TPK as a "literary" device?

[Rel]

I've always thought that an interesting start for a campaign would be where a group of highish level PC's were captured by their nemesis. The BBEG then proceeds to torture them to death and then Raise Dead on them...every day...for two weeks. Until they are back down near 1st level.

The hitch in this plan is obviously that you can't raise somebody who doesn't want to be, but I figure that you could explain that as long as the PC is alive, there is hope for revenge and hope to defeat the BBEG. If you just give up and stay dead, you are letting the BBEG win. At least make him earn it.

Anyway, the end result is that after the PC's are repeatedly tortured and stripped of their powers, they are sold into slavery as a final insult. Then the campaign begins and the PC's must escape from slavery and find a way to reclaim their former glory.

So you'd wind up with characters who were once powerful, may have lots of knowledge (I'd probably give them some bonuses to a few skills because of this) and political connections but are otherwise low level. They would be extremely well motiviated to go after the BBEG and I think there could be lots of interesting roleplaying situations along the way:

NPC - "Sir Eldric! You've returned!"

PC - "Yes, Cardinal, I have."

NPC - "But where is your Mace +5 and the Armor of the Saints?"

PC - "I'd rather not talk about it right now."

NPC - "I've a parishner who has come down with the Creeping Death. Would you mind curing him?"

PC - "I'm afraid that won't be possible right now. Cardinal, I've a question, is that band of goblins still raiding the south road from the abandoned mill?"

NPC - "Well, I believe they are, but surely that is a job for someone other than yourself!"

PC - "Thanks, Cardinal. Say, could you loan me a potion of Cure Light Wounds?"


Please note that I would never just do this sort of thing to my players' characters that they had worked so hard to get to upper levels unless they wanted to. Instead I'd probably have them roll up high level PC's for the campaign start and go from there.

 

[Berandor]

The short intro adventure to Aracan Unearthed that I ran, I had planned the PCs to die in the end (6th level, against NPC level 7 and an NPC level 13, as well as possibly an NPC level 8).

Naturally, they won the fight
So I adapted my camapign to that end, and instead of defeating the BBEG finally, they will have to prevent him from taking revenge on their former characters.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Having tried something similar many years ago, I found that this only works with certain players. Two potential concerns:

1. The players get frustrated as soon as they realize that it's a no-win situation. If this is likely to happen, it works better as a cut-scene. You can play out everything up to that point, but not the hopeless fight itself (players hate being helpless).

2. The players don't take the pre-gens seriously. They see them as throw-away and do strange things they'd never do with their "real" characters. If this happens, the whole mood you're trying to establish is shot.

I'm not saying either of these things will definitely happen, just giving you a bit of warning, given my own experiences with this kind of campaign start. Hope the session goes well.

 

[LordVyreth]

I did something similar in my game, but in reverse. The first game, the players were pre-gens of mid-level (10th, I believe,) who were seperately searching for an artifact called the Quill of Destiny, that lets them re-write the future. Only three PCs survived to reach it, but they each wrote themselves as rulers, emperors, etc. Then the actual game started, and it turned out it was over a thousand years later, after the world changed as a result of the actions of the first characters. In fact, two of the original characters were still alive as a lich and an entombed spirit inside a golem. And it's a pretty rough campaign, which isn't surprising considering two of three surviving characters that wrote the future were evil!

 

[Derfel]

A few years back, a DM did this in an old 2nd Edition game we were in. We created characters one day, gave them to the DM and met up a week later for the first session. The game was going to be a gothic-fantasy game (similar in tone to Ravenloft, but a homebrew setting). When we arrived at the session the DM told us he had decided to use pre-gens instead, and gave us each a character of around 7th to 10th level IIRC. These characters were similar to the ones we had first made in terms of classes and races.

So we begin exploring an old manor-house, rumoured to be home to a powerful vampire-lord. In the lowest levels we find his crypt and a fight ensues. Our characters get severely trashed, several dying before the rest of us decide to flee, while setting the mansion ablaze from an errant fireball. In the ensuing chase, and fire, every other character eventually died. The only survivor was the squire of our paladin.

At this point the DM pulled out our original characters (one of which is the squire) and informs us about a decade has passed since that night. Our characters are either the children, heirs or former followers of the deceased group, who must now finish off what our predecessors had started.

It was a pretty good game, and the prologue was a great way to set up the villain for the campaign. We really ended up hating, and fearing, that vampaire-lord.

 

[Desdichado]

Sounds like my "unique" idea has been done a fair amount of times. Thanks for the replies, guys! Keep 'em coming; I'm getting tons of great ideas here.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, I ran the session last night. It worked, but not necessarily exactly as I had hoped. I had three guys playing (with a fourth to join next session) and the one guy I thought was going to be late was the first one to arrive. He was also the only one who had generated his character ahead of time, so he ended up sitting around a fair amount while the other two made their characters. That took longer than I thought it would, so when we started up the "prologue" we were already halfway done for the evening.

This in turn meant that besides the prologue, and the kick-off sequence for the regular players, we didn't get to do anything other than fight the whole session (which means that all the roleplaying and investigation that is necessary has been pushed back; we may have a pretty slow session in terms of action next time we play.)

What this ended up doing was turning our first session into little more than two dissassociated and unconnected fight scenes. I think it'll come together and have more meaning as the campaign progresses, but all in all, I was a little disappointed with the way the campaign started off. It's a passable beginning, but it wasn't as clearly brilliant as I hoped it would turn out.