What should my friend do?

jmisthe08

A friend sent me A E-Mail yesterday asking a question, I only read it a few minutes ago and as I don't know what to say I'm asking here. What would you suggest she do?

Her campaign has her as The GM with her husband controlling 5 Pcs and she's running A Campaign that's mostly uses the rules for 1st edition DAD but has a few custom features, 1 of which uses a variation of The Encounters Table for The Original Warhammer Quest Game that came out during The 90's

1 unique feature of The Encounters Table in The Original Warhammer Quest Rulebook is that A roll of either A double 1 or A double 6 means that you face a foe of the next battle level

The problem is that she claims to have fairly rolled either A double 1 or A double 6 8 times in a row, which means that her group of 5 1st level Pcs are facing A Foe who is 9th level or the equivalent

The group ended up facing A Goblin Chief that had the abilities of both A 5th level Dex 19 Thief and those of A 3rd level Str 15 Fighter, as you can imagine it didn't go well

I know that you must be thinking that theirs no way that she fairly rolled either A double 1 or A double 6 8 times in a row and I do have my doubts but I know that its possible and that is because I've done it 4 times in 26 years

Kallak

This kinda sounds like a good situation to set up a recurring or medium-to-long term villain. If the PCs are not (all) dead, it can be used for a subplot. PCs have to escape, and then the menace is still out there - and will need to be dealt with eventually. Turn it into a 'fail forward'.

jodie

Usually a GM screen allows one to quietly reroll tpk results

twiggyleaf

@Kallak's idea sounds pretty cool.  I would advise against TPK results if your players enjoy playing their characters, unless they are very seasoned players happy to roll new characters.  So do definitely FUDGE any of those behind your MIGHTY GM screen.  

Remember, the powerful foes don't need to KILL the characters.  They can overpower them and keep them as prisoners.  Many a good adventure has started from a lucky and daring escape!

gastoff

This is a situation where Rule Zero comes in handy. In the end, the DM is the arbiter of their game. If the DM's intent was to have an encounter that the PCs would end up killing their foes, then after rolling multiple doubles and having the encounter scale up to a certain level, she should have just stopped rolling and thrown them against an appropriately challenging encounter. The DM is never required to follow all the rules and tables at the expense of the flow of the game. Tables and Rules are guidelines...guardrails to help keeping things on track and a tool to help a DM construct their world without getting bogged down.

The second that the rules and tables create a bigger problem than they were designed to solve, the DM should definitely abort them (temporarily) and wing it.