Party is checking out old, forgotten temple in a mountain range

>Party is checking out old, forgotten temple in a mountain range
>slowly crossing a very long, narrow, rickety rope bridge over a misty chasm to go from one part of the temple to another
>Halfway across the bridge a lone monk, last remaining disciple of the temple's faith, sits on the bridge and forbids passage
>Says that he won't allow the party to go through unless they prove they completed the trials in the previous area of the temple and present him the talismans from the challenge rooms
>Players threaten him with violence
>Point out, in and out of character, that the bridge is old and starting conflict is liable to break the bridge and send them all falling to their deaths
>Party attacks the monk anyway because they "don't have time for your riddles"
>Barbarian literally describes himself bodyslamming the monk
>Bridge collapses
>Everyone dies
>Players are mad at me because the bridge that I described as flimsy and old was actually flimsy and old

The players are saying that I should roll back the deaths because we've been playing for six months and it wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion to the game but I've warned these guys so many times their stupid bullshit would get them killed and now I'm making a thread to show them later so I can explain that I'm not being unfair. Even before *EXPLICITLY* warning these people that starting a fight on the rope bridge would risk destroying the rope bridge, I described the bridge as weak and flimsy multiple times and even made a point of pointing out that even everyone being on it at once was causing it to creak ominously.

My players will be reading this, please explain to them that they're idiots

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youtube.com/watch?v=cV0tCphFMr8
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As the DM, you should've known better than to pit such a challenge against such a group. If you had any idea that they would react with violence, you shouldn't have given them that encounter. Especially not as an attempt to 'break them out of their ways' or anything like that.

If you think they're idiots - and I agree that they're idiots - you shouldn't be DMing for them in the first place. Find a better group or learn how to properly entertain idiots, if you're going to DM for idiots.

If you used those exact words then yeah, they are idiots and should stay dead,

Okay, well if they read this thread

You guys are straight up retarded, and as much fun as that is, when somebody gives you a "heads up, this is dangerous" don't get pissed when you die.

To you, the DM, I would ask if the players were able to make any saves to catch ropes, did they roll for the actual damage taken for the fall (what was at the bottom of this misty chasm and was it survivable)?

And finally, never rollback a death. It will kill your future games, I guarantee it.

>My players will be reading this, please explain to them that they're idiots

Seems kinda petty desu

Eh, you didnt have to kill them, you could have just handwaved some shit like they fall into a river at the bottom or something. So whatever task they were on fails and whatever consequences go with that

>If you used those exact words then yeah, they are idiots and should stay dead,

This. Decisions have consequences

>wizard didn't cast featherfall and drag his friends corpses to a local city to have them revived or loot them and live like a noble.

what a mook

Nothing like spending a month of game time trying to crawl out of a chasm.

This, pretty much. Know your group. If you're playing with idiots and want to continue playing with idiots, it's your job to accommodate their retarded antics.

That said, they can't really be angry at you. Play like murderhobos, die like murderhobos.

Has your party never seen Monty Python's Holy Grail?

youtube.com/watch?v=cV0tCphFMr8

This and this
Also, what said, was there rolls made for saves or a chance at survival? Cause bridge falls you die is kinda rocks fall you die tier shitty

No dude the entire crux of "rocks fall" being so shitty is that it's arbitrary and usually a punishment for pissing off the GM. Sometimes actions have consequences, and not every consequence allows a last-minute miracle from RNGesus. If you walk into a nuclear reactor wearing nothing but a smile, you just die; you don't get to hope for le epix nat 20 fortitude save to save you from your suicidal choices.

Sounds like you've got one of those groups that thinks they're in a Final Fantasy world and nothing they encounter is above their challenge level because the game is designed for them to slowly grind their way to level 99 without thinking.

Assuming you didn't make the whole thing up, you're in the right and hopefully your players learned to pull their heads out of their asses.

If they wanted to murderhobo the monk they could have at least had the intelligence to shoot spells and arrows at him from solid ground.

The party went full retard. You never go full retard.

Why not give them a chance to grab shit as they fall? A chance to survive? If it was just "xD barbar body slams the monk, the ropes snap, you all die" then you did something wrong.

Featherfall only covers 60 feet user, any further than that and you're fucked.

Right but they were on a rope bridge. A Dex save to grab a rope or plank of the bridge seems reasonable

Possibly because he made it a point to direct them to complete the other trials before they proceed. I mean he could've just had them come in anyway but find nothing I suppose.

Depends where they were on the bridge, like if they were in the middle it wouldn't save them, as it was already rickety and it wouldn't makes sense for the rope or plank not to just give way as well with the sudden weight and stuff.

Not in 3.5

I just want to thank you for actually killing those faggots for being so stupid.

Cast it when you get within 60 feet of the bottom
Right cause it's never been done in media before. Indiana Jones totally didn't catch the bridge

It covers a round per level, with speed of fall 60 feet per round.

Also OP fuck you and your riddles. It's like the most boring CRPG with forced retarded puzzles.

Also your party is retarded too.

>You can not travel into this next area until you have spoken to the relevant NPC questgivers and completed the relevant fetchquests.

Here's a hint. D&D games are not MMOs.

Did you roll anything for the bridge s damage?
Did they have zero flying/feather fall?

>Go back and solve a bunch of puzzles to get the magic macguffins or you can't advance to the next level

Honestly I'd rather fall into a giant chasm that do your dorky video game quest.

...Why not just have the monk interrupt the attack if you were this intent on railroading?

Indiana Jones and other media doesn't have a DM that dictates the strength of the rope/planks tho.


I guess the only explanation is that the Wizard was flat-footed or rolled below the Barbarian on initiative.

What part of "old, forgotten temple in a mountain range" did you not understand? It's not like there wasn't a ton of different options.
What's next? "The guard in the secret military bunker requires a verified pass or he won't open the blast door? Waaah it's MMO, GM is a fag!"

Death as the stakes in the middle of the plot is fucking retarded. They were being done, but there are a hundred things you could do other than killing them and tanking the campaign. Like another user said, have them fall in a river, go downstream, lose equipment, now it's a survival scenario. Have their enemy, or an enemy of their enemy save them. They wake up in cages, in life debt to someone. Have them end up in sort sort of twilight between life and death. Now their quest is to get back to the living world, and the clock is ticking.

They were being idiots and you handled their poor choice correctly (if you're a player and you ignore the "are you SURE," that's on you) but tanking your game over it is retarded.

To be fair you have the benefit of hind-sight, but I agree that perhaps he have them fall into a survival scenario with the offending character getting the worst of it.

I would have given them reflex checks to grab hold of rope or something else to avoid falling to their death.

Maybe split any of the surviving members of the party into those that are on the right and wrong sides of the bridge.

>I would have given them reflex checks to grab hold of rope or something else to avoid falling to their death
Wouldn't that just have them swinging into a rock wall?

Good point.
>Now take 4d6 (maybe reflex for half) and make a strength check to hold onto the rope.

Please please ignore the mlp quote

what the fuck is a quibble

Uh no, I actually won't you horse-fucker faggot.
Get the hell out of here and go back to >>/mlp

>what the fuck is google
A fight

I deserve that but to be fair it's a screenshot from tvtropes.com

He has no control over what the tvtropes page quotes you dickwad

>OP gets assblasted and tanks campaign because he wants his players to play the way HE wants to play, not they

diaf

>tvtropes
Still a faggot who should get out.

This is what I don't get. It can't be fun for OP to tank his own campaign? Why not pivot, instead of killing everyone.

Why do gms think death is the only consequence?

Death wasn't the stakes though. Monk said "you have yet to prove your worth; fuck off" and the party threw a suicidal tantrum. This wasn't a high-stakes situation; it was the GM including a bit of scenery and the players killing themselves with it of their own volition.

>"In the room is a warm hearth and a blazing fire that--"
>lol I cover myself in oil and tar and jump in the flame
>WTF how did i burn 2 deth??!! SHIT ROCKS FALL GM REEEEEEE

The only way the GM could of saved them is to take the horrible stance of "PCs don't die unless I say so" and hold their hand instead of letting them do what they want.

Shit analogy. An abandoned temple is not a secret military bunker. You can't get a military clearance pass by going back a level and collecting all the power tokens in the previous bunker. A soldier at a guard post has a motivation. What's the monk's motivation besides acting a plot device to force the PC's to complete the DM's contrived fetch mission?

The PCs screwed up, but the DM shouldn't have put them into such a lame scenario in the first place.

Come come now I googled bridge collapses trope and it was the first result
>inb4 Google still a faggot

>What's the monk's motivation
We don't know, the party threw a suicide party instead of fucking figuring that out. Could be that the monk had a perfectly good reason, perhaps the temple is fucking dangerous and he sits out here as a guard to prevent dicks from mucking about with dangerous shit? There's lots of options but the party decided to kill themselves like morons rather than just talk to the guy for five minutes and figure out what was up.

Oh no you don't, you have control over your own screen. Better learn some photoshop or something

Lick my stick you horse-fucker apologist

Quick, what's the guard's motivation? Cool, now how is it any different than the monk's motivation? Both are guarding a place and keeping people that should be there out. Both require some sort of outside proof that the party should be allowed in. Both of the proofs require effort on the part of the PCs to obtain.

They still could have killed the monk, they just would have had to do in in a way that doesn't break the bridge, with them on it.

Like arrows, or whatever non-explody spells the wizard has.

I could not disagree with this more. A big part of the fun in these games comes from things being challenging or new. I would argue that not only is it not the GM's "job" to give his players encounters that don't require them to think outside of the box, but that it's bad GMing.

What's the point of this stuff if everything you throw at them you make sure to do in a way where their "Plan A" solves it? They're human beings, capable of intelligent thought and adaptation. They signed up for a game of make-believe, where their options aren't constrained by lines of code but by their imagination. If their knee-jerk reaction is to beat everything they meet tot death, give them something they actually have to exchange words with every once in a while.

As for OP's example in specific, whatever. Maybe it shouldn't have been entirely lethal. Who knows. I don't really care. But the idea that it's wrong for the GM to throw something out there that's capable of foiling his players irks me.

Sounds like a completely legit osr encounter.
What I personally would have done is roll damage, as applied to both character and gear. A reduced (not half that's for sure) amount for grabbing a rope and swinging into a cliff, which would require both a save, and a check to see if that side of the bridge snaps again from the weight once it hits the cliff.

But that's only because I play a system where falling damage is pretty lethal in its own right (if this cliff was at the damage cut off you'd be looking at an average of 90 damage, in a system where taking 9 drops an average human, 21 for your average pc).

Indy wrapped a rope around his leg before he cut the bridge

m.youtube.com/watch?v=WXjt0RgxcMs

Motivation does matter, If he's there protecting outsiders from themselves. You might be able to convince him that you're desperate and suicidal enough not to be worried about the consequences.

Or that he's no longer duty bound to protect a forgotten temple.

Or that they're honest, and will leave the temples treasures unmolested.

Or any number of things the party didn't bother to try.

Fuck your hug box game. The thrill is in the danger. If you die from stupid then you deserve it.

>whaaaa, rpgs are harder than hold right click to move forward!

Your players are super dumb, OP. But in the interests of not ending the game.

"The rope bridge snaps and you all begin plummeting to the ground below. Just before you impact the ground the world whites out..."

"When you awaken you are all sprawled on the ground in a tiny stream. A few feet above you is the remains of the bridge, much smaller than you remember. Nowhere near the height and length you remembered."

"The monk is gone and the temple as well. Briefly you barely hear a voice on the wind 'You are not worthy...'"

Option 1:
>go back to previous area
>find a platoon of other soldiers
>kill them and take their uniforms and identity cards
>return to sentry post and gain access
Option 2:
>barbarian bodyslams sentry
>sentry raises alarm
>entire base shows up to kill you
Seems fine to me.

>group of people come up wanting to gain entry
>tell them they need a pass
>they leave
>they come back 20 minutes later in uniforms
>uniforms don't fit quite right
>I know the guy who's name is on that one
>the pictures on these passes don't look anything like them
>tell them sure, get up like I'm going to open the door
>lock down the room and hit the alarm instead

>literally would have been easier to google the answer than posting on Veeky Forums asking the question

It means that you have a stunted vocabulary.

>What's the monk's motivation besides acting a plot device to force the PC's to complete the DM's contrived fetch mission?
Obvious. While trespassers are busy completing challenges and collecting talismans, monk grabs what holy relics he could find and escapes into the wilderness. You don't just hand out your church's property to some murderhobo chucklefucks.

>some guy comes walking past my post in the dark
>"halt, who goes there?"
>"he backs away before i get a good look
>k

>report it to my sergeant and have another cup of coffee
>group of soldiers in a truck show up a couple hours later
>check everyone's papers
>they seem fine but i can't get a good look at anyone in the dark

>suddenly i start feeling dizzy and nauseous
>chow hall food, amirite?
>wave them through and call for a relief sentry

Sounds like a dex save to me

Did you actually roll for damage for falling hundreds of feet into a chasm? If you did and that killed everyone, you did everything right. If you just said "okay you die" I still agree with your choice but can see a bit of wriggle room for the players to complain even though it's entirely their fault. Either way you're a good GM, you just may have made a mistake in how you handled their deaths by having it automatically happen instead of basing it on mechanics of gameplay. Your players will hopefully learn a lesson to stop being such dumb murderhobos and think when they're in dangerous situations.

At the point I think op is a troll. That question has been asked many times but not answered