TPKs; Where do you restart?

[Bacon Bits]

Thankfully I've never had this happen to or by me, but it got me thinking:
When your party is wiped out, if you continue the adventure, where does your next party pick up the plot? Back at the beginning? At the most recent "checkpoint"?

Usually the session ends after a TPK.

The next session, if there was a legitimate DM mistake which resulted in a TPK -- which has only happened once in the past 15 years or so -- then the PCs wake up at the start of the same day with the events of the fateful encounter a horrible premonition of a possible future. The DM modified the repeat encounters to keep them fresh and to correct the mistakes. DM mistakes would be things like, "Oops, I didn't realize that was a once a day ability. That makes a lot more sense," or "Oops, those were the Dire Champion Mook stats, not the regular Mook stats."

If the players died as a result of their own poor choices or the result of the dice, then the DM typically asks: "So, do you guys want to continue with these characters? Do you want to start new characters completely? Do you want a different campaign or should someone else run for awhile?"

If all the characters want to continue: The PCs are unconscious/captured. In the case of monstrous opponents that would eat the PCs, the monster is slain almost immediately after the PCs drop and they are rescued (perhaps by less-than-friendly rescuers).

If there's a split: The PCs of the players who rerolled are dead and gone, while the others are unconscious/captured. Play resumes with the new characters finding the unconscious/captured PCs. In the case of monstrous opponents that would eat the PCs, the new characters arrive immediately after the last of the old PCs drops.

If none of the characters want to continue: The PCs roll new characters. It may be a continuation of the same story or something unrelated.

 

[jasper]

God Call!. Sucks if no one answers. If it wasn't my mistake which causes a recon, some of my players have be smart enough to run away. Leaving little brown spots marking their trail.
In AL GAME OVER.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

If a single PC dies, I talk with the player and work out a reasonable way he can jump in with a new character (or revive his old). It's really not that hard.

As for TPK, I end the adventure and start a completely new one.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

After a TPK, the PCs...wake up in the underworld. All gear gone, they must fight for survival as they make their way to the person in charge to play a deadly game in the hopes of getting back to the world of the living. If they succeed, they get new bodies and must adventure back to the dungeon where they originally died to retrieve their gear. The DM could have some of it missing which requires further adventuring to get back. Death while in the underworld is up to the DM. They could cease to exist, or maybe they're just sent back to the start of the adventure.

 

[the Jester]

I run a sandbox, so the 'plot' is only one of many ongoing adventure options in the setting. The new party will choose its own path, at least to a great extent. It may never intersect with the path that the old party was following.

 

[lyracian]

Not happened often but we usually start a new Campaign. It may be the same world with same GM but if more than one person runs games then it is usually a change over time maybe a different system for a bit.

A lot of GM's have there own worlds and it is nice to go back to a place/city you know about with the plots moved on a few years. Maybe the Thug the last party were constantly fighting with is now the Mayor or running the Thieves Guild? You can often see the influence, for good or bad, your previous characters had.

 

[Monayuris]

I run an open world sandbox style game. There is no major overarching plot that can be ruined by a TPK. Players roll up new level one characters and keep playing in the same world (or some have alternate characters or followers they can take over).

Things are persistent in my world, so they can go to the same place their previous characters died at, if they want to. Depending on the circumstances of their PCs' deaths, they may find their previous character's heads on pikes, or some goblin may be wielding a magic sword owned by one of them, etc. (From my last session, there is a dead gnome fighter stashed in a random crypt on the outskirts of Barrowmaze (with the original body still in it)... it may be puzzling if another group finds it.