Is it bad form to slaughter a party for the sake of the story? I started a party off at chapter 4 of Orrery of the Wanderer and I'm planning on starting at the beginning for another party, making the first party the ones who were supposed to be called, and then killing them after chapter 3 to make it all make sense. Is that to jerky, or does it seem fine?
I think if you did it as a short prologue type thing it would be fine. I think you should let them know that they'll only be playing these characters a short time though.
Not necessarily bad form. Just... be careful. If I put days of work into my backstory just to die in media res, I would be kind of annoyed. Perhaps give the party pregens for chapter 4, so they're okay with their unceremonious exit.
Not necessarily bad form. Just... be careful. If I put days of work into my backstory just to die in media res, I would be kind of annoyed. Perhaps give the party pregens for chapter 4, so they're okay with their unceremonious exit.
I think the chapter 4 characters are the ones who get to live actually, but I agree with your sentiment.
Make sure that they are aware that the dying characters are temporary (you can save the details as a surprise).
This is something I would warn the players is a possibility.
Because I've recently had a DM just kill of my character because he didn't like that all of the spells I chose were control spells. So I basically stopped people from doing anything and he felt like it was ruining the story he was trying to tell when I would just skip or circumvent a part of the story.
He didn't tell me why he was doing this before, instead in-game he kidnapped my character and put anti-magic bracelets on me and threw them into an arena in which they had no chance to win. He explained to me after why he did it. He didn't give me any save's or any way to attempt to prevent that fate.
I sadly stopped playing with that DM after that session. I don't care if a character dies, I care when the DM kills your character and give's you no way to do anything about it.
I would not want to play with a DM who did that to me. If it was 'and then you wake up, it was all a dream/premonition' and you let the players play the same characters, that's fine. But purposeful TPKs by DM fiat are not something I want a part of. D&D doesn't have cutscenes.
As I keep seeing around these forums, communication is key. I feel that you want it to be a surprise and a surprise likely stings, but I also feel that enjoyment is tantamount in D&D, and what you describe is an act that could sting a bit too much for the players if they're not prepared for it.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Don't do it. It's a bad idea. It takes away player agency and could make people feel really terrible.
The players will feel, correctly, that everything they did with their character didn't matter. Their planning for future levels? Irrelevant. Their gear and equipment selection? Useless. Saving up gold, gaining EXP? They were just wasting time. Because you were just going to kill them anyway. Thinking about backstory, character development? Gone.
And it's not like they were put in a situation that they could survive if they had done something differently. If a TPK happens in a winnable situation because the players did something ridiculous, sure, that can happen. But you're just saying "rocks fall, everybody dies" but making everyone play out the campaign pretending there's a chance rocks won't fall.
D&D shouldn't be a game where the players are setpieces in the DM's story, and if the story says the players die, well the players are gonna die. It should be cooperative storytelling - the DM can set the stage but nobody really knows what the players will do.
That's assuming that the TPK didn't feel organic. If the encounter feels unfair or forced, yes. It is a bad idea.
On the other side: If the party feels like a failure in something they think they should be able to win, that's just as bad.
If the campaign needs a new party, let the players make a new party without the TPK. Wrecking players' hard work in a railroad for Narrative is a very bad bet. Such a thing will make players lose all trust in the DM to be fair and end up in one of the less-flattering threads about DM actions.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Imagine playing through Mass Effect 1 2 and 3, it's sprawling story and moral choices all the way, then finding out that in the end, none of it mattered as the ending is completely fixed. To say that the players of those games felt betrayed and cheated was an understatement. I think this would have the same effect on me as a player. I invest LOTS into my PCs, if they go out, I want it to be in an epic battle, an act of epic stupidity, or a sacrifice I made in the moment.
This is something I would warn the players is a possibility.
Because I've recently had a DM just kill of my character because he didn't like that all of the spells I chose were control spells. So I basically stopped people from doing anything and he felt like it was ruining the story he was trying to tell when I would just skip or circumvent a part of the story.
He didn't tell me why he was doing this before, instead in-game he kidnapped my character and put anti-magic bracelets on me and threw them into an arena in which they had no chance to win. He explained to me after why he did it. He didn't give me any save's or any way to attempt to prevent that fate.
I sadly stopped playing with that DM after that session. I don't care if a character dies, I care when the DM kills your character and give's you no way to do anything about it.
Wow, that's BS. I've killed a character because one of my players didn't like their own PC and wanted to roll another one. I gave him a plot related out on that and even wove his dead PC into the campaign ending. I would NEVER murder a PC because he built his character in such a way that it made combat from behind the screen difficult. The thing to remember is that all the tools they have as PCs the DM has as NPCs. Most things have counters and if they're just spamming the hell out of one effect making combat dull, give them a few encounters where that effect is nullified by something resistant/immune to it. Indeed, make them a BBEG.
For a story? No. Because you're killing the players who are in a story. The DM should never be out to kill the players intentionally with no good reason.
I've killed one player intentionally but the story fit as the situation was he was to be reborn at that moment. His character is alive and it furthers his backstory.
Let the dice and players decisions decide the outcome. No DM should ever put a group into an unwinnable fight for any reason. Just change the story to fit the new path they are on.
Mouse posted that a DM killed his character cause of the control spells. That total BS! The DM should be smart enough to have mobs around to counter that stuff so the fights get more interesting.
For a story? No. Because you're killing the players who are in a story. The DM should never be out to kill the players intentionally with no good reason.
I've killed one player intentionally but the story fit as the situation was he was to be reborn at that moment. His character is alive and it furthers his backstory.
Let the dice and players decisions decide the outcome. No DM should ever put a group into an unwinnable fight for any reason. Just change the story to fit the new path they are on.
Mouse posted that a DM killed his character cause of the control spells. That total BS! The DM should be smart enough to have mobs around to counter that stuff so the fights get more interesting.
I agree with this on pretty much all points.
In our game group, we had the (mostly unspoken) rule that you own your character. Nobody, not even the DM/GM/Referee/whatever, had the right to make permanent in-character changes to your character without your permission. In some games, like Champions, when character death is rare, we would have considered it unthinkable for a GM to kill a character unless the player had declared that he wanted his character to die (it happened occasionally -- usually to make up a new PC or part of a plot the GM and player had cooked up together that usually involved a "he's not really dead!" reveal).
Now, in a game like D&D or Rolemaster, where losing HP = death instead of unconsciousness, and you have "save vs. poison or die" and your saving throws are terrible at low level, death was expected and acceptable when it came from die rolls. Especially if it came from a player die roll and not the GM's ("You prick your finger with the poison needle... save vs. poison or die, 15 or higher", player rolls a 3...). Though of course if a GM rolled a 5 damage against your character with 1 hp left, that was death too. However, as we became more experienced, even then, DMs/GMs generally would fudge rolls to prevent a character death unless the player had declared he wanted to make up (or did not mind making up) a new PC. (I am an alt-aholic so I was often one of the ones who said he didn't mind...).
But to actually plan to kill a character, or in this case, a whole entire party, without telling the players beforehand that this is at least a possibility -- any DM who did that in my game group would have been told we were switching DMs and he was welcome to play in the new campaign if he wanted. None of us would have put up with it.
I also agree about the person whose character was killed as a result of the DM not being able to deal with valid, legal in-game abilities of a character built using existing rules. If the DM didn't want to (or know how to) deal with control powers, he should have just made those spells or abilities unavailable in his campaign. It's easy enough to prepare a "reduced" spell list and say to all players "pick from these spells -- the rest don't exist in my world." I am not a huge fan of that (I prefer more options to less, both as a player and a GM, unless I think a particular spell/ability is, as we say in MMO gaming, "OP"), but it's better than killing off a character.
Better would be to learn as a DM to deal with it (by picking monsters for them to fight who have countering abilities). Or do what probably the best DM/GM who ever ran games for my group used to do: give the enemies the exact same powers as the players and use it against them. Let them see just how annoying those abilities can be...
Everybody is so hung up on "killing bad" that they don't suggest what to do with the characters once they catch up to the part of the story they are not in.
The OP is running the chapters out off order. The doomed party is essentially a prequel (if I understand correctly). Eventually the prequel party is going to catch up to a part of the story that was already run that they were not in.
Death is not the only option. They could retire, be made NPCs, or be leveled up and added to the main party later (backup PCs).
Do the players already know that these prequel characters died since they already played Chapter 4 as a different party? I would find it difficult to be invested if I know everyone dies.
If there is any level of ambiguity on how the party ended up, DxJxC's right on the money. Death isn't the only option.
Prequels are tricky things.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
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Is it bad form to slaughter a party for the sake of the story? I started a party off at chapter 4 of Orrery of the Wanderer and I'm planning on starting at the beginning for another party, making the first party the ones who were supposed to be called, and then killing them after chapter 3 to make it all make sense. Is that to jerky, or does it seem fine?
I'll keep watch. Happy now?
I think if you did it as a short prologue type thing it would be fine. I think you should let them know that they'll only be playing these characters a short time though.
Not necessarily bad form. Just... be careful. If I put days of work into my backstory just to die in media res, I would be kind of annoyed. Perhaps give the party pregens for chapter 4, so they're okay with their unceremonious exit.
I think the chapter 4 characters are the ones who get to live actually, but I agree with your sentiment.
Make sure that they are aware that the dying characters are temporary (you can save the details as a surprise).
This is something I would warn the players is a possibility.
Because I've recently had a DM just kill of my character because he didn't like that all of the spells I chose were control spells. So I basically stopped people from doing anything and he felt like it was ruining the story he was trying to tell when I would just skip or circumvent a part of the story.
He didn't tell me why he was doing this before, instead in-game he kidnapped my character and put anti-magic bracelets on me and threw them into an arena in which they had no chance to win. He explained to me after why he did it. He didn't give me any save's or any way to attempt to prevent that fate.
I sadly stopped playing with that DM after that session. I don't care if a character dies, I care when the DM kills your character and give's you no way to do anything about it.
I would not want to play with a DM who did that to me. If it was 'and then you wake up, it was all a dream/premonition' and you let the players play the same characters, that's fine. But purposeful TPKs by DM fiat are not something I want a part of. D&D doesn't have cutscenes.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
As I keep seeing around these forums, communication is key. I feel that you want it to be a surprise and a surprise likely stings, but I also feel that enjoyment is tantamount in D&D, and what you describe is an act that could sting a bit too much for the players if they're not prepared for it.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Don't do it. It's a bad idea. It takes away player agency and could make people feel really terrible.
The players will feel, correctly, that everything they did with their character didn't matter. Their planning for future levels? Irrelevant. Their gear and equipment selection? Useless. Saving up gold, gaining EXP? They were just wasting time. Because you were just going to kill them anyway. Thinking about backstory, character development? Gone.
And it's not like they were put in a situation that they could survive if they had done something differently. If a TPK happens in a winnable situation because the players did something ridiculous, sure, that can happen. But you're just saying "rocks fall, everybody dies" but making everyone play out the campaign pretending there's a chance rocks won't fall.
D&D shouldn't be a game where the players are setpieces in the DM's story, and if the story says the players die, well the players are gonna die. It should be cooperative storytelling - the DM can set the stage but nobody really knows what the players will do.
That's assuming that the TPK didn't feel organic. If the encounter feels unfair or forced, yes. It is a bad idea.
On the other side: If the party feels like a failure in something they think they should be able to win, that's just as bad.
If the campaign needs a new party, let the players make a new party without the TPK. Wrecking players' hard work in a railroad for Narrative is a very bad bet. Such a thing will make players lose all trust in the DM to be fair and end up in one of the less-flattering threads about DM actions.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Wow. Thank you all for this.
I'll keep watch. Happy now?
Imagine playing through Mass Effect 1 2 and 3, it's sprawling story and moral choices all the way, then finding out that in the end, none of it mattered as the ending is completely fixed. To say that the players of those games felt betrayed and cheated was an understatement. I think this would have the same effect on me as a player. I invest LOTS into my PCs, if they go out, I want it to be in an epic battle, an act of epic stupidity, or a sacrifice I made in the moment.
Wow, that's BS. I've killed a character because one of my players didn't like their own PC and wanted to roll another one. I gave him a plot related out on that and even wove his dead PC into the campaign ending. I would NEVER murder a PC because he built his character in such a way that it made combat from behind the screen difficult. The thing to remember is that all the tools they have as PCs the DM has as NPCs. Most things have counters and if they're just spamming the hell out of one effect making combat dull, give them a few encounters where that effect is nullified by something resistant/immune to it. Indeed, make them a BBEG.
For a story? No. Because you're killing the players who are in a story. The DM should never be out to kill the players intentionally with no good reason.
I've killed one player intentionally but the story fit as the situation was he was to be reborn at that moment. His character is alive and it furthers his backstory.
Let the dice and players decisions decide the outcome. No DM should ever put a group into an unwinnable fight for any reason. Just change the story to fit the new path they are on.
Mouse posted that a DM killed his character cause of the control spells. That total BS! The DM should be smart enough to have mobs around to counter that stuff so the fights get more interesting.
I agree with this on pretty much all points.
In our game group, we had the (mostly unspoken) rule that you own your character. Nobody, not even the DM/GM/Referee/whatever, had the right to make permanent in-character changes to your character without your permission. In some games, like Champions, when character death is rare, we would have considered it unthinkable for a GM to kill a character unless the player had declared that he wanted his character to die (it happened occasionally -- usually to make up a new PC or part of a plot the GM and player had cooked up together that usually involved a "he's not really dead!" reveal).
Now, in a game like D&D or Rolemaster, where losing HP = death instead of unconsciousness, and you have "save vs. poison or die" and your saving throws are terrible at low level, death was expected and acceptable when it came from die rolls. Especially if it came from a player die roll and not the GM's ("You prick your finger with the poison needle... save vs. poison or die, 15 or higher", player rolls a 3...). Though of course if a GM rolled a 5 damage against your character with 1 hp left, that was death too. However, as we became more experienced, even then, DMs/GMs generally would fudge rolls to prevent a character death unless the player had declared he wanted to make up (or did not mind making up) a new PC. (I am an alt-aholic so I was often one of the ones who said he didn't mind...).
But to actually plan to kill a character, or in this case, a whole entire party, without telling the players beforehand that this is at least a possibility -- any DM who did that in my game group would have been told we were switching DMs and he was welcome to play in the new campaign if he wanted. None of us would have put up with it.
I also agree about the person whose character was killed as a result of the DM not being able to deal with valid, legal in-game abilities of a character built using existing rules. If the DM didn't want to (or know how to) deal with control powers, he should have just made those spells or abilities unavailable in his campaign. It's easy enough to prepare a "reduced" spell list and say to all players "pick from these spells -- the rest don't exist in my world." I am not a huge fan of that (I prefer more options to less, both as a player and a GM, unless I think a particular spell/ability is, as we say in MMO gaming, "OP"), but it's better than killing off a character.
Better would be to learn as a DM to deal with it (by picking monsters for them to fight who have countering abilities). Or do what probably the best DM/GM who ever ran games for my group used to do: give the enemies the exact same powers as the players and use it against them. Let them see just how annoying those abilities can be...
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Everybody is so hung up on "killing bad" that they don't suggest what to do with the characters once they catch up to the part of the story they are not in.
The OP is running the chapters out off order. The doomed party is essentially a prequel (if I understand correctly). Eventually the prequel party is going to catch up to a part of the story that was already run that they were not in.
Death is not the only option. They could retire, be made NPCs, or be leveled up and added to the main party later (backup PCs).
That does raise a question.
Do the players already know that these prequel characters died since they already played Chapter 4 as a different party? I would find it difficult to be invested if I know everyone dies.
If there is any level of ambiguity on how the party ended up, DxJxC's right on the money. Death isn't the only option.
Prequels are tricky things.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.