D&D 5E DM Advice: How do you handle a TPK?

[Queer Venger]

I nearly had one while running the Thundertree chapter of the Lost Mine of Phandelver. I wonder for DMs: what happens when your whole party gets wiped out?? Are players going to rebel against me and never come back to my table? Is this an opportunity for a new beginning? Do let players (who played well and were still wiped out) create new characters, and if so at same level?

Advice please. And please share your TPK stories and how your players handled it.

 

[Crothian]

The last TPK we had was near the end of the nights session so we ended a little earlier and the players were wondering what was going to happen next. The next session they all found themselves standing before the God of Death to be judged. It was a solid role playing session were they had to defend their actions and go thorough high lights and low lights of their characters lives. We covered what happened in session but also brought up secrets in characters pasts that they never brought up. I also used Death to foreshadow events to come and fill in some gabs in their knowledge. It ended with Death about to give his verdict when they all awoke in a temple as one of their NPCs friends resurrected all the characters. I told them they had full memory of everything that happened and they had to over come the set back of dealing with the people the killed them.

I've done similar things like that before. In a 2e game I had the group fight and figure out how to escape the afterlife and get back to their world. It was a very Greek inspired setting so it worked well with the themes of it. In another game when just one of the PCs died the group found a way to go into the afterlife and retrieve her soul. There's a lot of fun things that can be done after a TPK that do not mean the end of the campaign.

 

[the Jester]

I nearly had one while running the Thundertree chapter of the Lost Mine of Phandelver. I wonder for DMs: what happens when your whole party gets wiped out?? Are players going to rebel against me and never come back to my table? Is this an opportunity for a new beginning? Do let players (who played well and were still wiped out) create new characters, and if so at same level?

Advice please. And please share your TPK stories and how your players handled it.

The players start rolling up new characters at first level and start up a new group, possibly in the same area of the world, possibly elsewhere.

I've had many tpks over the years, and never yet had even a single player walk away because of it. The game goes on.

 

[Lancelot]

Unless the TPK occurred near the start of a new campaign (e.g. within the first 3 levels), then it's time for a new campaign. Almost always the same world, but a different area and a different theme. Pirates campaign TPKed? Next is Ravenloft horror-themed. Then the next campaign is dwarves reclaiming the demon-infested halls of their ancestors. Then an urban political/criminal saga. Etc, etc.

All new campaigns start at level 1.

This is absolutely the "social contract" I have with my players. My players (8-10 individuals in 2 separate groups) would probably mutiny if I... a) forced them to keep going with a campaign setting where their established characters TPK'ed; or b) forced them to start at higher than 1st level. We start fresh each time, because the group likes to start fresh each time.

We go through a lot of TPKs, and we play a lot of sessions. To give some numbers... over the course of 4e, we went through about 20 complete campaigns. Four of those campaigns reached 19th-20th level. One campaign reached 26th level. Most of the rest crashed and burned somewhere between 5th-10th level. Over the course of those campaigns, the guys lost about 250 characters. I know this for a certainty, because I keep a record of every death. Race, class, player, campaign, cause of death. It's worth pointing out that those are permanent character losses only. If a PC is raised, it's not recorded in the Hall of the Dead.

During all that time, with 20+ TPKs and hundreds of permanent character losses, I've only ever lost 1 player from the table. And that was over a treasure-division dispute with other players, where tempers flared. TPKs and character losses are just part of the game for us.

 

[BigVanVader]

Generally I make them carry me on their shoulders around the neighborhood, while I wear the Crown of Victory. I then bake them a cake with the words 'YOU ARE ALL LOSERS' spelled out on the top.

 

[Riley37]

I have seen Journey to the Underworld done once, very carefully and very skillfully, as an overnight game session.

The players had been running their PCs as people playing around with their powers. GM was bored with that. TPK was an all-out attack on a fortified position, perhaps with less-stupid-than-previous-sessions defenders.

The special overnight session started with the PCs as no-special-powers shades in a grim grey Homeric afterlife. The PCs treated it as if it were a puzzle and the goal was to escape, at first, which was partly true. Eventually they reached a Gatekeeper. But the gatekeeper asked them: So, if I let you guys back into the realm of the living - how long before I see you again? a year? five years, ten? and will anything be different? if not, you might as well wander around here as shades.

The players eventually realized that they had to actually come up with a meaningful vision, goal or purpose for their PCs and for the party, and after some discussions, with each other and NPCs, they did. THEN they got to fight the Dragon of Death; that fight was played out in the GM's garage; when the PCs won, the GM opened the garage door, and daylight streamed in. I think the GM cued "Salisbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel. The PCs found themselves back in their bodies, wounds healed and restored to life, and the campaign resumed.

 

[delericho]

I nearly had one while running the Thundertree chapter of the Lost Mine of Phandelver.

I had one in the first chapter. Though I did only have two PCs, so it wasn't a huge shock.

I wonder for DMs: what happens when your whole party gets wiped out??

Time for a new campaign. So, new characters, possibly a new world, almost certainly a new storyline.

(In the specific case of Phandelver, we made an exception, though - new characters, yes, but we jumped them in to part two of the adventure and took it from there.)

Are players going to rebel against me and never come back to my table?

I've never seen that happen. And, provided it doesn't happen too often, I can't imagine it would. (Conversely, if you're suffering TPKs every couple of sessions, you're probably setting the difficulty level too high. Best to dial it back a bit, IMO, as players can get frustrated if they're constantly 'losing'.)

But I'd actually consider a DM's first TPK to be a good thing. You should absolutely let it stand, and definitely not fudge things to somehow let the PCs 'win'. Because allowing a PC to die, and even allowing a TPK to happen, lets the players know that they can 'lose' and that they can lose PCs. And the converse is also true: it lets them know that when they win it's because they won, and not because the DM 'cheated' to let them win.

 

[pemerton]

please share your TPK stories and how your players handled it.

I've only had two TPKs that I can remember in the past 30 years.

One was in a high-level campaign which had stagnated (in part due to the system, in part due to my GMing errors). One of the players had his PC lead the party into an assault that he knew they couldn't win. And they didn't. This gave us a chance to put the campaign out of its misery in a somewhat dignified way and start again.

The other was early on in my 4e campaign (the PCs were just on the cusp of 3rd level) - an encounter with undead spirits summoned by a goblin shaman turned out to be harder than I'd anticipated when most of the PCs got stuck inside multiple debuff auras. One of the PCs was dead beyond a doubt (dropped below -ve bloodied hp by friendly fire). The others were dropped below zero but not dead. I asked the players who wanted to keep playing their PCs and who wanted to bring in a new one. Only one player wanted a new character. So, of the 5 PCs, 3 regained consciousness in a goblin cell, where there was also a 4th prisoner (the new PC, brought in at the same level). They could smell the smell of roasting half-elf (the PC whose player didn't want to keep playing him). And the PC who had died to friendly fire, who was a paladin of the Raven Queen, found himself sent back to the mortal wound by his god in order to thwart the summoning of the spirit of an evil wizard whom that character had dealt with earlier in the campaign.

 

[wedgeski]

TPK's are always a downer, you can't help that, but the very best TPK's are as exciting and memorable as any encounter where the characters walked away unscathed. If you're running an ongoing campaign and your players roll up a new party to start again, later call-backs to their previous PC's can work wonders to heal the wounds.

No TPK over which I have ever presided has caused players to leave the game. I wouldn't worry about that.

 

[Ravenheart87]

I usually roll several characters with everyone, so even if a character dies during adventure they can pull out another from the stable and possibly recover the corpses.