Seriously.

I get that players need to be smart, and walk away from encounters that are too tough.

Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, etc.

But, my (possibly slightly drunken) opinion is that TPKs are just a waste of everyone's fucking time. You spend all this time setting up a campaign, players invest lots of time in their PCs, you get an interesting storyline going with the PCs and whatever NPCs they've been interacting with...

And then, "Dur-hur-hurr.... yer all dead, fuckkas!" And the game has to reset to level 1, 25%, whatever 'beginning' stats are in your game.

Fuck that shit. PC death once in a while when warranted? Yeah, no worries. Killing off the entire party because of bad die rolls, and setting everything back at 0? No. I'm a fucking grown-ass man, and don't have time for that shit.

Fuck you, your TPKs, and the horse you rode your shitty ass in on.

Translation: "I'd rather have the GM save me from my own stupidity, bad luck, or deliberate choices then be responsible for my actions because I put no more thought into this game then I do the random video game."

Me, I prefer roleplaying.  Doom is always waiting and IDKFA still works.

Quote from: Herne's Son;806186But, my (possibly slightly drunken) opinion is that TPKs are just a waste of everyone's fucking time. You spend all this time setting up a campaign, players invest lots of time in their PCs, you get an interesting storyline going with the PCs and whatever NPCs they've been interacting with...

When I've seen games where TPKs occur it is almost always a sandbox style game where there is no storyline (other than whatever the PCs do) and where the same campaign set up works for any number of groups of PCs. So the loss in GM time invested is pretty close to nil. These have also been games that do not use elaborate, time-intensive character creation systems or detailed point buy systems. So player time invested in character roll up and creation is also not that large.

A very mature, thought-out opinion that we should all accept as Gospel. BRAVO!

Quote from: CRKrueger;806191Translation: "I'd rather have the GM save me from my own stupidity, bad luck, or deliberate choices then be responsible for my actions because I put no more thought into this game then I do the random video game."

Me, I prefer roleplaying.  Doom is always waiting and IDKFA still works.

Exactly.

"Death, when warranted."  Sounds like reverse "mother may I."  Perhaps you should try FATE? No one dies without consensus.

I'll play devil's advocate: For many groups, the knowledge that a TPK can happen is part of what makes the rest of the experience memorable and fun. Success is only meaningful if failure is possible. The drama is only powerful if hte stakes are real.

Which means that an actual TPK, while theoretically "ruining" all the hypothetical sessions which would have otherwise followed the TPK, will actually enhance all of the other RPG sessions you play.

Would I be sad if my D&D campaign that has been running for 7 years suddenly ended tomorrow in a TPK? Probably. OTOH, many of my memories from that campaign are greatly enhanced by the knowledge that they could have been TPKs, but weren't. That somehow the party managed to scramble its way free (or even to victory) despite the day looking dire. And that they managed to do that not because they had script immunity or because my thumb was on the scale for them, but because they actually did it.

What I will say, however, is that I think it is the mark of a mediocre GM when the only consequence for failure in their game is death. That's not a very realistic attitude and it results in a less interesting game even when it isn't ending in the TPKs which are statistically more likely as a result.

Wonder why the default stance isn't, "TPK--the mark of shitty player decisions?"  Is it the GM's job to protect player ego?

Everyone's entitled to the occasional drunken post, as long as you are sufficiently mortified by it when you sober up!

Quote from: cranebump;806198Wonder why the default stance isn't, "TPK--the mark of shitty player decisions?"  Is it the GM's job to protect player ego?

That'd be my stance. The crappiest GM I ever played under would not even let my character commit suicide (there was a reason) but our current Pathfinder GM has presided over plenty of TPKs and I can't say there was a single one we didn't earn... usually by picking off more than we could handle and not running away once we realized it.

Having been the near cause of a self TPK. I can say that it is NOT allways the DMs fault. Players are perfectly capable of wiping themselves out through various means. Usually unintentionally.

Nor should the DM be providing a "safety net" for the players willy nilly at every turn so death is impossible.

But that said. Most games provide a few possible built in fallbacks for individual death which despite some members claim here, is not the DM coddling the players. Nor is a TPK ever allways a thing desirable in every group. Theres just too much variance in prefferences. It is up to the DM to say where the line is and cleave to it as best they can.

Personally I am fine with a total loss on occasion. Sometimes the rolls just dont like you or your players. But. I have zero interest in it happening alot. And so far it has happened rarely. Starting the whole group over is sometimes the only recourse. But not allways even that due to how a DM might set things up.

For example the group I am a player in is VERY danger prone usually since two of the players tend to play gung-go fighter types with me usually the group caster. Previous go through with them saw, for once through no fault of our own, a gradual TPK with two characters eaten by animals which left me alone in a hostile swamp. Despite my best efforts at sneaking... didnt make it. So we were all back to start. Which was fine with us as we all had new ideas to try out from start.

But if the DM wants to provide options without actually tweaking rolls then there are ways to pull off a group save.
The group might be replaced by equally competent retainers of comprable levels.
The group might not be dead - Merely subdued and KOed.
Some wandering cleric might raise them all. Why? You are about to find out.
Someone else might pay for their recovery.
Some wizard might collect them and bring them to life for some mad experiment.
Some god might give them the option to fight their way out of the afterlife.
Or the afterlife IS their new adventuring setting.
etc.
Lots of approaches that arent a safety net.

I'm just going to copy over what I said in the other thread:

"Honestly, I'm not into random encounter TPK. I prefer not to have TPKs happen at all.

I mean, they happen, sometimes because I misjudged things, sometimes because my players misjudged things, and sometimes because the dice just fall that way."

Usually if I misjudged something wildly, I might soften the blow a bit. If I literally made an encounter I thought was a fairly even match and I was wrong about it, I might tone things down midfight. But if I made an encounter that was supposed to be a bloody mess, and it turns into a bloody mess, and the PCs are being idiotic, welp, that is on them. If the dice just turn on them, well, it happens. I can't say anything, it just does.

I'm not a hardcore DM, I'm not dogmatic about the whole "death around every corner' thing, or "fantasy Vietnam" or anything like that. I mostly run heroic adventure type stuff. But there has to be some real threat. And yes, there are other threats than just death. There are plenty of bad things that can happen without it, but you know, if you are running around swinging swords against dragons... you might die.

Quote from: Omega;806210But if the DM wants to provide options without actually tweaking rolls then there are ways to pull off a group save.
The group might be replaced by equally competent retainers of comprable levels.
The group might not be dead - Merely subdued and KOed.
Some wandering cleric might raise them all. Why? You are about to find out.
Someone else might pay for their recovery.
Some wizard might collect them and bring them to life for some mad experiment.
Some god might give them the option to fight their way out of the afterlife.
Or the afterlife IS their new adventuring setting.
etc.
Lots of approaches that arent a safety net.

I've had GMs do most of those... and once in a while they're good fun. Some evil demigod rezzing you so you can do his bidding is not exactly a free giveaway.
I'd like to see more non-magical outs like the KO'ed, followed by ransom demands.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;806200Everyone's entitled to the occasional drunken post, as long as you are sufficiently mortified by it when you sober up!

like that one.

Either you invested a lot of time and thought into your character, or you didn't.

If you did invest a lot of time and thought into creating your character, it shouldn't be any trouble to invest a lot of time and thought into playing your character, so they're unlikely to get killed just like that.

If you didn't invest a lot of time and thought into creating your character, then you won't care much if they get killed.

In some ways, worse than a TPK is a partial party kill. If you keep having characters killed, well eventually it's like one of those music bands where every member has changed since the start, is it really the same band anymore? You lose continuity and the care factor, things can kind of fizzle out.

Of course, most campaigns fizzle out, but that's another story...