Too Much Effort to Make New Characters?

[Ath-kethin]

They don't want to play those games. I've asked.
Those systems are usually more lethal (which is a strike against the players who want a deep story experience) and don't have the tactical depth of more modern systems (which is a strike against the players who want that style of play).

They made it halfway to 3rd level. But I think they consider the investment in the story and character development as a part of character creation - so that is all lost as well. So I do understand that part of it. Another part of the frustration is how quickly the TPK happened in that specific encounter - a matter of a few rounds.

In PF2 I am awarding them a Hero Point every hour to every player - which is pretty darned generous.

It seems to me that your two best paths forward are:

1. The old "wake up stripped of your belongings and now you have a serious side quest before you can get back to the main plot" approach. This one can work well for introducing and seeding adventured down the line, as well - why did the villains leave low-level nobodies alive? It's a question that can spur awesome ideas.

2. Just redo the encounter. TPKs can suck, But I'd change it up - don't make everything the same, so the party can't just change their approach slightly and have it work out.

Disclaimer: I don't know PF2 or Hero Points at all, so I don't know how those aspects might factor into things.

 

[CleverNickName]

My gaming group is kind of a mixed bag...some of the players don't mind rolling up new characters, others hate it with a burning passion. So I have a bit of a work-around....

When a character dies, I pull the player aside for a quick private chat (easy to do in Roll20 with the "whisper" feature). I'll say something like "Okay, so your character just failed his third death save throw, so your character has died. But it doesn't have to be the end--it's up to you to decide if that's the end of their story. If you want to keep playing your character, I'll find a way to bring them back. Or if you want to roll up a new character, I will figure out how to work them into the story. But I need an answer right now, before I narrate your character's fate. Which do you choose?"

Then I exit "whisper" mode, and go back to the story. The other players don't know what was decided. The character dies, and the player gets to narrate any last words, etc.

If the player says "I want to keep playing this same character," I will work something into the story to bring them back...I've used divine intervention (a dead warlock's patron decided he wasn't getting out of his pact that easily, and returned him to life...at a cost), I've used plot devices (the fighter's magic sword had a secret, hidden power: it restored the fallen fighter to life, and then shattered), heck I've even used a random encounter (a traveling cleric happened upon the character's funeral and cast raise dead on the fallen character). Death doesn't have to be the end.

Unless the player wants it to be the end...which is usually the case. (Not always, but I'd say 2/3rds of the time.) When that happens, we finish the scene, then I call a break. We all witness the new character's rolls, and then that player spends the rest of the gaming session filling out his character sheet and writing a backstory while we finish up the adventure. Then we correspond over email about the new character, and I figure out how to work the New Guy into the story.

 

[Retreater]

Have you considered actually asking the group why, instead of urging a bunch of strangers online to speculate about their motives?

Yes. I'm just having some difficulty sorting through their responses to answer what they want. Which I'm thinking is at the minimum we need to take some time off and recharge.
After that, maybe I can track down a more "fail forward" system than Pathfinder or D&D.

 

[Retreater]

Disclaimer: I don't know PF2 or Hero Points at all, so I don't know how those aspects might factor into things.

Hero Points in PF2 are a metacurrency that can be spent to auto-stabilize. If the players going into the combat had saved them for that purpose, they'd have been okay. The problem is that I didn't telegraph to them "this is a potentially deadly combat" (even though I described the monsters as very foul.) Even standard combats in PF2 can quickly turn against a party that doesn't use great tactics.

 

[Blue]

Yes. I'm just having some difficulty sorting through their responses to answer what they want. Which I'm thinking is at the minimum we need to take some time off and recharge.
After that, maybe I can track down a more "fail forward" system than Pathfinder or D&D.

This is a TPK. Changing the system won't solve that issue. Nor will blaming the system.

"Fail forward" is a concept for when continuing the adventure is locked behind a success. Like if the party doesn't find a secret trapdoor to the dungeon then they can't explore it. It usually works out that failure on the roll has a believable drawback. Like a failure searching for that hidden trapdoor takes too long and a patrol comes out of it - now you have a combat you wouldn't have had, but the trapdoor is revealed.

I don't think I've ever heard it applied to a combat, but if the adventure can't continue due to the results of the combat and you want to apply fail forward principles, that's fine. Multiple people have suggested some tried-and-true examples from D&D like waking up captured with no equipment and other options. These have been around for longer then the term "fail forward" had any formal RPG definition and work well with your existing system.

Or if you could even try what the players suggested - a redo of the session, but just like "fail forward", incur some other sort of campaign setback.

The players seem ready to go with a reset, where is the "we need to take some time off and recharge" coming from?

If you want time off, take it. If you don't want to run this adventure for them, don't. Both completely understandable things.

 

[payn]

Hero Points in PF2 are a metacurrency that can be spent to auto-stabilize. If the players going into the combat had saved them for that purpose, they'd have been okay. The problem is that I didn't telegraph to them "this is a potentially deadly combat" (even though I described the monsters as very foul.) Even standard combats in PF2 can quickly turn against a party that doesn't use great tactics.

There is definitely a learning curve for a newer game. I believe you mentioned this is the second go around with PF2? The game is wound very very tightly so its pretty easy for a GM to drown the players. There is a point they get so in over their heads no amount of tactical play will save them. As there is a long running thread right now on how poorly these games design run away options, its not often something the players consider until its too late. Also, death has been made into a long drawn out ordeal so its often more likely in PF2 to TPK then actually lose a single player.

I chalk this up to growing pains with a new system. There are a few things you can try. I'm not sure the amount of players you have, but slide the difficulty down. It was quite common in PF1 era to slide things up to optimization, but PF2 doesn't operate that way. Not everybody plays at the same standard level. The book might suggest moving up if you have 4-5 players at X level, but maybe go it straight anyways. There is a variant called progress without level or some such that removes the 1 per level stuff. It increases the band slightly of challenges the players are capable of encountering. Very easy to implement by VTT. Lastly, this part is for you specifically. Take to the forums and read about the adventure paths. Its not uncommon for them to have moments where the writing doesn't work right, or the math of the challenge is off. I have found them to be key in running a fun and successful AP.

Good luck.

 

[Umbran]

Rolling up a new character is one of the most fun things to do in D&D

For you, perhaps. But, are these players you? If not, you can't assume they feel the same way about that part of the game.

I can make a low-level character on there in 5 minutes (and of course, our game is low-level).

You can. But are they you? Do they have the same level of experience with games? Do they approach character creation and choices the same way you do?

For example - you may be the type that always has seven different character concepts rattling around at your head - making a new character for you might be merely the process of codifying one of those concepts, that has most of the choices pretty much made already. But maybe your players aren't like that. Maybe when a character has died, they are faced with a wall of options, and picking out what they want, especially after a disappointing moment of play, may not be the easiest thing in the world.

When players react to something in a way that "flabbergasts" you, the first constructive step is to figure out where they are coming from. What is their experience of creating characters like? What is their level of frustration and upset with the TPK?

Remember - game design and play is a balance between making the game hard enough to be an engaging mental effort, but not hard enough to make the player ragequit in frustration. Where that quit point will lie is dependent on many factors - before you start again, you might do well to ask them, rather than us, some questions to figure out how you came over that line.

 

[Umbran]

This is a TPK. Changing the system won't solve that issue. Nor will blaming the system.

"Fail forward" is a concept for when continuing the adventure is locked behind a success. Like if the party doesn't find a secret trapdoor to the dungeon then they can't explore it. It usually works out that failure on the roll has a believable drawback. Like a failure searching for that hidden trapdoor takes too long and a patrol comes out of it - now you have a combat you wouldn't have had, but the trapdoor is revealed.

I don't think I've ever heard it applied to a combat...

Fail forward is intrinsically encoded in conflicts in Fate.

In Fate combat, a Player may realize that they are about to lose a Conflict, and can choose to Concede. If they do, they get a Fate point, or possibly several, and get to narrate how the character is removed from being an active part of the scene, in such a way as they'll still be alive in future scenes. And the GM doesn't get to contradict this - if the player says the character is left for dead, the GM can't say at the end of the fight that everyone is captured and has their stuff taken away.

If the player does not Concede, and the character gets Taken Out, the GM gets to narrate what happens to them - and death is only one possibility. In Fate, death in general, and TPKs specifically, only happen if the GM absolutely wants it that way.

Sounds pretty fail forward to me.

 

[mythago]

Yes. I'm just having some difficulty sorting through their responses to answer what they want. Which I'm thinking is at the minimum we need to take some time off and recharge.
After that, maybe I can track down a more "fail forward" system than Pathfinder or D&D.

Your initial post was that your players' explanation is baffling to you, and you're turning to the commentariat here for clarification. Totally understandable, but the people you should be asking to clarify your players' responses are your players, not us randos.

That's not a knock on you - what your players are saying is not entirely clear - but it is significant that players, plural, are all in agreement that there is a problem, it isn't just Bob mad that you killed his cleric. Something's going on here, and if (as you say) it is baffling why their reaction to the TPK was to rewind, y'all need to sit down and have a longer conversation about what happened. For that matter, your players may not be entirely clear-eyed about why they reacted that way, and hashing it out may help them too.

You need to find out what the problem is before you start guessing at solutions.

 

[grankless]

13th Age has a system of "campaign losses" - players can unconditionally retreat from any fight. No questions asked.

But the bad guys get a victory! They win something meaningful. This is also a good option.
TPKs are simply not fun. There's a reason a lot of modern systems completely make character death a player choice, like Forged in the Dark or certain PBTA games - death is not fun for the character or the story.