I thought it would be fun, since the Professionals have shared their opinions, that now the community does as well.
To find out what Paizo Staff said, follow the link above, but if you just want to answer the question for yourself:
Original Question (#4)
4. You have been playing a campaign for many months, and your group suffers a TPK. Do you fudge the rolls, contrive a reason for them to be brought back, have them create new characters and pick up where the others left off, or just scrap the campaign?
I have never actually had a full TPK, but I have dealt with character death.
And like some of the PRO's have said.. it depends.
Some players have not felt like they've played a legitimate credible game if they don't think that I'm willing to kill their character when it is appropriate. If I am dealing with that sort of player, I kill them when the game, story, and die rolls all call for it. I also don't worry about it either- because I know the player will be most comfortable with that decision.
Some players aren't comfortable with that. I have had one tear up (cry) and start to get furious. I don't make a show of it, but I start to look for a good rationale to the save them that doesn't look too abritrary. Often I find other players willing to help, and I just get it done without as little attention to the "help" as I can.
For me, it comes down to what the specific player enjoys. They're there to have fun. Some people welcome the opportunity to try a new character, or go through the death experience (in those rare cases where they can be returned to life). Some people are there to experience a story, and one bad die roll doesn't necessarily do that for them.
I've had a lot of people tell me the 'right' way to do it, but I take it with a grain of salt. I GM to entertain, not uphold some standard or teach a life lesson.
But the 'right' way to do it, often has more to do with the player(s) than it does with me. It does get tricky however, when you don't know how they feel about till that very moment.
I've not had a TPK either....but there have been a few very close calls. I don't pull my punches, so I have to ensure through careful planning not to put my PCs up against an encounter that will wipe them out. If they die from poor decision making or poor dice rolls, then it was ment to be.
That said, IF I did have a TPK I'd give the players a choice:
1) Start over with new characters running the SAME campaign/storyline,
or
2) Start over with new characters with a NEW campaign/storyline.
Either way, new characters would be in order.
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I thought it would be fun, since the Professionals have shared their opinions, that now the community does as well.
To find out what Paizo Staff said, follow the link above, but if you just want to answer the question for yourself:
Original Question (#4)
4. You have been playing a campaign for many months, and your group suffers a TPK. Do you fudge the rolls, contrive a reason for them to be brought back, have them create new characters and pick up where the others left off, or just scrap the campaign?
I've had 5 TPKs, 3 of which were in APs and two were in one-shot adventures.
The adventures? Finished it. Stopped playing, they were throw away characters anyway.
The adventure paths? Well, it all depends. In the one, the players were doing a good job and enjoyed themselves, so I continued. Granted, it was a tad clunky after that, and the story was hard to follow, but they had fun.
When they did it again, it was a pretty epic, world changing kinda fail. Also, we were having troubles with one of the players, and the story was already pretty lost, so I finished the campaign.
The third time it happened in an AP, I had noticed that some of the fun was gone from the game. I had forced the players to get ressurected, and there was some communication issues, so I let the campaign die.
Now, if my current group ever wiped, then I'd give them another crack at it. They work well together, are having fun, and really try hard to make sure people don't die. I've had 1 character death, and that was caused by a player wanting to die.
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That said, IF I did have a TPK I'd give the players a choice:
1) Start over with new characters running the SAME campaign/storyline,
or
2) Start over with new characters with a NEW campaign/storyline.Either way, new characters would be in order.
I've come close to having full TPK, but no complete =)
I'm a big believer in letting the dice fall where they may - for good or bad. At the same time I also try not to pit my players against something they couldn't handle, though in some areas of my campaign world if you're not careful or do something extremely stupid you'll have to pay for the consequences of your mistakes.But if I managed to kill'em all and let the gods sort'em out, I'd do either 1) or 2), though right now with the way my campaign is going, it'd be 1) as there are some huge changes coming for my world.
I don't remember any TPKs, other than on a couple of "evil campaign" one-shots where players basically got themselves killed.
Lots of close calls though - at that point I typically start "leaning" things in favor of survival. Things like having creatures start power attacking - more likely to miss, and dead is dead anyways. Also reviewing every ruling to make sure I'm not missing a benefit on the player's side (rage hit points, Orc Ferocity, a bardic music bonus still active, etc.)
Nearly had one this Sunday running PFS Scenario #23, but that was a group of three players instead of 4-6, with no changes to accommodate that.
The closest though was when a large group all climbed through this one black Demon Mouth... fortunately for them I had already made an adjustment on that.
I've only ever had one. It was mostly the result of several bad decisions by the players and a few bad rolls.
As the players really wanted to continue with their chars (a lot of work had gone into them), I came up with a "fix".
They had consulted an old witch before heading out to the lair of the main villain. She had fed them and asked them all kinds of questions. So, I had everyone "wake up" at her hut. They had had a prophetic dream. They continued on, and every encounter was set up the same as in their "dream", allow for tough fights, but also for the group to survive.
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I've only had one, myself. It was just at first level, so it sort of worked itself out with new characters, since nobody was particularly attached. (This was in a version of Keep on the Borderlands. For the record, I've ran the Tomb of Horrors three times, and it's NEVER caused a TPK. There's always at least one survivor.) Now, further into a campaign? My personal preferences would be to mysterious-death them, as per the old Dragonlance modules and let them survive with an added roadblock to success. Alternately, I really enjoyed Green Ronin's Heroic Death rules from the Skull and Bones book. (Basically, the players survive, but have a penalty to their roles in certain areas. In a campaign with heavy-duty healing magic, it's easier to overcome than in the Skull and Bones setting, but a fun way to make the death "count" and still keep things going.)
I've had three I can think of, and I handled them all differently. Once I admitted messing up, and changed the results of the conflict. Basically, I had brought in reinforcements to finish off the half-dead party, and later realized that was a bad idea.
The second time, everyone died, and a new set of characters started years later to bring the originals back and continue the quest, albeit years later.
And the third time, there was a TPK in like the fourth game session, so I had them survive under suspicious circumstances which became the thrust of the campaign. How exactly did they survive, and at what price?
But every time there is a TPK, some characters are retired.
And then there are the near TPKs where I start giving out strategic advice to help avoid an actual TPK.
TPK's have happened. Three of them to be exact. All of them in the last 2 years.
I've had many near TPK's, and I did pull punches a bit (primarily not using all the monster's combat options which would have definitely resulted in TPK's). Two of the actual TPK's I have had happened during the first session.
The first was a Castles & Crusades game. The players were attacked by goblins. About six or seven. All had a couple of hit points and should have been a relatively easy battle for the players, not a cake walk, but something that shouldn't have lasted more than three or four rounds. The players dice betrayed them. I seem to remember at least two of them rolling ones. My dice however rolled rather well. Most of the rolls were over 15. And a couple were 20. I didn't reset the game. The story is more interesting to me, so I hand-waved their deaths to be knocked unconcious. The next game session was them escaping a giant's hall (sans giant) and was a terrifically fun game. The campaign went on for about a year after that and was finally ended when I moved.
The second TPK happened last spring. When I was wrapping up the aforementioned C&C game, I ran Hollow's Last Hope with the Pathfinder Alpha. Three 2 1/2 hour sessions. The first was character creation, the other two got into the meat of the module. The TPK was due to the Cleric's player being MIA, and some roleplaying decisions that the player had made. It was meant to be a short lived game (a few sessions) and the characters did make it to the end of the adventure, to be killed horribly by those beasties at the end.
The most recent TPK happened in the current Star Wars game I'm running. In fact it was almost identical to the C&C TPK above. First game session. Characters got bad rolls. I got great rolls. It wasn't goblins, just a toydarian scoundrel and a couple of battledroids. I had them become captured instead of killed. The next session added another player and had all of them escaping an abandoned docking bay that they were being held in.
I'm not opposed to a TPK, if it makes sense in the story. But if I can help it I'll avoid it. I have no problem killing off characters. It happens. But I loathe killing off the entire party, and if it happened in the course of the game (that wasn't during the first session) I would probably give the players one of three options: resetting the encounter, starting a new campaign, or continuing with all new characters. I personally would probably lean for the first. But, we'd ultimately vote on it.
Never had a TPK either, but a lot of difficult character deaths. I've had some trouble in making certain players maintain their interest in a campaign after their characters die. It depends on a player how she deals with character death. I have one player that would never play in the same campaign with another character, he prefers to raise his old one and move on, forgetting dying ever happened. Then again I have players that think resurrection is lame and lose interest in a character if that has "failed" and cowardly brought back to life. The situation of a character dying is bad enough when one character dies, it becomes quite frustrating when many of them die at the same time. I'm pretty sure a TPK would end any of my campaigns. Which hopefully won't happen 'cause I've already bought all necessary books for those campaigns. About fudging rolls. Can't quite do it because I roll my dice for everyone to see. Of course I could try and lower critters attack bonuses or damage, but this might be noticed and not appreciated.
TPK happens. Any GM who says they've never had one must be fudging the dice. To avoid that temptation, I roll the dice where everyone can see. The dice also have a story to tell, and it's always more believable than your own.
There are better ways to avoid TPK: design easier encounters, interpret player ideas more generously. If goblins chase the characters up a tree, you can always send in the giant eagles if you've set up the possibility in advance.
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I've had several TPKs, including two in RPGA events. In the home campaign TPKs it depended on where they were and what level they were and how bad they bought it. I've had them end up being prisoners. A wandering druid brought back the cleric after stabilizing the rest of the party. Strange blue mist rose up from the ground resuscitating them. My all time favorite though was when everyone woke up from a very bad dream after being royally thrashed by a former PC, who was assassinated by an NPC follower while sleeping herself and no one in the party tried to prevent it.
I also no longer use a DM screen. It works wonders with helping as the players know that you're being very forward and honest about what's happening to their character. Course it bites the big one when the bad guys start rolling horrible and get gang piled by the PCs.
I have had a number of near TPKs, but no actual TPKs. Most of my players are old school and remember Tomb of Horrors, White Plumb Mountain, and Dark Tower.
Even so, the Age of Worms resulted in a near TPK (One PC dead and all other in single digit hp fleeing with the corpse) and the Curse of the Crimson Throne has had two near TPKs (All PCs reduced to single digit hp by the end of the battle).
I don't typically pull punches, but I will give players a chance to fall back and regroup if they are smart about it. I may occassionally have the opponents use tactics that give hints to the players.
In one of the COTCT near TPKs, the PCs had alerted all of the enemies to their presence and ended up in a huge battle against a larger force. I used the weaker enemies to screen for the leaders. Once the PCs realized this, they either ignored the weaker guys to target the leaders or used the layout of the room to limit attacks from the major opponents. Had they just kept fighting the grunts, it would have been a TPK.
I also no longer use a DM screen. It works wonders with helping as the players know that you're being very forward and honest about what's happening to their character. Course it bites the big one when the bad guys start rolling horrible and get gang piled by the PCs.
Cool, I know I prefer that as a player. I still think a screen is a nice place to hide maps, notes, etc.
I will employ one of a few different options based on the game feel and players. These all assume that the character death or TPK was legitimate and not due to mechanical mistakes ("your AC was actually 23, not 18 so that last hit wouldn't have connected") and that standard resurrection or some kind of time travel in-game is not a reasonable option.
Death Penalty - your PC and is out of this fight or trap or whatever. After the rest of the team passes, you get to rejoin them but you get no XP or loot for that situation. If it's a TPK, you get one retry and if you succeed, no XP or treasure beyond the MacGuffin (if there is one). Otherwise, start making new characters.
Blaze of Glory - technically your PC is dead. (S)He will not survive the encounter but you will yourself back to consciousness one last time to fire off your big spell, throw the One Ring into the volcano or otherwise bring down the house Samson-style. You will not have died in vain. This happens to be my favorite to use as a player as well.
NPC Resurrection - your new character is haunted (at least emotionally if not literally!) by your old character; your old character dies under mysterious circumstances only to come back later as a villain or NPC. If (s)he comes back as an NPC, it's usually to undergo a Blaze of Glory. In any event, you do not have control of that character anymore though they might show up from time to time.
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It would depend on the circumstances surrounding who was present in my group during the TPK.
If all players were present, we would pick up where they left off with new characters of an equivalent level. They PCs would be a search party who was looking for the missing group and, upon discovering the slaughter, continue the quest.
If one or two players were absent from the session, I would give the party the choice of having the absent PC raise their PCs from the dead, or begin as new characters of an equivalent level.
In any case, we strive to avoid TPKs and have not had one in our group for quite a long time (a few years, at least).
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I've not had a TPK so far and I don't try too hard to create one. This said (and for exact this reason) I wouldn't probably pull any punches if it came to this. I've been heavily influenced by Robert Jordan's preface in the Wheel of Time-RPG where he basically states that you don't do your players a favor if you go easy on them. And like James Sutter I think that character death is an integral and important part of the D&D experience.
I'm not so sure on the "Chance to try something new" part, though. I'd probably think about a possibility to continue the campaign with new characters (as long as the players would want to continue, that is) and maybe even give them a chance to bring their old characters back, if they'd choose to do so.
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Well, before I would have let a TPK stand and chalked it up to bad luck all around. But a few threads on here have given me an alternative to a TPK, stay within the rules and still continue the game. So now, a TPK is no threat at all. Well, one anyway... two TPKs and I'll have to consider something...
Party all dies, every moans and groans, dice get thrown, someone tears their character sheet.
I'd look the players in the eyes and ask them what is the problem. No one said the game was over...
You find yourselves dead, now supplicants (as I believe the Great Beyond calls its dead). You begin your long trek to be judged by Pharasma... along the way you meet a Devil (Angel- whatever you want to use goes here) who wishes to strike a deal... he'll return you to life if...
the party adventures... gains a level... succeeds... returns to life a level higher... loose a level... ok back to the previous adventure...
So, what was the moaning and groaning all for? >;)
Well, before I would have let a TPK stand and chalked it up to bad luck all around. But a few threads on here have given me an alternative to a TPK, stay within the rules and still continue the game. So now, a TPK is no threat at all. Well, one anyway... two TPKs and I'll have to consider something...
Sarcasm? :) Funny if it is.
Party all dies, every moans and groans, dice get thrown, someone tears their character sheet.
I'd look the players in the eyes and ask them what is the problem. No one said the game was over...
Whoa, the soul searching is intense in your game.
You find yourselves dead, now supplicants (as I believe the Great Beyond calls its dead). You begin your long trek to be judged by Pharasma... along the way you meet a Devil (Angel- whatever you want to use goes here) who wishes to strike a deal... he'll return you to life if...
the party adventures... gains a level... succeeds... returns to life a level higher... loose a level... ok back to the previous adventure...
So, what was the moaning and groaning all for? >;)
Nice fluff about Pharasma and whatnot, but the crunchy bits for my DM toolbox amount to a reset button in case of a second TPK? Does this mean three strikes you're out? How about another alternative... (link)
Happy gaming!