When PCs fail.

[S'mon]

I would only kill off a PC Cleric's god as an initial target if the PC were still able to quickly acquire spells from a different source, such as a different member of the pantheon. Eg Tyr is dead but you can still get your spells via Odin.

 

[angelababy]

This will be very, very, very bad for the people of the setting but that's the bad part of being the characters upon whom the fate of the world rests. A few times it has completely altered the campaign setting -- effectively the PCs endure a "fall of civilisation" event and focus shifts to survival/rescue/rebuilding.Too many times you read about groups that abandon the campaign or even split up over a major failure or TPK. However, it seems like it isn't quite so final with your group, so how does their failure impact the world?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I like the ideas that a lot of people are throwing around about one of the PCs gods or a god somehow related to a god a PC worships being killed as a result of Orcus returning.

My question for everyone is, do you think that would be singling out the PC and make it seem like it was more his fault that the group failed to stop Orcus?

Kill several gods and you won't have this problem. Make Orcus powerful enough and kill a handful of Gods and you'll be able to end up with anything up to and including a very uneasy alliance between Hieronius and Jubilex to deal with the worse evil/bigger threat of Orcus.

I'm just having a hard time getting a feel for this type of scenario. I'm not sure what a player would think if this happened. I don't mind if it made it more personal and the 'group' as a whole felt more guilty, I just don't want a single player to take all the guilt. Or maybe I can come up with scenarios to single out something important to each PC. That actually might be the best route and may make their failure hit home even more.

Imagine the world was a tray containing dinner. The PCs just dropped it. Not everyone is going to be equally hurt. But you have Orcus' demons roaming the land (which will help if the PCs were running out of plausible random opponents). Most towns need to fort up because of this. Trade is ... dangerous. Mutations of wildlife?

Just wreck the place both grimly and entertainingly.

 

[webrunner]

Have you ever played Final Fantasy 6? Spoiler warning, by the way..
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Half way through the game, the party rushes to stop the BBEG from aquiring god-like power and destroying the world as they know it.

They.. fail at doing that. In fact, their attempt to stop them ends up giving him the power he wants, and they barely escape with their lives.

The game then picks up about a year later, with the party scattered, the world in ruins, and the BBEG destroying entire cities on personal whim from atop his gigantic tower. The game shifts from saving the world from destruction to re-gathering your party and saving the remnants of the world from Kefka's god-like dominion.

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Similarly, in Star Ocean: The Second Story (or Star Ocean: Second Evolution on PSP)

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This game also ends it's first disc with the destruction of the planet every character you have (except the main one) is from as the main villain crashes it into their own pseudo-planet in order to get home.
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The point of all this is that massive failure is not the end of the line. Failing one task, even the overarching main task, as long as there's pieces to pick up the party now has a new goal, and the campaign can continue from there.

In your particular case I would imagine they would need to find a way to retrieve the artifact, or to find some sort of magical device to allow them to jump back to when they failed, and stop the villain that way. Or mount some sort of resistance against the now evil lord, maybe by travelling and finding other resistance cells, Peiping together a plan like that?

 

[nedjer]

Well, we just finished a 4 year long run of the Dead Gods adventure last night. I added a lot of content in between each scenario in the adventure, which is why it took so long. This was the biggest and most epic adventure I've DMed. I'm pretty bummed out though. The PCs failed to finish the last chapter as heroes and they did not "save the day".

As DM, I could have probably done some things to 'give the players a break', but this was supposed to be the big finally. So at the time, I was thinking that whatever they choose to do, I will not deviate from the events that are supposed to be happening behind the scenes.

I did everything I could to let them know they needed to be prepared, even to the point that I thought I might be annoying them by reminding them to buff, use their resources, and to work together as a team to win the day. They seemed very confident & sort of dismissed my advice (it seemed). When the time came, they did not do anything to improve on their tactics, and it took my NPCs only 2 rounds to send their PCs fleeing for their lives.

This last event was on a time frame. The master was on his way and the PCs knew this. So they knew they had to defeat the BBEG and take (or destroy) the artifact before his master arrived. The problem was, they left the major artifact that they came to retrieve (or destroy) in the room that they fled, which allowed the enemy to simply walk over, pick it up, and hand it to his master once he arrived.

So they expected to flee, lick their wounds (in their defense, they did get their butts handed to them), and then come back and try again. But the time frame did not allow for this. The BBEG did not care about the PCs; he only cared about getting the artifact for his master. So when they fled, all he had to do was pick it up and that's that (game over).

I guess they had a decision; focus on their survival, or try to stop the BBEG from taking the artifact. Obviously their survival was more important (not a problem, but not heroic either), and they really didn't give any thought about what happens to the artifact if they flee. So they made their choice, they lived, but they failed big time.

This is the first time I've seen such an epic fail before. So now I get to sort things out and figure out where to go from here. I honestly can't think of anyway for them to redeem themselves. So I think it will have to be chalked up to the bad guys won the day, and the PCs will just continue on with their lives (and the adventures I've been preparing). If anyone has ideas or advice for me, let me have it. I honestly don't know if the way I handled things was good or not. I also don't blame the players, they made a choice that they thought was best. And as far as they were concerned, they were prepared for the fight.

What are your thoughts about allowing the PCs to fail a mission? Does it happen in your campaigns? Do you think it's better to fudge things to help them succeed?

I feel guilty whenever a PC dies (heck, one died in that last fight due to a freak teleporting accident as they fled). But I feel guilty in a totally different way seeing as how it's 4 years later and everything they did was a at a loss.

Maybe call in the cavalry. That non-descript dude lurking in the background at various points who steps up and rallies 'the troops'. Not to win it for them but to offer a shot at redemption. A wizard who holds time still to give the players another chance but can only hold it for so long. The kid you saved in passing three weeks ago who's Dad and his mates turn up with a handful of healing potions and surprising skill with a scythe after years in the fields.

Build these 'backdoors' in the same way as programmers do and there's, hopefully, a plausible intervention on hand throughout the campaign. They might still fail but a glorious fail is better than a total fail

 

[athos]

It sounds like your players care more about their characters than the mission at hand. I really like that !

Seriously though, maybe if they are supposed to die to save the world, or fight to the death for the world, then they should have premade characters that are given them that they have no attachment to. How many people in real life care enough about something or someone to die?

You obviously ran a fun campaign for those 4 years and the players really have come to identify with their avatars in the game. This is a good thing, it means they had fun and enjoyed RPing their characters.

I wouldn't sweat it about them not winning in the end. Life goes on, the game goes on, the bad guys get stronger, the good guys get weaker, but their PCs (which they obviously attached to) get to live to fight another day.

 

[anest1s]

If I was Orcus, I wouldn't bother with mortals...I wouldn't even show that I could kill Gods because they would obviously team up against me. I would wait for a good opportunity. But IF I could get them all by myself, then they WOULD team up, and I couldn't bother with mortals anywayz...except if I have that many spare troops (?)

However Good Gods will be a bit distracted, and mortals would be left on their own luck..no wait, on the hands of some evil minor deities who see the opportunity to grow in power. So while the "Immortals" fight, mortals are suffering from the consequences of their fight. And since your players can't fight Orcus right now, maybe they could help the mortals survive, till they can.

 

[lin_fusan]

Oryan -

I would definitely have Orcus kill the player's god. Then this next chapter of the campaign would be either trying to bring the god back to life or getting revenge on Orcus and his minions.

Since Dead Gods is from Planescape, I take it you have a Planescapy kind of campaign? To mitigate the impact of the PC losing his/her god, they can quest for a power key which could hold enough divine energy for the PC to continue on with their spells.

The caveat would be to talk to the player and see if you can come up with an acceptable solution to a slight power drop in the divine character's power. Sometimes a player doesn't mind losing a bit of power if they become the center of the story.

As for failure, one way to spin it is to say that the PCs were the only ones who tried. They may have failed, but if they didn't even try (in terms of the whole campaign, not the last minute retreat), then Orcus would have won earlier.

 

[Kingreaper]

Oryan -

I would definitely have Orcus kill the player's god. Then this next chapter of the campaign would be either trying to bring the god back to life or getting revenge on Orcus and his minions.

Perhaps have a small aspect of the gods power take up residence in its followers. Especially the one that came closest to the wand.

The PC may be guilt-stricken at the failure, but has been handed an even bigger burden to shoulder. And they can't give up now, can they?

 

[NN]

some thoughts

- generally, let the players know that its The Final Battle so they can choose heroic sacrifice

- the ideal adventure is written so that failiure is fun

- in the OPs example, it seems the problem is not so much that they failed, but the rubbish manner of their failiure. They didnt last 3 rounds and they made a dumb - no, unbelievable - mistake leaving the Macguffin just lying around.

If the BBEG had wrenched the macguffin from the bloodspattered grasp of a dying hero while her despairing comrades fled for their lives, that would have been cool, yes?