What was the fastest mass party killing you've ever experienced in a fair, reasonable way?
My party just lost 2/3 guys to a suitcase of C4 on session 3. Admittedly, it was also detonated by the lone survivor to kill some Slenderman/Resident Evil Iron Maiden hybrid horror in the process.
Playing Dark heresy, disembark from a drop ship for our group of acolytes to be raked with a burst heavy bolter fire...
enough degress of success to hit everyone in the group, TPK session 2 after spending session 1 traveling on a ship to destination planet doing shitty small menial tasks only to be executed by firing squad as soon as the door opens.
I'd love to watch that encounter play out.
it was 15 minutes setup and settle into game, 10 minutes describe the planet as the shuttle approached the surface, 5 minutes GM rolling attacks and players rolling critical damage effects then 2 of the guys just sighed and went home.
it's at that point the group realised despite the GMs love the 40k universe and amazing scene setting skills he was too much of a tabletop gamer to run a game that wasnt going to just be combat encounters all night every week.
See, we were in the basement of a restaurant with this thing, with my character unconscious, one friend's character desperately trying to shoot a chain attached to my leg off of me, every hostage we were sent to save and backup NPC dead, and the survivor a block away running for his life with the remote activator.
The bomb was detonated, and our DM pulled a "rocks fall, people die".
Rule #1 of DMing.
Never start with travel.
Any particular reason for this?
There's no point. Characters want to start with control and see where it takes them.
I have 4 great examples, oldest to most recent.
1) AD&D2 forgotten realms setting. A friend rolled a wild mage. Tried to cast light on the paladin (i.e. me), and ended up dropping a boulder me. Since we were climbing up into a cave the boulder promptly rolled down and killed the rest of the party. Total party wipe 2nd session.
2) AD&D2 Forgotten Realms Setting. I was playing an Elf Druid/Wizard. Party had this "bright" idea to assault a castle without gathering any information ahead of time. I hid myself very thoroughly with magic. I was the only person who survived. Best part is I solo collected the entire party and reincarnated them all. Lmao, several of them were NOT happy with their new races...
3) AD&D2 Grey Hawk setting. I joined a long term campaign because a player quit when his Rogue died. I was invited to continue playing my megalomaniac Elfling* Rogue from another campaign. Party talked me into soloing a dragon. I successfully killed it. Party threatened me and then attacked me to steal my treasure so I killed the rest of the party. Don't threaten an obviously insane rogue...
* Elfling is a 1/2 elf, 1/2 halfling from Dark Sun. How he got to Grey Hawk is a long story. Summary is certain death or break a Staff of Power, I broke the staff and successfully survived getting thrown to a random plane.
4) Dark Heresy 1st session. I'm an Assassin. Party gets into a pinch. I stealth and do recon. I inform party an overwhelming force is ahead. They insist we can handle it. So I hide and take up over watch as a sniper. I tell the others to proceed carefully. They run around the bend like they are invincible. Everyone but me dies in the 1st round of combat. I retreat...I mean I "strategically withdrew" to base to report what happened. Armed with a new party (i.e. everyone else had to roll new characters), we proceed to carefully pick off the enemies that. If the party had listened to my plan the 1st time no one would have died...
I have a related story. 2-4 times I completely wrecked a campaign.
1) GURPS Supers campaign. I’m playing a mutant that has a damage ability (area, selective effect), and expanded senses so I don’t target allies. I witnessed a group of murderers having a secret meeting. I killed all of them, and then their bosses. By the 3rd session there was no storyline because I solo killed all the long term enemies.
2) Star Wars D20. I'm playing a demolitionist. 1st session I negotiate my way into a bag of explosives to distract an enemy army. With the party running distraction, I literally blow up the building. Unfortunately a party member that hadn't been introduced yet died because he was in said building...
3) Same campaign as 2...PC now an elite trooper. The emperor's hand has me cornered in a space station. After confirming the rest of the party successfully withdrew into our ship, I proceed to blow up as many outer windows as I can get to. Almost the entire Emperor's Hand dies immediately because they aren't wearing armor that contains a life support system.
4) Same campaign as 2...PC now a bounty hunter. Our luck has run out. An entire Imperial Armada has tracked us to a planet in the outer sector. I remotely blow the spaceport as Vader's landing craft arrives (GM ret-con so Vader survives). During the chaos, while in stolen power armor modified to have thrusters and life support, I fly into space intent on boarding an Imperial cruiser. Meanwhile the rest of the party has goaded some pirates into performing some hit and run maneuvers to distract the Imperial fleet. During the chaos, I board one of the Imperial ships and a kidnap a Grand Moff. I blow up said Imperial cruiser so the party has an opportunity to pick me up. I force her to give me some information that I later use to blow up and disable Kuat Ship Yard. Final plan works better than anticipated. I manage to steal Kuat Ship Yard. Campaign was supposed to keep going but GM ended it there.
One party member had Explosive Runes scarred into their face and always wore a mask because of this. He died in combat, the other party members assumed they were lying about the runes and assumed the mask was valuable.
It didn't go well.
>party just lost 2/3 guys to a suitcase of C4
>it was also detonated by the lone survivor
So, the others were killed before the explosion? Were they bludgeoned to death with the suitcase or what?
1) 1978 or 79, playing D&D. We're using the same PCs each session, sort of, but you can't call it a campaign because there's nothing actually linking each session other than the PCs. It's true murderhobo play, although that term hasn't been coined yet. Anyway DM pulls out the brand spanking new "Steading of the Hill Giant Chief" and we're psyched. A published dungeon has to be better than a homemade one, right? Of course, we completely ignored the LEVELS suggestion. About 30 minutes later the last PC is killed trying to run away. We all laughed, took a break for pizza, rolled up some buffer PCs, and started again.
2) Early 80s, refereeing Traveller, 2nd session, using the "Shadows" adventure to trip up the players who need to get to X by Y to do A for B. Alien pyramid shoots particle beam, ship damaged, time for a dungeon crawl to shut down the weapon. Planet's atmosphere means vacc suits can only last so long without repairs. Players putz around, bad rolls & bad luck & bad decisions, one player is getting more and more pissed. He convinces the others he can pilot the ship to evade the weapon. He couldn't. TPK. Game picks up next session with new PCs meeting the same patron. Patron's job? "I hired these guys a couple of weeks ago to do X, but their ship crashed. I want you to find out what happened."
>Fair, reasonable way
Depends on what you mean by this. Fair as far as everyone was doing equally well but we couldn't succeed in the end? Lost to a troll ambush that took out two PCs and all of our horses.
Fair as logic is concerned? We were planning a level 1 ambush against some CR 1/3rd NPC class scrubs. After one asshole blew our cover the bandits crit three people in one round to death, a little over an hour into the first session.
The guy who lived was the person who detonated it- killing us.
That's extremely badass.
Reminds me of that greentext about rats if anyone has the file.
>Party is investigating series of caves filled with hobgoblins
>They know hobgoblins are good strategists and organised soldiers
>They put the sorceress at the front of the march, down a long, single-file corridor
>She gets shot to shit by archers waiting at the end in one turn
>Cleric is next in line and dies the same way
>Tank is all the way at the back and books it
how the fuck can anyone be that stupid? Literally even my first ever game I wouldn't have put a sorcerer up front
Look m80, I think it's very cool and charitable for you to be DMing games for all the local "special" kids.
But you're going to have to help them out a bit more, the whole learn by trial and error thing doesn't work so well for them.
A friend of mine once told me of a lvl 5 party he was in that fucked around with a Grizzly bear on their first session and critfailed themselves into a mass grave.
Blue Half-Dragon T-Rexes dyed green wiped out half the party.
"I rolled a 36 on my Knowledge Nature check, why couldn't I tell they were blue?" They looked green.
Wiped out all but 3 of the party and a mass reincarnate spell was used to bring us back.
So the opening of Half Life 1 was shit?
Travel is fine to open with IF the group has agreed to the starting premise. But yeah if you keep the railroad going longer than 5 to 10 minutes of scene-setting, you're going to fuck the campaign.
Legit tough, but not overly threatening Mind flayer as a boss in the dungeon we almost finished up during the last session.
Half goliath or some shit psychic warrior(3.5e) tries to use +2 oversized greatsword we juuuuuuuuust found a minute ago without identifying. Cursed of course, now berserking half whatever psychic warrior asshole starts going berserk. I(Favored soul of Moradin) gets turned into giblets within one action, with the other 3 guys getting mangled by the mind flayer. This was maybe a half hour into the days session, we all just went home and worked on our re rolls.
The Age of Worms as my first D&D campaign still gives me PTSD flashbacks.
That's kind of a dickish move though. Since you're clearly playing 3.pf and I sincerely implore you to reconsider, 36 is genius-level info, it's enough for knowing the tiniest of details, in which blues and greens most likely differ.
Still, great job and I'm sure they decided every bit of suffering.
had a party put the thief in the back of the marching formation. he was the one looking for traps.
> they cross room
>first guy steps o pressure plate
>roof drops
>massive damage, 4/5 die