#of my opinions on party synergy and above board communicaiton as well as improv from the dm chair.

[elphael]

Curiosity question if you don't mind from a newbie dm. How do you deal with tpk as a dm ? Where you super stressed as it was happening or was it ok cause you could communicate with the players ?

this is the first time i've ever had a tpk happen. several things happened and several things contributed to the way i ran things and why i think my players are okay with the outcome and i'll talk about them now. some of these i think are tips that can be applicable to dming, some of them are just personality things, and some of them speak to group synergy.

i know this party well. i know the PLAYERS at this table that i was doing this campaign with well and we know how to communicate, 3/4 of us dm for each other and we are all typically good at knowing what each other will enjoy

we communicate well, even if it takes a minute out of session. for example, in another game we play where i'm a player some of the decisions i was making as my pc were bringing down another player, and while we all agreed at the start that it was okay, things changed, and so i changed the way i was playing my character and they're swapping out their pc for awhile to play a different character.

i think it's important to note with the two examples above, your mileage really will vary when it comes to communication with other people because one's capacity for interpersonal communication has nothing to do with their enjoyment of the game. likewise, you might have great friends but realize you don't enjoy playing d&d with each other. things happen.

i think something any ttrpg player can keep in mind is that just because you like someone doesn't mean you like playing a 4 hour board game with them once every two weeks and viceversa. just because you get along to play a game doesn't mean you need to be best friends with someone you don't feel that close to outside the game.

some actual thoughts of mine regarding tpks and what happened in session that i feel like made it a successful session instead of something that felt horrible and unfair

i did not make the encounter with the goal to kill my entire party or even to kill one of them. i wanted a hard fight, cr is hard to balance, usually you have to punch way above your party's weight class to have a fight feel scary and challenging. that is what i was doing. the fight was very winnable. it just came down to roll of the dice. i think they could've taken them down but that's just not the way it turned out. the encounter itself did not feel hopeless, that is important. the alternate to this is i am not against, as a dm, flagging that a fight IS hopeless and that the party should flee. that is run very differently than how i ran this encounter, i was not signposting for them to run, i thought they would win.

when the first player dropped and then rolled a nat1 i asked them this: by raw this is failing two death saves, however, if you want this to be an automatic death you can choose that. i do not want to choose for you, i want you to make the choice that is fun for you. pc death is not fun unless you have fun with it. and then to keep a bit of mystery, i direct message'd them where i thought we could take their pc's story if they died / what the 'resurrection quest' could be. the player ended up deciding that auto death could be fun.

at this point, i did not know that i would successfully knock the other two players. and when it became clear that i could and was on the cusp of it, i asked them both something similar. do you both want to roll death saves and fight to the last breath or do you want to die. here's what will happen. they were excited by the death option.

my players chose to tpk. their characters did not, narratively they did not, the challenge was fair but hard and they failed narratively. failure should never be the end and should not be a punishment. the story moves forward. i presented an idea for where the story could go from the failure and they were enthusiastic about it.

after session i also checked in with the group and said, hey if you get second thoughts about this let me know and we can retcon that fight. i do not want to play a game that is not fun for you. as it stands now, they're all really excited about the idea of clawing their way back from the grave whenever we pick up a new story arc with those characters again.

and that's really what it boils down to for me as a dm whose spent a lot of time as a player in the game. pc death is not fun unless the player is excited about it. if they aren't okay with it, it will not be fun for anyone involved.

the game is about roll of the dice, the game is about story, the game is about mechanics and challenges and puzzles, but most of all it is about having fun. so if something is not fun, you don't have to do it.

i could talk forever about how i feel like there are some dms who take so so much pride in their intricate plots and ideas that they keep secret to their last breath without actually collaborating with their players which i think is actually a detriment.