The occasional TPK and bad ending is good for the hobby.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes, we're all aware that TPKs are generally terrible. They cut sessions unexpectedly short, they tend to be anti-climatic, and they also 'ruin' peoples' hard work.

Regardless, I think that games have to sometimes follow through on the threat of TPK -- and not just a 'oh, as long as you're not being stupid you'll be okay' way either. I mean in a full-throated 'you tried your very best and played it beautifully but this time it just wasn't good enough. The princess gets sacrificed, the zombie apocalypse consumes the kingdom, and you rot in a ditch; hand in your character sheets' sort of way.

It doesn't need to be very often (like maybe 1 in every 50 campaigns, or even lower) but I still think that the threat of ultimate failure and loss needs to be credible. And for the threat to be credible, you actually have to follow through on it. Yes, it does suck that everyone has to go home with a bad feeling and feeling like failures. But it makes the other 49 sessions that much sweeter.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Pretty much. If I know I can't fail, that won't hold my interest. And as hard as you try to maintain the illusion, as soon as it's recognized as such it falls apart.

[Bihlbo]

One of this hobby's biggest paradoxes for me is rooted in the preciousness of the character. On the one hand, you want players to get really invested and involved and doing great RPing (and this requires investment, time, work, and depth), while on the other hand you want the possibility for PC death in order to make encounters seem risky and interesting.

Make it too much like a 1e game and players get frustrated at having to come up with yet another name. Make it too MTP and players never take anything seriously.

I know from my perspective I've played in games where, if my character had died, the game didn't hold enough of my interest to justify me making a new one to keep playing. But the character I had was super fun to roleplay (regardless of being crappy) and that's not an easy achievement. I have rarely played in games with so much combat that "will I survive this fight?" went through my mind more than once every 8 game sessions.

What I've experienced is that there are other ways to fail than character death. If a player regards losing his character as being tantamount to telling him not to come back next week, but he regards the development of his guild into a major regional power as his character's main goal, then his goals are not avoiding death. Players can fail at their goals and still have fun; players cannot lose their ability to meet any goals at all and still have fun.

[wotmaniac]

Well, I think that you'd have to really set your players up for something like that from the very beginning. Like, they have to know before they even make their characters that there's legitimately a high likelihood of failure -- you straight up tell them "unless some really unforeseen shit happens, you will all die". While that may be demotivating for many, there's plenty of players that will take that as a challenge. The flip-side of that is that the players are probably not going to be at all attached to their characters -- to be able to get fully on board for a game like that, you're most likely going to have a very antagonistic attitude towards the GM (unless you, as a GM, can somehow deflect that antagonism to the adventure itself -- which may take some doing; and even still, the antagonism will still be there).

I mean, there are plenty of us that have fond memories of dying horribly in the Tomb of Horrors. When I went through it, the DM said right up front: "I don't even care what kind of equipment you take with you; because it won't matter one bit -- I've had a dozen groups go through this adventure, and nobody has ever survived".
Challenge accepted!
And then we all died. We were like "holy shit - that was fucked up". And then we quickly got over it started up a new campaign the next day -- one that was not explicitly designed to intentionally go out of it's way to TPK on purpose.

The up-side to that is that from that point on, you definitely have an appreciation of character death, and know that that particular DM has it in him to let it happen. The potential down-side to that is that you just might end up with a bunch of paranoid players that now go overboard to avoid that shit -- taken to far, this is just flat fucking disruptive in any sort of "normal" play.

As a side note -- the length of the adventure and the starting level are going to be considerations for how exactly you plan on driving the point home.


TL;DR = can only work right if you have the right group of players, and do a proper and responsible job of setting expectations.

[Koumei]

For actual TPK "Everybody dies, game over", I generally want that to only be a possibility for the final battle - and yes, I know, if it does happen then that is by definition the final battle. You know what I mean. "This fight will be the last. Either everybody wins forever, or you all die and the world is doomed and all flavours of icecream save horseradish and salmon are banned."

For anything else, I'd rather the threat of failure, or of individual character deaths and other setbacks, rather than "Game Over [Bad End]"

[wotmaniac]

For anything else, I'd rather the threat of failure, or of individual character deaths and other setbacks,

Oh, that shit should definitely be happening in normal play (well, unless you're playing RPGA; but that's a whole other topic).

[DSMatticus]

Wait. Wait. Haven't we had this discussion before?

I really don't think TPK's are necessary, especially in routine circumstances. I have read exactly zero books where the heroes all get wiped out in the middle of chapter 3 and the story stops, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying literature. Now, I've seen things like protagonist swaps where all the characters you thought were the protagonists die and then an entirely different set of protagonists are introduced who basically approach the same problem from a different perspective. And I've seen the bad guys win. And I've seen climactic martyrdom. But that's all different than "EPIC ADVENTURE! Oh noez, orc ambush! Le fin."

The ability to fail campaign objectives is absolutely vital, though; on that I agree. Not everything the protagonists metaphorically touch should turn to metaphorical gold.

[Koumei]

Oh, that shit should definitely be happening in normal play (well, unless you're playing RPGA; but that's a whole other topic).

Exactly. But we've long debated the problems with D&D when it comes to combat boiling down to 1-3 intense rounds where escape is very unlikely if you don't happen to be able to teleport (and actually manage to do so between "Things going bad" and "You die"). But once the death of individual PCs becomes something that slows the party down more than anything else, it should be a risk that is ever-present. And if you can make fleeing and surrendering into actual things that happen, that's great as well.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Let me clarify my position.

[*] By ultimate failure and loss, I mean actual ultimate failure and loss. Not 'you get thrown in prison for the next three years and when you bust out the world is a wasteland', not 'you get resurrected by a group of cultists who put the mark of Trigon on your forehead' or any of that. I mean ultimate failure and loss as in the campaign's over. That's the end of the story. You can infer what happened from then on with context. But depending on where you got a TPK, it could be as anti-climatic as Easy Rider or Holy Grail. Sometimes you don't go out with a bang at all.

[*] This needs to be able to happen at any time in the game assuming you're taking on challenges roughly within your area of expertise. Yes, it's more likely that Darth Freex will kill your party than Skeleton Minion #89, but all the same Skeleton Minion #89 can get a string of lucky crits and that's all she wrote. If you don't think that a fight with random bandits on the side of the road can end in player death (even if the probability is miniscule) then you probably shouldn't have that encounter in the game.

[*] Regardless, most campaigns, if they last that long, should still generically end in a non-TPK/Game Over way. The point isn't to laugh at players or make them 'earn' their victories (a ridiculous notion in a TTRPG) but to actually make them feel like it wasn't inevitable. Not every player needs to taste the bitter stench of TPK, but, players should at the very least be aware that it's a possibility. Or even better, hear scare stories or read depressed blog entries about how a campaign ended early when the air pirates shoved them off of the deck while they were going to visit some old friends.

[DSMatticus]

If you don't think that a fight with random bandits on the side of the road can end in player death (even if the probability is miniscule) then you probably shouldn't have that encounter in the game.

Now that's bullshit. Not as in I disagree, as in it's just wrong. There are plenty of reasons to have a fight that can't result in death (either absolutely or probabilistically; things with a low enough probability do become practically impossible for all considerations). You need to realize; the players have goals other than survival. If an encounter can threaten those goals, even if it doesn't threaten the players themself, that could be a worthwhile encounter.

[Foxwarrior]

This thread reminds me of some ennui I experienced many years ago after reading a number of unfortunately overly formulaic books. At the time I reacted by rebelling against books with happy endings, but I've come to realize that the question "will the good guys win?" is never as intriguing as the question "how will the good guys get out of this scrape?"

That said, TPKs without hope of revival don't have to be removed, especially in the case of grand world-rescuing/destroying campaigns. It's just that the campaign can't stop there.

On a tangent: Once D&D parties hit level 6 or so, it's probably a good idea to handwave encounters occasionally. An ambush by bandits isn't going to harm the party, but the bandits don't necessarily know that, so excluding such encounters from the game hurts verisimilitude.

[Red_Rob]

Wait. Wait. Haven't we had this discussion before?

Yeah, pretty much.

[OgreBattle]

and when the party members get back up as undead, they realize they've been in a Dark Souls RPG the whole time.

[Koumei]

Yeah, having explained your position in greater depth, you're full of shit Lago. Having every single unimportant battle have a chance of "And the game ends" is stupid and adds nothing to the game. Fights with weak-ass mooks where the only risk is wasting time can have several uses:
[*]The players are going around picking fights with people who they can't lose against (maybe they're assholes, maybe they have a reason), there should be outcomes other than "They refuse to ever fight back" and "It turns out they were all secretly Everquest NPCs".
[*]It's appropriate that a bunch of weak bandits attack, because the setting states it is (or that the players have to hack their way through a group of deluded cultists on their way to the archmage or whatever) - sure, you can handwave the fight away without using the rules, but it still actually happened in the game.
[*]Give PCs a chance to look awesome and remind them "A while ago, you struggled against stuff like this, look how much smackdown you're laying now!"

Never mind the bit where it's totally fine for "non-TPK failure" to be an option for most conflicts, and thus "You wasted too much time fighting the bandits, therefore you didn't make it to Matchstickville in time to save it from the dragon/salamander/pyromaniac clown." is perfectly acceptable.

So as with most of your threads lately, I would direct you to go suck a barrel of cocks.

[mean_liar]

Failure is awesome! Success is okay too I guess.

[PhoneLobster]

So rare TPKs are supposedly good? (Though it seems unclear as to precisely how).

But you are full of ass if you think there should be any notable measurable chance of a TPK state being generated in any RANDOM manner.

Then you should use the same TPK generation mechanic I do.

It's never a TPK unless the players themselves decide it is.

Does the situation look like a massive failure that "should" be a TPK? Do the players all agree that they WANT a TPK? No? Right. It's not a TPK then.

The biggest problem with the "TPK is good for you guyz trust me! You want this!" is that is exactly the sort of thing GMs (and moronic game designers) screw up and miscalculate on a regular basis. So ask the damn players.

Odds to sodds that the vast majority of the time they say "oh hell no" to your proposed TPK. And if they DO agree while I think the TPK at that point WOULD be good for the game, I suspect that is in more of a "the game has a pre-existing incurable disease and the players want it put down" kinda "good", NOT a "good" that in any way contributes directly to creating a better gaming experience in the future other than to get a bad gaming experience done and pushed behind you.

[FatR]

I'm OK with the party fucking up and dying randomly with following caveats:

1)There is no obvious rubber band difficulty and a GM does allow party to curbstomp and steamroll if they do better than average or come up with good plans. This is important, because the possibility of failure only leads to feeling of achievement if you can do something to reduce this possibility.

2)The GM warns the players upfront what he runs and is honest about what he runs (no inflicting life-or-death battles on PCs routinely in what was supposed to be a primarily social/intrugue campaign, and so on).

[ishy]

What I'd like to see is good fleeing mechanics.
And a good way for players to be able to judge the threat of their enemies.

So they would know bandits ambushing them probably would have no chance in a fair fight.

But that, that balor destroying the city over there could potentially be a tpk if they just rushed in to fight it.

[Wrathzog]

I agree with wotmaniac. The situtation is really dependent on the players involved and it is important that the DM be very transparent upfront about the kind of games he runs.
IMO, I think it's more interesting that every fight is potentially lethal for the party. But it's definitely a fine line.

[mean_liar]

TPKs should be a punishment for repeatedly ignoring obvious warnings, and a possible result of major boss fights.

Otherwise, I don't believe failure should include "everybody dies".

[Neurosis]

I may be a shitty GM (although I maintain it's more likely I have shitty players) but this happens significantly more often than one in 50 times at my table.

The death of one or more PCs short of TPK is even more common.

I run tough games, that's part of it, the rest is that my players suck at being PCs. That said, I really expect the same treatment as a PC. If failure is impossible, I have no interest in playing.

Pretty much. If I know I can't fail, that won't hold my interest. And as hard as you try to maintain the illusion, as soon as it's recognized as such it falls apart.

Fully agree. I think my toughness as a GM probably stems from my inherent and WRONG assumption that everyone else feels the same way.

Edit: I don't want anyone to think that I kill my players with bullshit MTP or Gygaxian Rule 0 powertrips. Pretty much I'm very much an "it is what it is" GM. If the adventure notes say this room has two basilisks, there's two fucking basilisks. If you enter the room without special preparation or defenses and the dice say the basilisks turn you to stone...I'm sorry bro. You're stone. For this reason I do massively prefer games with a reroll mechanic, a la Shadowrun.

I mean in a full-throated 'you tried your very best and played it beautifully but this time it just wasn't good enough. The princess gets sacrificed, the zombie apocalypse consumes the kingdom, and you rot in a ditch; hand in your character sheets' sort of way.

This is precisely the way I occasionally run Shadowrun; games I have written fucking personify this trope. The ending of the campaigns I've finished have been bittersweet; triumph mixed with sacrifice.

[hogarth]

For actual TPK "Everybody dies, game over", I generally want that to only be a possibility for the final battle - and yes, I know, if it does happen then that is by definition the final battle. You know what I mean. "This fight will be the last. Either everybody wins forever, or you all die and the world is doomed and all flavours of icecream save horseradish and salmon are banned."

For anything else, I'd rather the threat of failure, or of individual character deaths and other setbacks, rather than "Game Over [Bad End]"

Same here. Similarly, I have no interest in reading a book halfway through then flipping a coin: heads = keep reading, tails = throw book into fireplace.

[Neurosis]

Yes, when you put it that way, you're right; but player agency and competence needs to be a big part of why the PCs aren't getting wiped out by random encounters. It can't all be GM handholding and training wheels.

Also, short of total party wipeout, PARTY FAILURE and PC DEATH should be happening with more regularity if it is what the dramatic situation and the dice dictate.

[Juton]

PC death should be a possible outcome in any encounter, but TPKs should be rare, barring incompetence. What separates a TPK from just a really deadly encounter is whether some PCs are unable or unwilling to quit an encounter. It would be a dick move if a MC made escape impossible in a majority of encounters, lets assume the majority of MCs aren't dicks. So it falls on players to save themselves from a TPK, by being willing to retreat. Some players or PCs won't retreat, in those cases TPKs should be a viable option. It's a reasonable outcome of a battle that one side dies.

[TheFlatline]

TPKs are shit. TPKs AND "you lose the grand, overarching storyline HAHAHAH" is risking players abandoning you.

Saying that they need to happen every so often like you *PLAN* them is Gygax bullshit.

TPK should only ever happen in two and a half situations:

1. The players have bitten off more than they can chew and you can't fudge things without getting into the realm of "that's bullshit"

1a. The PCs are very low level or the players have little invested in the characters.

2. The party agrees to go into a super dangerous situation to do... whatever.

Note in each instance there's a *choice* on the players' behalf. Not a fucking "this will put the fear of god back into them" attitude on behalf of a GM.

Any GM who is out to TPK, even one campaign/mission/adventure out of a hundred that isn't playing like Paranoia or Kobolds Ate My Baby I'd have to ask their motivations seriously. Because TPK isn't about humbling the players, it's about the GM "winning".

Failure is fine, and character death is fine. Shit in Dark Heresy I haven't killed a character in over a year but my players still repeatedly state that they feel like their characters are in mortal danger every time a fight breaks out. You don't *have* to kill off characters to impart a sense of danger and immediacy.

So yeah... Pretty much the entire premise of this thread is bullshit. TPKs happen. Sometimes the players fail at their goal. Intentionally setting up both just to teach the players a lesson? Arrogant bullshit.