"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

[iserith]

But there are certain DMs based on previous postings where the following scenario is "out of their hands",

• The PCs have a tough fight and are low on resources and badly wounded.
• They need to recover so they retreat and do their best to find a safe location.
• The DM rolls for a random encounter and happens to roll a really tough encounter.
• TPK because "the dice said that was the encounter they should get".

In some sense, it may be out of the DM's hands, though again I don't think it's helpful to think of things in terms of fault. My players, for example, understand that there's a certain structure as to how things work when it comes to random encounters and wandering monsters. They make decisions based on that. If I change it without notice, then I'm messing with their ability to make informed decisions and possibly with their agency which is undesirable.

I would also add that there's not necessarily a straight line between your third and fourth bulletpoint. There are some player choices to be made there, I would hope.

This or the "the entire party is climbing down a rope and the kobold cuts the rope" scenarios are what I see being along the same lines as a 1/6 chance of a PC dying if the enemy scores a critical hit. If the group is going through dangerous territory and know that they are knowingly putting themselves at risk then I let the dice fall where they may. But if they are taking every reasonable precaution, I'll give them a break now and then.

That's one of those situations where I need more details to determine if it's fair. The players would need to have at least some clue it's a possibility in my view and not just "Well, you were in dangerous territory!" either.

How? Well some ideas if that random encounter comes up as a fire giant patrol

• One of the PCs has the option of distracting the patrol.
• A chase scene for the entire group.
• Unexpected mysterious allies. Allies that may expect repayment in the future.
• Divine (or infernal) intervention, possibly setting up a warlock class for one of the PCs.
• The giants simply don't see the group because I'm the DM and it's more interesting for the group to have a holy **** moment than to kill them.

In other words just about anything other than a straight-up-fight that they're effectively guaranteed to lose because it was dictated by the dice.

I simply don't think it's fun to roll a die or look at my notes and tell the group they're dead. It's not dramatic, it's not telling an epic story of heroes overcoming adversity. It may not even be realistic and I don't care.

Again, I think this overlooks the importance of player choice. I may roll up a fire giant patrol and perhaps by their nature they're up for smashing low-level PCs and eating them, but that doesn't happen automatically. The players have some say in what happens next, right?

In any case, IMHO the DM always has the final say whether or not a PC dies.

While that's true in a technical sense, I think it is a bit too reductive a statement to be useful. There's more to it than that.

 

[iserith]

This really depends on the goals of play. For my group, there is a scenario that exists, and their PCs have come into the scenario and have been interacting with it long enough that it's pretty much "their" scenario.

So for my group, the resolution of that scenario is the goal of play. Denying any sense of resolution by having a TPK would ruin that goal of play.

Again, this is particular to my style, yes.

When I refer to the "goals of play," I'm referring to the ones stated by the rules themselves. Anyone adding additional goals of play to that or changing the default ones can expect different results. My players have no expectation that they will get to see the end of some plotline or whatever because there isn't one.

I suppose for me, no one has given a compelling reason where a TPK is the favored result. Meaning that the TPK as a result offers something not offered by any other option. So far, it seems to me that two reasons have been sited in support of the TPK:

- maintaining a sense of realism or verisimilitude relating to the level of danger established in the game world
- reinforcing to the players that there are consequences for their choices

Maybe there are more, but those two seem to be what people have said so far. To me, neither one seems exclusive to the TPK.

Is there any other factor a TPK offers? And if so, is it not achievable through a less extreme method?

I would say that nobody's looking for a TPK as a solution to anything or perceiving it as a favored result. But when the players willingly decide to stake their characters' lives on getting the XP, gold, or whatever they value and things don't go their way, the DM is doing the players a disservice by changing the stakes after the fact. "Oh, um, they actually capture you instead." I would be mightily annoyed at that because my expectation was that we'd be dead if we failed and I made all the decisions leading up to that point on that basis. I might have made other decisions had I known capture was the failure condition instead.

Now I'd say I disagree with this. I don't see this as denying agency. Bad things can still happen because of your decisions. Not resorting to a TPK isn't the same as having there be no repercussions. Far from it.

It depends on the stakes that were set at the outset. If this fire giant battle is clearly life-or-death and the players bought into that, I would say it's denying agency that to suddenly change because things aren't going the PCs' way as the DM is negating or mitigating the impact of the players' own decisions. Don't make those the stakes to begin with if you're not willing to see it through. I'm all for other forms of stakes and my scenarios are rife with them. It would be a stupid position to take that the only stakes are life or death.

If I were running a game with your particular goal of play above (to the extent I understand it well), I would probably remove life-or-death stakes completely from the game. To do otherwise means we might not achieve the desired goal.

 

[Oofta]

While that's true in a technical sense, I think it is a bit too reductive a statement to be useful. There's more to it than that.

Ultimately the DM is judge, jury and executioner. It's up to the DM along with their players to determine how deadly they want the campaign.

Personally I wouldn't want to play on "Daddy don't hurt me" mode, but I don't want a grindhouse either. There should be a cost for failure, that cost does not necessarily have to be death of a PC. In general, I think PC death is one of the least interesting outcomes of failure.

 

[Tony Vargas]

When I refer to the "goals of play," I'm referring to the ones stated by the rules themselves. Anyone adding additional goals of play to that or changing the default ones can expect different results.

These would be the rules-defined goals of play for playing the game that defines its own rules as 'only a starting point...'

 

[iserith]

Ultimately the DM is judge, jury and executioner. It's up to the DM along with their players to determine how deadly they want the campaign.

Personally I wouldn't want to play on "Daddy don't hurt me" mode, but I don't want a grindhouse either. There should be a cost for failure, that cost does not necessarily have to be death of a PC. In general, I think PC death is one of the least interesting outcomes of failure.

I'm not against alternative stakes. I just want to know what the stakes are before committing and I don't want them to change to prevent the agreed upon failure condition.

 

[iserith]

These would be the rules-defined goals of play for playing the game that defines its own rules as 'only a starting point...'

Your point being that people can add to the default goals of play? Is there anything about my post that suggests you can't do that?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Your point being that people can add to the default goals of play? Is there anything about my post that suggests you can't do that?

Or change them completely, yes. No, but the idea that you'll get 'different results' as if that weren't desireable seems to suggest that you shouldn't... the whole point of approaching a system as a starting point or kit is to get better results than you would have gotten if you'd approached it as a plug-and-play system.

 

[iserith]

Or change them completely, yes. No, but the idea that you'll get 'different results' as if that weren't desireable seems to suggest that you shouldn't... the whole point of approaching a system as a starting point or kit is to get better results than you would have gotten if you'd approached it as a plug-and-play system.

I did not at all say that different results are undesirable. You're reading into things.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not against alternative stakes. I just want to know what the stakes are before committing and I don't want them to change to prevent the agreed upon failure condition.

And what I'm saying is that there are no "agreed upon failure conditions" in most cases. In my campaigns, failure could mean many things. The PC could die. They could become a prisoner kept alive for a prisoner exchange. They could become a prisoner only to be rescued later but lose all (or most of) their loot. They could become a slave in the underdark and we could start a new campaign either to rescue them or to lead a slave revolt. They could be dead but stuck between life and death with a chance to return if they succeed at some other task.

I don't have predetermined outcomes for any campaign contingencies, why would being defeated in combat be any different?

To be clear, I'm not saying any one play style is "wrong", just that if I find myself in a player death or TPK situation the cost of failure is going to be whatever I think will be most rewarding and fun for the group. For you that may mean your player dies.

 

[Satyrn]

For you that may mean your player dies.

Sounds like a Stephen King novel. I mean Richard Bachman. Bachman wrote the Running Man.