Hello! I am a new DM running my first campaign with new players that have not played before. We have played several sessions of the Sunless Citadel and they are level 2 characters. And last night, the party TPk'd.
tl;dr: My party tpk'd after making a lot of dumb decisions. I'm tempted to let this action stand, instead of ret-coning or some other method of bringing them back. Because they are all brand new players, I think this would help them think/take it a bit more seriously when they are playing. But, I am a first time DM and don't know if that is the best decision and, if I go for it, where do I start? New everything? New characters same dungeon, somehow?
Essentially, the party made a lot of dumb decisions. To start with, we were short a PC (a rogue) and I told them I wasn't going to pilot the PC (essentially I am too new of a DM for this and I suspected they were going to pick up an NPC during the session, and I was already playing one NPC).
They encountered three goblins which they aggro'd but did not fight, causing those goblins to go and get reinforcements and return. Meanwhile, my party hid in a hallway to use the wall as cover, but by doing so essentially made themselves fish in a barrel, accepting that the goblins were poking their heads in, shooting them and then hiding. And my party just kind of... took it. They were standing LITERALLY in front of a door and they didn't use it, they didn't run or... anything. 3/4 fell. They were out of potions and had no healing spells (a wizard, a warlock, and a ranger, of whom none took healing spells when they reached 2nd level). The warlock is proficient in medicine but didn't use it until after the wizard had failed two death saving throws and failed their medicine check. The warlock, being the last person standing with 1 HP finally went behind the door and hid. The ranger succeeded on their death saves and the warlock pulled them through the door once the goblins had left, believing they had killed the whole party.
The warlock took the ranger to the kobolds, whom they had befriended, and the kobolds provided some healing and an ally (I had the player who lost their character playing a kobold for the remainder of the session). After discussing it, the warlock and the ranger decided to carry on with the dungeon. I even broke in to suggest that they could go back to the town, resupply and rest, but they did not heed my advice. They carried on and through, essentially, sheer luck ran directly into the wyrmling.
They were determined to not hurt it, as they were meant to be capturing it, but they weren't hitting it at all (Again, at this point I even broke in to say that the wyrmling was very hearty, very hard to hit, etc. and I was falling on deaf ears). So, it was full health with a rope around its neck gathering some silver that one of the players had thrown on the ground. One character tried to sneak up and apply manacles, but their stealth roll was only a 6. And, the dragon already knew it was surrounded by enemies and (having been held captive before) did not want to go back. So, it used its ice breath on all of them, which was enough to kill all three.
We left it there for the night. I feel bad, but I also feel like I gave them a lot of outs and they continued on. After doing some reading this morning, I found a few folks suggesting things like having the NPC's take the players captive instead of killing them (which I will keep in mind for next time) and various ways to continue the story without having the whole party dead (such as having them battle their way out of hell to revive themselves (But they are only level 2....)) but in the end I think I want to let this TPK stand.
The players are still learning and I feel like with no consequences they won't start to.... (in all honesty) pay attention while they are playing. They need to think a bit more, and if they feel they can't die, I don't think this will contribute to long term success in the game. None of the players seemed particularly upset by the loss of their characters, so it wasn't particularly emotional.
It also gives me an opportunity to add some players from another campaign I was in that fell apart and while those players aren't much more experienced, it might help to have some different personalities in the mix.
If I keep the TPK, my thought was to have the rogue return to the town and get a new group together to go back into the dungeon, potentially leading them as far as the TPK.
I am mostly just looking to check in with more experienced folks. Does this seem like a decent plan? Do you think it would be better to in some way revive the characters? Is there something I am not seeing or thinking of?
I think your plan sounds great! If you did retcon the TPK, you'd take away all the excitement for the rest of the game, since the players will totally start to feel immortal, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Sounds like you've got everything figured out, and that's awesome, especially since it's your first time! Good luck!
I disagree with BigLizard's last two paragraphs. That may be your experience and why you play D&D, but it's not mine. The D&D groups I've played in have not been primarily focused on "the challenge" - the point of the challenge was to create opportunities for cool solutions, RP, and wacky hijinks. The games I've had the most fun with were ones where players aren't focused on mechanically optimizing to beat the challenge. If I wanted to play a tactical challenging combat game I'd play Gloomhaven; the RP is what makes D&D stand out.
I agree with the advice to let the TPK stand. The players seem to be OK with it, so it's not like you're gonna lose the table by sticking with it. They see that the TPK was "fair" and not railroading/DM fiat. And this way they can experience new characters, have them pick up the action in the middle. Adds excitement to future battles to know that all outcomes really are on the table (including death), and lets them play out consequences of that.
Be very, very careful about the people who would tell you what "real" D&D is about, or what your Players "really" want, and what all Players love from the game. These are people who confuse what they like, and what works for their table, with what everyone, everywhere, really like, and - worse - what everyone, everywhere shoulddo.
I've been playing off and on, since the red/blue boxes were published in 1978 ( 41 years ago - although I think "time served" in DM circles means absolutely nothing ; practicing mistakes and bad techniques for 10K hours doesn't make your better than someone doing it right for only 100 hours ), and I have seen more tables and groups, and in more RPG systems, than I can count; there is no "one size fits all". Players come to the table for a myriad of different reason, and different types of fun. There were some interesting articles published almost 30 years ago, by Robin Laws, classifying the types of Players - including problem types. I'd recommend checking out the Matt Colville video ( also a D&D veteran of multiple decades ) of the classes of Players here, where he goes over them. Playing your game cross-type to the types of fun that your Players enjoy, can cause you to lose Players. That's not always a bad thing - I believe there are Players and GMs which just aren't compatible, as they want different things out of the game; some people shouldn't be playing together - but don't detach Players from your Party accidently by disregarding their wants and pissing them off.
You need to find what works for your Group.
And that's the problem here - none of you know what works. Both you and your Players are really quite new. Your Players don't know what are the prudent choices yet. Trial and error doesn't seem to be working well - they TPK'd - so maybe some gentle guidance is in order. Maybe point out when they don't understand the implications of their choices, in the game that you're running. Train your Players up to be able to work well in the kind of game you want to run. Be willing to give the Players information that the Characters would know automatically - especially for new Players. They didn't take any healing spells? Their Characters would know better, so maybe point that out to the Players. If you want a mechanical reason for doing so, and don't want to be seen as hand-holding the Players - make them roll against an appropriate skill ( you rolled a 20 on Nature? Yeah - you know that a Dragon like this can take out whole military formations! ).
Eventually you can take off the training wheels and you can stop doing this, because the Players will have learned how to play, but be willing to give some guidance to new Players at the beginning.
Throwing a situation at the Party where the GM expects the Party to withdraw, or recognize they are in over their heads, but they don't - that's a common issue. I'd point you toward Matt Colville's video on Losing, where he covers TPK'ing ( I think ).
If no one is upset with the TPK, and you feel it should stand, then I would let it stand, and start over with new Characters. I think there should be consistency and consequences in your game. Just understand the causes, and try not to repeat the situation. Repeatedly, throwing newbies Players at the wall, without any experience or training, and letting them go splat - you'll lose Players. Losing all the time sucks, if your approach to fun is not all about overcoming difficult challenges ( that is, #4 on that list ).
I'd recommend having a sit down post mortem talk with your players - literally, pardon the dark humor - and in as non-confrontational a manner as possible, discuss why this happened. You may find that what you were saying, is not what they were hearing. It can be hard to communicate the situation to the Players since we - as GMs - have perfect knowledge. Clues we think are obvious go right over Players' heads sometimes. It might very well be that your Players are just making dumb choices - that happens - but it may be a breakdown in communication. Find out which it is.
Once you understand the why of what happened, you'll have a better idea on how to better avoid it in the future.
I think the idea of seasoning your Group with more experienced Players is a good one, personally; letting the veteran Players help train up the newbies takes some of that workload off of you - as a new GM you have enough on your plate. I think maintaining some narrative continuity by having the new Party built around the surviving Rogue is a good one as well - you can even have the new Party tasked with the same adventure the old Party died trying to perform - " well, the last team didn't come back, so we hired you ...." - so you can even recycle the adventure ( updated to reflect changes that occured while everyone was dead ).
Best of luck with this! Hope things go better next session.
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It absolutely can be about both. I enjoy Story development, and Character development at my table; I enjoy awesome well executed, nail biting, hard won, and clever tactical combat as well.
But it's hard to read statements like:
Third and most importantly, despite a lot of the modern gibberish about "Its all about the story" and "characters this" and "narrative that" type talk, once you get passed all the hipster B.S., D&D is about going into dungeons, fighting monsters and taking their stuff. That's it.
as being a call for incorporating both kinds of fun.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I disagree with BigLizard's last two paragraphs. That may be your experience and why you play D&D, but it's not mine. The D&D groups I've played in have not been primarily focused on "the challenge" - the point of the challenge was to create opportunities for cool solutions, RP, and wacky hijinks. The games I've had the most fun with were ones where players aren't focused on mechanically optimizing to beat the challenge. If I wanted to play a tactical challenging combat game I'd play Gloomhaven; the RP is what makes D&D stand out.
I'm not sure why people believe that D&D must be a game about tactical combat challenges and fighting monster or its a role-playing game with a story, but its not possible to be both?
It absolutely can be both, and it's at its best when it is!
However, for that you can't push any of those two to their limits. If you're pushing the "role-playing, story" part of it too far - fudging dice, making up abilities to have whatever you want happen, and justifying everything by its effect on the narrative - then the rules-based combat part of it becomes dumb, as players realize that the dice mean nothing and the rules are made up on the fly. On the other hand, if you push the "challenging tactical combat" part of it too far, having the players always pushed to their limits and at the edge of TPK if they mess things up, the reverse is true - players realize they have to play optimally to avoid death, and realize that whenever there's a conflict, they have to drop the "RP" part of it. So the role-play becomes a bit of flavor and not much more.
To me, the key should be that the player should feel free to decide "This course of action is probably not optimal. But it's what the character would do, so I'll do it." Or "but it might be awesome, so it's worth a shot." If the challenge is always so high that the players don't feel like they can do that without killing themselves, it needs to be ratcheted down until they can.
That just my own opinion. It's how I've had the most fun in D&D; others will play otherwise I'm sure.
I used to run a summer club for youth and young adults who wanted to try out DND. We were playing an Acq Inc style game, and I made it VERY clear that their characters are likely to die at some point, but that they were welcome to create new interns. They were welcome also to start their new interns off with the same level of experience points their last character had died at. Several of the people whose characters died really enjoyed their new ones, especially since they learned things like the value of not having only rogues and bards on your team (although I'll admit, that made for some very fun teams). So that might be what I would do. Something like let them know that they can just create new characters at the same level. Perhaps their new character was the sibling of the dead one, and the sibling joined in the adventure to avenge the first character's death. Or perhaps one of the kobolds was inspired by the team's sacrifice and wanted to take up their banner and continue their quest.
But dang. Battling your way out of hell? That sounds like a freaking BLAST. If you have Descent into Avernus or Out of the Abyss or Hellbound Heists (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/287220/Hellbound-Heists) or something like that, you could probably restructure content to fit your characters' story. If you don't have any of those content things, I'd say go for the hell thing anyways. You could easily just homebrew some monsters real quick and draw a few maps of what you think hell (or wherever they went) might look like. Escaping from hell could be a whole new adventure or just one session's worth of detour before you get back on track to the rest of your adventure. Maybe let the players to have the option for their characters to be brought back via resurrection (be themselves still) or via reincarnation (be reborn as someone else, with a different name, race, and/or class).
And to add on to an earlier topic, my favorite part of DND actually is the "hipster B.S.," like the characters and relationships and social and story. I really enjoy that type of thing. Zee Bashew, on YouTube, was the first one to open my eyes to the concept that there are a lot of legitimate play styles in DND. That's one of the many reasons that 5e is so much more popular than previous editions - it's built to be a lot easier to incorporate play styles besides the traditional "Enter, kill, loot" and "Optimize character builds for entering, killing, and looting." With the summer club, I made sure to run it so that one week would be combat-focused, one would be exploration and noncombat skill focused, and one would be social and problem-solving focused, and we'd repeat the cycle. That way the new people were introduced to a wide variety of play styles. They seemed to really enjoy it.
So the players turned an encounter with 3 goblins into a TPK.
To me that sounds like they don't know the mechanics of the game. Things like cover, going prone to avoid arrows, how much damage is enough to be concerned about, or basic tactical ways to avoid damage (i.e. close the distance with the ranged enemies and take them out rather than stand there and take it).
That's fine, there's a lot of mechanical stuff to learn, and the way most people learn is from their more experienced party members. So, with a party of new players, that makes *you* the person they need to learn from. You'll have to balance that role with your role as a DM in order for them to learn and still be challenged. Don't be afraid to tell a player what they're options are if they seem like they don't know. Give them simpler choices to start out and ramp up the complexity as they learn. Feel free to be a little less opaque with them. With the wyrmling for instance, instead of saying "this is a *very* hearty beast HINT HINT", I might say "you can choose to do nonlethal damage to it if you just want to knock it out," because your player might not know that nonlethal damage is an option, hence why they're so wary of hurting the wyrmling. They may even have guessed that you were trying to hint at something, but just had no idea what it was.
As others have said, I'd let the TPK stand so whatever lessons the players did learn stick, even if they just didn't realize death was on the table before. Just keep an eye out for teachable moments going forward. Make sure they know about all the different actions beyond "attack" and "cast a spell" and show them how the rules of the game work so they can internalize that as they continue to play.
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Hello! I am a new DM running my first campaign with new players that have not played before. We have played several sessions of the Sunless Citadel and they are level 2 characters. And last night, the party TPk'd.
tl;dr: My party tpk'd after making a lot of dumb decisions. I'm tempted to let this action stand, instead of ret-coning or some other method of bringing them back. Because they are all brand new players, I think this would help them think/take it a bit more seriously when they are playing. But, I am a first time DM and don't know if that is the best decision and, if I go for it, where do I start? New everything? New characters same dungeon, somehow?
Essentially, the party made a lot of dumb decisions. To start with, we were short a PC (a rogue) and I told them I wasn't going to pilot the PC (essentially I am too new of a DM for this and I suspected they were going to pick up an NPC during the session, and I was already playing one NPC).
They encountered three goblins which they aggro'd but did not fight, causing those goblins to go and get reinforcements and return. Meanwhile, my party hid in a hallway to use the wall as cover, but by doing so essentially made themselves fish in a barrel, accepting that the goblins were poking their heads in, shooting them and then hiding. And my party just kind of... took it. They were standing LITERALLY in front of a door and they didn't use it, they didn't run or... anything. 3/4 fell. They were out of potions and had no healing spells (a wizard, a warlock, and a ranger, of whom none took healing spells when they reached 2nd level). The warlock is proficient in medicine but didn't use it until after the wizard had failed two death saving throws and failed their medicine check. The warlock, being the last person standing with 1 HP finally went behind the door and hid. The ranger succeeded on their death saves and the warlock pulled them through the door once the goblins had left, believing they had killed the whole party.
The warlock took the ranger to the kobolds, whom they had befriended, and the kobolds provided some healing and an ally (I had the player who lost their character playing a kobold for the remainder of the session). After discussing it, the warlock and the ranger decided to carry on with the dungeon. I even broke in to suggest that they could go back to the town, resupply and rest, but they did not heed my advice. They carried on and through, essentially, sheer luck ran directly into the wyrmling.
They were determined to not hurt it, as they were meant to be capturing it, but they weren't hitting it at all (Again, at this point I even broke in to say that the wyrmling was very hearty, very hard to hit, etc. and I was falling on deaf ears). So, it was full health with a rope around its neck gathering some silver that one of the players had thrown on the ground. One character tried to sneak up and apply manacles, but their stealth roll was only a 6. And, the dragon already knew it was surrounded by enemies and (having been held captive before) did not want to go back. So, it used its ice breath on all of them, which was enough to kill all three.
We left it there for the night. I feel bad, but I also feel like I gave them a lot of outs and they continued on. After doing some reading this morning, I found a few folks suggesting things like having the NPC's take the players captive instead of killing them (which I will keep in mind for next time) and various ways to continue the story without having the whole party dead (such as having them battle their way out of hell to revive themselves (But they are only level 2....)) but in the end I think I want to let this TPK stand.
The players are still learning and I feel like with no consequences they won't start to.... (in all honesty) pay attention while they are playing. They need to think a bit more, and if they feel they can't die, I don't think this will contribute to long term success in the game. None of the players seemed particularly upset by the loss of their characters, so it wasn't particularly emotional.
It also gives me an opportunity to add some players from another campaign I was in that fell apart and while those players aren't much more experienced, it might help to have some different personalities in the mix.
If I keep the TPK, my thought was to have the rogue return to the town and get a new group together to go back into the dungeon, potentially leading them as far as the TPK.
I am mostly just looking to check in with more experienced folks. Does this seem like a decent plan? Do you think it would be better to in some way revive the characters? Is there something I am not seeing or thinking of?
Thanks for the help!
I think your plan sounds great! If you did retcon the TPK, you'd take away all the excitement for the rest of the game, since the players will totally start to feel immortal, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Sounds like you've got everything figured out, and that's awesome, especially since it's your first time! Good luck!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I disagree with BigLizard's last two paragraphs. That may be your experience and why you play D&D, but it's not mine. The D&D groups I've played in have not been primarily focused on "the challenge" - the point of the challenge was to create opportunities for cool solutions, RP, and wacky hijinks. The games I've had the most fun with were ones where players aren't focused on mechanically optimizing to beat the challenge. If I wanted to play a tactical challenging combat game I'd play Gloomhaven; the RP is what makes D&D stand out.
I agree with the advice to let the TPK stand. The players seem to be OK with it, so it's not like you're gonna lose the table by sticking with it. They see that the TPK was "fair" and not railroading/DM fiat. And this way they can experience new characters, have them pick up the action in the middle. Adds excitement to future battles to know that all outcomes really are on the table (including death), and lets them play out consequences of that.
Be very, very careful about the people who would tell you what "real" D&D is about, or what your Players "really" want, and what all Players love from the game. These are people who confuse what they like, and what works for their table, with what everyone, everywhere, really like, and - worse - what everyone, everywhere should do.
I've been playing off and on, since the red/blue boxes were published in 1978 ( 41 years ago - although I think "time served" in DM circles means absolutely nothing ; practicing mistakes and bad techniques for 10K hours doesn't make your better than someone doing it right for only 100 hours ), and I have seen more tables and groups, and in more RPG systems, than I can count; there is no "one size fits all". Players come to the table for a myriad of different reason, and different types of fun. There were some interesting articles published almost 30 years ago, by Robin Laws, classifying the types of Players - including problem types. I'd recommend checking out the Matt Colville video ( also a D&D veteran of multiple decades ) of the classes of Players here, where he goes over them. Playing your game cross-type to the types of fun that your Players enjoy, can cause you to lose Players. That's not always a bad thing - I believe there are Players and GMs which just aren't compatible, as they want different things out of the game; some people shouldn't be playing together - but don't detach Players from your Party accidently by disregarding their wants and pissing them off.
You need to find what works for your Group.
And that's the problem here - none of you know what works. Both you and your Players are really quite new. Your Players don't know what are the prudent choices yet. Trial and error doesn't seem to be working well - they TPK'd - so maybe some gentle guidance is in order. Maybe point out when they don't understand the implications of their choices, in the game that you're running. Train your Players up to be able to work well in the kind of game you want to run. Be willing to give the Players information that the Characters would know automatically - especially for new Players. They didn't take any healing spells? Their Characters would know better, so maybe point that out to the Players. If you want a mechanical reason for doing so, and don't want to be seen as hand-holding the Players - make them roll against an appropriate skill ( you rolled a 20 on Nature? Yeah - you know that a Dragon like this can take out whole military formations! ).
Eventually you can take off the training wheels and you can stop doing this, because the Players will have learned how to play, but be willing to give some guidance to new Players at the beginning.
Throwing a situation at the Party where the GM expects the Party to withdraw, or recognize they are in over their heads, but they don't - that's a common issue. I'd point you toward Matt Colville's video on Losing, where he covers TPK'ing ( I think ).
If no one is upset with the TPK, and you feel it should stand, then I would let it stand, and start over with new Characters. I think there should be consistency and consequences in your game. Just understand the causes, and try not to repeat the situation. Repeatedly, throwing newbies Players at the wall, without any experience or training, and letting them go splat - you'll lose Players. Losing all the time sucks, if your approach to fun is not all about overcoming difficult challenges ( that is, #4 on that list ).
I'd recommend having a sit down post mortem talk with your players - literally, pardon the dark humor - and in as non-confrontational a manner as possible, discuss why this happened. You may find that what you were saying, is not what they were hearing. It can be hard to communicate the situation to the Players since we - as GMs - have perfect knowledge. Clues we think are obvious go right over Players' heads sometimes. It might very well be that your Players are just making dumb choices - that happens - but it may be a breakdown in communication. Find out which it is.
Once you understand the why of what happened, you'll have a better idea on how to better avoid it in the future.
I think the idea of seasoning your Group with more experienced Players is a good one, personally; letting the veteran Players help train up the newbies takes some of that workload off of you - as a new GM you have enough on your plate. I think maintaining some narrative continuity by having the new Party built around the surviving Rogue is a good one as well - you can even have the new Party tasked with the same adventure the old Party died trying to perform - " well, the last team didn't come back, so we hired you ...." - so you can even recycle the adventure ( updated to reflect changes that occured while everyone was dead ).
Best of luck with this! Hope things go better next session.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
It absolutely can be about both. I enjoy Story development, and Character development at my table; I enjoy awesome well executed, nail biting, hard won, and clever tactical combat as well.
But it's hard to read statements like:
as being a call for incorporating both kinds of fun.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
And now at least one of the new characters can be avenging the death of their sibling/parent/mentor/rival/...
It absolutely can be both, and it's at its best when it is!
However, for that you can't push any of those two to their limits. If you're pushing the "role-playing, story" part of it too far - fudging dice, making up abilities to have whatever you want happen, and justifying everything by its effect on the narrative - then the rules-based combat part of it becomes dumb, as players realize that the dice mean nothing and the rules are made up on the fly. On the other hand, if you push the "challenging tactical combat" part of it too far, having the players always pushed to their limits and at the edge of TPK if they mess things up, the reverse is true - players realize they have to play optimally to avoid death, and realize that whenever there's a conflict, they have to drop the "RP" part of it. So the role-play becomes a bit of flavor and not much more.
To me, the key should be that the player should feel free to decide "This course of action is probably not optimal. But it's what the character would do, so I'll do it." Or "but it might be awesome, so it's worth a shot." If the challenge is always so high that the players don't feel like they can do that without killing themselves, it needs to be ratcheted down until they can.
That just my own opinion. It's how I've had the most fun in D&D; others will play otherwise I'm sure.
I used to run a summer club for youth and young adults who wanted to try out DND. We were playing an Acq Inc style game, and I made it VERY clear that their characters are likely to die at some point, but that they were welcome to create new interns. They were welcome also to start their new interns off with the same level of experience points their last character had died at. Several of the people whose characters died really enjoyed their new ones, especially since they learned things like the value of not having only rogues and bards on your team (although I'll admit, that made for some very fun teams). So that might be what I would do. Something like let them know that they can just create new characters at the same level. Perhaps their new character was the sibling of the dead one, and the sibling joined in the adventure to avenge the first character's death. Or perhaps one of the kobolds was inspired by the team's sacrifice and wanted to take up their banner and continue their quest.
But dang. Battling your way out of hell? That sounds like a freaking BLAST. If you have Descent into Avernus or Out of the Abyss or Hellbound Heists (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/287220/Hellbound-Heists) or something like that, you could probably restructure content to fit your characters' story. If you don't have any of those content things, I'd say go for the hell thing anyways. You could easily just homebrew some monsters real quick and draw a few maps of what you think hell (or wherever they went) might look like. Escaping from hell could be a whole new adventure or just one session's worth of detour before you get back on track to the rest of your adventure. Maybe let the players to have the option for their characters to be brought back via resurrection (be themselves still) or via reincarnation (be reborn as someone else, with a different name, race, and/or class).
And to add on to an earlier topic, my favorite part of DND actually is the "hipster B.S.," like the characters and relationships and social and story. I really enjoy that type of thing. Zee Bashew, on YouTube, was the first one to open my eyes to the concept that there are a lot of legitimate play styles in DND. That's one of the many reasons that 5e is so much more popular than previous editions - it's built to be a lot easier to incorporate play styles besides the traditional "Enter, kill, loot" and "Optimize character builds for entering, killing, and looting." With the summer club, I made sure to run it so that one week would be combat-focused, one would be exploration and noncombat skill focused, and one would be social and problem-solving focused, and we'd repeat the cycle. That way the new people were introduced to a wide variety of play styles. They seemed to really enjoy it.
So the players turned an encounter with 3 goblins into a TPK.
To me that sounds like they don't know the mechanics of the game. Things like cover, going prone to avoid arrows, how much damage is enough to be concerned about, or basic tactical ways to avoid damage (i.e. close the distance with the ranged enemies and take them out rather than stand there and take it).
That's fine, there's a lot of mechanical stuff to learn, and the way most people learn is from their more experienced party members. So, with a party of new players, that makes *you* the person they need to learn from. You'll have to balance that role with your role as a DM in order for them to learn and still be challenged. Don't be afraid to tell a player what they're options are if they seem like they don't know. Give them simpler choices to start out and ramp up the complexity as they learn. Feel free to be a little less opaque with them. With the wyrmling for instance, instead of saying "this is a *very* hearty beast HINT HINT", I might say "you can choose to do nonlethal damage to it if you just want to knock it out," because your player might not know that nonlethal damage is an option, hence why they're so wary of hurting the wyrmling. They may even have guessed that you were trying to hint at something, but just had no idea what it was.
As others have said, I'd let the TPK stand so whatever lessons the players did learn stick, even if they just didn't realize death was on the table before. Just keep an eye out for teachable moments going forward. Make sure they know about all the different actions beyond "attack" and "cast a spell" and show them how the rules of the game work so they can internalize that as they continue to play.