Is it wrong to want to TPK your group?

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Comments

  • Dyluth
    Dyluth
    Posts: 92
    @StephenWollett That is some very fine advice indeed! I'm actually VERY intrigued about TPK plot device you employed. I'm curious, how much notice if any did your party have before the revelation that the final PC standing would in fact be killed by this artifact's power? Did this new campaign forged in this rewritten world start immediately afterwards? It sounds like a very interesting TWIST to be sure:)
  • Baalshamon
    Baalshamon
    Posts: 585
    I never told any of the players but one who was familiar with Michael Moorcock's work suspected. I had the next campaign already planned. As you can see with my Star Trek Campaign I plan many months in advance. The way I set it up was about six months before the grand event I had the party stumble onto a vague profesy. It described six characters and the parts they would play in a grand battle, in addition it names people and places. I might be able to dig out the old files off my old computer to give you an idea. Anyway I then made sure that over the next six months each leg of the profesy was completed by the party. When I set it up I had no plan on how they would do this so I formulated the adventure upon the profesy as written taking cues from the player's interpretations. The Horn of change was the artifact used. It had to be blow three times to stop the evil and save the universe (Stopping the evil meant destroying the universe but they never put that together until it was too late). Each blast of the horn killed the blower, so three players had to sacrifice themselves to pull this off but they all believed they would come back when the final toot of the horm was made. I made the stakes high and the battle for the horn was deadly to the extreme. Two players died giving others the chance to blow the horn. What was beautiful and unplanned was in the profesy I described a traitor that would threaten everything. The party always assumed it would be one specific player but on the day I gave the Profesy my friend Mike decided he was done with gaming. I decided then to make him the villain and had been awarding his character experience equal to double what the party was getting each adventure. I needed him to be bad ass enough to take on the whole team. The beautiful thing was on the night of the grand finale, Mike showed up out of the blue. He just stopped in to say hi and I handed him his character and told him the deal. He played the part of the villain to the T and it was a perfect end to a great campaign.

    Now for the new world. The game of Immortal we were playing dealt with the gods walking the Earth in the modern day. The new world was a world in which gods and magic had vanished into legend. A world in which millions of alternate universes were connected by a vast labrynth of gateways. We used the Fringeworthy setting but set it to the rules of UniSystem. I allowed each player to create one alternate world in as they desired. They were gods for the creation but the world they created was lost out on the pathways and they had only to discover it. This was a great tool as it allowed each player the chance to be GM for a day and then allowed me to expand upon their creation. One of the few times I actually had everyone participating in the story from begining to end. Great days of which reminiscence often surfaces. I also set up a reward for each character based upon their new creation. If they found their creation they would be given the chance to get the reward which was basically a minor artifact that only that player could use.

    I hope that helps to give insight into the adventure. It was close to a decade ago we ran that one and it still amazes me we talk about some aspect of it almost every time we all get together.
  • Dsqr964
    Dsqr964
    Posts: 1
    TPK's hmm, you have never played GamaWorld or Paranoia where TPK or death is not if but when. I have ran Paranoia back in the 80's and played in my best Friends GamaWorld recently were we call it more accurately GammaHammer. TPK's can be ok if they fit the story or actions. I run a future SciFi game and have no alignments but run a type of Renown system, the players who did not help the town would have received negative renown and the players that helped would get positive renown with the towns folk, this can equate into a reduced or inflated price of an item, help or lack of at a desperately needed time, or even a better payment for services rendered.
    Biggest concern would be did the Players play their character accurately by helping or not helping? If they did then it is just a "wash session" were it has set up the mood of the Town's Folk towards the players, run from there. These little hic-ups in our (GM's) story arc can some time lead to great adventures (mis-adventures) on their own. I run Sand box so many things are up to the Player's decisions on the path the adventure/campaign takes.
    -Dennis
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