How open are you to a bad end? As in, the players fail, the world falls into darkness, and all hope is lost...

How open are you to a bad end? As in, the players fail, the world falls into darkness, and all hope is lost? Not necessarily setting out to engineer one, but if the party gets wiped by the BBEG or whatever, do you roll with it or do some kind of reset?

It an endless cycle. That also means it can happen the other way around too.

BBEG
>ugh

Or whatever. Doesn't have to be an individual.

Just means the next campaign is set after the baddies win.

>bbeg

ugh

>ugh
blugh

I usually try to shy away from having the stakes be so high.

The kingdom falls to ruin is usually as high as I'll go, and I'm more than happy to let that happen if that's what it comes to.

I never was a big fan of "The fate of the world hangs in the balance" and all that

Most of the time I do shorter games that don't get into the high levels so the really crazy end game shit never happens.

What is tg's aversion to bbeg? Every story needs a reason to fight. What are you doing if you're not out fighting against the forces of evil and whatnot? Making epic characters that just retire because they've had their fill of killing random monsters? Any good story has some person or organization(led by a person or group) that is the main cause of strife in the setting. What's with the
>BBEG
>ugh
Meme?

Yeah, sure why not. Because in our darkest time the light shine the brightest. Now it up to the DM if he want to resolve his bad end or explore it more or leave it as is.
(me)
Add on to this, I don't like bad end though. They remind me that I failed. I would at least like to mend my mistake.
It a bad one. Someone got into an autistic screech because they found it on tvtrope.

I'm fine with a bad end happening as long as the players know that they could have prevented it had they chosen differently. Maybe because they chose poorly, maybe because they took a risk that didn't pay off when there was a less risky option available.

I'll accept a TPK due to the players having really bad luck. I'm not a fan of fudging the dice*, so I have to accept bad luck.

What I don't like is when the GM makes the bad end the only possible option.

*I've played in games where the GM fudged the dice in the players favor. While we sometimes didn't notice the GM was fudging them, we always noticed that combat had less risk. Certain players always kept pulling more and more risky stuff, which kept succeeding due to dice fudging by the GM.

I'm not fine with it at all.

I want to escape from my shitty failure of a life, not live through two of them.

I'm an emo depressed fuck so I love when bad ends happen. If thats what happens then let it happen. Stupid to always expect some happy disney ending.

>players having really bad luck
>actively decide to never check anything, don't prepare for delves at all, after a single fight together have not found a good way to synergize and organize themselves as a group
>bad luck

They're not here you know, they'll never know you said they were idiots.

I feel you have to be open to that if you're going to set the stakes that high. I mean, otherwise the stakes are completely false. No, I wouldn't reset the timeline to the beginning to allow the players to try to prevent what already happened. It happened, and we go from there.

I once wrote basically a "worst" end where the BBEG awakens with full power and the party has to either escape their plane of existence altogether or be locked away in a dying world where all connections to all gods and magic have been severed.

It's just one autistic memelord, don't mind him.

>but if the party gets wiped by the BBEG
I feel bad for this never happening. I'm some kind of pussy who likes long-lived PCs who get involved in the story (and doesn't want to have to start trying to weave a replacement back in from scratch)

>or whatever, do you roll with it or do some kind of reset?
I don't usually continue in the same setting with any significant continuity beyond the odd cameo.

>No, I wouldn't reset the timeline to the beginning to allow the players to try to prevent what already happened
I meant more resetting the party wipe encounter to give them a second shot at taking down the bad guy, not the entire campaign.

Did you party decide to legalize gay marriage?

Nah; the worst end is if they allow the Bahamut/Tiamat version of Crystal Dragons to revive with full power. The gods don't want a third undying dragon god on their hands, so they'd sever that world's connection to the rest of the planes to trap it in its own hell.

What are you talking about? Victory of the players IS the bad end. Fuckers want to conquer everything and crush anything that threatens their vision.

>How open are you to a bad end?
This is basically everyday life for me, what else is new?

>Be me
>Running a Sam Raimi-style dark fantasy game in Savage Worlds
>After spending several sessions running in fear of ancient evil's minions, players start discovering ways to work against it
>Elves believe several hidden artifacts may hold key to salvation.
>Players go to a sunken observatory to look for one
>Fight sea trolls and undead pirates
>Encounter a "Legendary Guardian Crab"
>Literally just the "Large Crab" entry from the bestiary, not even a Wild Card. Name I gave is just a piece of orcish folklore
>Party wipes and campaign ends
>The realm is doomed to eternal cold darkness because of a giant fucking crab

That's why you have focus pivots; nothing wakes up a party to what they've become when they realize that that group of "bounty hunters" they slew was literally an adventuring party on a mission to stop some suspicious characters.

>>actively decide to never check anything, don't prepare for delves at all, after a single fight together have not found a good way to synergize and organize themselves as a group
That would be them making poor choices.

Bad luck is when they made all the right choices and only failed because of the dice rolls. For example, missing every attack they attempted in the fight when they only need a 5 or higher on a d20 to hit.

I've never seen luck that bad. But I'll accept it if I ever do.

>They're not here you know, they'll never know you said they were idiots.
I usually find some way for my PC to question their PCs intelligence. So the players know.

Not that they stop with their PC making questionable choices. Especially when it's more amusing for all of us for them to continue.

As the DM, a bad end is the only way I can cum. I've tried strangling hookers, but it just doesn't do it for me any more.

The best possible ending to my campaign is already a bad end by the standards of most other campaigns. The actual bad end entails the annihilation of spacetime and the end of all existence, which is a fuckup not entirely outside the realm of the players' capabilities.

Sure. Depends on how high the stakes were to begin with. An orcish invasion isn't going to be a problem forever because someone is going to push them back. Azathoth being summoned is game over with no continues.

I did a bad end once.
In which one of the PCs and by proxy the rest of the party, got horribly manipulated by his familiar, who loved his master so goddamn much, he managed to achieve an empty world devoid of anyone except for him and his now immortal master.

But other than that, the party got their climatic final fight so they weren't all THAT salty.
We called It Yandere End and moved on

Right now, not so much. I prefer Bittersweet endings more than just bitter ones.

It really depends on my mood: but if I like a GM, then it is for good reason and they can make even a Bad ending good.

Value of story is how much it makes you feel. If you execute the ending well, that's great. I would accept my character dying, and all those plans and dreams he had and tried to fulfill, while being very fun to acomplish in game, also add tragic flavor when they fail. I secretly want my current gm to make my characters life as tragic and complicated, so he becomes unhinged and ruthless. My favorite trope is when revenge consumes the one who tried to bestow it.