TPK recovery ideas

[Kae'Yoss]

The party awakens, reincarnated as small forest animals with little to no memory of their former lives.

With their former abilities? So they have spell-like powers? And werid colors? And they can speak, but only spell names and their own names? Where do I know that from? (Adventure Hook: have kids capture the characters and pit them against others of their kind, in an arena)

 

[fusangite]

A number of people have mentioned the possibility of journeying through the lands of the dead. I think this is the way to go. But run this not as a single episode but as a 4-10 episode plot arc. Journeying through the otherworld and confronting its various inhabitants makes for good adventuring. Since I turned my old game over to a successor GM, the characters still haven't escaped from hell. Looks like their journey will occupy about 14 episodes.

 

[Li Shenron]

Right now I'm struggling with questions like "why isn't the world full of formerly dead people who have crawled back from hades"?

BTW, the characters don't have to make it out from the land of the dead, right?

 

[The Shaman]

The party awakens, reincarnated as small forest animals with little to no memory of their former lives.

...and use this as an opportunity to switch to Blue Rose?

 

[The_Warlock]

Well, I'll admit I like involving gods, because the PCs in my run have a destiny. But anyway, they implicitly trusted a thoroughly amoral individual, and he hit them with waer from the river styx and then threw them through a killing portal, turning their remain into, as it became known, "Astral Chum". The entire party wiped out because they trusted one of the most well hidden, amoral, and mercenary "villains" in the game. So I dusted off my old books and had Anubis, now Guardian of the Dead Gods, resurrect their pulped bodies (still minus their memories thanks to the styxian water) and set to them a task. And thus the party became temporarily The Nameless Champions of the Guardian, and played through the old Planescape Dead Gods module and prevented Orcus' resurrection, at which point Anubis acquired the flower of memory from his former brother/cousin Set, and restored the heroes memories to them, and sent them back on their original heroic path.

It was a hoot! Considering the fun, I really should TPK them more often...chuckle

 

[ThirdWizard]

Whoever killed them has them raised in order for them to do a job for him. He knows he can beat them, especially now that he knows their tricks. He needed someone to handle something for him, and this is the perfect opportunity, of course when they're done with it, he's going to have to make sure they can't come after him again.

 

[Psion]

I liked Barsoomcore's ideas of animating the party as heads on a necromancer's shelf.

 

[psyronin]

A long time ago someone posted here at EN World a simple way out of a TPK. Make it a dream/illusion.

For example, say the party died attacking a baddie. Roll them back to the last day they woke up, and tell them they woke up with the vivid dream of their demise. From there you can either go with the dreams being sent by the baddie as a warning, or by an unknown ally as helpful information on the baddie's tactics and defenses.

Or if they died fighting some intelligent monster that demanded payment for passage, put them back before the fighting started, with the monster saying something along the lines of "Do you want to REALLY die? Aren't your lives worth a few gold?". Throw in some descriptions to make it look like the monster has mental powers.

With a little work you can extricate the party from any demise and without any serious changes to your campaign plans.

 

[WillieW]

They awaken in the mists outside Castle Amber. Used it; abused it...

 

[VirgilCaine]

I have to agree that if characters can't really die, it's time to change games.