This post is part of a series of answers to the Reverb Gamers 2012 blogging prompts (full list in PDF format here).

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #23: Have you ever experienced Total Party Kill (TPK), or been close to it? What effect did that have on you personally? On your group of players? Have you ever used retroactive continuity (retcon) to save yourself? Why or why not?

In the first session of a particular campaign I play part of our party was ambushed by gnolls dropping out of trees. I was a gnome wizard and there was a human cleric and human fighter. We fought fiercely but were all knocked to less than 0 HP. It was the first combat in the entire campaign. Our GM wondered allowed what should be done about it. He decided that rather than end the campaign before it started he would have us wake up, captured by the gnolls.

He hadn’t planned that but it turned out to be very effective and our party bonded over the incident, met an NPC who we then owed our lives to and started off into a very enjoyable campaign. It ended up being all about our characters and their relationships to NPCs we met when we came back into town.

If we had died and started up with new characters the whole campaign would have been very different. We weren’t that committed to our brand new PCs at the time, so the potential TPK didn’t have a lot of impact on us. Nevertheless, I’m glad the GM made the choice to avoid it.

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