What normally happens after a TPK?

[Jhaelen]

As I recall, the "dormant" characters received 50% of the exp of the active characters.

IIRC, whenever your active character advanced a level you were allowed to level up one of your inactive characters.

It's a great system that I'm using a variant of in my current 3e campaign.

 

[Starfox]

You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Steel_Wind again.

TPKs have happened from time to time (twice that I recall) in the campaigns run by one of the other GMs in my gaming circle. Those events have resulted in a complete end of the campaign and a complete switch in game systems, too.

Again, it has been a "game shaking/world changing" event. A TPK is not the end of the party - it's not even the end of the campaign. It's been the end of that entire game system being played in our group for quite some time.

Today, I think a TPK would mean the moral bankruptcy of the game. People would lose interest, go into denial, etc. It is rare for people to die in our campaigns, as we focus more on role-play than on tactics.

We've glossed over two TPKs back in the early 80's. One was in Q3, in the demonweb. We used teleport in the web, not having been warned not to. The DM let our bodies be lost, but our souls be recoverable, reincarnated in new bodies. After that, our party consisted of a doppleganger, a titan, and a ki-rin. I wasn't the DM of this one.

Another was even earlier, with me as a DM. We'd let a new guy into our high-school game, and he played an assassin. For some obscure reason he figured the goal of an assassin had to be to kill everyone else. He succeeded a bit too well - the session ended with the reed raft the players were trying to evacuate on (the assassin had let their boat drift away) sank after heavy-duty combat on board. This is the only time I've had a play session end in physical violence (not as bad as it sounds, we were still kids).

 

[kilpatds]

BUT, do all the adventures ever played in that setting under the same DM represent one campaign? Probably. I'd leave that decision up to each particular DM.

I've run multiple campaigns in one setting, and had them be different campaigns. Different endings, different plots, different story lines. No connections at all, except for the initial conditions.

I've played with a DM who uses his one setting for all campaigns, and some of them are probably just different adventurers following different threads in the same campaign. But even there, some of the adventures are mutually exclusive, so I do not believe they were part of the same campaign.

 

[maddman75]

I find myself surprised that a little more than half of the respondents simply start something new. What do you do with the work you have put into the current setting?

My settings don't matter. Nor do my plots or my NPCs. I don't honestly put very much work into them, as I've found you can run a very enjoyable game without doing so. All of these things are created as-needed to get the PC's stories going. The events, situations, and antagonists that appear are there to play off the characters that the players bring to the table. As I posted in the other thread, if the PCs are gone there's not much for me to continue, honestly.

In most games I'll not even have a clear idea of what kind of plot is going on or who the BBEG might be. I'll send them various things to do and see what they bite on, what gets them going, and what they are interested in and make decisions based on that.

Its awesome and requires very little prepwork.

Thus the result of a TPK is we play some other game entirely. Continuing this one is pointless with the main protagonists eliminated, and there's not much to be gained by playing more of the same rather than try something new. And there's so much out there I have to keep trying new things.

 

[Uder]

Campaign has a lot of different meanings, not necessarily limited to just mission/story/quest-related topics. It could be the adventures in a setting of a particular collection of characters, particular group of players, based on the same starting hook, whatever. Any number of those could be deranged by a TPK.

I agree completely. To see the idea of a campaign defined down so narrowly deserved comment IMO.

I voted the first option - I've done that for 2 out of 3 TPKs. The first time I did the old "you awaken three days later in a prison cell," and the second some players arranged to save their old characters while other players started new ones. Neither of these strictly fits the first poll choice, but it's closer than "Other."

The third TPK I've had was a restart, complete with a change of game system. The less said about that the better. My fault completely.

I technically have a fourth TPK, but that was a planned ending to the campaign and no dice were rolled in the final "encounter" that led to the end of the party... along the lines of the ending to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Since the PCs in that campaign won by dying, it's not really a classic TPK.

So... three TPKs. As two of the TPKs were my fault, I honestly think that's a bad record. I think I've learned from them, though. I'm standing at three TPKs for my first two decades of RPGing, and none for the last decade. Here's to another ten years (or more) of just enough PC death to keep it interesting, but not so much that it brings the game to a halt.

 

[Ariosto]

Other.

The game goes on. It does not "restart" simply because a fraction of the pieces have been removed.

New characters may or may not even know of the quests of previous ones, much less have inducements to take them up.

 

[Bullgrit]

To see the idea of a campaign defined down so narrowly deserved comment IMO.

And if the term had been left without a specific definition for this discussion, lots of people would have complained about the confusion. Defining it as I did prompted only one complaint.

Bullgrit

 

[Sammael]

I haven't had a TPK in a while (and the last TPK I had was quite intentional, ending one "chapter" of the campaign, and beginning a new one, with players playing their former PCs as "wandering souls"). However, after a typical TPK, I'm likely to scrap that particular campaign, come up with a resolution to any important story threads, incorporate those events into my campaign setting, and move on to a new campaign, likely in the same world, but in a completely new and unexplored area.

I've been running a "persistent world" for some 10 years now, and events of one campaign always touch upon the events of another, but I do not consider all that to be a single campaign. Instead, it's a shared world experience with established continuity.

 

[Raven Crowking]

* I'm using "campaign" in the sense of a story/plot. That is, the new party may start in the same world, even in the same city, but not necessarily on the same plot as the deceased party.

I wish I had noted this before voting; it changes my answer. AFAICT, that excludes any sandbox campaign from continuing past a TPK, as a sandbox game never necessates that a party follow the same "plot" -- even without a TPK.

This, potentially, explains the results. It excludes (perhaps a large percentage of) people who would continue as normal after a TPK.



RC

 

[Sammael]

But even sandbox campaigns have "stories," and it should be fairly easy to ascertain whether a new set of player characters are choosing to follow the same story (or set of stories/hooks), or moving in an entirely different direction for no reason other than "resetting" the campaign.