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S5 Ep. 4 - Is it ok to TPK the Party? · Bards and Barrels

• 0:00
  Ross: Is it okay to TPK the party?
• 0:11
  Ross: Welcome everyone to another episode of Bards and Barrels I'm rosters.
• 0:14
  Ross: Along with me tonight is Phil Boone.
• 0:17
  Ross: There's the opening crack for this one.
• 0:19
  Ross: Phil, an exciting topic.
• 0:21
  Ross: Well, I don't know about exciting, but a an interesting topic tonight.
• 0:24
  Ross: I find this one exciting because I've done this before.
• 0:27
  Ross: Well, let's start with that.
• 0:28
  Ross: Tell tell us tell us a little story and then we'll we'll dive into this.
• 0:31
  Phil: Oh, a story, a story.
• 0:33
  Phil: You see, um, once upon a time, I was a DM for a couple um knuckleheads that decided that they were going to traverse in a subterranean uh sewer system and needed a light source.
• 0:49
  Phil: And although they had plenty of magical ways to conjure such a light source that was not a flammable source, they smelled something funny in the air and still chose to carry in a torch, leading to a massive explosion in an underground chamber that with the dice roll collapsed the entire chamber on top of the entire party's heads.
• 1:10
  Ross: Okay, I'm gonna call timeout here.
• 1:12
  Ross: You you said they walked in with a torch.
• 1:15
  Ross: It was a one person that walked in with a torch after getting several warnings and having an another light source available to them.
• 1:23
  Ross: Okay, I maybe left out a few details.
• 1:25
  Ross: Hey, there was a lot of dice rolls today.
• 1:27
  Ross: Oh, yeah, Brett's behind the mic tonight.
• 1:29
  Ross: Uh that's because it was his character that uh killed us all in that one.
• 1:32
  Ross: Uh but Philip liked to be the fit, and that wasn't my fault.
• 1:35
  Phil: So you didn't TPK the party.
• 1:37
  Phil: No, that Brett TPK'd the party.
• 1:39
  Phil: This is accurate.
• 1:40
  Ross: The dice roll?
• 1:42
  Phil: The dice roll.
• 1:43
  Ross: So that that begs the question.
• 1:46
  Ross: Uh an accidental TPK is one thing.
• 1:49
  Ross: As a DM, is it is it okay?
• 1:52
  Ross: Like in this instance, it it it was fate almost, right?
• 1:56
  Ross: Like something happened.
• 1:58
  Ross: It wasn't like they were doing something wrong, and you're like, yeah, these guys gotta learn a lesson.
• 2:03
  Phil: No, um, it's a tool, right?
• 2:05
  Phil: I mean, when you think like as a DM, you have a bunch of tools in your kit, and is a TPK a tool you should pull out all the time?
• 2:12
  Phil: No, like sure I don't par taken that whole idea that like the DM plays against the players sort of video where I'm trying to kill the players.
• 2:22
  Phil: That to me is not the goal of this storytelling game.
• 2:26
  Phil: So I think if it narratively actually kind of fits, there may be cases where you know what the stakes are really high and we've built all this tension up, and this is a life or death scenario, and the players know it, and the DM knows it, and it comes down to maybe something like the dice, and we miss, and everybody dies.
• 2:49
  Ross: Sure.
• 2:49
  Ross: Let me let me present you with a situation.
• 2:51
  Ross: So let's say that it's a relatively new party, and they've gotten themselves into uh similar situations here that I'm gonna present to you.
• 3:01
  Ross: One situation is they're fighting somebody who's a little bit overpowered and they're just making some not great choices in combat.
• 3:08
  Ross: Do you, as a DM, pull some punches to avoid a TPK in that situation?
• 3:13
  Ross: And let me give you the opposite situation.
• 3:14
  Ross: Okay.
• 3:15
  Ross: Same party tries to fight a god who you have warned them they cannot beat at this point and should not even be enticing into combat.
• 3:27
  Ross: In those two situations, how do you feel about that?
• 3:29
  Phil: I think you've explained the two perfect scenarios because in the first scenario, right, I would probably not TPK the party.
• 3:37
  Phil: I may knock several of them down so they understand that they're making stupid mistakes.
• 3:42
  Phil: In the second scenario, I would absolutely teach a lesson.
• 3:46
  Phil: That's how I would refer to that as.
• 3:48
  Ross: That's fair.
• 3:49
  Ross: Although the time you tried to teach us a lesson with a god and we nearly wiped out the god was a great moment in my memories.
• 3:57
  Phil: Yeah, we don't have to talk about that today.
• 4:00
  Phil: That's a different scenario.
• 4:02
  Phil: That is how not to TPK the party.
• 4:04
  Ross: Yeah, I think I think there's been a couple instances.
• 4:07
  Ross: Um one with a different party that I DM'd, and then I'm trying to think of like times with you guys that I've DM'd where because of how the narrative of the story was going, that I pulled some punches because dying at that point, especially like when you've been setting like your own story up where I'm like, I just don't want to do this right now.
• 4:27
  Ross: Like this, this there will be opportunities later for like full on combat and opportunities to die where it's more impactful almost.
• 4:36
  Ross: But like at this moment, I had like in specific moments, I have pulled punches for the narrative.
• 4:41
  Phil: Yeah, I I would agree with that because I it's once again, it's it's the story.
• 4:46
  Phil: So if if it makes sense, right, if it has something we built to, yes, if it's not that time, like I think that's the thing.
• 4:53
  Phil: It's like as a DM, you're like, no, like this isn't the time, you know, like it's not what I pictured, it's not what the players would picture.
• 4:59
  Phil: And I think you ideally you know that, right?
• 5:02
  Phil: You can kind of feel that out and understand when that should be happening, right?
• 5:06
  Phil: Um, I've heard of some DMs doing it like at the beginning of a campaign to like wipe clean and have everyone start with new characters.
• 5:16
  Phil: I've never done that.
• 5:17
  Phil: That's probably not really my style.
• 5:20
  Phil: Um, but I've like read some examples where people have done that.
• 5:23
  Ross: I I could see where that would be interesting for like a party who like likes the story, but maybe their their party build isn't ideal.
• 5:31
  Ross: Like it was a case where like let's build characters and they kind of built what they wanted without like really thinking about how it could play with the story.
• 5:38
  Ross: Like, I I guess like in a session zero, something I would do is like I would lay out a little bit in the campaign you're going to play, some of like not give anything away, but just be like, you should probably have a healer in your party or something to that effect.
• 5:52
  Ross: And it's like if you don't do it that way, you just want to wing it, and then you get into it and you're like, oh crap, we really could.
• 5:58
  Ross: A way to fix that would be kill them off, make it super dramatic and make it part of the story.
• 6:04
  Ross: And then, hey, this is an opportunity for us to start over.
• 6:07
  Phil: I think that's one way, and another way, I guess, as I was thinking about it, is as a DM, if you didn't share a whole lot of details in your session zero, but the plot of your campaign was that you're gonna kill these players off and they're all gonna become like undead and they are pushing me or something like that.
• 6:23
  Phil: Like I could see that being a thing.
• 6:25
  Phil: Um, you know, I had another point, Russ, and I lost it.
• 6:29
  Phil: It was not related to this specifically, probably very important though.
• 6:33
  Ross: Um, I I think those are all excellent examples.
• 6:36
  Ross: And and I do really like your point about potentially teaching a lesson.
• 6:40
  Ross: I have not been at a table where I have a party who like pokes at the DM to be like, well, you're not doing enough, or disguise a most like that you're not gonna, you're not gonna really kill us.
• 6:51
  Ross: Like, I've never been in that situation, but I could see where like if somebody would push me to the point and I'm just like, okay, you mess around, you're gonna find out, and here we go.
• 7:00
  Phil: I that was it was the teaching a lesson thing.
• 7:02
  Phil: I feel like uh if you start a campaign and suddenly we're like the entire party's headed down the murder hobo route.
• 7:08
  Phil: Oh yeah, boom, time to teach a lesson.
• 7:10
  Phil: Yep.
• 7:11
  Phil: I I think that's fair.
• 7:12
  Phil: I think that's a good thing.
• 7:13
  Ross: I think it even becomes more impactful when it's not a god or powerful singular thing.
• 7:18
  Ross: Like if it's just a uh the city guard comes with a battalion and just wipes you out, you may have taken some of them with you, but they took all of you out, kind of deal.
• 7:27
  Phil: And once again, like that's a narrative way to do it, right?
• 7:29
  Phil: Like your actions have consequences and you need to understand that.
• 7:33
  Phil: So in in those instances, I absolutely think that it's appropriate.
• 7:37
  Ross: So let's talk a little bit about like it let's do this on the side of like the narrative-based side.
• 7:43
  Ross: Because I think if you're teaching a lesson, you just want to get this done because you reach you've reached a point.
• 7:48
  Ross: But like it, if it makes sense for the story, how do you how do you initiate this and how do you resolve it in a way that doesn't feel out of place?
• 7:57
  Ross: Like it just doesn't feel like I came in swinging and I'm it give you that real DM versus the player feeling.
• 8:03
  Phil: Oh, um I'm kind of thinking of it in two, even even though we're still talking about the narrative route, there's still almost two different versions of that.
• 8:12
  Phil: One is like, hey, this is the you know, natural consequence of the actions or like of your decisions, like walking into a room with a lit torch when you smelled gas and were warned against it, right?
• 8:23
  Phil: Like that is a little bit easier to initiate because it's natural, right?
• 8:27
  Phil: The players are interacting and causing like they're the trigger, um, versus you know, as a DM, if it's part of the story that you're building, I think that building the tension, making sure that you know, as we talked about Candela previously, like making sure that your players understand the stakes of what they're up against, what's happening right now, you know, we've built all this up.
• 8:49
  Phil: This is a life or death situation, and then at some point, right, like there's a climax there.
• 8:54
  Phil: Sure.
• 8:55
  Phil: I I could go either way though, in that case, right?
• 8:57
  Phil: Like it's not necessarily going to be a TPK, it could be a glorious success.
• 9:02
  Ross: Sure.
• 9:02
  Ross: I I think I think there could be a case for like where it happens in your campaign.
• 9:06
  Ross: Are you doing this like right away?
• 9:08
  Ross: Are you doing this toward the end?
• 9:09
  Ross: Sure.
• 9:09
  Ross: Because if it's toward like you've been playing this campaign for a while, you you could lay the tension really well up to that.
• 9:15
  Ross: If it's early in a campaign going the trap route, that was very early in our campaign when that happened.
• 9:20
  Ross: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Ross: So it again, you weren't intentionally doing that, but it was warned.
• 9:24
  Ross: Uh, but there's opportunities there where, like, you know, they're not at a high enough level to roll well enough to catch this.
• 9:31
  Ross: And so you lay out some traps to where this could happen, and it feels very player-driven, even though you intentionally set the pieces for it to happen.
• 9:38
  Phil: And the funny part of that scenario was truthfully, like, it took a very specific set of like terrible dice rolls to make that happen.
• 9:47
  Phil: Like two or three in a row.
• 9:49
  Ross: Brett, you want to chime in on that one really quick?
• 9:51
  Ross: Nope.
• 9:54
  Ross: Okay, and that's that from Brett tonight.
• 9:57
  Ross: Uh, any any other thoughts?
• 9:59
  Ross: I I feel like we've done a decent job of of uh covering like the TPK so far.
• 10:05
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
• 10:06
  Phil: Uh the only other side of it is kind of that resolution, right?
• 10:09
  Phil: So let's say you did it.
• 10:11
  Phil: Hey, party's gone.
• 10:13
  Phil: How do we resolve that?
• 10:15
  Phil: Is it a okay, roll new characters, is that your style, or is it a oh hey, there's some divine intervention, right?
• 10:22
  Phil: Let's bring at least somebody back, or you know, there I feel like there's different ways to kind of resolve that.
• 10:27
  Phil: And maybe it's specific to each situation or to a party, but true.
• 10:31
  Ross: Well, and and I think that goes back to to the situation we've been talking about with the the the ceiling falling in.
• 10:37
  Ross: Like that was a TPK that didn't end up being a TPK, right?
• 10:40
  Ross: Like you allowed there, it was in that case it was divine intervention, but you allow there to be a way out of it, mostly because it was accidental in a lot of ways.
• 10:48
  Phil: It was accidental and it was early in the campaign, right?
• 10:50
  Phil: Sure.
• 10:51
  Phil: So I wanted you guys to be able to develop those characters, and it ended up being a good plot point too, because that deity, right, played a larger role later on in the campaign.
• 11:00
  Phil: So it was a story tool.
• 11:03
  Ross: Yeah, for sure.
• 11:04
  Ross: Well, and I think it would be great if if everybody out there would like put put in the comments like how you've handled TPKs at your table.
• 11:12
  Ross: Um, give us some stories.
• 11:13
  Ross: I think it would be really fun to hear from people like different versions that have happened because I think you're gonna get everything across the gamut from well, I had to kill the party because this is where we're at, to to oh crap, they accidentally killed themselves.
• 11:25
  Ross: Now, how do we get out of this?
• 11:26
  Ross: Do we did we re-roll characters or did we, you know, have divine intervention to get out of that or something to that effect?
• 11:32
  Ross: So sure.
• 11:33
  Ross: Uh before we get out of here, any any other final thoughts on on TPKs?
• 11:37
  Ross: It's just not really in our style to do that.
• 11:40
  Ross: It's it just doesn't tend to happen.
• 11:42
  Ross: Not maliciously.
• 11:44
  Phil: I would say I would agree with that.
• 11:46
  Phil: If it happens naturally, it's part of the story, or everyone is kind of like they know something's gonna happen.
• 11:51
  Phil: We're building to that crescendo.
• 11:53
  Phil: I think it's appropriate.
• 11:54
  Phil: Yeah, I I agree.
• 11:56
  Ross: All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of Bards and Barrels.
• 11:58
  Ross: Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, and we'd love it if you joined us on our social channels as well Facebook, Threads, Instagram at Bars and Barrels.
• 12:05
  Ross: Until next time, may your dice be hot and your beer be cold.