While DM'ing a game for some friends, the dice are not kind, and a TPK happens during a large encounter (but nowhere near the climax of the plot) and all their characters are killed.
In the closing of the session, your players confront you, saying they had all grown deeply attatched to their characters and have little to no interest in making new ones. They ask you for a retcon / redo and let them continue from before the TPK, giving them their characters back.
How do you respond?
you will tell them you are going to take a few days off to think about how exactly you are going to bring them back realistically. if possible, this you will do. if you can not find a story-wise method of repairing the damadge, you retcon.
remember the golden rule.
Most DMs I know would have started fudging stuff to make sure the TPK never happened if the group didn't feel like starting over from scratch. Hell they probably would have done it for their own sanity too so they would have to scrap a campaign and make a new one.
I'm kinda rail roady. I intentionally fudge the dice to prevent TPKs sometimes because the most important part of the game for me is that everyone's having fun.
Though I still don't baby the fuckers. I won't TPK them but I'll damn well kick the shit out of them for being cocky. An attack that'd kill a character would instead heavily damage his armor or weapon for instance.
>would have to scrap
wouldn't*
Depending on the campaign, TPK might not be the end of it. Maybe the dying party members are stabilized and the entire party is imprisoned pending trial, or maybe they did die but a rogue faction stole their bodies for resurrection. Perhaps it's simply being rolled into a new campaign where the party needs to fight their way out of hell.
I wouldn't simply offer them a do-over unless you seriously fucked up though, and usually you catch on to your fuck-up well before it becomes a TPK.
Make em adventure trough the local realm of the dead, perhaps even have them try to find eachother if one is in a differing afterlife then the other and strive forward to get ressurected agian.
Let them plead with their gods/patrons, Con or challenge death to a game of wits, Prove to the local war deity that they are fit for being a eternal warrior or something, the TPK shouldn't have to be the end of the game.
i did all these three things in my 25 years as a dm.
Most fun one was when I let one party member survive and wake up in a pile of corpses, badly wounded, had to find a way to ressurect the priest to get the group back to life and then kill some henchman to get most of their stuff back. It turned a tpk into an interesting adventure that bonded my group even more together. You need to plan it well thou. Nobody likes to sit and wait as a dead player for 4 hours, they have to trust you as a dm that you are going to give them the chance to get their gear back. So lots of planning, playing some parts solo with the first player and inviting the rest a few hours later and keeping to that scheduel. Also kind of reveal their item location to them. It is pretty awesome and your party is gonna love it.
When the DM starts rolling behind the screen and announcing monster fumbles, that takes a lot of the joy of the game away for me. I want to beat the monsters fair and square, not be nursemaided to the point where nothing I've done matters.
Sorry guys, that's the nature of a dungeon crawl. Shit happens.
I don't run games that lead to some predetermined "climax of the plot", nor do i usually play systems where deaths can't be helped by game mechanics in some way.
Permanent character retirement, through death or otherwise, is best left in the players hands desu. inb4 mindblown d&d peasants
If you're doing your job as a GM your players deaths should be their fault
I let my players die by the rules. I dont drop rocks and kill everyhody, but I have absolutely allowed a risky plan to drop a character into a bottomless pit and askex them to reroll.
Theatrics, when they happen in my group, are carefully planned nowadays. Dont get me confused for a sadist DM, I just dont want the players to ever feel like they could get away with anything and have no consequences. You know what helped a lot? I flat out had a rogue hung in town square for failing one of his constant pickpocketing rolls against townspeople. There was more obvipusly than just 'They hang you lol', but the rest of the group got the sense that siding with their criminal ally would turn the mob against them too, so they denied all aquaintance and the rogue died. We dont have people roll kleptomaniacs anymore
>starts rolling behind the screen
rolling in the open should be an exception, not the rule. That way, revealing dice (and playing in the open) is much more impactful since it is kept for "key moments" and fudging is easier overall
They can roll a resurrection party, if justified in-universe (in the sense that is a campaign high enough to have the magic and the PCs are so famous that makes sense).
Epilogue.
Tell them what happened over the next 20 or so years after the characters' deaths, and how Bad Things happened.
Then have them roll up new characters, now in a worse situation... But probably at the same level/WBL as they had before.
Whats the point in playing a game with all those rules if you're just gonna fudge roles? At that point youre not playing a game, just tricking your players into thinking they are. Let the dice fall in the open, then the players know they won or lost fair and square.
by allowing it but with the characters at one level lower and changing all encounters up to and including the one responsible for the TPK.
>Whats the point in playing a game with all those rules if you're just gonna fudge roles? At that point youre not playing a game, just tricking your players into thinking they are. Let the dice fall in the open, then the players know they won or lost fair and square.
Being the DM, you fucking rule.
The idea that they could die at any time and you won't babby them is fine, but there's nothing wrong on some bullshit post-TPK save.
>Demon offers Paladin to save the party, but he must stop being a paladin and worship him.
>Players are still alive, but tied and ready to be embalmed to become undead servants. Saving rolls decides which party members are not ghouls yet.
>The characters wake up naked and surrounded by flowers. Some holy priests resurrected them 20 years later, as they are the legendary heroes who could save the world.
>A spirit possesses them and brings some of them back to life, but every time they cast magic they have to roll for soul damage. Eventually, the spirit will consume their soul.
TTRPGs aren't videogames, there is no saving or reloading, they're stories created and told at the table in real time following a certain set of guidelines.
All TPKs are unwanted, but they do happen and should occasionally happen.
It will serve as a poignant reminder to everyone that adventuring is inherently dangerous and deadly, and that putting your life on the line shouldn't be done lightly.
It's the sort of experience that will present a contrast to all the successful adventures, and help educate everyone both player and GM to play smarter in the future, and be wiser with their character's lives.
I have thought about that, as it almost happened during this campaign.
My current thought/plan if it happens is to have the resurrected at a later day, a few decades down the line.
The party is currently (although they don't yet realize it fully) on a quest to save the world from demon invasion. They have seen most of the pieces between them (in play and backstory). As such I would have them resurrected as the 'last people who had this knowledge'.
The world will be a post-apoc setting at this point with the players fighting to save what little light there is, end the darkness, and restore hope.
That is this campaign though.
>Whats the point in playing a game with all those rules if you're just gonna fudge roles?
Because the aim of the game is not to win in the conventional sense and nobody wants to scrap a character/campaign because they couldn't roll above a 10 for the entire night and whiffed against the most basic of enemies.
>t. Player who just got through a campaign last night where we almost got killed by goblins because nobody could roll above a 5-8 on the die.
>have little to no interest in making new ones
That's convenient. A couple of my friends have been bugging me to run a game for them but I haven't had the time to run two games. Let me know when you guys change your mind and want to join them.
I mean it depends on the tone of the game, but that sounds tremendously unfun to me.
Details?
I would let them fight their way out of hell and make them embrace the land they left behind, but make sure they know it's a one time deal and next time they're in for an eternity
good answer
This suggestion is fucking retarded
I'll do a translation of this post for you.
>"Give me a few days so I can figure out how to bandage your boo-boos properly, but if I can't we'll all just bury the rulebook and pretend the numbers-box had a different number! You guys don't have to worry at ALL about any threats anymore, since I won't let you die!"
Might as well be giving them blowjobs under the table instead of playing D&D.
this
>a secondary evil revives them in exchange for servitude to help usurp the big bad
>party becomes undead and must deal with the consequences
>party sells their souls to a chaos god/demon to come back to life
Or you could just roll new characters you pussy
Best answers.
>Next session
> You all wake up on the shore of a river shrouded in mist
> A boatman who's face is hidden in a bowl of darkenss extends his hand asking "do you have the fare to cross travelers"
> They have no fare
> "Looks like you'll have to work for your passage, luckily I have some miscreants I need delt with in the land above"
> Party is now a hit squad for the master of the river Styx while also trying to find a way to escape having to cross it themselves.
>They ask you for a retcon / redo and let them continue from before the TPK, giving them their characters back.
Ha, that's easy. If I had a really stupid random TPK just before climax, I'd be at loss possibly, but if the players are asking for it, all I need to do is retcon / redo, giving them their characters back.
The issue is my players wouldn't ask for it. Therefore I always have a backup plan intended to save the party or most of the party, usually relying on the obvious fact that they are not the only adventurers in the world. Sometimes they rescue others, one time karma might come around.
>TPK because they went full retard against a powerful warlock
>They were given lots of hints to no avail.
>They throw a bitch fit.
>Let them proceed with a "for some inexplicable reason you are still alive, full hp and perfectly fine in every way." They think it's just lazy DM'ing. Poor fools.
>They occasionally have nightmares. The same one. I tell them separately so they won't know until they talk about it.
>As they keep going, some of them start hearing voices.
>They can roll to try to communicate with them, but failing to do so will cause them to suffer hallucinations that might cause them to attack their friends.
>Eventually, they get to realize it's not because of the quest they're in, but something ELSE
>It begins.png
>Have them discover that they were cursed by the evil warlock, and every passing day their soul gets closer to the demon realm, making nightmares worse and causing them horrible visions that may or may not be true.
>They have to abandon mid-quest and go for the capital, to find more about the nature of their curse.
>They learn that they have to pour the blood of a lesser dark wyrm into a holy fountain, tainting it in the process but purifying themselves.
>As they get the wyrm's blood, they realize there some unkillable cosmic horror after them. If it catches them it will drag them to the netherworld, meaning insta worst ending game-over.
>They become so unstable even a party of kobolds is enough to get them SHIT GOT REAL mode.
>Paranoid of everyone they speak to, as demons now take different forms they all can see to mislead them and mock them.
>They arrive to the fountain of purification, sneak through the temple and avoid the guardians.
>desperate as fuck, still hunted and wishing they had fucking died, they pour the blood of the wyrm on it.
>Just as they do, the warlock appears and claps.
>He becomes even more powerful because they did his dirty job by tainting the fountain.
>worldwide bad reputation, warlock is now final boss
Time for a trip through the underworld side plot.
Well done
Depends on why the TPK happened. Did I underestimate the difficulty of the encounter? Did the characters do something spectacularly stupid? Was it genuinely just the dice fucking them over?
If I screwed up, then fair enough, we can retcon. If the players screwed up, then sorry, no redo. Characters dying is a part of the game. They might be able to get some sort of deal with a devil kind of thing, however. If it was just the dice fucking them over, I'll try to figure out a way to bring them back from death, and if that's just not possible, then I might consider retcon.
>party says they stop playing because they are bummed out by the game
>heh, fuck you anons, you rolled bad so all the time we spent together ends here
>so does your hobby
>sit at home alone, obeying the rules
you autistic incels have no sense of social situations. i have played with parties that needed the edge and i have played with parties that wanted comraderie and to make friends. if the entire party wants the dm to retcon so their hobby is saved, you help them out. your main role as a dungeon master is to make them have fun. if you do not understand that, reread chapter one of every fucking rp book you noobs.
>massive projection
We get it, you like fellating your players. Have fun with that.
>How do you respond?
If we didn't hash out what our expectations for this situation were at the outset, we fucked up.
My current group would be fine with a jailbreak or similar, if it was plausible, and there are Fate Points to stave off death, but at the end of the day... Pic related.
Unless you have a compelling reason to hide your rolls, you should always roll in the open. And even if you don't roll in the open, fudging dice rolls should be the absolute last resort, reserved for when you've fucked up and there's no graceful way out of it.
They die, go to the afterlife, and then the gods/spirits/devils ect that are invested in them and them succeeding go "Oh shit you're not supposed to be here yet", and either work through celestial bureaucracy to see the party returned, and/or have to overcome harrowing trials of metaphysical proportions. Thor tests to see if you're a bad enough dude to go back to Earth ect.
"Unwanted TPK" sounds redundant. Of course it's unwanted, who would be interested in having all PCs killed? Not the players, and not the GM unless he's an asshole.
That said, did the characters die from their players' stupidity? Or from bad rolls? I'm not going to retcon their decisions; but, if the dice really, REALLY went against the PCs, I might cut them some slack. Once.
Boring and too traditional. Learn how to mix things up. Sometimes you make them reroll, sometimes you let them suffer more in exchange for one more chance. Unpredictability is a virtue.
>being a retarded special snowflake is a virtue
Nope, go play vampire you stupid faggot
Keep being a boring cuck because you have an unhealthy obsession with following tradition every single time like a retard.
I'm always more interested in taking any other possible method instead, Such as explaining that they were only gravely wounded + knocked out and rescued somehow after the "loss", or even going into your setting's afterlife or equivalent in order to escape permanent death. The latter option can be particularly interesting and a great temporary change of pace.
Retcons I think are a last resort, even behind starting entirely new characters in scenarios like this.
Dude you're so cool holy shit.
This. If at all possible, have players roll all the dice.
I love my DM screen, but it's to hide my notes and maps and the whiskey.
The goal of dnd is to have fun with the framework of rules used to facilitate that and nothing more, rather than most games which are fun because of the rules. The rules in dnd exist solely to prevent constant arguments and divergences from the play session to worry about how a certain scenario should be handled fairly.
He's right though. If you make it so every time they get defeated they get some mystical saving event they will feel like they have plot armor. If you're a cunt and dead is dead all the time games may get ruined because of a shitty roll or some player being unlucky or unluckily stupid. Let them fear for their players, but let's keep it moderately fair.
Also, if the players don't know what they expect but it STILL makes sense it can be a great experience and even make the game better. It's "Lolsurandumb unicorn peed on your party and revived xD" moments that DMs need to avoid.
be careful with those vampire fangs while you're sucking dick
>Unwanted TPK" sounds redundant
Unscripted would probably be better, some people think they're the directors of a play and don't like when the dice don't play along.
Kinda depends on the campaign. If I'm running WFRP or something similiar, then a TPK is a TPK, no second chances. But if I'm running some high fantasy stuff or similar, where the PCs are practically superheroes, then I usually cut them some slack, like they are defeated, grievously injured and some bad shit probably happens since they failed to stop the bad guys. Usually in these types of games I leave the characters ultimate fate in the hands of the player, like if they want their character killed so they can reroll, fine by me. I don't do retcons though. What happens, happens.
If you want to play freeform then there's better ways to do that.
The rules and the dice are what separates it from playground cops and robbers.
And if you think there should be a script, then just write your shitty novella.
Yes, that's my point exactly. It's stupid to even roll dice if you aren't going to abide by their results.
Well, I give them a threat level, for instance. 'You think you cpuld probably get away if caught and disappear into the crowd, however any violence at all against the citizens will result in many many guards happening.' Or 'you estimate that you could climb the wall but looking down you are certain a fall would break your legs'
I didnt have the rogue hung out of the blue, he had been caught twice by merchants but always managed to escape. I had also warned him that the guards were getting wise to merchant complaints. This time I had him face pathfinder grappling rules and he lost, when the guards came one drove a pike through his leg to reinforce the idea that this wasnt a random encounter.
(I, as a DM dont put much faith in Bluff or Diplomacy cheques versus good roleplaying). The whole execution was entirely silent, the party was noticably shocked that I would allow a PC to get lynched but when I asked the rogue to come next time with a new character, he looked like he had watched his own clone get massacered. After a break for a session he came back as a very pragmatic ranger
Guys, this is an easy opportunity for an interesting plot hook.
>the heroes lie dead
>the kingdom is in despair and the evil dude looks like he is about to win
>but the friends the heroes saved on their journeys over the past year, emboldened by their sacrifice band together
>evil is defeated
>statues made to dead original PCs
What I do is take each player aside and ask the following questions!
>Are you sure you don't want to make a new character? Didn't you have a cool concept you wanted to try?
If they insist...
>I see. I can give you the character back but you'll have to give up something
Then I list a bunch of options. Coming back as a Revenant, or with a missing limb, or with serious trauma, or with a stat penalty. Keeping the character but losing a magic item, or being captured by the bad guys and having to "earn" a second chance through an escape scene, or making a temporary character until they can resurrect their last one.
Not all options are equal, and I trust the player to pay whichever price they feel is appropriate.
They can even pick a purely cosmetic option, like a battle scar or bad dreams. Because, and I make this clear, there's another; *real* price, and this one must be paid whether they make a new character or not: the bad guys won this round. Metaphorically speaking, they KO'd a bunch of adventurers (and either escaped, or kicked them out of their lair) and leveled up a little. For the player side, this means lost gear, lost gold, nasty things happening to NPCs. For the villain side, this means more resources and evil agendas advancing forward.
For example, if the party gets TPK'd by bugbears and wants to "retcon" it into fleeing for their lives, I'll happily allow it. But they'll be leaving gold and gear behind, which will benefit the bugbears. The bugbears will be ready for another attack and will add more traps to their lair. The bugbears will be motivated by their victory, having defeated a threatening group of warriors. And while the PCs are hiding in the woods and licking their wounds, the now-galvanized bugbears may even attack the nearby village, causing much distress for the inhabitants.
It doesn't matter whether you "repair" a "dead" PC or bring in a new one. PCs are disposable. The state of the world is NOT.
tl;dr (I should really have summed it up like this): failure doesn't need to mean character death. But it will always mean failure.
>the DM throws 5 shambling mounds at your party instead of 2 because he can't read his own handwriting
I once threw a large blood elemental at the party, thinking "Oh, it's CR 5, should be a reasonable fight". In retrospect, if I had actually compared it to other CR 5 creatures, it probably would've been obvious that it's more dangerous than CR 5 fight should be.
At least that party had the sense to run away.
In most campaigns I run, the real risk of TPKs is part of the fun. As long as the players can go out in a heroic way, it's great.
>collapse the tunnel to save the surface world
>defend the bridge, giving the prince enough time to get away and reclaim the throne
>while fighting their rival, they manage to destroy his ship... which they're on... a bittersweet victory
You have to read your players. I have played with a couple of people who didn't like player deaths (at least not permanent ones). So for some campaigns I've kept that in mind. Instead of letting the players die in the pyramid and end their story there, I had them awaken years later wrapped up like mummies. It spun a nice adventure.
Whether that's true or not, you just turned the table on your players and they'd probably reconsider fast before the seats run out.
9/10 thinking on your feet.