You are DMing, and the party gets killed early on the story, be from bad roll of dices or sheer idiocy

youtube.com/watch?v=5NIoZ9wQTEE

Shrodinger's railroading is awesome if you are creative enough. Gotta have a permissive lore though.

>do you finish the story there and tell them to pack their shit

Okay, as a side note, I refuse to believe there is any DM autistic enough to throw players out of their home for dying

fuck that they all wake up in bodies not there own to the laughter of a maniacal wizard."I have given you your lives in exchange for service!" he bellows. they are now under the effect of a geas to do the wizards bidding. He then teleports them back in to the town they were last in. They have a smoke filled orb in addition to there old gear. the wizard contacts them through the orb and tells them he will contact them when he needs them and not to squander their second chance there may not be a third. then use the wizard as a stick to make the plot move forward from time to time of for fun and weird side quests you might want to through their way but might not fit directly with the plot you have in mind.

Tell them to pack their shit, continue the campaign from the perspective of another party, plus consequences of the first party's failure. This can continue down the chain, with parties working through increasing amounts of damage control until the players learn their fucking lesson.

My playstyle boils down to the continuation of the characters' existences or more importantly, narrative. I feel that the death of a character should be a means to advance the story or give it bigger depth, not end it.
>So your luck finally caught up with you in the shape of the dagger of the assassin. You find yourself yet again clinging to life in a withered shell of what you once where. Who murdered you, and for what reason? What insidious conspiracy brought you a second chance, and at what cost?

I think it is too bothersome for the players to create new characters due to the result of poor RNG, or misinterpretation of a situation. A solution would be in the case of death to copy the PC sheet and just give the character a new name so it can be the of the original character. I think it is a lazy solution though as the character in spirit does not die, and you risk getting a party of derivatives in the style of infinity blade.

In my case, if a character reaches a death state from lets say HP loss as a consequence of an either stupid or non-stupid action, then I as a DM would most likely override the game mechanics and instead invoke some form of lighter 'punishment'. For instance, try to feed a mimic (who is described to be on the alert) with sleep inducing herbs and your character will most likely get her hand bit off permanently in my game if your HP reaches the state of death from that action.

That said, I do not want to give my players the impression that I actively prevent their demise. As a DM I must appear to represent the consequences and dangers of the universe they play in. If I do not then my players will not feel that their actions can be challenged, and may then do stupid things or actions that do not align with their characters just for the sake of provoking danger.

Ultimately, it depends on the setting. High lethality campaigns demands blood as sacrifice. Mine demands struggle.

One of my players' character died in the last session (playing DnD 5e Starting Set adventure), but I'm letting him come back because he came up with a good reason for it, and I really dislike killing characters. Also, it's everyone but me's first time playing.
I'm having him come back with detriments though, namely insanity (no mechanical malus for it, just visions), -4 to all rolls with +1 regained every long rest, and a fear of arrows (he was killed by them) which translates to having to roll saving throws when he is hit or targeted but missed by one and being frightened/paralyzed until the end of his next turn if he fails. If he succeeds, he will be immune to it for 24 hours and maybe even gain a bonus. Might even consider a similar approach as with the minus to rolls, meaning that it runs out eventually.

But to answer the OP, I've really never been in a situation like that, so I dunno. I'm tempted to post that "depends on so many factors..." picture, actually.

>foil MY railroad plans, will you?

Good DMing champ.

>the party gets killed early on the story, be from bad roll of dices or sheer idiocy
I switch to a better system.

If they die, they die. If they want to see the end of the story, all they have to do is not die. Now if we get a TPK on session 1 or 2 for some reason, I'll retcon, but if we're a few sessions in and everyone dies then that's that.
I don't agree with pulling punches just because they hurt.

That's it, they're dead. I know that TPKs aren't fun in the moment, but after time passes it will probably become a memorable story. And since they didn't really get anywhere with the plot, it's not like I have to write a whole new campaign.

Depends whether it makes a good story. I'm the sort of faggot GM that basically just pretends to roll half the time.

Heavily depends on what led up to it, if it was my bad for not imparting accurate information, not leaving enough threads to find such or a bad encounter build that was way more than I expected I'll figure something out. If it's through the parties own actions, inaction or general unwillingness to prepare or try to gain an edge then let the dice fall where they may.

I would go for. A new adventure that starts like:

"As your approach, your suspicions are confirmed, there are four slain adventures in this field and further, you are not alone, 3 others stand at a distance. It is unclear if they know eachother. Why did your character come to this place at this time?"

Let them reroll characters. Each character gets a valuable secret.

I had a campaign bloom from this. The players were feeling spiteful and took it out on eachother, they were much too cooperative before, now they where fighting over there own remains for loot. They embraced role-playing more and had their own motives. One player nearly died again and activly hunted the other three for awhile until eventually joining the party. A band of bastards, every one.

This reminds me of one of the most painful and least favorite D&D games I've ever played. At some point before I joined the group, the PCs had been given a quest of some kind. As PCs were killed, the players rolled up new characters and joined the quest already in progress, but by the time I joined, none of the original PCs were still alive, and none of us had any legitimate reasons for continuing towards the goal other than the fact that they were being controlled by the same players. It hit me at that moment that the DM was just going through the motions of running a game, and in his eyes the PCs were completely interchangeable.

Ever since then I've tried to avoid this issue by keeping the desires of the PCs at the front of my mind.

nope, they can make new characters with a related cause to the ones that died though, and we carry on from a slightly different perspective

I ask if they'd like to keep playing in the same world and if so to make new characters. Perhaps connected to the previous ones, to try and pick up the pieces, perhaps not.

I've been gming long enough that if the entire party gets themselves killed early on it is at least 80% their fault or it is a system I've never ran before and have yet to get a knack for planning encounters (in which case it's a oneshot, two shot, or otherwise a short campaign to begin with). If it was a poorly made encounter I'll admit it, and at the very least offer them the chance to scratch the serial numbers off their characters for a different but similar game.

If it was entirely their fault, as in I warned them it was a bad idea and they would die, but they do it anyways, then tough shit; time to reroll.
If it was due to extraordinarily bad luck, then they will probably get a second chance by being captured or something of the like.
If it was entirely my fault, I ask them if they just want to retcon that bit and move on as if it had never happened.

>I'll just completely change enemy behavior so that they'll get captured because apparently that wasn't even on the table before the tpk.
Ya'll bad gms. Ya'll bad gms who probably run encounters where both sides just smash into each other until the pcs numbers out number the bad guy numbers.

Just make it so the PCs can't die. Boom. Problem solved.

The way my game is right now, I'd go the captured/fiat by an archfey/left for dead but didn't die route.
Every player has died at least once by now, and it's severed enough interesting story routes that I've had a fuck of a time reweaving a narrative.
On that note, it really helps if the character's death changes the world somewhat. One's threw a prophecy off the rails, one caused their god to go into a blind rage and one granted a bunch of fairies just the juice they needed to undermine their rival fae. PC death makes things worse for everyone.

Smart people who want information (interrogate you before execution) or to ransom you will capture you. Hungry animals and undead will eat you.

I know someone has probably asked this at one point and time but, is there anymore of this? I'd love to see more of Skelly-Santa

The image contains a book recommendation. I can't even begin to hazard a guess as to why though. Probably a one off idea for tumblr that would never have a low budget movie made for tv.

If it comes down to it, i'll sacrifice a bit of immersion and realism to prevent everyone at the table from having a bad time.
Because it's a fucking game, and I guess I'm a bad gm for not forgetting that it is one

I see waaaaaaaay too much of my parenting methods in this comic.

nice blog faggot
give your children up for adoption, they're a lost cause

I did this too. Sometimes you gotta think on your feet.

Worse, one of the players actually missed the session where everyone died, so next session started with his solo encounter with the monster that killed everyone. He had no idea why everyone was telling him to die, it was hilarious.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.

Hogfather is the Father Christmas to the Discworld. Someone tries to kill Hogfather and Death takes his place because Discworld Death is bro-tier as fuck.

Wow what a boring a faggy person you are.

Ran into this issue not too long ago, in one of my players' session 0 (had one for each character before they met up, was dank af). He was dueling this Ogre-like thing that was tuned to be challenging but doable, sadly due to a bunch of bad rolls, all his friendly NPCs get knocked out the first turn, and he has to solo it. He does this kinda ok, but botches his final attack, where he is grabbed and suspended in the air. He fails to break free and is being crushed.

I did not plan for this at all, so in my infinite wisdom (read: hurried panic) I decided to rewind time, as in rewinds the in-game time and have him pass the check. Obviously his character was confused as all shit, but I came up with a "Oh hello I am minor deity and I have taken interest in you, you are not allowed to die today" thingy that talked to him.

Only problem is that now he has made it his "main quest" to find this deity and repay his life debt, luckily (read: not at all) he is located somewhere around the same place the story will be taking them, so I hope it all works out (he hasn't gotten there yet).

The floor behind them opens, their chairs tilt back, and they’re slid into my sub basement for fattening to be processed into food for my next group of players.
They know what they signed up for.