TPK! Or: "Everyone is down! Now what?"

0:20 Heres the podcast for role players and game masters to help the level look at your game. We are your dungeon masters. I'm Jason Portiso, I'm Joe McCall, and I'm Jim Crocker, and we're all dead. Yeah. Sorry, sorry, guys. It happens. Not not not what we're expecting, but it happened. Sometimes doing it off screen was kind of a it was kind of a bitch move. But you know, what's what are we talking about today, Jim. What we are talking about today is what we would colloquially refer to as a t p K. That is a total party kill. This is when combat either goes wrong or goes right, depending on what kind of d M you are, and all of the player characters end up out of hit points at some point, you know, before the combat is over and the monsters win the bad guys are victorious. I don't forget that the K could also stand for a knockout, depending on what direction you need us to go. And that's one of the things that we're going to talk about is and the first thing that I want to get out of the way is that you may well run a campaign where the dice fall where they may we're playered. Sorry, I was about to say player death where character death.

1:27 Where player character death is a thing that just happens at the table, and without that, there's no stakes. And without that D and D is it really fun? And if all of the characters die in a fight, well that's just how it is, and we restart the campaign. I'm not talking to you using your Grognard, I'm not talking to you. So that's cool, Like, go with God, enjoy your game, have a great table, you know, skip to the next episode or you know, if you want to see how the other half lives, but you know, stay tuned. But this is not I under standards. If you can at least listen through, like to the ads and like get us a couple of pennies, that'd be great. But what was the what was the like original one of the original modules that was like impossible, the impossible dungeon, Oh that they just remade. It's got Tom of Horrors. Yeah, two of Annihilations of Horrors is the one you're talking about. Two of Annihilation is the one that sounds like it should be that one, but it's actually quite playable.

2:24 Yeah, a lot of those early modules were created specifically as competitive tournament modules where you'd play them through multiple rounds on whichever you know, group of them actually survived to the end, like literally one at D and D, which is like not a thing kind of not only would play the game anymore so far we've come yes, yeah, but this is this is for folks who don't want that situation where the monsters win in a fight, either accidentally or because you you know, the players want a really tough challenge and maybe somebody miscalculates and you know, and you get a couple of krits with the Dragon Breath or something like that, and everybody's wiped out. But you don't want to end the campaign. You want to keep playing. Now. You can either have this be a thing that everybody agrees upon at the beginning of the campaign. You have a discussion and you say, look, it's going to be possible for you guys to be defeated, and prepare for that. You know, I'm not going to put the kid gloves on. But if you get beat, all that means is you get beat. And that's like, you know, that's like Buffy getting beat in the show or something like that.

3:32 You know, it's like Spider Man getting beat. It's like Batman getting beat. We know that they can be defeated, but the story will continue from there, and if you want to do that in your D and D games. I like to divide these into three kind of three basic approaches that you can take when you encounter a TPK, when you encounter this situation where the party is defeated. And the first one I'm going to call left for dead. Right, that means everybody's down to zero hit points and effectively, you know they're they're they're killed. But rather than you know, have everybody get buried and make new characters and restart the campaign, you treat it like a TV show where somebody loses a fight and they all wake up in exactly well they wake up, I mean, And you could do this any one of several ways. And there's kind of a couple of variations of this left for dead theme. One is literally left for dead. You know, the bandits that they're fighting are in a hurry, right, and they've got to get to you know, you've ambushed, like there's some kind of ambush or something. You know, stab stab stab. People get shot with arrows, fireballs go off and they're like, okay, they're down, We're out of here. And then that is when, you know, as the DM, you say, okay, ranger, you know you come to you've got one hit point. Everybody else looks like they're in really rough shape, or the cleric or something like that. What do you do and go from there?

5:05 You know, and this maybe this is a thing where like the Wizard, you wake up with your familiar licking your face or you know, you know, with a healing potion in one claw, pouring it, you know, like like a drop of it on your tongue so that you you know, just enough to revive you and now you can kind of get everybody back on their feet, and that's adorable. Or like exactly, somebody comes along, you know, the farmer that knew that you were going into the woods to fight the goblins that were, you know, playing his farm or something like that. Yeah, you know, their kid followed you and they saw you get beat up and stuff, and so that left for debt scenario, you're defeated, but you just kind of agree that that's you know, whatever, the zero hit points and the failed deat staves and all that kind of stuff means you're incapacitated, you certainly can't get up and fight some more. And maybe you've got to go back to town and get healed, and maybe you put some levels of exhaustion on or something like that in exchange for that.

6:02 You know, the bad guys are a lot further along in their play. Absolutely impose some kind of penalty that makes sense, some kind of you know, narrative, you know, narrative cost for losing the flight. You don't have hands anywhere, Well, that can be a little I mean maybe until you get back to the town. You got to get back to town and grow your fingers back. What do you mostly hands? You guys been watching fallout, so so you can do that. You can have them wake up imprisoned by the bad guy right who you know took them all down and you know, now you're all in shackles and stuff down in his dungeon or something like that, or you know, kind of another variant of that left for Dead is you know, the bandits knock you down and you wake up and you look around and you are in you know, a cave that is the larder of the local hill giant, right, you know, or a tribe of ogres that came along and found you land there and are like, oh, we'll take these guys. We'll lay them up for a little while to tenderize them, and then tournament again, like Empire strikes back exactly, and that can you know, you're like like you wake up and you're like, holy crap, what is going on here? You get the opportunity to kind of do a little thing where you know, maybe you're unarmed for a little while and you got to find your gear and get it back, you know, video game style, right, you know, the middle of Half Life where they knock you down and then all you've got is a crowbar after, you know, throwing a gravity gun around and stuff like this. Right, well we call that one the end. Now we have new problems. Yes,

7:33 precedence absolutely a thing that you can do, but that's the left for Dead where you know they're absolutely they're defeated, but not killed, simply incapacitated, and then the story continues from there after being incapacitated. For that one, I like the idea of having them wake up naturally with like one HP is kind of like that's a little dis x MakingA for my taste. Sure, having them be knocked out for some period of time and then like giving them the benefits of a short rest with maybe with an exhaustion level. Yeah, it feels it feels a little more realistic. Yeah. The ways you can do options, yeah, or you do like the sorry you do the man like the Princess Bride. Yep, it's like we're like, we're going to bring you back just so we can torture you. Think of the captured route. Yeah. Yeah, and that's and that's another thing that you can do. We have a new problem, Yeah, you know where where you know something that the bad guy needs or the bad guy like like you say, wants so so badly to lord it over you, to you know, to kind of gloat in his victory. It literally has you resurrected so that he can gloat over you. And of course that proves to be his fatal mistake because you know he's underestimated you. Right, that's totally another monologue figure it out, Yeah, for sure. So the second kind of general bucket of ways that you can continue after a TPK, I'm going to call adventure in the afterlife. So this is a thing you can do where everybody did

9:05 get killed, but whoops. For whatever reason, you know, you all wake up in limbo, and in between you're in Valhalla something like that. You're in the you know, the arena of the gods or something, and you have to fight your way or bargain your way or trick your way out of the afterlife. And maybe this is a thing where you start all the characters in their various afterlife, you know, because they're you know, they worship different gods or something like that, or you know, the fact that the cleric has been using all that clerical magic on everybody has bestowed a connection to the clerics god, and so you know, for some reason, everybody wakes up in the afterlife of the cleric right or you know, was his.

9:50 The clerics will to drag them their souls along, you know, maybe you even have the cleric narrate as you're being pulled up into into you know, into vale Halla. You see the souls of your friends. How do you bring them along with you? Kind of thing like that, And and you you run some adventures in the afterlife. And this is fun because this can be kind of a cool sidetrack to the game. It can get really weird. You can do like kind of kind of crazy stuff. You know, you can level up in the afterlife and so that when you you know, figure out how to get out and come back down, you know, you're leveled up. Stuff like this. There's all kinds of things you can do. You have to dragon balls you through that like a lot. Well not only that, but you have to use a like an old phone booth to travel to the past to fix things during this bogus adventure. Yeah, but this is like God a War does some stuff like this right where you kind of you know, like you go into the afterlife and you've got to fight the you know, the whatever ghosts and stuff like this. And this is also a really cool way to do callbacks to characters that were in the campaign and like maybe bad guys to be defeated before. Cool. Now who you've got to either fight again or you come across and they say, man, when you guys killed me, I really learned my lesson. I'm gonna help you out here and now get me allies. Yeah that actually all of these things before, including the bad guy turned good guy spoilers for campaign one on that pod. It's also it's also at least partially the plot for Gladiator

11:22 to the unmade yet unmade Gladiator too. No, Joe, there we go Maximus from Maximus is supposed to be from from the field in the underworld sun Sign shining down. He has to yeah, what do they call that Hades? No, no, it's called I can't think of it. I'll think of it later, Okay, But yeah, he has to like save his son, he has to come back, and yeah, look it up. It's pretty pretty interesting. In campaign one, they go from now do they have a whole there's a whole arc in the Night Hells that ends up with like one of the big bads, one of one of the early big bads, a little bad whatever you want to call him, turns into it just a goof character and just you know, they Hi Jenson's with that one. And there's a whole larger arc that takes place in the Shadow Fell, which is kind of like in between Life and Death, which is a very cool one Queen arc there, yeah, yeah, exactly, she's in there.

12:11 And then there's a whole nother arc that is also in the Nine Hells. I believe it has been whilst I listened to it. And then there's like this something we brought up a while ago with like putting a clock on the table, where like not not a physical plot, but like not having some sort of like yeah, yeah something something to make to create urgency where the bat guy was like they were there and they were dead in the nine hells yeah, d six that counts down or something like that. Yeah, well the world. This one was like creating husks of giant monsters to sem up to the material plane. Yeah, and like whichever ones they didn't stop, they had to then go fight in the plane. So they were able to get around the TMOP, but they did have to fight the Tarasque. Yeah, Elicium, this was the name of Oh oh okay, yeah, sorry.

12:56 And this is also one of the things where if you have kind of teased at some of the gods in your game, are hinted at them, or you know, you want to give the cleric kind of the opportunity to have actual divine intervention and some contact with some of those divine beings without you know, really messing with your campaign, the ongoing campaign, you know, like to have the gods showing up in the middle of your game and unbalancing thing or messing with it. Having the characters go to the gods is an interesting way to do that. Sure, you know, and the gods can take an interest in what they've got going on. And maybe you know, it was one of the gods that actively said, yeah, I know, you guys are supposed to go to your respective heavens, but I pulled some favors with those gods to pull you in so that you can, you know, keep so you can keep my cleric safe while he completes my mission.

13:46 Sure you have a you have a very confused paladin for a different god and a now very scared warlock whose patron will not take time to us, or you know, or you've got a paladin who's you know, the paladin's dity is there, you know, next to the clerics deity, and they're both going, yeah, okay, you guys are going to get get this done for us. So but there's a lot of opportunities there. And and that is also a thing where you can I have written down here now you owe the gods. That is a thing that can become a part of an ongoing thing. I just like, what kind of favors does a god call in? Yeah, I just like that as a sentence. That's just that's just the cool the gods so and so that's kind of the second. That's the second sort of bucket that I put these kind of you know, the sort of the like like post TPK, you know, campaign continuation under is that adventure in the Afterlife? Hello Adventurers, Thank you so much for listening.

14:43 If you enjoy the show, the absolute best thing you can do to support us is to subscribe so you'll be notified when new episodes are released. You can also leave us a review five stars. Of course, that will help us get seen by more D and D players and more than anything else, just tell your friends of if you like what we're doing here, that there's a good chance that your DM or your players will enjoy it too. And you don't need to loop goal to do any of that. We appreciate your listening. Now back to the show. The third kind of bucket of stuff that I put put things in, And this may not work for everybody. You may decide that this is you know, this is not your thing, but but it's a thing you can do. And that is the it was all a dream, right because in D and D of the Bob New Heart approach, the Bob Newhart approach, the Bob Newhart approach, the Dallas approach.

15:33 Sure, but you absolutely can create a situation where and this is a thing that you can do that you can kind of lay some groundwork for as a DM, if they're going into an incredibly difficult combat, you can have a thing where you have them go to a fortune teller and the fortune teller says, you know, the fortune teller tells their fortune, and then the next session they go off and they run this combat and it goes disastrous, slee and then so at the end of that, you shake your head and you go and the fortune teller leans back, eyes wide in terror, and says, you better try a different approach than the one you're planning. And you know, and then you get a do over, right, remember to run away or try something different or you know, just hope the dice.

16:22 But kind of like it's kind of like that's about the Strange approach, Doctor Strange. But also notice thinking was, oh man, what's that movie Final Destination? Yeah, like the zooms out and it's like the truck, you know, somebody cuts off the truck and hits its brakes. Forever if you're of an age. Yeah, any millennial or extra that's not your gen z. You're not maybe not get this that will not pull over to the side of the road and wait if they get behind one of those trucks, because I the first movie. We're just gonna wait at this rest up for a little while, honey, and let that Oh is that the second one?

17:04 Oh? The first one was the airplane. First one was the airplane. Ye, that was the second one. Okay, So yeah, so if if if the player characters were going to go to their final destination, you can you can do you can borrow borrow something from that and borrow something from Devin sawah. Yeah, and depending on what depending on what kind of villain it was, perhaps it was all powerful illusion magic, right, that that caused them to believe that they got into this fight and got killed and everything, and you know, they kind of come to as the illusion wears off. This is a little bit of a kind of kind of kind of almost looking at the you know, like like sort of putting it into left for dead territory. But by that time, you know, the bad guy has gotten away. They haven't gotten whatever mcguffin it was that they were going to get but they're still able to continue adventures. You know, the effects of that illusionary battle still you know, come into play. But that's a thing if you don't want to impose levels of exhaustion or have their gear be used up or something like that. That is a way that you can do that.

18:14 You know, it could be like I said, it could be a prophecy that someone is telling. It could be you know, like it could be a prophecy where somebody is you know, seeing the future and then you wind that back. It could be illusions that's used on them. The other thing that can be fun that you can do that's kind of a variant of this is depending on the nature of the fight. This could be like an orc or you know, a bandit telling a bunch of their friends what happened in the fight at the end of the you know, at the end of that terrible TPK you say, you know, and the bandit stands up and everyone in the bar toasts them for their you know, glorious defeat of the party. And next session we're going to play what really happens like that, Yeah, and you know, not his story that he made up to you know, and then at some point you have that bandit like watching and then run away or something like that. You know, in the next session.

19:11 That's another thing that you can do is is this is what somebody says happened, and boy, that was pretty bad and their version of it clearly makes you guys look terrible. Now let's do you know, and kind of you kind of give him a do over, and let's do that again and see how it. Make sure you point out that he gets away or else that destroys the space. Continue. Absolutely, you got to do that. You know, you got to create that situation that you know or he's just you know, watching from the sidelines and scoots as soon as he sees you guys have arrived or something. But then when you get to the town and you and you get to the tavern, you hear him telling the story's big and that's when you stink behind them funny story. Let's see how it really is, Yes, and then you kick his ass exactly, And that's that's another fun way to do that. Kind of people say beat him up, but there's lots of ways that you can do that. And like I said, one of the things that I always do when I start a new campaign.

20:07 Is I'm really specific about telling the players you can be defeated as characters. Your characters can lose a fight, but I'm not going to tell you when the campaign ends or you have to stop playing those characters. Sure, some players want, you know, if their character goes down, they want to pick up and play a new character. That's totally fine, you can accommodate that. But there are other players that want to keep playing their characters for as long as they have a story for that character and taking the pressure off of them that the dice may decide that they can't do that anymore. That can actually be a huge relief to some people and really free them up to have a lot more fun with the game. And is this something that we've talked about before, where like that's a very When I say generational, I mean generations of gamers, not so much like gen X versus money or versus gen Z or whatever. But as we progress in additions of D and D, the idea of people getting more attached to the character and the story between the story within that character is much more of a thing than it was in first edition, where like you have mentioned, and we've had we had Tony Bogan the game a games store owner on one of the last episodes of Curmudgeons.

21:17 Really they would show up to session one with backup characters. Yeah, and so okay, here's the here's the guy I'm gonna play, and then here's the three guys are gonna play when they die. Yeah, And it's just how the game is played. And now that this game is very story driven, and we can thank a lot of like you know, D and D media, you know, your critical roles in those types of things where the story is just way more part of the game than it was. Yeah, And you're seeing a lot more attachment to characters. So having having a contingency for when the character is defeated but not dead is going to be a lot more important now than ever. Has been the thing that I think of too, And I don't know if we've mentioned it here in one of our previous episodes or that's something I've read more about, but one of the things that I want to start introducing in my game is going forward, is like a session zero questionnaire, ye, like, and that's like a great question, like how attached to your character are you? And like maybe a note on there, like if this changes, please let me know, imp because everybody, that's an explanation or something that you're going to have a discussion about at that session zero of like, hey, listen, like there's gonna be real consequences for choices that you make in this campaign. So just so you know, I'm the type of DM that you know I'm I'm going to kill your characters if if I'm going to let the dice decide and you know, have that have that conversation, is all I'm saying from a lot of a lot of DMS. One of the things that Jason, that you and I have read about, you know, for years as we've been doing this, is DMS talking about how difficult it can be to get players to invest in,

22:52 like invest in a backstory and creating a backstory and doing that work to you know, craft a narrative for their characters and like taking off the table. The idea that they may have to do that again and again and again is a thing I think that could be a powerful motivator to get the players to invest in and really believe in, you know, the importance of having that story and that it's that it's going to matter, and it's that it's going to continue to matter for those types of players. Yes, my regulars, I have the opposite problem where they have one hundred characters with one hundred page backstories that they can't wait to bring to the table and they want to just letting them off a cliff so they can play the next like well fleshed out character Mary talking to you, she'll text me because she'll text me at three o'clock in the morning with a character idea and a shared iPhone note.

23:42 Yeah, a lot about which we know from previous episodes is your bedtime, So yes, don't do that. And there are those players. But the other thing that this does is sets expectations for everybody and make sure everybody is on the same page, because it may be difficult if you've got like four or five players that are all interested in an ongoing story and you've got somebody that wants to bring a new character to the table every two weeks, that might not be the right table for them, and having that discussion to make sure that you know one particular player's preference is going to be disruptive to everybody else you know, or or that you can make sure that you find a way to integrate those approaches. That's an important conversation to have, Yeah, and important to note that those are two totally fine approaches. Oh yeah, if everyone's on the same page, yep, yeah for sure. But that's kind of the general three buckets that I put those into. If anybody else has any ideas or you know, or you want to talk specifically about something you came up with on the fly or that you have as kind of campaign standard for the table that you're running, we would absolutely love to hear about that. Now. You can do that by emailing us at Hello Adventure with Podcasts at gmail dot com, or tell us your story yourself a Hello Adventure with podcast dot com slash voice. Yeah. Also, if you have any updates on the as yet unmade Gladiator Too Gladiator sequel, can we kick start this? It's it got green light and then COVID happened like they were about ready to go. I think everybody signed on and Jim, I hear you

25:15 googling, and that's not what I want. I want our listeners, our listener to call again and talk to me about the Gladiator sequel. Ridley Scott's eighty six but still on his feet, so you know, could happen. All right, Well, I guess on that note. Is that the note we're going to go out on. I guess. So, so let you wrap this thing up, go kill your players. It's okay, guys, Jim said, so, yes, don't. I said what I said. That's that's a to unless you're LARPing. Why I've never played in one of Jason's games. Yes, like an my players all the time down, although there are several seats open. That's the kind of topic that I want to get into sooner than later. I had a whole thing on players versus player characters and what that really means, that that's gonna be. That's be a cool one down the line. What was the name of the guy that had the hotel in Chicago with the with the murder hotel? Oh, the Devil and the White City guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think of his name right now. It's really Balrab. Well, you can think of it now because the episode's over. Thank you so much for listening to Hello Adventurers, Weird your host us and Portizo Jim Crocker and Joe McCall, producer, editor and engineer Jason Portiso musically by Nick Spurri or art right by Chris and Roderick. You can reach out to us with any feedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventurers gives a GTP audio production. Good Night Adventures, Sorry Adventures,