The not quite TPK

[Ancalagon]

Hello

So my other thread about encounters that are "too" powerful (on purpose!) and potential TPKs really seemed to have touched a nerve, but it also got me thinking. There is a TPK - which can wreck a campaign, let's be honest here - and there is the single PC death. The single PC death can be "reversed" with resurrection magic but it can happen that it is permanent (the party doesn't have the body, the body/soul is destroyed, the player wants to try something new, the party can't afford or can't access resurrection magic etc etc).

A single death won't derail a campaign. A TPK definitely can.

... But what about... in between? Half the party died. Or heck, there is one sole survivor who managed to escape through magic, stealth or superior mobility (or perhaps literally was the last person standing). I think this scenario is as likely as a TPK, perhaps even more.

One of the thing that troubles me a bit about this is it could still derail the campaign anyway. It could be that the sole survivor is not a credible "party builder", or is not well suited to "passing on the torch" of the campaign to an almost entirely new group. Or it could be that this survivor was less "engaged" by the campaign. This shouldn't be the case, but I find it's not rare to have some characters more integral to the plot than others.

I remember a 3.X game where we were doing the return to the temple of elemental evil, and it was a real meat grinder. A number of us had lost PCs and were on our second one, but the "core" of the party - a war priest of some kind - Kord maybe?- was the anchor. When he died (he was a CODzila too) we were a bit shaken. A few games later, 2/6 members died and 2/6 were captured. The campaign collapsed and we never finished it.

Has anyone gone through a "partial TPK"? How did it work out for your party?

 

[pogre]

Sadly, it worked out exactly as you described in your temple of elemental evil campaign. It destroyed the campaign.

The two PCs who escaped retired and that was that.

I don't think it has to be that way, but it is problematic when it happens for sure!

 

[Sunseeker]

The issue here isn't characters. It's players, and it's two fold:

Do Bobby, Joe and Sue fundamentally want to get back into questing and adventuring?
If the answer is "yes" it doesn't matter how Frank's PC sells the quest to their new characters. Their new characters, like them, are likely going to be interested in taking on the quest. If the answer is "no" you probably have bigger problems.

But there's a potential problem:
Does Frank want to?
If the answer is "yes" then it doesn't matter if he's the sole survivor, he's going to want to get new companions.
If the answer is "no" then you either have a potential problem player, depending on the history of Frank's character, OR you're back in a TPK situation, everyone is dead/uninterested in continuing.


I have a lot of partial TPKs, one because I run hard fights, and two because I usually have smaller groups. As above, I just try to look for players who want to quest, and try to avoid "lone wolf" types.

 

[Quartz]

How about asking the players something along the lines of, "Do you want this story to end here?"
[MENTION=9546]JollyDoc[/MENTION] wrote a good ending of a campaign that ended after such a disaster.

 

[MarkB]

I've seen it happen without derailing a campaign, but there was a degree of player turnover.

Back in the day when we were playing 3.5e, I bought and ran Red Hand of Doom shortly after it was published. Our players were experienced, but not exactly power gamers, and I wasn't pulling many punches as a DM. It was a tough campaign with a lot of tough encounters, and although they didn't hit TPK levels there were a lot of character deaths. We also had a couple of players leave, and a couple more came into the game.

There's a point during the campaign where the party reaches the second major friendly town. They've essentially taken the long way around, via a couple of enemy strongholds, and by the game's narrative their reputation is supposed to have preceded them, the townsfolk welcoming them on the basis of their deeds back at the starting town. Except that we did the math at that point, and realised that between the several characters who'd died and the couple who'd left when their players did, none of the seven characters who arrived in this second town had ever actually set foot in the first one.

The game did eventually end in a TPK, but it was right outside the entrance to the final dungeon, so we did push on through most of the campaign, and did have fun with it.

I had a similar experience with the Savage Tide adventure path, which was similarly unforgiving in difficulty, but that one did finally stall. We reached the point where the party arrives on the Isle of Dread, but never picked it up again after that.

 

[OB1]

A single death won't derail a campaign. A TPK definitely can.

I think derail is an interesting choice of word here.

If you have a campaign that runs like a train on tracks, then yes, a TPK or any dice rolled outcome that doesn't match your expected outcome can and will derail the campaign, because dice aren't being used to generate a random outcome, but rather to present the illusion of challenge in a pre determined story. I say illusion of challenge because it's easy to fall into the trap that it's "easy" or "hard" to roll certain DCs or hit certain ACs or whatnot. Rolling dice to hit a DC isn't easy or hard, it's likely or unlikely, and that is an important distinction.

If on the other hand, you have the players roll dice only when you are in a situation where you and the players, don't want to make a decision by fiat about how the story moves forward, and both you and the players have a clear picture of what happens if they succeed, what happens if they fail, and what happens if they don't try to do the specific thing they need to roll dice for, then it is impossible for the dice to derail the campaign, even if it leads to a TPK or a partial TPK. It's just a part (or the end) of a memorable story about brave adventurers facing deadly perils.

 

[Maxperson]

Has anyone gone through a "partial TPK"? How did it work out for your party?

As I mentioned before, I don't see the premature ending of a campaign as a problem at all. We make new characters and come up with a new campaign idea. I go home and work it up a bit, and then I figure out the long term consequences of the failure of the last campaign and apply it to the game world. Even failures add a great deal to the game and the players appreciate that they can fail at things, and that such failure has as much(or nearly as much) meaning as success.

 

[CTurbo]

I played in a campaign where, around level 3, all but one character died. Everybody rolled up new characters and the sole survivor recruited us to help his cause. Not long after, that remaining character got killed so we tried out best to continue the "story" but it fizzled quickly not having anybody else there from the beginning. So we started over.

Ironically, same group of people, in our very next campaign, at level 5, the BBEG was a Evocation Wizard and he fireballed the party right after we just got through with a big encounter and our resources were low. It outright killed every character in the party, but my Half-Orc Fighter thanks to Relentless Endurance. We immediately agreed to roll up new characters again while keeping the same storyline. My Fighter made it back to the city and told the King everything that happened so the King sought out a new band of adventurers. I agreed to roll up a new character with the group provided my Fighter show up every now and then as a NPC which the DM agreed to and also let me level him up accordingly. From then on he became a Fighter 5/Vengeance Paladin X. He became an important contact for the group and helped out in a few large battles.

 

[Nagol]

Hello

So my other thread about encounters that are "too" powerful (on purpose!) and potential TPKs really seemed to have touched a nerve, but it also got me thinking. There is a TPK - which can wreck a campaign, let's be honest here - and there is the single PC death. The single PC death can be "reversed" with resurrection magic but it can happen that it is permanent (the party doesn't have the body, the body/soul is destroyed, the player wants to try something new, the party can't afford or can't access resurrection magic etc etc).

A single death won't derail a campaign. A TPK definitely can.

... But what about... in between? Half the party died. Or heck, there is one sole survivor who managed to escape through magic, stealth or superior mobility (or perhaps literally was the last person standing). I think this scenario is as likely as a TPK, perhaps even more.

One of the thing that troubles me a bit about this is it could still derail the campaign anyway. It could be that the sole survivor is not a credible "party builder", or is not well suited to "passing on the torch" of the campaign to an almost entirely new group. Or it could be that this survivor was less "engaged" by the campaign. This shouldn't be the case, but I find it's not rare to have some characters more integral to the plot than others.

I remember a 3.X game where we were doing the return to the temple of elemental evil, and it was a real meat grinder. A number of us had lost PCs and were on our second one, but the "core" of the party - a war priest of some kind - Kord maybe?- was the anchor. When he died (he was a CODzila too) we were a bit shaken. A few games later, 2/6 members died and 2/6 were captured. The campaign collapsed and we never finished it.

Has anyone gone through a "partial TPK"? How did it work out for your party?

I find in-between -- anything over 50% main party killed -- to be more problematic than a TPK. With a TPK, you can either go "clean slate" and start a new group, go "whatever happened to..." and run a new group who can discover the fate of the old, or go "rescue the heroes after certain doom" to unwind the TPK. The upshot is the campaign history/context either no longer matters or is maintained in toto.

With a hefty but not complete character turnover, the party loses much of the context that has developed in the campaign. This can easily derail adventure hooks, derail relationships, and generally cause me to get a headache for a while.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think derail is an interesting choice of word here.

If you have a campaign that runs like a train on tracks, then yes, a TPK or any dice rolled outcome that doesn't match your expected outcome can and will derail the campaign, because dice aren't being used to generate a random outcome, but rather to present the illusion of challenge in a pre determined story. I say illusion of challenge because it's easy to fall into the trap that it's "easy" or "hard" to roll certain DCs or hit certain ACs or whatnot. Rolling dice to hit a DC isn't easy or hard, it's likely or unlikely, and that is an important distinction.

If on the other hand, you have the players roll dice only when you are in a situation where you and the players, don't want to make a decision by fiat about how the story moves forward, and both you and the players have a clear picture of what happens if they succeed, what happens if they fail, and what happens if they don't try to do the specific thing they need to roll dice for, then it is impossible for the dice to derail the campaign, even if it leads to a TPK or a partial TPK. It's just a part (or the end) of a memorable story about brave adventurers facing deadly perils.

I think his use of derail is likely just a colloquialism. Characters who are tackling an adventure have investment in it, likely in the form of "this helps people I care about" or "someone is going to pay me money" or "we're half way there, lets see this baby through". New characters may lack that investment, and I think that is the context in which "derail" is being used here. The quest will go unfinished because the new characters have no reason to pick it up.

Though really, the solution seems simple: Survivor returns to Quest Giver and says "hey everyone died." and Quest Giver helps hire a new party, or Survivor returns just as Quest Giver is instructing the new party on "Good news everyone! The old party never reported back, so I have job openings!"

But then, I think part of the flaw in the OP's logic is the reliance on the Survivor to motivate the party to take up the Unfinished Quest. That, IMO, is the DM's job.