TPKs; Where do you restart?

[Yunru]

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"?

Personally I'd probably go with an investigation quest if there were no (friendly) witnesses, or a heroic tale and a passing of the mantle if they died in a blaze of glory.

 

[jgsugden]

7 or 8 TPKs as a payer or DM since the 70s. A few more games that just ...faded to a stop. We stopped playing those PCs, but continued (later) with the same DM in the same world.

A few times we just ended the campaign after a TPK. In some, we picked up the tory a 'generation' later with the world feeling the pain of the first party's failure. In others, the world was left behind.

In one game I ran, I told the players not to make new PCs (sometimes people get excited about starting a new character and it is a disappointment when they return to the PC they've played for so long). Then I handed them character sheets for friendly NPCs at the start of next session and gave the PCs a chance to save their fallen PCs... as their friends... but doing so came at a cost to those NPCs, but they'd all be willing to pay the price. For most of the players, the pain that bringing them back caused to the NPCs was a motvational tool that made the game more intense.

In one game I played in the entire party was turned to stone. They were revived a thousand years later, in a world that had changed dramatically around them. It didn't really work as well as the DM hoped, so he retconned in a time travel element to effectively undue it.

One game had an adventure in that world's Limbo plane, where souls waited to be claimed. This allowed them to return to the mortal plane in other bodies.... It was fine, but we were close to the end and we rushed through it as we didn't like the twist so much, even though I ended up with a paladin in a giant ape's body.

 

[LordEntrails]

What makes sense? I mean, I wold be reluctant to even bother picking up the adventure, and if you do it's got to make sense. That is going to be different for each and every adventure.

 

[Oofta]

I almost always run home campaigns in my own world without using published adventures. I haven't had many TPKs, but I basically just pick the world up where we left off. Once it was in a completely different region so it had no effect in another it was in the same area so there were nods to the previous group here and there (mostly as "those other idiot adventurers").

So it just depends on what makes sense. TPK while doing general adventuring? Not much of an impact, other than possibly finding some corpses to loot eventually. Everyone died trying to protect the city? The city fell and the orcs now use it as a base of operations. Oh, and Aunt Sue who was always nice to the previous group and baked them pies? She's now a slave. Trying to kill the BBEG? They won ... what's going to happen to the region now?

My campaign world continues to grow and respond to the actions or inactions of PCs for better or worse. It's one of the reasons I don't use published modules.

 

[iserith]

Unless death is taken off the table as a possible result, character death and the odd TPK can happen. In order to prepare for that contingency, we have backup characters ready to go at all times who are already "written in" to the ongoing tale and can jump in to take over where their comrades left off.

 

[aco175]

We all died in the 3e Kyruss series when we picked a bar fight with a NPC we were not ready for. The DM asked if we wanted to start new characters or continue with the adventure. I thing we ended up rewinding the timeline to before we started the encounter and spoke with him. We ended up fighting him later when we gained a few levels.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

Full stop.
New adventure.

Continuing the same adventure does not make any sense.
Players know more than characters can possibly know.
So save the un-played parts of the adventure for a new one.

 

[ccs]

If it's for the same adventure? Then someplace that makes sense.
Let's say a TPK happened during Storm King while defending Goldenfields. Well, the giants are still causing problems there & elsewhere.... So If I were the DM I'd pick the next giant local I thought the group would like.
What doesn't happen when we pick up the same adventure is treasure/quest items re-setting. They remain where the original PCs fell or in the victors hoards/possessions.

 

[billd91]

Depends, I think. Were the players highly engaged with the storyline that was going on? Do they want to continue dealing with it? If so, figure out what would be a good point to have someone else jump in. You could base it on the disappearance of the TPKed PCs in which case there'd be a delay as others notice and organize to do something about it. Or you could come up with another hook for a parallel group to experience that would then intersect with and merge with the storyline you were on, in which case the effect on the timeline may be minimal.

If they're not that engaged or don't want to continue, then don't. New adventure time.

There's no right or wrong answer, ultimately, just what works for you and your group.

 

[S'mon]

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"?

When I have restarted, it has been with the bad guys winning that chapter or book AP or military campaign etc, and so the next game starts with the world in a worse state. Eg I had a group TPK at the end of Book 1 Rise of the Runelords in 2013, so the villain destroyed Sandpoint town. When I restarted in late 2015 it was with a different group, and Sandpoint destroyed.

Edit: All my returns to failed campaigns have been years later and with new players, who get to experience the joys of a world where the previous group failed. This is very motivating I find.