Enjoy!
**
The Total Party Kill is the one thing players, and usually
Game Masters, want to avoid, yet it happens so often you’d think people
actually enjoyed getting fried by dragons. Usually it’s a very sudden event,
and almost completely unexpected. Someone tanks a save, or whatever it may be,
and before you know it, six stalwart heroes are being mashed into jam for the
next orcs’ tea party. What went wrong?
Dave Noonan, back in the days of 3.5 Dungeons and
Dragons, suggested that lack of communication between players is one
of the big issues. “When times get tough at the game table,’ Noonan said, “It’s easy to stay focused on your character and lose awareness
of what your comrades are doing.”
Noonan noticed that players, when faced with a significant
threat, stopped thinking like a team and started reacting like individuals. As
a team, a group might realize that a fight’s too tough, and decide to withdraw.
But each of those individuals has a character sheet, with a long list of combat
abilities and spells. It proved too tempting to study that character sheet,
looking for a way out that wasn’t there. Players would say they wanted the
group to retreat, then engage in combat themselves, or start spellcasting,
hoping for a good roll.
Funny thing: every single player I’ve ever met has worked
out, in advance, how fantastically awesome their character will be, if they
roll a critical success. That’s partly because every player thinks they’ll be
the one to roll that critical success, right when they need it the most. Just
like diehard gamblers, they think critical failure is something that happens to
other people, not to them.
In a TPK situation, the chance to retreat is usually a
fleeting thing. Before too many rounds go by, the enemy might have blocked the
escape route, or knocked out one too many important characters; the cleric,
say, with all the healing magic. Then
it’s too late. All that’s left is to order the pizza and start the post-game
argument.
On the other hand, if the players – or even just one player
– step up and devise a plan for getting the whole group out, the TPK problem
might never come up. Assign one player the task of picking up the unconscious
or critically wounded, assign a couple others the task of securing the exit,
and then tactically retrograde as fast as your feet will let you. Job done!
That’s in situations where the combat system is crunchy,
with lots of add-ons and modifiers. Call of Cthulhu used to
be famous for its TPK situations, and its mechanics about as crunch-free as can
be, while still using dice. There’s no leveling system, so the 10 to 15 hit
points you start the game with are the only ones you will ever have. There’s a
percentage chance to hit, a chance to critical succeed or fail, and a damage
roll, but the system lacks many significant combat modifiers and situational
adjustments that Dungeons and Dragons players would be
familiar with. What counts as a TPK situation in that system?
Let me just give you the brief low-down on one such
situation, from the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. Very mild spoiler warning, but
really, we aren’t talking plot here. The situation is described as:
Present at the ritual will be twelve priests,
including [powerful and important NPC] and [equally powerful and important
NPC], nearly 800 cultists … and 100 [powerful monsters]. The rest of the
[friendly NPCs the group will have encountered previously] will be there, as
sacrifices. The din and screams will be loud and sustained. Eventually,
at the height of the ceremony, the enemy will summon up a godlike creature
capable of demolishing a city.
Now, if your first thought is, ‘Attack! ATTACK! ATTACK!’ there’s clearly a disconnect going on here. If ever
there is a moment for stealth and caution, it’s when you’re facing off against
a battalion strength group of dangerous people backed up by another small army
of monsters. Yet I have seen otherwise rational players, without any special
equipment beyond a few sticks of dynamite and a couple rifles, happily charge
in without a moment’s thought. Tell you what I rarely see: I’ve rarely seen
those same rational players get together, as a group, and plan out what the
group was going to do about the problem.
I get that everybody wants to be the hero. I really, really
do, but there is such a thing as overwhelming odds. Bilbo Baggins, when meeting
Smaug for the first time, doesn’t rush up and try to kick the old wyrm in
whatever passes for its genitals, hoping for a critical success. Maybe that’s
one of the bonus scenes on the DVD; I’m not in a hurry to watch it. In the
book, Bilbo’s more sensible than that. He hides, and schemes, and bluffs,
because he knows that, if he puts even one foot wrong, there isn’t a Reflex
save high enough to save him from becoming a charcoal briquette.
So far I’ve been talking about the player’s side of the
equation. What about that sinister fiend behind the screen? How much
responsibility does the Game Master have for the TPK?
As Wizards of the Coast designer Andy Collins once pointed out, “It's no challenge for the DM to kill off the whole
party; the challenge is in creating encounters that are just tough enough to
put a scare into the PCs without actually killing them all off.” Sometimes,
particularly for novices, finding that balance is a tricky business, and it
doesn’t help that some monsters are well over the top to begin with. However
there’s no advice anyone can give to help you there, beyond ‘be careful’;
finding that balance is a skill that only comes with time and practice.
That said, there is one way that better communication
between GM and player can help avoid a TPK. The players don’t always know when
a monster is going to test their limits, and that’s sometimes because the
description the GM’s given so far is insufficient. If the group’s about to
march into a boss encounter, the group needs to be aware of that fact, and that
means clearly signposting the threat. It might be plenty of corpses lying
around, or scorch marks where the deadly trap’s exploded several times before.
Maybe the Doppleganger’s impersonation of an ally is just a little bit off, or
that doorway just radiates evil. But there has to be that one clue, or warning
sign, that things are about to get very nasty, to put the group on alert.
This goes back to something I’ve said before: the GM should always be open in all of her dealings with
the group, because even perceived unfairness can ruin the session, if not the
campaign. This doesn’t mean the GM can’t be clever; it means the GM has to
always be seen as a fair arbiter. Therefore the group gets one warning, whether
it’s as cheesy as a talking skull on a stick, or as menacing as a fresh
bloodstain on the dungeon floor. What
the group does with that warning is out of the GM’s hands. The heroes want to
be mashed into jam? Fine. Let ‘em get squished, and maybe next time they’ll be
more careful.
This isn’t a time to get hung up on ability checks either.
Just give out the necessary information; don’t make them roll for it. A failed Spot
check might put the group on alert, but it lacks drama. Suddenly realizing that
all the birds and wildlife in the forest have gone quiet, fearful of some large
predator, is drama personified.
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