include me. As we'll see, your method is quite close to mine.

They investigated a little bit and found out a few more legends, rumors, ...etc. and descided to hold onto the map and maybe investigate later because of the reputation of the place. Not only did I provide a plot hook that will last throught the entire campaign, but they did some role playing to determine if it was someplace they should investigate now or later. If they had of ignored the information and gone anyways they would have died there like many others before them ... And to be fair I do give plenty of warnings when they head down this type of path.

Reading your last sentence, I see you have encapsulated my essential question. Here, we see a DM snickering beyond the screen because the stupid fighter/rogue can't hit a DC 35 search check. The thing is, at 5th level, NOBODY can except an unrealistically designed rogue focused almost exclusively on Search checks, and even THAT character only has a forty percent chance of success.

Yeah, splitting up the party is stupid at any level. But particularly in this case, it doesn't really matter. Even if they were fully buffed and prepared, acting together, they would probably lose anyway. Nothing they do, except running, makes any difference. And it's awfully hard to run with a Wall of Iron in your way.

My players know that they are not blessed. They can die. I will TPK them without a second thought if they decide to swagger around in pants too big for their britches.

But they also have a pretty good idea where the line is. You mentioned giving "plenty of warnings" to PCs. I do EXACTLY the same thing. But a DC 35 search check is not a warning.

In this manner I like to try and allow the players and their characters a choice of their paths.

As do I.

Character deaths many, characters running for their lives often, people having fun always. And before you ask how I know people are having fun I will answer for you. Every campaign I have run in years I have had to turn people away ... So even though my technique is different than others the ultimate goal of having fun is still maintained.

For one thing, I'm not so sure your technique is so different from mine. I didn't ask if your players have fun. I just don't view this particular situation as fun or compelling - unless you really, REALLY like rolling up characters.

 

[Quasqueton]

The opening post in this thread is a slightly edited version* of someone else's story. It is not my game group, not my adventure, and I did not DM the game described. [Nod to atom crash ]

I posted this story as a experiment in how people here react to different folks. Compare and contrast the replies/reactions to my post to the replies/reactions to the original post:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=113126 post #25.

My post is nearly identical to the original, using the same words and tone and comments. Yet my post was received quite differently than the original.

*Edited only enough to keep it from being immediately recognized as a copy-and-paste. (And still atom crash and Corsair remembered it.)

Quasqueton

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Well played.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Just enough changes to make it sound ridiculous instead of reasonable:

But I'm wondering if I'll need to start planning for another campaign after a TPK. I'm also wondering if they'll get the idea that they're not ready for this dungeon yet?

vs.

And I'm wondering if they'll get the message that they probably shouldn't be in this part of the dungeon just yet.

It's a well-established concept that dungeons get tougher the further and deeper you go. It's one thing to be too deep into a dungeon and another to be utterly outclassed by a challenge the DM has placed.

 

[Graf]

This thread just got much funnier.

To be honest I didn't read the original wulf post, or comment on it then, so I probably don't count but I think that my comment on this post works equally well.

I don't know whether Wulf mentioned status quo, but from tenor of his posts here over the years it seems likely that his players knew he runs those kinds of worlds.
The group had wandered off away from a dungeon for miles. Low level parties wandering through the Underdark usually leads to pain and death. It seemed from the tone of his posts that Wulf had made it clear to them that they were straying.

Having said that the whole "look at what I did to my players, I'm cool for being so mean" thing isn't really my cup of tea. I -do- enjoy it more in higher level games (like Piratecats) because character death is almost a non-issue and challenging high level characters without just "turning the dial to 11" is tough.

But high DC traps and over CR monsters deployed against low level characters aren't anything that makes someone a cool DM. At best it's an unfortunate deployment necessary to maintain verisimilitude.

This was a great post though! Thanks for cooking it up!!

 

[Steel_Wind]

I don't believe I saw the first one. Perhaps I did.

Two very different elements though:

1 - the subject header heads off down a different path; and.

2 - the original thread was plainly in the context of running a published adventure. Yours was not, leading a reader to think your adventure was a homebrew.

These are important difference in how a post is received.

(First thread necromancy! Now it's thread doppelgangers too!!)

 

[atom crash]

I win! I win! Finally my photographic memory pays off.

When I read your posted, I immediately thought of the old thread and was wondering if you were trying to do a compare-and-contrast. Or if you were just running the same campaign and didn't remember the older thread. That's why I asked the question.

Anyway, I think it's interesting that without the context of the rest of the thread (ie the dungeon crawl up to that point) following posters focus in on drastically different elements. And the tone is definitely different.

I wonder how much of the difference is attributed to context, how much to original poster, how much to responders, etc.

 

[Len]

2 - the original thread was plainly in the context of running a published adventure. Yours was not, leading a reader to think your adventure was a homebrew.

And that's why Q. took a lot of flak for the DC 35 trap. In Wulf's post, it sounded like that was part of the written adventure.

Also, in Wulf's post it was clear that the party had left the intro part of the dungeon before finishing it and gone off into a more difficult section (as opposed to the whole dungeon being beyond their capabilities).

I actually thought there was something phony about the post, but I put it down to "If Quasqueton can't think of an interesting topic to start a thread, he'll make something up."

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I don't believe I saw the first one. Perhaps I did.

Two very different elements though:

1 - the subject header heads off down a different path; and.

2 - the original thread was plainly in the context of running a published adventure. Yours was not, leading a reader to think your adventure was a homebrew.

These are important difference in how a post is received.

(First thread necromancy! Now it's thread doppelgangers too!!)

3 - Not everyone replying has read the original post.

I would feel no deep and lasting regret for killing the party off one by one if they split up (and have done so...)

However - I would not use a DC 35 trap on a fifth level party in the way described either, and would expect to be replaced for running a game that badly balanced against the party It is unfindable by any reasonable, or even unreasonable roll of the dice. A 20 would not find it for most rogues of that level - so why bother giving it a DC? Just say 'Bang! Your all dead! Ha! Ha! Ha!' and get it over with.

The Auld Grump

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I posted this story as a experiment in how people here react to different folks. Compare and contrast the replies/reactions to my post to the replies/reactions to the original post:

At first I wasn't sure what your motivation was for starting this thread. Sure, you say it's "an experiment in how people here react to different folks" but that explanation is vague and unsatisfying. I hadn't read the original thread you copied, but I did go back and read it after you linked to it. I found your own reply to that thread interesting.

Yeah. Don't PCs pick the dumbest times to do the smart things?

I want to congratulate Wulf on his ability to tell a story like this and not get raked over the coals and told he's a bad DM. When *I* tell a story like this, half the replies are holier-than-thou Players and DMs telling me how wrong/bad I am. How they'd immediately leave the game if they had to endure such a situation. Hell, even when I post a hypothetical situation for discussion, some folks take it as an example of my bad skill.

Wulf seems to be a let-you-die-when-you-are-stupid DM and a willin'-to-kill-a-PC Player. And people love him for it! Online Charisma of 24.

[For the record, I have no problem with how Wulf's running his game. I run a similar style: stupid actions get you killed.]

Quasqueton

So your point seems to be that Wulf can get away with telling his story without being criticized, while you, Quasqueton, are (unfairly?) criticized, even when you're just trying to start a discussion. Have I got it? And you've started this thread to test your belief.

I haven't been paying too much attention to all the threads you've started, and how they've been received, so I can't say if your claim about being criticized all the time is true or not, but even assuming it is, I think your experiment is flawed. Your paraphrase has altered the tone of the original, and left out some information as well. While it's true that your post garnered more criticism than the original, I'm not sure you can definitively say the reason lies with the original poster's name on page one. The information and scenarios presented in the two threads are too different (despite your intention that they be exactly the same,) to prove anything.

I'm curious, now that your experiment has been revealed, what do you draw from it, Quesqueton? What conclusions have you reached? Do you believe that it does indeed prove your hypothesis, that Wulf can get away with saying things that you couldn't?