On Total Party Kills

Total Party Kills are a funny thing in Dungeons & Dragons. The "killer Dungeon Master" is a myth and a trope as old as the game itself, originating in the earliest days of D&D when the game was more lethal and DMs were maybe more adversarial, and becoming popularized in the imagination of the play culture due to internet discussions and, eventually, memes. 

DMs love to lean into the trope too, in spirit, if not in practice. If you were to form your conception of D&D based purely on the "dndmemes" subreddit, you'd probably think that every DM was out to get the player characters and that PCs were dying left and right in every session and campaign. DMs are constantly excitedly talking about the next way they're going to "get" their players' characters, yet stories of actual TPKs treat them as some monumental, rare, unforeseen, and often unfortunate outcome. 

After all, a TPK means the game is over.

Right?

"Dead Adventurer" miniatures from Tiny Furniture

The popularity of 5th edition D&D and associated actual plays like Critical Role has polarized the player base on the topic of TPKs. After all, D&D is a game about telling a "story" about heroic characters who overcome the odds to vanquish evil and save the realm, and they can't do that if they're dead.

Right?

(As an aside, I don't think that this is what D&D is "about", and it certainly isn't the assumption in my games, but it does seem to be the popular way for modern players to approach D&D and 5e in particular.)

This "to TPK or not to TPK" discussion is also roughly as old as the hobby itself. Gary Gygax wrote the following in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition) Dungeon Master's Guide (Conducting the Game, page 110):

Interestingly, this passage draws a distinction between PCs who "die through no fault of [the player's] own" and those who die because the player has "done something stupid" or "not taken precautions".

It's also worth noting that the idea of story-focused campaigns in which PCs more or less have "plot armor" is at least as old as AD&D 2nd edition's Dragonlance modules, in which the players control characters from the novels who are unable to die for story reasons. While these modules may have started the trend towards TSR's and Wizards of the Coast's D&D adventures being "story"-focused, I still feel that the 5e play culture is uniquely occupied with the preconceived notion of "story", even if this tendency is present to some extent in all fantasy TTRPG players due to the outsized influence of fantasy epics like The Lord of the Rings (which is not necessarily the type of fiction D&D was originally attempting to ape, hobbits and balrogs aside).

Total Party Defeat and Campaign Collapse

Although TPK stands for "Total Party Kill", suggesting that all PCs are dead, it's worth it to discuss Total Party Defeats as well. A TPD is when the PCs are soundly defeated in combat but not necessarily killed. PCs always have the option of subduing rather than killing monsters and nonplayer characters, and that's a two-way street. TPD'd characters might be imprisoned, ransomed, robbed, or put into any number of detrimental positions depending on the monster or NPC's goals. There are other TPD conditions as well, which don't necessarily result in direct harm to the PCs, such as the villain achieving some goal - killing a key NPC or securing a powerful magic item. These conditions don't end the game. Why should a TPK?

I can't think of any time that I've TPK'd my players, but I can think of a few TPDs. On one occasion, the PCs were double-crossed by a cambion and a rival party of adventurers. Ambushed at their camp while resting after a harrowing fight with plague-ridden demons, two PCs were killed, two fled, and the fifth was taken prisoner. On another occasion, three were petrified by beholders while three barely escaped. In a different campaign, the PCs fell to infighting over a magic item.

Only the latter ended in a Total Campaign Collapse, which was because the in-game defeat was so fractious for the real-world players that we felt the only way to continue playing was to start something fresh (the perils of immature, adolescent gaming). On the other two occasions, the party regrouped and liberated, resurrected, and unpetrified their companions and eventually overcame the enemies that defeated them.

Well that's all well and good, but the PCs can't exactly do all that if they're all actually TPK'd, so surely the campaign must end in a TCC.

Right?

Total Communication Failure

There has been some consternation as to whether a TPK is a failure of the DM or of the players. It can be one or the other or both, but doesn't have to be either. There is such a thing as good DMing and good play. 

A good DM provides their players with information to make choices. As it relates to TPKs, this information is mainly concerning threat level. In an "old-school" game, threat level is usually consistently determined by the level of the dungeon the players are exploring, whereas the wilderness's danger is more unpredictable due to the nature of random encounters. In more linear games (and often, adventure modules), players can usually trust that as long as they are doing what they're "supposed to do", the threat level will be appropriate for their characters. 

This is more challenging in a sandbox game, where areas of varying danger will be scattered about somewhat randomly. Occasionally, threats will be telegraphed by some other means, such as by having distinct regions which are obviously more or less dangerous, or by having more dangerous areas located further from civilization. A good DM will make the players aware of these game assumptions or rules of thumb. In a more random sandbox, a good DM will use rumors and other delivery methods to convey information about threats to the players.

Good players use information about threats to make wise decisions, whether by taking game assumptions into consideration or by making an effort to gather in-game information before embarking on a given adventure. They will use their own judgment to determine whether to attempt to explore the next level of the dungeon or venture out into the wilderness, engage in "side quests" before advancing the "story", travel to the next, more dangerous region, or choose to embark upon either the adventure where they'll be fighting goblins or the adventure where they'll be fighting ogres.

A failure by the DM is a failure to convey information. A failure by players is a failure to make decisions that correctly take that information into account.

Total Imagination Failure

There is an idea that a TPK is due to a failure of imagination on the DM's part - every monster or NPC should have a motivation other than killing the party, so if the PCs are defeated, they always have a chance to live another day and fight again. But sometimes monsters are just monsters - the dragon's motivation might be simply to eat someone (or four-to-six someones); the undead abhor life and seek to snuff it out at every opportunity; the ooze just dissolves things.

I opt to take the choice out of my hands by determining monster and NPC motivations somewhat randomly, depending on alignment, reaction rolls, and random tables to determine personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and the like. Whether my monsters and NPCs fight to kill, subdue, or achieve some other end isn't strictly up to my imagination, but some combination of imagination and randomization.

In the same vein, a TPK could be a failure of imagination on the players' part - they never imagined the possibility of fleeing, for example.

The true failure of imagination is the failure to imagine what comes after the TPK.

In a typical D&D game, the afterlife is a real and somewhat tangible thing. Depending on the setting, the PCs' souls are whisked away to some other plane of existence, where they may or may not maintain agency, and where further adventures are surely possible. 

In my recently-concluded 5e game, I planned for a true TPK from the outset. In the event of a TPK, each character would be spirited away to an Outer Plane corresponding to their alignment - the Chaotic Good barbarian would find themselves in the Beastlands, the Chaotic Neutral wizard in Limbo, the Lawful Evil ranger in Gehenna, the Lawful Neutral paladin in Acheron, the Neutral Evil warlock a lemure in Hell, and the Neutral Good bard in Elysium. They would have their work cut out for them if they intended to traverse the Great Wheel or head to Sigil to regroup, but adventure would await them wherever they went, and with good play there was always the possibility of returning to the mortal realm. We never got there, but I was ready for it if we did.

As always, DM and player communication and collaboration is key. If the goal is to play a story-focused game with high narrative stakes in which character death will seriously derail the campaign and cause it to collapse, or the DM wants to try their hand at being the "killer DM" or run a Tomb of Horrors-style adventure, those expectations should be communicated at the beginning of the campaign. Both DM and players should be on the same page as to whether the PCs are destined heroes or fodder. If a TPK does occur, it warrants a discussion between both parties as to whether the game should continue in one manner or another, either with the same characters in a new situation, new characters in the same setting, a new setting, or a new game system entirely.