How was your first TPK like? How did you feel?

How was your first TPK like? How did you feel?

>tpk
what?

Never done one because im not a shit gm.

WELL, my players wanted to trick the goblin king into fighting his champion, by one of the PCs using a disguise spell, and telling the king his champion had betrayed him. The king took the disguised PC and some of his guards down to where the champion was in the lower level, right near the rest of the party's hiding spot. As the king throws open the door to the champion's room, the disguised PC sneaks into the side passage where the rest of the party is. The king tells the champion "you dun fucked up," the champion says "no way, who lied to you?" and so when the king turns to where the disguised PC was, he's understandably confused an enraged. Within ten seconds, the goblins find the party in the broom closet they were hiding in and a melee erupts in the middle of the goblin fort. The whole place goes on high alert, the PCs don't try to make an escape as they hear the goblins shouting for reinforcements, and they get killed by the half-demon controlling the tribe.

I felt a little bad for killing them, but their plan was dumb, and they really should've fled when they heard the shouts for reinforcement. It certainly made the half-demon into a credible threat, considering she burned them at a pyre while they were still barely alive.

That's responsibility of the players to act smart, not you. Like the death of a character, TPK can be awesome. Braveheart it or even say something about the tragedy of their failure. Above all, use it as an anchor for setting up the next party 5, 20, 50 years late. Don't waste death. Use it, make it meaningful.

It was godawful. Literally the first encounter in this one campaign, we strolled into a graveyard and were attacked by a bunch of zombies and some kind of graveyard golem. Two rounds and we were all killed. We were told "you could have run away."

I was both surprised and confused. We were close to the end of the campaign. I was a merman fighter and my buddies were a mage and a rogue.

We were up against the BBEG's bodygaurd, who was some kind of phantom creature. He was tough, so tough that we weren't doing nearly enough damage. Our mage had a spell that worked only about 1/3 of the time that summoned a whale god that could help us out.

Frustrated and low on HP, we decided to try the summoning because it was our last hope. Mage summons the whale god, but it goes wrong, very, very wrong. The whale god attacks us instead of the enemy. It did enough that it 1-shot all three of us.

We took a chance and it failed.

>summon whale god
what the hell kind of spell was that?

Never had a TPK because I always survive, even if everyone else dies. Feels good

Hilarious.
We rolled up another group and went into the dungeon again, this time better informed.

I mean, you could have done. On the other hand, if you're used to games where fights are assumed to be balanced and winnable, and the GM doesn't tell you 'in this game, some fights you need to just run away from', that's a dick move. If you're not aware of the assumptions of the game, stuff like this will happen.

A very risky one. IIRC, the mage used it a couple of times in earlier encounters and it did nothing. Then he got like, the worst roll he could and the only time the whale god was successfully summoned, it turned on us and killed us all. We thought that it would be our salvation, but it ended up being our undoing.

total party kill.

There was that, but as someone who dm's I don't think you're setting a great tone for the game if the first encounter is unwinnable.

Never been part of one as a GM because my players are competent, and never have been in one as a player because I and the other players are competent.

Just in last session, we pulled the levers in Tomb of Horrors, which should result in total party kill, but I just grabbed our Rogue and DD:d to safety, our bard cast fly, our cleric cast indestructable sphere and our Paladin just hung on and Misty Step:d back to safety.

Supposed to be a TPK trap, but everyone survived without taking a single point of damage.

>I don't think you're setting a great tone for the game if the first encounter is unwinnable
Iunno. If that's the feel he wants, I think it's legit. A lot of horror games, and a decent amount of OSR stuff, absolutely run on 'some fights are unwinnable' as an assumption of the game. And starting with that absolutely lets players know thatn he's not fucking about with a high lethality game.
But.
HE SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU THIS BEFORE THE GAME. Letting you assume that this was a standard 'fights will be won' set up and just smacking you down rather than communicating properly is a dick move. Like, at least when you're close to death pointing out 'you guys know you can run, right?' before the TPK is good GMing.

Source: runs LotFP.

retconned, GM was a pussy

>be me
>second ever RP session
>playing Dark Heresy
>barely survived crashing a ship into a planet after emergency warp-exit
>even barelier stopped the bleeding on the other, mostly unconscious PCs
>in comes NPC
>he is a psyker
>"let me try pushing my psy rating so I heal better"
>demon.gif
>by the time its dead everyone's bleeding again
>"let me try again"
>demonhost.png

And that GM was never seen again.
Sounds made up but it was on roll20

>Shadowrun
>Introduce new player during the game
>Meet him in a burger king
>GM had him as the johnson, delivering us the next run
>He was a paranoid fucker, and rigged himself to a shitton of explosives wired to a Dead Man's switch
>Tap him on the shoulder with my cyberinjector fingers
>New guy depresses his thumb to get me to back off
>New guy has no idea how a Dead Man's switch actually works, and actually set off the explosives, blowing up the entire burger king
The DM retconned it because it was so damn stupid, I kinda wish he didn't just to see if anyone could have survived those soak rolls.

I've never had a TPK, but I've had two near falls that still ended the game. In one, everyone died to a trap except one player who lost his arm. He then immediately stabbed himself in the throat rather than have to play a guy with one arm.

The other, in cyberpunk, everyone died in a boss fight except one guy. He then went home, leaving the building I had specifically told them they could not leave without getting these bombs removed from their skulls. His head exploded.

What was supposed to just be a fun throwaway encounter against some skeles ended up killing the entire party due to the map having a natural chokepoint that the players could not get past, and the players all sticking in a tight group with the skeles throwing out some AOEs.

Don't spoonfeed the newfags

I didn't give a shit about the character anymore, so I didn't care for the TPK either.

Group entered a room, there was a medusa and a flesh golem: half the party didn't save against petrification, the rest got mopped up quickly. Doesn't help that one member wasn't present at the time.

On the other hand, with another group I was part of another TPK by the GM (who doesn't fuck around) and I feeled bad for losing my character because I like playing her.

Thankfully, because he was GMing for us for the first time he retconned our deaths because it was very early in the session and clearly told us that this was our first and last warning. If we die again, we are Dead.

Bodaks are just bad monsters to put into encounters. Despite having a low DC 12 fort save its a save or die on a gaze against the party that happens every round. I shit you not the level 10ish party consistently rolled 2s and 3s on all of their fort saves and died off in the first 2 rounds. They were hardy warriors too not some flimsy spell casters.

Lesson learned give strong hints of lethal gaze creatures before hand even if its "just one" and never trust RNG to make a encounter "tense, but mechanically easy"