May 6, 2024 • 26 mins
In this episode, the discussion centers around the Total Party Kill (TPK) scenario in role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, providing DMs with strategies to maintain the game narrative following the party's defeat. The conversation progresses from acknowledging character death as a significant aspect of gameplay to methods for avoiding a premature end to the campaign after a TPK occurs. Key tactics include scenarios such as the 'Left for Dead' situation, where characters are incapacitated instead of killed; 'Adventure in the Afterlife', where characters navigate challenges in the afterlife to return to the living world; and the 'It Was All a Dream' approach, offering a narrative reset. The hosts stress the importance of discussing character mortality and post-TPK game continuation during session zero to manage player attachment to characters, noting changes across different D&D editions. The episode wraps up with an invitation for listeners to share their own strategies for handling TPKs and other campaign obstacles.
Tell us about your best (or worst) TPK! helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
Tell us about your best (or worst) TPK! helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:20):
Heres the podcast for role players andgame masters to help the level look at
your game. We are your dungeonmasters. 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 itoff screen was kind of a it was
(00:41):
kind of a bitch move. Butyou know, what's what are we talking
about today, Jim. What weare talking about today is what we would
colloquially refer to as a t pK. That is a total party kill.
This is when combat either goes wrongor 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
(01:03):
over and the monsters win the badguys are victorious. I don't forget that
the K could also stand for aknockout, depending on what direction you need
us to go. And that's oneof the things that we're going to talk
about is and the first thing thatI want to get out of the way
is that you may well run acampaign where the dice fall where they may
(01:23):
we're playered. Sorry, I wasabout to say player death where character death.
Where player character death is a thingthat just happens at the table,
and without that, there's no stakes. And without that D and D is
it really fun? And if allof the characters die in a fight,
well that's just how it is,and we restart the campaign. I'm not
(01:44):
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 tothe next episode or you know, if
you want to see how the otherhalf lives, but you know, stay
tuned. But this is not Iunder standards. If you can at least
listen through, like to the adsand like get us a couple of pennies,
(02:04):
that'd be great. But what wasthe what was the like original one
of the original modules that was likeimpossible, the impossible dungeon, Oh that
they just remade. It's got Tomof Horrors. Yeah, two of Annihilations
of Horrors is the one you're talkingabout. Two of Annihilation is the one
that sounds like it should be thatone, but it's actually quite playable.
Yeah, a lot of those earlymodules were created specifically as competitive tournament modules
(02:30):
where you'd play them through multiple roundson whichever you know, group of them
actually survived to the end, likeliterally one at D and D, which
is like not a thing kind ofnot 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 monsterswin in a fight, either accidentally or
(02:53):
because you you know, the playerswant a really tough challenge and maybe somebody
miscalculates and you know, and youget a couple of krits with the Dragon
Breath or something like that, andeverybody's wiped out. But you don't want
to end the campaign. You wantto keep playing. Now. You can
either have this be a thing thateverybody agrees upon at the beginning of the
(03:15):
campaign. You have a discussion andyou say, look, it's going to
be possible for you guys to bedefeated, and prepare for that. You
know, I'm not going to putthe kid gloves on. But if you
get beat, all that means isyou get beat. And that's like,
you know, that's like Buffy gettingbeat in the show or something like that.
You know, it's like Spider Mangetting beat. It's like Batman getting
(03:36):
beat. We know that they canbe defeated, but the story will continue
from there, and if you wantto do that in your D and D
games. I like to divide theseinto three kind of three basic approaches that
you can take when you encounter aTPK, when you encounter this situation where
the party is defeated. And thefirst one I'm going to call left for
(04:00):
dead. Right, that means everybody'sdown 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 andrestart the campaign, you treat it like
a TV show where somebody loses afight and they all wake up in exactly
(04:26):
well they wake up, I mean, And you could do this any one
of several ways. And there's kindof a couple of variations of this left
for dead theme. One is literallyleft for dead. You know, the
bandits that they're fighting are in ahurry, 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 stabstab. People get shot with arrows,
(04:46):
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 likethey're in really rough shape, or the
cleric or something like that. Whatdo you do and go from there?
You know, and this maybe thisis a thing where like the Wizard,
(05:09):
you wake up with your familiar lickingyour face or you know, you know,
with a healing potion in one claw, pouring it, you know,
like like a drop of it onyour tongue so that you you know,
just enough to revive you and nowyou can kind of get everybody back on
their feet, and that's adorable.Or like exactly, somebody comes along,
(05:30):
you know, the farmer that knewthat you were going into the woods to
fight the goblins that were, youknow, playing his farm or something like
that. Yeah, you know,their kid followed you and they saw you
get beat up and stuff, andso that left for debt scenario, you're
defeated, but you just kind ofagree that that's you know, whatever,
the zero hit points and the faileddeat staves and all that kind of stuff
(05:51):
means you're incapacitated, you certainly can'tget up and fight some more. And
maybe you've got to go back totown and get healed, and maybe you
put some levels of exhaustion on orsomething like that in exchange for that.
You know, the bad guys area lot further along in their play.
Absolutely impose some kind of penalty thatmakes sense, some kind of you know,
narrative, you know, narrative costfor losing the flight. You don't
(06:14):
have hands anywhere, Well, thatcan 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 doyou mostly hands? You guys been watching
fallout, so so you can dothat. You can have them wake up
imprisoned by the bad guy right whoyou know took them all down and you
(06:36):
know, now you're all in shacklesand 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 banditsknock you down and you wake up and
you look around and you are inyou know, a cave that is the
larder of the local hill giant,right, you know, or a tribe
(06:58):
of ogres that came along and foundyou land there and are like, oh,
we'll take these guys. We'll laythem up for a little while to
tenderize them, and then tournament again, like Empire strikes back exactly, and
that can you know, you're likelike you wake up and you're like,
holy crap, what is going onhere? You get the opportunity to kind
of do a little thing where youknow, maybe you're unarmed for a little
while and you got to find yourgear and get it back, you know,
(07:19):
video game style, right, youknow, the middle of Half Life
where they knock you down and thenall you've got is a crowbar after,
you know, throwing a gravity gunaround and stuff like this. Right,
well we call that one the end. Now we have new problems. Yes,
precedence absolutely a thing that you cando, but that's the left for
Dead where you know they're absolutely they'redefeated, but not killed, simply incapacitated,
(07:42):
and then the story continues from thereafter being incapacitated. For that one,
I like the idea of having themwake up naturally with like one HP
is kind of like that's a littledis x MakingA for my taste. Sure,
having them be knocked out for someperiod of time and then like giving
them the benefits of a short restwith maybe with an exhaustion level. Yeah,
it feels it feels a little morerealistic. Yeah. The ways you
(08:05):
can do options, yeah, oryou 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 wecan torture you. Think of the captured
route. Yeah. Yeah, andthat's and that's another thing that you can
do. We have a new problem, Yeah, you know where where you
(08:26):
know something that the bad guy needsor the bad guy like like you say,
wants so so badly to lord itover you, to you know,
to kind of gloat in his victory. It literally has you resurrected so that
he can gloat over you. Andof course that proves to be his fatal
mistake because you know he's underestimated you. Right, that's totally another monologue figure
(08:48):
it out, Yeah, for sure. So the second kind of general bucket
of ways that you can continue aftera TPK, I'm going to call adventure
in the afterlife. So this isa thing you can do where everybody did
get killed, but whoops. Forwhatever reason, you know, you all
(09:11):
wake up in limbo, and inbetween you're in Valhalla something like that.
You're in the you know, thearena of the gods or something, and
you have to fight your way orbargain your way or trick your way out
of the afterlife. And maybe thisis a thing where you start all the
characters in their various afterlife, youknow, because they're you know, they
worship different gods or something like that, or you know, the fact that
(09:35):
the cleric has been using all thatclerical magic on everybody has bestowed a connection
to the clerics god, and soyou know, for some reason, everybody
wakes up in the afterlife of thecleric right or you know, was his.
The clerics will to drag them theirsouls along, you know, maybe
you even have the cleric narrate asyou're being pulled up into into you know,
(09:58):
into vale Halla. You see thesouls of your friends. How do
you bring them along with you?Kind of thing like that, And and
you you run some adventures in theafterlife. And this is fun because this
can be kind of a cool sidetrackto the game. It can get really
weird. You can do like kindof kind of crazy stuff. You know,
you can level up in the afterlifeand so that when you you know,
(10:20):
figure out how to get out andcome back down, you know,
you're leveled up. Stuff like this. There's all kinds of things you can
do. You have to dragon ballsyou through that like a lot. Well
not only that, but you haveto use a like an old phone booth
to travel to the past to fixthings during this bogus adventure. Yeah,
but this is like God a Wardoes some stuff like this right where you
(10:41):
kind of you know, like yougo into the afterlife and you've got to
fight the you know, the whateverghosts and stuff like this. And this
is also a really cool way todo callbacks to characters that were in the
campaign and like maybe bad guys tobe defeated before. Cool. Now who
you've got to either fight again oryou come across and they say, man,
(11:03):
when you guys killed me, Ireally learned my lesson. I'm gonna
help you out here and now getme allies. Yeah that actually all of
these things before, including the badguy turned good guy spoilers for campaign one
on that pod. It's also it'salso at least partially the plot for Gladiator
to the unmade yet unmade Gladiator too. No, Joe, there we go
(11:26):
Maximus from Maximus is supposed to befrom from the field in the underworld sun
Sign shining down. He has toyeah, what do they call that Hades?
No, no, it's called Ican't think of it. I'll think
of it later, Okay, Butyeah, he has to like save his
son, he has to come back, and yeah, look it up.
It's pretty pretty interesting. In campaignone, they go from now do they
(11:46):
have a whole there's a whole arcin 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 tocall 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 thattakes place in the Shadow Fell, which
is kind of like in between Lifeand Death, which is a very cool
(12:07):
one Queen arc there, yeah,yeah, exactly, she's in there.
And then there's a whole nother arcthat is also in the Nine Hells.
I believe it has been whilst Ilistened to it. And then there's like
this something we brought up a whileago with like putting a clock on the
table, where like not not aphysical plot, but like not having some
sort of like yeah, yeah somethingsomething to make to create urgency where the
(12:28):
bat guy was like they were thereand they were dead in the nine hells
yeah, d six that counts downor something like that. Yeah, well
the world. This one was likecreating 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 inthe plane. So they were able to
get around the TMOP, but theydid have to fight the Tarasque. Yeah,
(12:50):
Elicium, this was the name ofOh oh okay, yeah, sorry.
And this is also one of thethings where if you have kind of
teased at some of the gods inyour game, are hinted at them,
or you know, you want togive the cleric kind of the opportunity to
have actual divine intervention and some contactwith some of those divine beings without you
(13:13):
know, really messing with your campaign, the ongoing campaign, you know,
like to have the gods showing upin the middle of your game and unbalancing
thing or messing with it. Havingthe 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 gotgoing on. And maybe you know,
it was one of the gods thatactively said, yeah, I know,
(13:35):
you guys are supposed to go toyour respective heavens, but I pulled some
favors with those gods to pull youin so that you can, you know,
keep so you can keep my clericsafe while he completes my mission.
Sure you have a you have avery confused paladin for a different god and
a now very scared warlock whose patronwill not take time to us, or
(13:56):
you know, or you've got apaladin who's you know, the paladin's dity
is there, you know, nextto the clerics deity, and they're both
going, yeah, okay, youguys are going to get get this done
for us. So but there's alot of opportunities there. And and that
is also a thing where you canI have written down here now you owe
the gods. That is a thingthat can become a part of an ongoing
(14:18):
thing. I just like, whatkind of favors does a god call in?
Yeah, I just like that asa sentence. That's just that's just
the cool the gods so and sothat's kind of the second. That's the
second sort of bucket that I putthese 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, theabsolute best thing you can do to support
us is to subscribe so you'll benotified when new episodes are released. You
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(15:05):
you don't need to loop goal todo 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 youknow, this is not your thing,
but but it's a thing you cando. And that is the it was
all a dream, right because inD and D of the Bob New Heart
(15:30):
approach, the Bob Newhart approach,the Bob Newhart approach, the Dallas approach.
Sure, but you absolutely can createa situation where and this is a
thing that you can do that youcan kind of lay some groundwork for as
a DM, if they're going intoan incredibly difficult combat, you can have
a thing where you have them goto a fortune teller and the fortune teller
(15:50):
says, you know, the fortuneteller tells their fortune, and then the
next session they go off and theyrun this combat and it goes disastrous,
slee and then so at the endof that, you shake your head and
you go and the fortune teller leansback, eyes wide in terror, and
says, you better try a differentapproach than the one you're planning. And
(16:14):
you know, and then you geta do over, right, remember to
run away or try something different oryou know, just hope the dice.
But kind of like it's kind oflike that's about the Strange approach, Doctor
Strange. But also notice thinking was, oh man, what's that movie Final
Destination? Yeah, like the zoomsout and it's like the truck, you
(16:36):
know, somebody cuts off the truckand hits its brakes. Forever if you're
of an age. Yeah, anymillennial or extra that's not your gen z.
You're not maybe not get this thatwill not pull over to the side
of the road and wait if theyget behind one of those trucks, because
I the first movie. We're justgonna wait at this rest up for a
(17:00):
little while, honey, and letthat Oh is that the second one?
Oh? The first one was theairplane. First one was the airplane.
Ye, that was the second one. Okay, So yeah, so if
if if the player characters were goingto go to their final destination, you
can you can do you can borrowborrow something from that and borrow something from
(17:22):
Devin sawah. Yeah, and dependingon what depending on what kind of villain
it was, perhaps it was allpowerful illusion magic, right, that that
caused them to believe that they gotinto this fight and got killed and everything,
and you know, they kind ofcome to as the illusion wears off.
This is a little bit of akind of kind of kind of almost
(17:44):
looking at the you know, likelike 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 whatevermcguffin it was that they were going to
get but they're still able to continueadventures. You know, the effects of
that illusionary battle still you know,come into play. But that's a thing
(18:06):
if you don't want to impose levelsof exhaustion or have their gear be used
up or something like that. Thatis a way that you can do that.
You know, it could be likeI said, it could be a
prophecy that someone is telling. Itcould be you know, like it could
be a prophecy where somebody is youknow, seeing the future and then you
wind that back. It could beillusions that's used on them. The other
(18:29):
thing that can be fun that youcan do that's kind of a variant of
this is depending on the nature ofthe fight. This could be like an
orc or you know, a bandittelling a bunch of their friends what happened
in the fight at the end ofthe you know, at the end of
that terrible TPK you say, youknow, and the bandit stands up and
(18:52):
everyone in the bar toasts them fortheir you know, glorious defeat of the
party. And next session we're goingto play what really happens like that,
Yeah, and you know, nothis story that he made up to you
know, and then at some pointyou have that bandit like watching and then
run away or something like that.You know, in the next session.
That's another thing that you can dois is this is what somebody says happened,
(19:15):
and boy, that was pretty badand their version of it clearly makes
you guys look terrible. Now let'sdo 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 pointout that he gets away or else that
destroys the space. Continue. Absolutely, you got to do that. You
know, you got to create thatsituation that you know or he's just you
(19:36):
know, watching from the sidelines andscoots as soon as he sees you guys
have arrived or something. But thenwhen 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 funnystory. Let's see how it really is,
Yes, and then you kick hisass exactly, And that's that's another
fun way to do that. Kindof people say beat him up, but
(20:00):
there's lots of ways that you cando that. And like I said,
one of the things that I alwaysdo when I start a new campaign.
Is I'm really specific about telling theplayers 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 tostop playing those characters. Sure, some
(20:22):
players want, you know, iftheir 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 playersthat want to keep playing their characters for
as long as they have a storyfor that character and taking the pressure off
of them that the dice may decidethat they can't do that anymore. That
can actually be a huge relief tosome people and really free them up to
(20:45):
have a lot more fun with thegame. And is this something that we've
talked about before, where like that'sa very When I say generational, I
mean generations of gamers, not somuch like gen X versus money or versus
gen Z or whatever. But aswe progress in additions of D and D,
the idea of people getting more attachedto the character and the story between
the story within that character is muchmore of a thing than it was in
(21:07):
first edition, where like you havementioned, and we've had we had Tony
Bogan the game a games store owneron one of the last episodes of Curmudgeons.
Really they would show up to sessionone with backup characters. Yeah,
and so okay, here's the here'sthe guy I'm gonna play, and then
here's the three guys are gonna playwhen they die. Yeah, And it's
just how the game is played.And now that this game is very story
(21:30):
driven, and we can thank alot of like you know, D and
D media, you know, yourcritical roles in those types of things where
the story is just way more partof the game than it was. Yeah,
And you're seeing a lot more attachmentto characters. So having having a
contingency for when the character is defeatedbut not dead is going to be a
lot more important now than ever.Has been the thing that I think of
(21:51):
too, And I don't know ifwe've mentioned it here in one of our
previous episodes or that's something I've readmore about, but one of the things
that I want to start introducing inmy 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 areyou? And like maybe a note
on there, like if this changes, please let me know, imp because
(22:17):
everybody, that's an explanation or somethingthat 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 makein this campaign. So just so you
know, I'm the type of DMthat you know I'm I'm going to kill
your characters if if I'm going tolet the dice decide and you know,
have that have that conversation, isall I'm saying from a lot of a
(22:41):
lot of DMS. One of thethings 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 itcan be to get players to invest in,
like invest in a backstory and creatinga backstory and doing that work to
you know, craft a narrative fortheir characters and like taking off the table.
(23:02):
The idea that they may have todo that again and again and again
is a thing I think that couldbe 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'sgoing to matter, and it's that it's
going to continue to matter for thosetypes of players. Yes, my regulars,
(23:22):
I have the opposite problem where theyhave one hundred characters with one hundred
page backstories that they can't wait tobring to the table and they want to
just letting them off a cliff sothey 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 acharacter idea and a shared iPhone note.
Yeah, a lot about which weknow from previous episodes is your bedtime,
(23:47):
So yes, don't do that.And there are those players. But the
other thing that this does is setsexpectations for everybody and make sure everybody is
on the same page, because itmay be difficult if you've got like four
or five players that are all interestedin an ongoing story and you've got somebody
that wants to bring a new characterto the table every two weeks, that
(24:07):
might not be the right table forthem, and having that discussion to make
sure that you know one particular player'spreference is going to be disruptive to everybody
else you know, or or thatyou can make sure that you find a
way to integrate those approaches. That'san important conversation to have, Yeah,
and important to note that those aretwo totally fine approaches. Oh yeah,
if everyone's on the same page,yep, yeah for sure. But that's
(24:33):
kind of the general three buckets thatI 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 flyor 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 dothat by emailing us at Hello Adventure with
Podcasts at gmail dot com, ortell us your story yourself a Hello Adventure
with podcast dot com slash voice.Yeah. Also, if you have any
(24:57):
updates on the as yet unmade GladiatorToo Gladiator sequel, can we kick start
this? It's it got green lightand then COVID happened like they were about
ready to go. I think everybodysigned on and Jim, I hear you
googling, and that's not what Iwant. I want our listeners, our
(25:18):
listener to call again and talk tome about the Gladiator sequel. Ridley Scott's
eighty six but still on his feet, so you know, could happen.
All right, Well, I guesson that note. Is that the note
we're going to go out on.I guess. So, so let you
wrap this thing up, go killyour players. It's okay, guys,
Jim said, so, yes,don't. I said what I said.
(25:41):
That's that's a to unless you're LARPing. Why I've never played in one of
Jason's games. Yes, like anmy players all the time down, although
there are several seats open. That'sthe kind of topic that I want to
get into sooner than later. Ihad 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. Whatwas the name of the guy that had
(26:03):
the hotel in Chicago with the withthe murder hotel? Oh, the Devil
and the White City guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think of
his name right now. It's reallyBalrab. 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 andPortizo Jim Crocker and Joe McCall, producer,
editor and engineer Jason Portiso musically byNick Spurri or art right by Chris
and Roderick. You can reach outto us with any feedback or suggestions by
(26:26):
emailing Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dotcom. Hello Adventurers gives a GTP audio
production. Good Night Adventures, SorryAdventures,
Heres the podcast for role players andgame masters to help the level look at
your game. We are your dungeonmasters. 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 itoff screen was kind of a it was
(00:41):
kind of a bitch move. Butyou know, what's what are we talking
about today, Jim. What weare talking about today is what we would
colloquially refer to as a t pK. That is a total party kill.
This is when combat either goes wrongor 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
(01:03):
over and the monsters win the badguys are victorious. I don't forget that
the K could also stand for aknockout, depending on what direction you need
us to go. And that's oneof the things that we're going to talk
about is and the first thing thatI want to get out of the way
is that you may well run acampaign where the dice fall where they may
(01:23):
we're playered. Sorry, I wasabout to say player death where character death.
Where player character death is a thingthat just happens at the table,
and without that, there's no stakes. And without that D and D is
it really fun? And if allof the characters die in a fight,
well that's just how it is,and we restart the campaign. I'm not
(01:44):
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 tothe next episode or you know, if
you want to see how the otherhalf lives, but you know, stay
tuned. But this is not Iunder standards. If you can at least
listen through, like to the adsand like get us a couple of pennies,
(02:04):
that'd be great. But what wasthe what was the like original one
of the original modules that was likeimpossible, the impossible dungeon, Oh that
they just remade. It's got Tomof Horrors. Yeah, two of Annihilations
of Horrors is the one you're talkingabout. Two of Annihilation is the one
that sounds like it should be thatone, but it's actually quite playable.
Yeah, a lot of those earlymodules were created specifically as competitive tournament modules
(02:30):
where you'd play them through multiple roundson whichever you know, group of them
actually survived to the end, likeliterally one at D and D, which
is like not a thing kind ofnot 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 monsterswin in a fight, either accidentally or
(02:53):
because you you know, the playerswant a really tough challenge and maybe somebody
miscalculates and you know, and youget a couple of krits with the Dragon
Breath or something like that, andeverybody's wiped out. But you don't want
to end the campaign. You wantto keep playing. Now. You can
either have this be a thing thateverybody agrees upon at the beginning of the
(03:15):
campaign. You have a discussion andyou say, look, it's going to
be possible for you guys to bedefeated, and prepare for that. You
know, I'm not going to putthe kid gloves on. But if you
get beat, all that means isyou get beat. And that's like,
you know, that's like Buffy gettingbeat in the show or something like that.
You know, it's like Spider Mangetting beat. It's like Batman getting
(03:36):
beat. We know that they canbe defeated, but the story will continue
from there, and if you wantto do that in your D and D
games. I like to divide theseinto three kind of three basic approaches that
you can take when you encounter aTPK, when you encounter this situation where
the party is defeated. And thefirst one I'm going to call left for
(04:00):
dead. Right, that means everybody'sdown 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 andrestart the campaign, you treat it like
a TV show where somebody loses afight and they all wake up in exactly
(04:26):
well they wake up, I mean, And you could do this any one
of several ways. And there's kindof a couple of variations of this left
for dead theme. One is literallyleft for dead. You know, the
bandits that they're fighting are in ahurry, 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 stabstab. People get shot with arrows,
(04:46):
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 likethey're in really rough shape, or the
cleric or something like that. Whatdo you do and go from there?
You know, and this maybe thisis a thing where like the Wizard,
(05:09):
you wake up with your familiar lickingyour face or you know, you know,
with a healing potion in one claw, pouring it, you know,
like like a drop of it onyour tongue so that you you know,
just enough to revive you and nowyou can kind of get everybody back on
their feet, and that's adorable.Or like exactly, somebody comes along,
(05:30):
you know, the farmer that knewthat you were going into the woods to
fight the goblins that were, youknow, playing his farm or something like
that. Yeah, you know,their kid followed you and they saw you
get beat up and stuff, andso that left for debt scenario, you're
defeated, but you just kind ofagree that that's you know, whatever,
the zero hit points and the faileddeat staves and all that kind of stuff
(05:51):
means you're incapacitated, you certainly can'tget up and fight some more. And
maybe you've got to go back totown and get healed, and maybe you
put some levels of exhaustion on orsomething like that in exchange for that.
You know, the bad guys area lot further along in their play.
Absolutely impose some kind of penalty thatmakes sense, some kind of you know,
narrative, you know, narrative costfor losing the flight. You don't
(06:14):
have hands anywhere, Well, thatcan 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 doyou mostly hands? You guys been watching
fallout, so so you can dothat. You can have them wake up
imprisoned by the bad guy right whoyou know took them all down and you
(06:36):
know, now you're all in shacklesand 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 banditsknock you down and you wake up and
you look around and you are inyou know, a cave that is the
larder of the local hill giant,right, you know, or a tribe
(06:58):
of ogres that came along and foundyou land there and are like, oh,
we'll take these guys. We'll laythem up for a little while to
tenderize them, and then tournament again, like Empire strikes back exactly, and
that can you know, you're likelike you wake up and you're like,
holy crap, what is going onhere? You get the opportunity to kind
of do a little thing where youknow, maybe you're unarmed for a little
while and you got to find yourgear and get it back, you know,
(07:19):
video game style, right, youknow, the middle of Half Life
where they knock you down and thenall you've got is a crowbar after,
you know, throwing a gravity gunaround and stuff like this. Right,
well we call that one the end. Now we have new problems. Yes,
precedence absolutely a thing that you cando, but that's the left for
Dead where you know they're absolutely they'redefeated, but not killed, simply incapacitated,
(07:42):
and then the story continues from thereafter being incapacitated. For that one,
I like the idea of having themwake up naturally with like one HP
is kind of like that's a littledis x MakingA for my taste. Sure,
having them be knocked out for someperiod of time and then like giving
them the benefits of a short restwith maybe with an exhaustion level. Yeah,
it feels it feels a little morerealistic. Yeah. The ways you
(08:05):
can do options, yeah, oryou 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 wecan torture you. Think of the captured
route. Yeah. Yeah, andthat's and that's another thing that you can
do. We have a new problem, Yeah, you know where where you
(08:26):
know something that the bad guy needsor the bad guy like like you say,
wants so so badly to lord itover you, to you know,
to kind of gloat in his victory. It literally has you resurrected so that
he can gloat over you. Andof course that proves to be his fatal
mistake because you know he's underestimated you. Right, that's totally another monologue figure
(08:48):
it out, Yeah, for sure. So the second kind of general bucket
of ways that you can continue aftera TPK, I'm going to call adventure
in the afterlife. So this isa thing you can do where everybody did
get killed, but whoops. Forwhatever reason, you know, you all
(09:11):
wake up in limbo, and inbetween you're in Valhalla something like that.
You're in the you know, thearena of the gods or something, and
you have to fight your way orbargain your way or trick your way out
of the afterlife. And maybe thisis a thing where you start all the
characters in their various afterlife, youknow, because they're you know, they
worship different gods or something like that, or you know, the fact that
(09:35):
the cleric has been using all thatclerical magic on everybody has bestowed a connection
to the clerics god, and soyou know, for some reason, everybody
wakes up in the afterlife of thecleric right or you know, was his.
The clerics will to drag them theirsouls along, you know, maybe
you even have the cleric narrate asyou're being pulled up into into you know,
(09:58):
into vale Halla. You see thesouls of your friends. How do
you bring them along with you?Kind of thing like that, And and
you you run some adventures in theafterlife. And this is fun because this
can be kind of a cool sidetrackto the game. It can get really
weird. You can do like kindof kind of crazy stuff. You know,
you can level up in the afterlifeand so that when you you know,
(10:20):
figure out how to get out andcome back down, you know,
you're leveled up. Stuff like this. There's all kinds of things you can
do. You have to dragon ballsyou through that like a lot. Well
not only that, but you haveto use a like an old phone booth
to travel to the past to fixthings during this bogus adventure. Yeah,
but this is like God a Wardoes some stuff like this right where you
(10:41):
kind of you know, like yougo into the afterlife and you've got to
fight the you know, the whateverghosts and stuff like this. And this
is also a really cool way todo callbacks to characters that were in the
campaign and like maybe bad guys tobe defeated before. Cool. Now who
you've got to either fight again oryou come across and they say, man,
(11:03):
when you guys killed me, Ireally learned my lesson. I'm gonna
help you out here and now getme allies. Yeah that actually all of
these things before, including the badguy turned good guy spoilers for campaign one
on that pod. It's also it'salso at least partially the plot for Gladiator
to the unmade yet unmade Gladiator too. No, Joe, there we go
(11:26):
Maximus from Maximus is supposed to befrom from the field in the underworld sun
Sign shining down. He has toyeah, what do they call that Hades?
No, no, it's called Ican't think of it. I'll think
of it later, Okay, Butyeah, he has to like save his
son, he has to come back, and yeah, look it up.
It's pretty pretty interesting. In campaignone, they go from now do they
(11:46):
have a whole there's a whole arcin 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 tocall 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 thattakes place in the Shadow Fell, which
is kind of like in between Lifeand Death, which is a very cool
(12:07):
one Queen arc there, yeah,yeah, exactly, she's in there.
And then there's a whole nother arcthat is also in the Nine Hells.
I believe it has been whilst Ilistened to it. And then there's like
this something we brought up a whileago with like putting a clock on the
table, where like not not aphysical plot, but like not having some
sort of like yeah, yeah somethingsomething to make to create urgency where the
(12:28):
bat guy was like they were thereand they were dead in the nine hells
yeah, d six that counts downor something like that. Yeah, well
the world. This one was likecreating 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 inthe plane. So they were able to
get around the TMOP, but theydid have to fight the Tarasque. Yeah,
(12:50):
Elicium, this was the name ofOh oh okay, yeah, sorry.
And this is also one of thethings where if you have kind of
teased at some of the gods inyour game, are hinted at them,
or you know, you want togive the cleric kind of the opportunity to
have actual divine intervention and some contactwith some of those divine beings without you
(13:13):
know, really messing with your campaign, the ongoing campaign, you know,
like to have the gods showing upin the middle of your game and unbalancing
thing or messing with it. Havingthe 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 gotgoing on. And maybe you know,
it was one of the gods thatactively said, yeah, I know,
(13:35):
you guys are supposed to go toyour respective heavens, but I pulled some
favors with those gods to pull youin so that you can, you know,
keep so you can keep my clericsafe while he completes my mission.
Sure you have a you have avery confused paladin for a different god and
a now very scared warlock whose patronwill not take time to us, or
(13:56):
you know, or you've got apaladin who's you know, the paladin's dity
is there, you know, nextto the clerics deity, and they're both
going, yeah, okay, youguys are going to get get this done
for us. So but there's alot of opportunities there. And and that
is also a thing where you canI have written down here now you owe
the gods. That is a thingthat can become a part of an ongoing
(14:18):
thing. I just like, whatkind of favors does a god call in?
Yeah, I just like that asa sentence. That's just that's just
the cool the gods so and sothat's kind of the second. That's the
second sort of bucket that I putthese 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, theabsolute best thing you can do to support
us is to subscribe so you'll benotified when new episodes are released. You
can also leave us a review fivestars. Of course, that will help
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just tell your friends of if youlike what we're doing here, that there's
a good chance that your DM oryour players will enjoy it too. And
(15:05):
you don't need to loop goal todo 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 youknow, this is not your thing,
but but it's a thing you cando. And that is the it was
all a dream, right because inD and D of the Bob New Heart
(15:30):
approach, the Bob Newhart approach,the Bob Newhart approach, the Dallas approach.
Sure, but you absolutely can createa situation where and this is a
thing that you can do that youcan kind of lay some groundwork for as
a DM, if they're going intoan incredibly difficult combat, you can have
a thing where you have them goto a fortune teller and the fortune teller
(15:50):
says, you know, the fortuneteller tells their fortune, and then the
next session they go off and theyrun this combat and it goes disastrous,
slee and then so at the endof that, you shake your head and
you go and the fortune teller leansback, eyes wide in terror, and
says, you better try a differentapproach than the one you're planning. And
(16:14):
you know, and then you geta do over, right, remember to
run away or try something different oryou know, just hope the dice.
But kind of like it's kind oflike that's about the Strange approach, Doctor
Strange. But also notice thinking was, oh man, what's that movie Final
Destination? Yeah, like the zoomsout and it's like the truck, you
(16:36):
know, somebody cuts off the truckand hits its brakes. Forever if you're
of an age. Yeah, anymillennial or extra that's not your gen z.
You're not maybe not get this thatwill not pull over to the side
of the road and wait if theyget behind one of those trucks, because
I the first movie. We're justgonna wait at this rest up for a
(17:00):
little while, honey, and letthat Oh is that the second one?
Oh? The first one was theairplane. First one was the airplane.
Ye, that was the second one. Okay, So yeah, so if
if if the player characters were goingto go to their final destination, you
can you can do you can borrowborrow something from that and borrow something from
(17:22):
Devin sawah. Yeah, and dependingon what depending on what kind of villain
it was, perhaps it was allpowerful illusion magic, right, that that
caused them to believe that they gotinto this fight and got killed and everything,
and you know, they kind ofcome to as the illusion wears off.
This is a little bit of akind of kind of kind of almost
(17:44):
looking at the you know, likelike 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 whatevermcguffin it was that they were going to
get but they're still able to continueadventures. You know, the effects of
that illusionary battle still you know,come into play. But that's a thing
(18:06):
if you don't want to impose levelsof exhaustion or have their gear be used
up or something like that. Thatis a way that you can do that.
You know, it could be likeI said, it could be a
prophecy that someone is telling. Itcould be you know, like it could
be a prophecy where somebody is youknow, seeing the future and then you
wind that back. It could beillusions that's used on them. The other
(18:29):
thing that can be fun that youcan do that's kind of a variant of
this is depending on the nature ofthe fight. This could be like an
orc or you know, a bandittelling a bunch of their friends what happened
in the fight at the end ofthe you know, at the end of
that terrible TPK you say, youknow, and the bandit stands up and
(18:52):
everyone in the bar toasts them fortheir you know, glorious defeat of the
party. And next session we're goingto play what really happens like that,
Yeah, and you know, nothis story that he made up to you
know, and then at some pointyou have that bandit like watching and then
run away or something like that.You know, in the next session.
That's another thing that you can dois is this is what somebody says happened,
(19:15):
and boy, that was pretty badand their version of it clearly makes
you guys look terrible. Now let'sdo 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 pointout that he gets away or else that
destroys the space. Continue. Absolutely, you got to do that. You
know, you got to create thatsituation that you know or he's just you
(19:36):
know, watching from the sidelines andscoots as soon as he sees you guys
have arrived or something. But thenwhen 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 funnystory. Let's see how it really is,
Yes, and then you kick hisass exactly, And that's that's another
fun way to do that. Kindof people say beat him up, but
(20:00):
there's lots of ways that you cando that. And like I said,
one of the things that I alwaysdo when I start a new campaign.
Is I'm really specific about telling theplayers 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 tostop playing those characters. Sure, some
(20:22):
players want, you know, iftheir 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 playersthat want to keep playing their characters for
as long as they have a storyfor that character and taking the pressure off
of them that the dice may decidethat they can't do that anymore. That
can actually be a huge relief tosome people and really free them up to
(20:45):
have a lot more fun with thegame. And is this something that we've
talked about before, where like that'sa very When I say generational, I
mean generations of gamers, not somuch like gen X versus money or versus
gen Z or whatever. But aswe progress in additions of D and D,
the idea of people getting more attachedto the character and the story between
the story within that character is muchmore of a thing than it was in
(21:07):
first edition, where like you havementioned, and we've had we had Tony
Bogan the game a games store owneron one of the last episodes of Curmudgeons.
Really they would show up to sessionone with backup characters. Yeah,
and so okay, here's the here'sthe guy I'm gonna play, and then
here's the three guys are gonna playwhen they die. Yeah, And it's
just how the game is played.And now that this game is very story
(21:30):
driven, and we can thank alot of like you know, D and
D media, you know, yourcritical roles in those types of things where
the story is just way more partof the game than it was. Yeah,
And you're seeing a lot more attachmentto characters. So having having a
contingency for when the character is defeatedbut not dead is going to be a
lot more important now than ever.Has been the thing that I think of
(21:51):
too, And I don't know ifwe've mentioned it here in one of our
previous episodes or that's something I've readmore about, but one of the things
that I want to start introducing inmy 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 areyou? And like maybe a note
on there, like if this changes, please let me know, imp because
(22:17):
everybody, that's an explanation or somethingthat 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 makein this campaign. So just so you
know, I'm the type of DMthat you know I'm I'm going to kill
your characters if if I'm going tolet the dice decide and you know,
have that have that conversation, isall I'm saying from a lot of a
(22:41):
lot of DMS. One of thethings 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 itcan be to get players to invest in,
like invest in a backstory and creatinga backstory and doing that work to
you know, craft a narrative fortheir characters and like taking off the table.
(23:02):
The idea that they may have todo that again and again and again
is a thing I think that couldbe 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'sgoing to matter, and it's that it's
going to continue to matter for thosetypes of players. Yes, my regulars,
(23:22):
I have the opposite problem where theyhave one hundred characters with one hundred
page backstories that they can't wait tobring to the table and they want to
just letting them off a cliff sothey 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 acharacter idea and a shared iPhone note.
Yeah, a lot about which weknow from previous episodes is your bedtime,
(23:47):
So yes, don't do that.And there are those players. But the
other thing that this does is setsexpectations for everybody and make sure everybody is
on the same page, because itmay be difficult if you've got like four
or five players that are all interestedin an ongoing story and you've got somebody
that wants to bring a new characterto the table every two weeks, that
(24:07):
might not be the right table forthem, and having that discussion to make
sure that you know one particular player'spreference is going to be disruptive to everybody
else you know, or or thatyou can make sure that you find a
way to integrate those approaches. That'san important conversation to have, Yeah,
and important to note that those aretwo totally fine approaches. Oh yeah,
if everyone's on the same page,yep, yeah for sure. But that's
(24:33):
kind of the general three buckets thatI 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 flyor 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 dothat by emailing us at Hello Adventure with
Podcasts at gmail dot com, ortell us your story yourself a Hello Adventure
with podcast dot com slash voice.Yeah. Also, if you have any
(24:57):
updates on the as yet unmade GladiatorToo Gladiator sequel, can we kick start
this? It's it got green lightand then COVID happened like they were about
ready to go. I think everybodysigned on and Jim, I hear you
googling, and that's not what Iwant. I want our listeners, our
(25:18):
listener to call again and talk tome about the Gladiator sequel. Ridley Scott's
eighty six but still on his feet, so you know, could happen.
All right, Well, I guesson that note. Is that the note
we're going to go out on.I guess. So, so let you
wrap this thing up, go killyour players. It's okay, guys,
Jim said, so, yes,don't. I said what I said.
(25:41):
That's that's a to unless you're LARPing. Why I've never played in one of
Jason's games. Yes, like anmy players all the time down, although
there are several seats open. That'sthe kind of topic that I want to
get into sooner than later. Ihad 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. Whatwas the name of the guy that had
(26:03):
the hotel in Chicago with the withthe murder hotel? Oh, the Devil
and the White City guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think of
his name right now. It's reallyBalrab. 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 andPortizo Jim Crocker and Joe McCall, producer,
editor and engineer Jason Portiso musically byNick Spurri or art right by Chris
and Roderick. You can reach outto us with any feedback or suggestions by
(26:26):
emailing Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dotcom. Hello Adventurers gives a GTP audio
production. Good Night Adventures, SorryAdventures,
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