Tee Pee Kay

[Dark Dragon]

depending on if your players can handle it, don't end the game there. Have them resurected, or even better reincarnated as new characters but with their old memories. Or even better have the players use the memories of a character they didn't play before.

Yep, that's how RttToEE ended for my FRCS group. Some days before the party was killed by the temple forces, the group informed several powerful guys like Elminster, the harpers, the high priests of the church of Helm and the druids of the Mossstone circle, about the cultists and their evil allies. The party was, at that time, aware that the chances of surviving were fading and that the cult may no be stopped by the adventurers.

So, Eleminster and his allies finished the cultists off and organised the ressurrection of the characters a few days after the fall of the temple.

It was the first adventure in which the party failed. Now the group is at level 20, and tries to survive in the Abyss...

 

[mearls]

Oof, I'm sorry. I can't believe they sent away the emissary -- that was really a bad decision. I know some of your players, and I know how stubborn one or two can be; I wonder if they earned anything?

Which makes me wonder if you're continuing the Temple, or going on to a different game for your next campaign. Any thoughts?

Oh boy, are they stubborn. Once they decide they want to do something, they drive towards it no matter what. There's a legacy of really bad DMing that haunts this group - a bunch of them are used to games where the story grinds on regardless of their actions, so a few players try to be clever and destroy the "story" that I've supposedly built into the game. Since I don't DM that way, it leads to some weirdness.

I think there might be some amount of blame against me, tied into what I said above. I could see a couple of the players thinking, "Mike wanted us to parlay, so when we attacked he just killed us all off."

The frustrating thing is that I can see all the bad plans and ideas playing out like a script, week after week. They tend to decide what they have to do, or what an adventure is all about, before they get into the action. With the temple, they had decided long ago that they have to fight their way through everything. Even in the face of more and more evidence that this isn't the case, they stick to their initial read.

A good example - the party could've attacked north to the earth temple, or headed south the mine passages. They explored a bit of the mines, found nothing, and went back north. Later, I asked them why they didn't just head south.

My roommate told me, "The earth temple was all stirred up and ready for a fight. We wanted take advantage of that and attack."

So, basically, they wanted to attack while their opponents expected a fight, had fortified their position, and were ready for an attack. If they had gone south and spent some time away from the area, he was worried that the earth temple would relax its defenses.

It's funny, because as soon as I explained it in those terms he finally caught on to how their plan was, basically, designed to hose the themselves. It's a good example of how they think - they were engaged with a foe, and they just assumed that they had to keep fighting until they had one.

As for what's next - I have no idea. I'm tempted to take a week off, or maybe I'll run a module or something. My Eberron campaign is on hold until I'm done with my current design project.

 

[diaglo]

The frustrating thing is that I can see all the bad plans and ideas playing out like a script, week after week. They tend to decide what they have to do, or what an adventure is all about, before they get into the action. With the temple, they had decided long ago that they have to fight their way through everything. Even in the face of more and more evidence that this isn't the case, they stick to their initial read..

they work for the government.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Was that the comedic scene to relieve from the tragedy going all around? Clever use of the bead, but very funny.

Kind of, but not really.
At any other time it would have been. But people were dropping like flies or fleeing and the monk had no way to get to the exit with out being fried in the process.

It was just one of those times where you look real hard at your character sheet and look for anything that could work (a la A-Team and/or MacGyver). My 12th level monk's load was real light: a couple potions, a feather token, a magical quarterstaff, some magic gloves, and a bead of force.

 

[GlassJaw]

Just for the record, I hated RttToEE. I would have begged for a TPK. LOL.

Anyway, sounds like it's the classic kick-in-the-door-style players meet the villains-actually-think-for-themselves DM. Now that the deed is done, perhaps you just discuss with your players what happened and why it happened. Otherwise, you can't expect anything different to happen if you keep playing, especially if they have had near-TPK's in the past.

On a side note, does anyone have any misgivings about "allowing" a 1st-level party to be TPK'ed? I have a hard time letting that happen. It's just to easy to do. Heck, a couple of kobolds can get lucky and lay waste to a freshly rolled-up party. I have no problems with fudging some rolls or invoking the hand of god to not TPK a 1st-level group. Unless it's a very experienced group doing something extremely stupid (that should know better), I can't ever see myself TPK'ing a 1st-level group. It's just not fun.

That's why I usually start my groups at 2nd level.

 

[howandwhy99]

Anyway, sounds like it's the classic kick-in-the-door-style players meet the villains-actually-think-for-themselves DM. Now that the deed is done, perhaps you just discuss with your players what happened and why it happened. Otherwise, you can't expect anything different to happen if you keep playing, especially if they have had near-TPK's in the past.

I agree. If rpg's are really going to allow for a learning experience, I think more postgame debriefing needs to be done. From both sides.

On a side note, does anyone have any misgivings about "allowing" a 1st-level party to be TPK'ed? I have a hard time letting that happen. It's just to easy to do. Heck, a couple of kobolds can get lucky and lay waste to a freshly rolled-up party.

No misgivings whatsoever. In fact, I think it is the absolute best time for a TPK to happen. 1st level means they are still growing into their characters. Players are likely to have only met a handful of sessions so far, so things are still unsure. Players haven't had long to fall in love with their characters either. The whole tone of the campaign is set early. And just like a school teacher needing to take command of her classroom from day one, the DM also needs to present a potentially lethal world with consequences from the start.

If your players act like the ones described above, the lesson that even a kobold can kill you is best learned immediately. Then you can use that initial fear and grow on it. I think it is even better to have a group which runs from everything and works to win battles "unfairly", then one willing to run into unknown combat without reason or planning. Overcoming that fear and developing sound tactics I believe is growth. Learning how to become a lean, mean, tough-as-nails party means actual teamwork honed from lengthy experience.

This is the "real" part of the game for me. Whether you learn to develop better tactics, work through group problems, or brainstorm solutions in real life or in a game of hypotheticals it comes down to the same thing: progress. IMO, progress is fun. When realistic, potentially lethal consequences are removed, then the game stops being fun for me.

I am not suggesting setting up 1st level players for a TPK, just setting the lethality level for your campaign before you start and sticking with it. The return to ToEE version 2.5 in the storyhour section is a good example of this (though probably without enough debriefing on what that group could have done when they failed).

So yes, 1st level is the perfect time for a TPK.

 

[Fieari]

I just gave my players their first TPK last night. It's my second TPK ever, the first of which was during a "rules learning" mini-session where myself and another group were finally converting from 2ed to 3ed, and I had been so used to the very bad rules of 2ed (so bad, we'd simply make up half the rules everywhere 2ed was lacking, which was almost everywhere) that I overestimated what the party could handle, and overwhelmed them. But that was okay, we were just learning the rules anyway.

This one was a little more complicated, but regardless, I think it ended well.

Now I was having a little bit of a problem with the party. The party consisted almost entirely of fighter-types, and they were coming to a section of the campaign where I really thought it would be cool if the players had a wizard. There was a sorcerer in the party, but he wasn't very good at it... his spell selection was terrible, and hardly ever used the correct spell in the correct situation.

So before the session, I had a little talk with my players about this, and one of the players.... heck, two of the players volunteered to roll up a new character. After a little more discussion, we agreed that we would retire the old character in a dramatic method... going down in a blaze of glory. It was supposed to be only one of the two. Everyone was looking forewards to what was comming up, knowing that someone was going to die by the end of the session, not knowing -exactly- who it was going to be, or how it was going to work.

And so the party started off to reach their destination of one of the northern cities, located in the mountains. Their very first encounter was with a blizzard, and the second was a White Dragon that they managed to kill via a cursed artifact they carry (I usually have a problem with "Disposable Dragons", but since every time they use this artifact I get to do cool things with the plot later on, I was fine with this case). After that, I kept throwing them against more and more dangerous situations... any one of which could be fatal, but wasn't really how I planned to strike the final blow.

The final blow would come in the form of some tunnels later on. I'd have them fight a gelatanous cube or two in these tunnels, and when they kill it (they being ECL8, it being a CR3) it would turn out that the cube was actually a main support for the tunnel. Then one of the two players, who has a strength of 27, would get to hold up the ceiling as the others get to run to safety... nice dramatic ending.

Except.

That the cubes killed them all.

I'm not quite sure how this happened. I did advance the cubes slightly, giving them a heftier grapple check and some more hit points, but I didn't think that could possibly make them a SERIOUS threat... but the person in front failed his spot check and walked right INTO the first cube. The second player ran up to engage the cube in hand to hand melee (he was a monk). The others wisely fired on it from a distance, while the two now engulfed players fought as best they could from the inside, but neglected to run away at first, allowing the cube to advance it's 15' movement and grab them too. Then they did run away, but failed the spot check on the OTHER cube, leaving just the sorcerer outside. And then the engulfed players started... one by one... to fail their saves against paralyzation for 3d6 rounds. In desperation, the sorcerer looked at his list, considered his spells, realized that magic missile just wasn't going to cut it, and did the only thing that had any hope of killing a cube: He cast fireball.

We'd already houseruled previously that fireball produces volumetric fire... meaning that if there are walls, like in a tunnel here, it will cover (pi)(30')^2 feet. This had been used to great effect by the party before against other enemies. So I couldn't in any conscience or consistancy not have the same thing happen here. The tunnels were 10' wide, and the way back (I didn't want them fleeing BACKWARDS while the cave in was happening) was a slippery slope that would be nearly impossible to climb up, so there was no way he was going to avoid his own flames.

The fireball managed to kill one of the cubes. And the sorcerer (-11, instant char). The characters freed from the cube that died were all paralyzed. The cube still living, being mindless, could do nothing but engulf them too, slowly digesting them to their deaths.

Oops.

These characters had been making a political splash in the world so far. They'd annoyed powerful beings who were hunting them down. They possesed a power (although evil and cursed) artifact.

Which means that the new party will get to be mired in all the whirlpools and eddies their previous party created. Their first quest will be to recover the artifact from the tunnels it was lost in. Their new characters will start with informaton that their old characters were journeying long and hard to find, and then some more. They have a wide world of adventure in front of them. And they've learned to fear a CR3 creature.

We ended the session with everyone rolling up new characters, discussing Min/Max combinations, getting really excited about their future prospects. I have high hopes for next week.

Although I didn't intend it to be a TPK, I think it turned out to be pretty cool, and I'm glad we all decided to stick to the dice rolls.