Tag Archives: TPK

RPGs

Weekly D&D Game

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Wednesday night is the AD&D 1st edition campaign I play in. We all just hit second level after we roll played selling loot and dealing with the aftermath of being famous, and getting training. A lot of loot is now gone thanks to training, so back to the adventuring life! We go from 8:00 PM to about midnight Eastern. Tonight was our 7th session.

We get 150 XP for a session write-up and take turns for that. We just started getting 10 XP for each NPC and location/business when add to the campaign Google+ site.

Google+ Hangouts and Roll20 is what we use. We use theater of the mind instead of maps. We use tokens for characters and monster placement. We use the whiteboard pen to mark where things are, but not mapping.

It has worked rather well.

We lost one player after two or three sessions, and another player dropped out a few hours just before our session. So we are looking for two new players. The DM is in charge of that. Hopefully, we get someone who fits the group.

Last week it looked like we were headed for a TPK, but we started to roll just good enough to win.

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TPKS

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A Bullette can kill an entire 2nd level party in 3 rounds. I found this out because I was DM for our next session. We rotated DM and characters were played. It was my first time as DM. I REALLY wanted to have a bullette in play, so I forced an encounter and it annihilated the group. My intent was not a TPK. I was not fully aware of the power of the combat tables and how hard it was to hit and how easy it was for it to hit back. We all called a do over and I did not DM for a long time after that.

A TPK where I was a player. My brother, Robert, was the DM. Brett and I were the players. There were just the two of us. We were in a desert campaign and headed to a canyon with a cave that was ten or twenty feet off the ground. There was some sort of treasure there. Prior to setting out, we learned of a vendor at Abdul’s (Abdul’s is another story.), that had semi-automatic crossbows that could fire several shots a round. It was based on the Chinese crossbow. Some orcs were in the area and spotted us. We figured we would be OK in the cave, but there were like 20 orcs to the two of us. We became lunch because we used swords instead of the crossbows that could unload several shots per round.

I mentioned two other TPKs where I was a player: DM Meta Gaming Oddness and Revenge!

I think the first time I player Traveler we either had a TPK or a near TPK. the guy who ran the game loved Traveler, but was not a good GM.

RPGs

Revenge!

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Have you ever experienced revenge in your RPGs?

I’m not talking about characters or NPCs out for in-game revenge. This is personal, where one player does something another does not like and gets back at them in the same or a different game.

In high school, my brother, Robert, and I played in a game of AD&D. We were in the school library. A member of our group decided he wanted a Drow character, an evil Drow character, and the DM allowed it. The problem was that my brother and I had good elf characters. We did not handle it in a good way, but when our group traveled and made camp for the night, when the Drow was sleeping we killed him. Brett, the player vowed that he would kill our Boot Hill characters, because he was the GM for that. So a week or so later, at our house, when we next played Boot Hill, he made good on his word. This was the same guy who ran the high level character mentioned yesterday.

I don’t remember all the details, but the bad guy rode into town with a wagon, and whatever started the conflict,the villain won because under the tarp was a Gatling gun. It sprayed so much lead that we did not stand a chance.

As I look back on this, I see two places where this should have been handled differently.

One, the DM should have advised on an evil character running around with good characters. We were a brand new party and there was no thought to how we would work together.

Second, if we killed him in his sleep, was that really a good thing? An alignment deviation should have been in the mix.

One can argue if the morality of the good players is to kill all evil things on sight, or only after they do something harmful. The DM needs to set the tone.

I don’t recall who the DM was, but they were not very experienced.

Have you ever had this experience?

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DM Meta Gaming Oddness

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Famous player character in one game, very evil.

Two new 1st level characters, one ran by my brother, Robert, the other I ran. All I recall is that my character was a magic-user. Robert posits to the DM that his character’s goal is to eventually go after this high level character.

The DM tells the player of the evil high level character about this. There is no way for the high level character to even know who we are. Let alone know that we want to set our long range goals on him.

Next session , the DM says that the high level bad guy shows up in town looking for us. He trashes us and the only thing my 1st level M-U can do is shoot a magic missile in his eye before he kills me.

I don’t recall now if the revenge story coming tomorrow was before or after this.

RPGs

Abdul’s

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My brother, Robert, is my favorite DM. He can improvise almost anything, and never seems to be surprised or disappointed with the actions a player has his character make. He has had what I would classify as four campaigns. The first campaign was the generic catch-all, different dungeons and modules.

His second campaign, was a desert campaign that centered around Abdul’s. Abdul’s was basically a giant shopping center for the adventurers. One could get anything at Abdul’s if you had the gold.

Abdul’s was inside  a giant mesa. If one looked up, they could see a Constellation class starship hanging from the ceiling.

I remember having to roleplay equipping our first level characters. I ran a thief, who foolishly asked for thieves picks and tools, and had to avoid the law.

Robert invented a couple of creatures, one was a mount called a quast. It was a fast-running desert creature that needed little water. It ran fast enough that a human rider could cross a large stretch of desert and not have to worry about dying of thirst. The other creature was a flying creature. I do not remember what he called it, but they came with a special saddle that had the commands on the saddle, and the word “avaunt” which meant to take flight.

One time two players had these new gizmos, basically Chinese repeating crossbows that could fire 10 bolts a round. They went to a cave and were trapped by a huge hoard of orcs, and rather than rely on our new weapons as Robert, the DM, thought we would. We instead drew our swords and died, a TPK becuase we did not rely on the tools the DM let us have.

Another incident we had in the desert was coming to an oasis and stumbling across a dimensional rift where a bunch of French Foreign Legionnaires were fighting desert tribesmen.

Abdul’s became a crutch for the players in this game and the DM had a great solution. Abdul had done something to offend some ghostly host that one night came and took away Abdul’s piece by piece, and we all watched it disappear. This was a transition to a new campaign Robert called “Quest For The Dice of Destiny”.