Apart from this are there any other printed adventures/campaigns with a mandated railroaded TPK?
>>94394275There's foxes in DND now?
>>94394309based retard
>>94394275Does it really? LMAO, some motherfuckers been playing too many shitty JRPGs.
>>94394309Have been since the 80s, have you never heard of Kara-Tur?
>>94394275> are there any other printed adventures/campaigns with a mandated railroaded TPK?Quite a few. For example, the 3.5 adventure “Red Hand of Doom” has a massive, well-organized army of monsters attack a tiny town near the start of it while the PCs are around level 6-7, and is clear about the fact that action economy alone will kill any PCs who actually stand and fight the horde, nevermind that it contains scores of monsters with high CRs who by themselves would be a challenge. It advises that the DM should try to make it as clear as possible that standing and trying to defeat the Red Hand here is doomed to failure - but if the PCs are absolutely determined, to consider just letting them. Don’t fudge the dice, just play out the hopeless fight fairly. Wipe the party, then have the players roll up new PCs who’ve heard about what happened and now have to pick up where the fallen PCs left off.I’d hazard a guess that most adventures, in fact, have moments that absolutely will lead to a TPK if the party makes stupid or incautious choices.
>>94394275'nuff said.
>>94394423This is the opposite of a railroaded tpk. OP is a situation where the players literally cannot avoid a tpk.
>>94394275Why the fox giving out side eye like that
>>94394275Wrath of the Righteous if your players aren’t braindead faggots
>>94394825>Lawful Good goddess braps her champions to death for not knowing random trivia
>>94394423That's just a situational TPK. A railroaded one is like in OP where the death of the players is mandated by the plot.
>>94394275not offical, but if i remember correctly one of the grimhollow ones starts with one and then the characters wake up at level 1 in the citadel of the lich and have to get the fuck out or something like that
Don't mind me, just casting a cheeky Baleful Polymorph
>>94395457 >>94394636Hmm, not familiar enough with OP’s thing, then. What, specifically, happens in it that forces an unavoidable TPK?
There's a ravenloft one in Paridon. It's like Hour of the Knife I think? The darklord has a healing touch so the bit is that he kills all the players then revives them to offer then a job.
>>94395572Not OP but IIRC the plot of that one is that the arcanoloth woman keeps hiring the PCs to get murdered to accomplish some kind of weird shit with the planes and you play very reduced versions of the characters after they revive in the Mortuary in Sigil. I only looked at it briefly and realized it was a very clumsy and inferior attempt to do the story from Planescape Torment except with a full party and trying to not do the same plot.
>>94394275doesn't Die Vecna, Die end up with the entire campaign setting being destroyed?
>>94396417I mean…does it really count as a TPK if death doesn’t actually end the campaign, or even the characters?
>>94395688no, 1. the dark lord saves them from the jack the ripper expie that's trying usurp him (if they died)2. its avoidable if the players never go off on their own or dieAdam's Wrath had a mandated TPK by hags and then the party gets rezzed back as flesh golems by the Dr Frankenstein expie and sent on a mission
>>94394275None that I personally know of, but you did remind me of the Gamma World adventure GW5 Rapture of the Deep. IIRC it was abandoned by TSR during development, and fans took the concepts and ran with them to finish it. Which is pretty based in itself, but man does it not look fun to run. The (GW equivalent of high-level, so very capable and armed to the teeth) PCs are sent to a town to investigate a series of mystery raids sweeping down the coast, wiping out settlements one by one. They find out that mutants from beneath the sea are coming to raid the town, and are encouraged to organize and plan a defense of the town. However, the raiders have spies in the town (which the PCs have no chance of rooting out, and no reason to even suspect there could be spies), so the raiders will always know their plans, fortifications will all be sabotaged, etc. And the raiders have such overwhelming force and technology that they will always wipe out the town and abduct the PCs. If they're outgunned, the GM simply adds more tanks and shit until the PCs are crushed anyway. So you have a scenario where the PCs are encouraged to invest themselves into defending this town and it will always fail spectacularly by pure fuck-you GM fiat. A shame, because the concept is really cool.
>>94396898>Adam's Wrath had a mandated TPK by hags and then the party gets rezzed back as flesh golems by the Dr Frankenstein expie and sent on a missionI guess that's meant as a one-shot as continued "life" as a flesh golem wouldn't be very fun in the Ravenloft setting.
>>94396964Found the PDF, here's a relevant bit.>>94394423By contrast this doesn't really bother me. The players are told up front and have a meaningful choice. That sounds like it could be a cool moment.
>>94394275There is an AP for PF1e, I think it was the very last one for that edition, where the party dies
>>94394559FUCK YEA! Came here to suggest this. One of the best adventures ever printed, and sadly doesn't get talked about enough.
>>94397083Poetic as that is also when Paizo died.
>>94394771she knows what human men wantspecifically the ones that are lonely and live in some miserable dystopia instead of a comfy fantasy world
>>94396879obviously yes, it's TPK is total party kill, not forced campaign end or forced party replacement
>>94394423>very obviously not mandated railroaded TPKswhat a retard
>>94394275There's been a few
Real talk. If your GM runs an adventure with an "obligatory" TPK that's reason for walking out right there. That's probably the shittiest way to take away player agency you could do short of the GM getting them raped and impregnated or something like that.
>>94398497Agreed, there are better ways to achieve the same outcome without forcing your players into a boring cutscene.It's funny, because the fucking thing the planescape module is badly ripping off did it right: you start the game in the mortuary, already having been killed.
>>94394309Always have been. If you mean "furfag foxsonas" then yes sadly those are more recent but they're there
>>94398560A single player experience in a computer game is also a vastly different animal than a collaborative pen and paper RP. In a computer game you go in with the full expectation that many of the choices of the story are already made for you. You cannot in Torment make a different protagonist than the Nameless One and the Nameless One has a backstory which does not change regardless of what you do. Your choices as a player can change your playthrough in ways but only according to pre-scripted paths. Ideally in a pen and paper your GM should pay attention to what you do and try to incorporate that into the plot(s) as much as possible, not force the characters into a template. Plus having several characters go through the reincarnation blender is just chaos and will mean that either everyone tries to do a character arc out of their changes at once and the game devolves into a mess or everyone just ignores it and stoically continues as if nothing happened in which case it's just a dumb gimmick. And I mean if you roll up a character you probably have an idea of what you want to play and maybe some ideas for that. And then the GM goes "no you're playing THIS character". You can make something of that but it feels like you're wasting your time.
>>94394275Vecna LivesYou start as the Circle of Eight, which is the council of setting's most powerful wizards and get slaughtered by Vecna after a few scenes
>>94398585At least with the PCs starting dead you can say right away "in this campaign your characters start dead" and set expectations right there instead of railroading.The very start of any campaign by nature has to be set up by the GM every time.
>>94398957Yeah. I would also imagine if you start out dead then you don't make the players go through the entire smokescreen of "hey make your characters but we will actually change them up entirely after the TPK" thing.
>>94399033The only good mandated TPK involves going into the underworld with express understanding that the players will regain their lives and bodies again.
>>94399311Has that ever happened?
>playing D&DFound your problem, chief. Any RPG with a casual resurrection method is shit. Death should be a real threat and a real danger, not a temporary status problem that can be fixed with a spell.
>>94398616Came here to say this. I learned about this from a Nodwick comic.
>>94399431>this troll is still hereFucking hell.
TPKs are a meme
>>94394275>Apart from this are there any other printed adventures/campaigns with a mandated railroaded TPK?above all stands the Ravenloft adventure 2e Thoughts of Darkness, supposedly 12 to 15 level but 30 level characters can also die in it. At 12 to 15 level you just die and if you had a magic machine or some ai that works you could test at what level this can be finished 51% of the times it is attempted. Probably at 30+ level. there is a thread with details on what and why in the archivehttps://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/91669877/the adventure is true death
>>94394275>Ravenloft adventure 2e Thoughts of Darknessif you wanat TPK use this adventure, it takes the heroes to a domain which is despair and lunacy itself and kills them with no mercy, explanations or excuses. I suggest you go through the thread mentioned above if you consider the adventure. https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/vampilli/has 8 levels possibly drained per round Vampire Mind Flayers and so many other things. Its also so much of a railroad they might as well have had it occurring in an actual train. A Rape Train with no Breaks for this adventure.
>>94394275>Ravenloft adventure 2e Thoughts of Darknessencounter 1https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/91669877/#q91671865After some dream adversary fight in the mists.Ten 15th level drow fighters plus six after 3 rounds for 16 totalTwo 16th level drow mages plus one mage as above for 3 totalEight 12th level duergar fighters plus six more as above for 14 totalThirty three steeder spiders, their steeds & the baldy 17th level thief and his nightmare steedThree rounds after the duergar blows his horn, six more drow fighters, one more drow mage, and six more duergar arrive on their steeders. They all attack the PCs’ flank.All of them except Bonespur (baldy thief) are mind-slaves of the illithids and fight to the death, so morale is not a factor.
>>94400606>>94400654I assume this happened because (A)D&D barely had playtesting before 3E and when they did they just sat down some random people and tried it out without any stress testing?
>>94400687>playtestingthis had zero (other than lots of beers and laughing about how all parties would die) but it seems that they did it on purpose, writing a deadly adventure with no chance of victory. The writer in effect mocks the dm and players by suggesting the levels and the items and their limitations. This one was beyond no play-testing.
>>94400687you can finish the adventure with space marines from Deathwatch armed to the teeth of course.
>>94400738mocking the customer"This adventure is designed for four to six players who are at the 12th to 15th level of experience. It is assumed that a player character in a realistic, balanced 12th-to 15th-level party has an Armor Class between 0 and —5, although some parties may have a warrior with a slightly lower one. In terms of magical weapons, there may be an occasional sword +5 in such groups, but +3 is a more realistic maximum. Any character besides a wizard who carries much more than a half dozen magical items has a generous DM indeed."
>>94400761>>94400687meant to click to you not myself
>>94400687i really wish i had an AI that could estimate what party it would take to finish this 51% of the times. Playing it otherwise as written.
>>94394423>>94394559these two adventures can be fun
>>94394275>mandated railroaded TPKThere is also City of Skulls a 2e Greyhawk adventrue for 9-12 level characters i think.No exactly mandated railroaded TPK (just very likely for some parties) but if the heroes are not careful in their infiltration and combat (hiding corpses and traces etc) they can be noticed and eventually slain for sure as the patrols and team sent to investigate end up being the super-elites of Iuz.
>>94394275the best place to kill players i think is using the Ravenloft Thoughts of Darkness domain, Bluetspur but without the adventure. Just use the domain, as its debilitating just being there and bluetspurize any mini-dungeons or mini adventures you have. heroes end up there with other heroes or random folk like traders etc and try to surviveand DO NOT.
>>94399431There is no edition of D&D where any kind of resurrection or reincarnation is a trivial spell. Have you tried actually playing d&d, not a bunch of easymode house rules?
>>94398616>Vecna Lives>You start as the Circle of Eight, which is the council of setting's most powerful wizards and get slaughtered by Vecna after a few scenesi remember that, it truly sucked
>>94394275>mandated railroaded TPKseveral ravenloft adventures had this and it included usually body swapping and it sucked.
>>94400938Give examples.
>>94400832If it's not mandated then it can't be part of the plot, can it? Like Turn of Fortune's Wheel is 100% about the PC's being murdered and reincarnated without memories
>>94401048>>94401053The Created -> forcibly become puppetsAdam's Wrath -> forcibly become half-golemsHour of the knife -> oops you are dead and are replaced by dopplegangers (something like that)
>>94401048Grim Harvest trilogy (+1 draft exists of part 4) ->oops you die and become undead
>>94401053in that adventure some parties are so daft that they end up causing so much trouble that the arrival of the fiend squad and high priestess squad etc is actually 100%
>>94401080>>94401090>>94400855AD&D 2E was infamous for doing railroad adventures that often barely took stats and gameplay mechanics into account and very often were entirely imbalanced due to the lack of any kind of CR mechanic and that leads to a lot of their finished products being just unplayable garbage more suited to a freeform campaign. In Die, Vecna, die! which is supposed to be an epic-level adventure that's a campaign-ender suitable for PC's that have truly cosmic powers there are encounters which are so trivial a level 10 party could clear them then paired up against encounters that can chain-kill even fully prepared epic PC's. Ravenloft I think is the worst out of all of the sublines for this because so many of the published modules try to be horrific and play around with horror tropes when AD&D is a fundamentally non-horrific system. Only by pulling DM fiat's can they achieve the atmosphere they want by making the PCs unable to affect the outcome in any way.WotC introducing playtesting with the release of 3E was a fucking godsend let me tell you.
>>94401186>introducing playtesting2e supposedly had playtesting, ToD had even playtesters listed but its clear that ToD was never playtested or even played as a joke. Unless they were all on LSD while playing it.
>>94401186>playtestingToDPlaytesters: Richard W. Brown, Gary “Garg” Brown, Larry Brown, and William J. MartensDesign: David WiseEditing: Wolfgang BaurProject Coordination: Timothy B. Brownthe art and maps are fineBlack and White Art: Stephen FabianColor Art: Fred FieldsCartography: John KnechtTypesetting: Tracey ZamagneProduction: Charles WatsonPlaytesters: see aboveThanks to: William W. Connors, Bruce Nesmith, Zeb Cook, Tim Beach, Colin McComb, Thomas Reid, and Timothy B. Brown
>>94401193I should specify that what they called "playtesting" during 0E-2E wasn't really what we call playtesting today. It consisted mostly of grabbing some people you usually played with (other employees at TSR or private friends), going "I have this new adventure to try" and then running it. Maybe just one time with that one group. These people were not trained or used to stress testing an adventure or commenting on the balance or mechanics, they just ran through it blindly seeing if there was any glaring problem, and often they then missed 10 other glaring problems. It was a much less serious and professional process than what it became.
>>94401273>glaring problemthe army of tens sometimes underdark fuckers (even higher level than the heroes) vs 4 to 6 dudes was quite glaring indeed
>>94401273>they just ran through it blindly si think they were drunk and stoned and surrounded by strippers at that point
>>94398377I learned about it from Spoony's Counter Monkey. Comfy as fuck.
>>94401080>Hour of the knife -> oops you are dead and are replaced by dopplegangers (something like that)This one is the worst thing mentioned in this thread and it's just because of that gimmick.
>>94394275>>94397083Tyrant's Grasp for Pathfinder. Infamous for having the party sacrifice themselves to momentarily delay the villain, hoping for the real heroes to finish the job, cucking them of the glory.
>>94401888lol paizo
>>94394275There's a shack in Rime of the Frostmaiden that railroads a TPK and then the team, as ghosts, has to repair a McGuffin that turns off the main antagonist's environmental power, the power which is the whole point of the setting. It's pretty gay.
>>94402554That's not remotely true because the device is only set up to kill one player at a time, which is necessary because the ghosts have to coach the living into fixing it and it doesn't work as intended since the players still have to go to Grimskalle (and Ythryn) to fight Auril and get a working weather control machine. Auril isn't really the main antagonist, she shouldn't be showing up more than twice.
>>94401080>The Created -> forcibly become puppets>Adam's Wrath -> forcibly become half-golems>Hour of the knife -> oops you are dead and are replaced by dopplegangers (something like that)Hour of the Knife is hilarious because it has a lot of DM-player trust betrayal. The adventure instructs that player death is automatic, unavoidable and not roleplayed out. In fact you don't even tell the player it happened, they're just playing a doppleganger of their character now until the DM assumes control and has them attack the party. RAW it is almost custom made to piss players off.
>>94394275who is this fox waifu
>>94402793Shemeska the MarauderIt's not actually a fox, tho. It's an arcanoloth
>>94402793not a she either
>>94401828horrible adventure and this ravenloft mainly habit of forcing death out of the writer's arse made the adventures unplayable.
>>94394275>Apart from this are there any other printed adventures/campaigns with a mandated railroaded TPK?do you want to end your campaign by killing your players with such an adventure, or just curious? or something else?
>>94403208>Shemeska the Marauder>It's not actually a fox, tho. It's an arcanolothshocking, from a fiend they made it look like some toy for kids or some badly designed cartoon character.
>>94394275>mandated railroaded TPK?as its clearly that for many times its a ravenloft body-swap trick with few other adventures using this frustrating ball-buster
>>94404210Somebody faps to fox furries at Wizards that's for sure
Vecna Lives begins with you playing a batch of NPCs and getting killed which is entirely pointless because you will literally never repeat that encounter in that fashion with your actual PCs.
>>94401888>>94397083Tyrants grasp also opens with players getting literally nuked and wandering in the afterlife
>>94404616Was that the Infinity War ripoff one?
>>94404498>batch of NPCsthe only good thing about the adventure is you get to see the major npc stats
>>94401888>Infamous for having the party sacrifice themselves to momentarily delay the villain, hoping for the real heroes to finish the job, cucking them of the glory.wow that is a new standard super-lame insult to customers
>>94404763They're not even accurate. Greyhawk has been so bastardized in 2E that it barely resembles the original
>>94402591This anon can't read!
>>94394275The Apocalypse Stone invariably ends up with the whole planet destroyed. It is designed to kill of overlevel parties alongside the whole setting with it and do it in an epic way.
>>94404868>The Apocalypse Stonethis fits in all settings, but does it lean more towards a specific one?
>>94394275Fortune's wheel isn't bad for the character death. It's bad because it's a fucking half-assed adventure which centers around the idea that the PC party is immortal and will constantly respawn upon death, but does not at any point provide any explanation on why this is.The designers clearly wanted to rip off Planescape Torment (to the point of even using NPCs from that game) but in PST the immortality of the main character is the very focus of the game, the storyline mystery around which everything revolves. Discovering the truth is what leads to the endgame and the main villain is quite literally a product of that immortality.In Fortune's Wheel your PCs are immortal because uh multiverse glitch lol.It has nothing to do with the main villain of the story, it has nothing to do with the overall plot. It's just a deus ex machina to explain why the PCs can come back after the main villain kills them (repeatedly). It's just a random event in a random adventure that just so happens to allow the player characters to come back and beat the villain (hopefully). it's bad. like very bad.
>>94405115>rip off Planescape Tormentits a great computer game though i detest the tabletop setting. But the computer game can be converted and modified into a good tabletop adventure for those that like it, if they were not retarded.
>>94397011>Doesn't name the spies>No way PCs can catch themCowardice, pure cowardice.
>>94394275While death is no obstacle in this AP, what the heck are you talking about? There is no point where in the AP that it intentionally makes a Railroad TPK. It does railroad pretty hard, but despite the setup and primary gimmick, the whole adventure assumes the PCs will live through and defeat everything.WHERE are you talking about?God. I hope you're not talking about the Rigus fight. If you are, I suggest you read it again, because that thing VERY much assumes most if not all the PCs live through the fight.
>>94404868>>94394559I recall reading this, within this last decade too, and know it's about some dude getting a hold of that world's World/Apoc Stone to try and end it.I recall the party encounters a tarrasque but the module is like: "eeeeh Don't worry about it. You've got other things to fight."And I recall the semi-distortion castle at the end.Where does it TPK the party in the course of the adventure? If you're talking about the "End-credits-death" that very much doesn't count cause that's more of a campaign closer not a TPK.I'll admit I don't recall the whole adventure though.
Tyrant's Grasp has a full TPK as a cutscene and then the real heroes arrive to defeat the BBEG at the end. It's weird.
>>94394275The apocalypse stone.
Can't remember the exact details and it's not so important that I'm going to dig through some storage boxes, but the old Doomstones campaign for WFRP. You drag yourself through hell and pain for ... four? five? books, wresting powerful magical jewels from villains to avert an apocalypse, and then at the end when the crystals are destroyed, well, so are the PC's who attuned to them. Not nicely either. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark levels of magical backlash in keeping with each stone's elemental power.It's certainly Warhammer, and folkloric in as much as - well, you did bond your soul with mysterious magical artifacts of unknown provenance called DOOM stones, but still.
>>94398404>she
>>94404861Neither can you, you niggerfaggot
>TPKMeme
>>94394275>Apart from this are there any other printed adventures/campaigns with a mandated railroaded TPK?Oh my, yes.
>>94394275What happens in Turn of Fortune's Wheel that leads to a TPK?
>>94418911NTA but the fox-demon thing keeps killing the party for some dumb reason and the latest time (when the campaign starts) they wake up in the Mortuary in Sigil as different people.
