Your first TPK

#1

Hey guys,

last saturday, my first campaign came to an end. We’ve got a TPK two or three scenes before the grand finale. During this year-and-a-half-long campaign my players encountered numerous near-death-experiences and were always saved (either by luck or by my creativity).

But their hybris meet point of no return. The death was sudden and unexpected: They’ve got killed by one players’ nemeses and the party’s former PC, which they insisted on chasing as an NPC nemesis). My players were shocked and there was a moment of silence, followed by deny and negotiation. Finally they went into the light and we looked back on a couple of moments (screenshots I’ve taken from older sessions) :smiley:

Rest in Peace.
Horatius Tarkil Thandor

Unfortunately I’ve only got a couple of screenshots ready. One player said:

Oh f*ck, if my life ends like that … with only three memories … I’m screwed.

Lesson Learned: No mercy, death is real.

Meanwhile we agreed on a second campaign with PC backgrounds linked to the first one.
What was your first TPK? Which circumstances led to it? How did you players react?

Greetings & Merry Christmas
glocke

#2

My first and only TPK was back in the day when I was playing with soome goofy and honestly nightmare-ish players. I didn’t knew a lot about GMing and haven’t read dungeon world atm so I didn’t had any real tools to deal with some situations.

The thing is that they escaped a bs puzzle prison and where chased by a white drake. They where scared crapless and ended up in a small town. The tavernkeep was a big bald ripped dude that offered help to them and I tried to make it look like a retired adventurer by having some “trophies” displayed on the walls. The scum characters controlled by the wild players decided then to try to murder him and steal the “trophies”, it was the only logical conclusion lol.

I was mad and in response I pulled a high level fighter character sheet from other game I played long before and proceded to kick their lvl 1 buta so hard it actually became comical.

Gladly, we all ended up having a hard laugh and talked about it after apologizing. They rolled new chars and we said that the dead party was the “bad behaviour” batch of prisoners that escaped and the new one was the “actual” heroes this time haha.

I did learned a lot from that…

#3

Honestly don’t think I’ve ever officially TPK’ed the characters. I had one wandering monster encounter that ended poorly but led to a capture, escape from the lair scenario - because frankly a wandering monster TPK is not very satisfying. Had a couple of two to three player kills with the last player hiding in the bushes and evading until they reached safety.

I don’t ever see it as the end of the campaign though. It’s fun to keep the world moving so you as the DM get to play what happens if the BBEG (or random bandits) gets one in the win column. New characters get rolled up with new hooks that resulted in the aftermath of that bad buy victory. If a player survived they get to rally the forces (new characters) and tell the tale.

Reactions to it when they do die, depends. Some players are really attached and are upset, younger ones usually, others are excited because the blade, mariachi, shaman, or fragment/amazing mage character from ICRPG Magic looks so much cooler.