When does a TPK occur?

[pdzoch]

BTW, laughing at "Plot Driven" as a choice. I've heard one-shots where that was part of it. There was one recently someone was talking abotu Viking PCs who were each trying to die heroically accomplishing a great feat to get into Valahalla. But for normal play, a plot-driven-TPK is hilarious.

I've heard that Cthulhu games often have TPKs are part of the plot in the game. I do not play that game, but I understand how that is possible. Paranoia also had a capacity to support that plot devise also.

I've also heard of games culminating in a TPK on purpose as a way to ditch the current set of characters and start a new campaign. An odd way to go, but I suppose it beats simply abandoning the campaign to start over. Provides closure.

 

[pdzoch]

I should clarify my intent behind the "Self-Inflicted / Inner Conflict (PC Attacks PC)" choice. It was based only on an instance I saw many years ago (early 80's) when I saw a PC group TPK each other when the assassin started attacking his own group (the reason today I will never understand) and the entire party broke into a internal fight that they killed each other. Needless to say, the group did not get back together again. It was a weird scene. But it was a bunch of very young kids early in the hobby's days.

It was not meant as an assessment of players making a bad decision during the game (and thus be self-inflicted). I'm trying to keep judgement of causes out of the poll (probably with little success).

 

[aramis erak]

I wonder if anyone's ever gotten a TPK during Traveller's character creation process...

Yes, I have. Back in HS. Went to start a module, everyone started rolling up characters, no one made it with first character. (In one case, he had 3x 2's ... so he went into the scouts and stayed till he died... of an aging crisis in term 7.

 

[pdzoch]

Though no TPK is a satisfying event, I think play groups would take some gratification that the TPK occurred at the against the final boss who is supposed to be deadly. Perhaps, a TPK might be tolerable when the players know an especially dangerous situation, such as the environment, trap, or other dire dilemma is present. I think play groups who see a TPK about to happen and recognize that it is due to their own poor tactical decision would reluctantly accepted as fair.

I'm not sure about other situations though. I will admit that I do not allow lucky dice to cause a TPK in situations where it would be unexpected (easy encounters).

I've had two TPKs a couple of years ago when I was using a pre-written adventure and the game group did not contain an optimal mix to meet the challenge of the encounters in the pre-written adventure. Now, I custom write my adventure with my game group in mind. Considering @robus 's "Accidental TPK" thread elsewhere on this forum, this was as close as I got to an accidental TPK.

Perhaps once more responses are provided to the poll, an indication on TPK location can better be ascertained, but for now, it seems fairly evenly spread.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

I had one TPK when the players assumed the great wyrm they were talking with was evil and attacked it. They also learned the difference between "green dragon" and "emerald dragon" that day.

Most times, it's been because they don't use strategy. "Oh, those orcs have bows! No way they'd dive behind that convenient cover... Let's stay out in the open and just charge them! OH DEAR GODS, THEY'RE PEPPERING US WITH ARROWS FROM COVER!"

Then there was the god cat incident. I seriously didn't think the Paladin would fail that save and die from using detect magic on a cat. I even less expected the rest of the party to use various means of detecting magic to try to figure out why the paladin died.

Beholder balloons filled with methane + fireball inside a room coated in lamp oil... after being specifically warned about the beholder balloons before they started the mission and then smelling the lamp oil when they entered the room. The adventure was to arrest a guy for pulling pranks all over town and the party confirmed before going in that there were no real beholders involved.

 

[ccs]

I had one TPK when the players assumed the great wyrm they were talking with was evil and attacked it. They also learned the difference between "green dragon" and "emerald dragon" that day.

Sounds like a group I DM'd for a few years back in 3.5.
They'd decided that they needed to recruit the aid of a local Bullywug tribe. So they set off into the great swamp to gain an audience with the Bullywug King. Eventually they succeeded.
Through bad RP & worse dice rolls, they completely failed to sway the Bullywugs to their cause.

But they were persistent in their pestering for aid.... So the King told them "Fine, I'll pledge 100 braves to your cause. But only if you can bring me the head of the Pan-Lung who drove us from our ancestral home when I was a child."
(as we played an idea for another swamp adventure/side-trek had come to me)
The party quickly agreed to the terms, received directions to a massive ruin deeper in the swamp, & there the session ended. Well, at least I knew what to prep for next week.

{Pan-Lung are Oriental Water Dragons. VERY powerful, far far beyond the capabilities of the characters hunting it. Lots of innate magical abilities. Not evil.)

None of the players , let alone their characters, knew what a Pan-Lung was. And none of them bothered to ask. They didn't even ask the Bullywug King what it looked like.

What followed was 3 weeks of exploring the upper parts of a large sunken city, encountering antagonizing & killing a # of not-necessarily hostile monsters, occasionally RPing with a an NPC who'd appear to them as a young oriental woman (Pan-Lungs can shape-change), and goofy high jinx.
Eventually they stumbled across the PLs actual lair, saw her in her true form, & prepared to fight yet another monster (still having no idea that this was the Pan-Lung).
Seeing that the party was about to attack, she changed into her human guise, revealed that SHE was the Pan-Lung, & tried to reason with them.
Some years before she returned home to find the city she'd lived in a sinking ruin infested with Bullywugs. She drove them out & recruited a workforce comprised of the various not-necessarily-hostile monsters the party had been chopping up (an annoyance as it's disrupting the work, but Tasloi etc can ultimately be replaced) to rebuild as much as possible. She offered the PCs peace/safe passage away. She then offered them that + treasure to leave. The PCs could've even talked her into aiding them against the original foes that drove them to seek the aid of Bullywugs in the 1st place - but this never occurred to them.

They denounced her as evil for persecuting the Bullywugs and attacked.

They persisted in their attacks even when they discovered that the Pan-Lung was virtually immune to anything they could do to it & was fighting defensively, trying not to hurt them....

Had the Pan-Lung been evil it'd have been a TPK.
But she wasn't & knew these idiots to be merely misguided. Instead I plane-shifted the lizardman barbarian away to a Victorian garden where he could destroy shrubs until his rages ended* & beat the rest unconscious.
They woke up miles away with a sack containing a basilisk head and a note 1) warning them never to set foot within 5 miles of the ruined city of whatever-I-called-it, 2) wishing them Good Luck, 3) instructions to give this head to the Bullywugs and claim it to be hers, and 4) a warning not to trust the man-eating frog people, as they'd surely turn on the PCs.


*The LM barbarian was never seen again as the player was pissed off that I'd put a monster in an adventure that couldn't be killed & chose to quit the game. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea that combat ISN'T the answer to every encounter.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I've also heard of games culminating in a TPK on purpose as a way to ditch the current set of characters and start a new campaign. An odd way to go, but I suppose it beats simply abandoning the campaign to start over. Provides closure.

I read far too much of that on forums. The reason is that people simply aren't aware that retiring a character is an option.

 

[pdzoch]

I read far too much of that on forums. The reason is that people simply aren't aware that retiring a character is an option.

I agree. I prefer to retire and place the characters in the world. These become special NPCs that the players themselves can control on special occasions. They become contacts, patrons, trainers, and quest givers. In rare cases, the retired character still levels up on their own and gain renown in the world as their legend grows, adding to the history of the game world for the new campaign.

 

[MarkB]

I read far too much of that on forums. The reason is that people simply aren't aware that retiring a character is an option.

As mentioned, it provides closure. At least the players can feel that the campaign had a conclusion, even if a tragic one, rather than it simply petering out due to waning interest.

 

[was]

...IME, most TPKs happen when the PC's insist on doing something they know is reckless/inadvisable.