In our case we have our city of “paradise”, Zenefil, and there’s a deity in the world who has created this for the adventurers to find. Now, that sounds great for our adventuring party, but the world otherwise really sucks. There are powerful chromatic dragons that are ruling the lands with fear.

So this is clearly going to basically be the whole thing getting to the paradise of Zenefil, but generally if something sounds too good to be true, it probably will be. And the deity should definitely have put a limit on how many people can actually get in. So while I said adventurers, everyone and their mother is going to consider themselves adventurers and probably be willing to kill to try and get there. Plus, then you’d have the dragons who would be trying to stop the people from leaving because they need subjects to torture or it’s just dull.

Beyond the dangers of the other people going and the dragons, I’d make it sort of a puzzle/mystery sort of thing where players need to figure out clues and decipher things that the deity is giving them in order to eventually make their way to Zenefil. This will do two things, it’ll weed out some of the weaker NPC’s that they might run into for a while so it becomes less chaotic, it also kind of gives you points of timing for other NPC’s. Beyond that, it allows you, the further they get away from the dragon kingdoms towards Zenefil, they should start seeing more monsters and natural things like that.

You can also add in less natural things as well, depending on what you want to do with Zenefil. Do you want it to be an amazing sanctuary and refuge against the dragons, or do you want it to be a equally as bad, if not worse place. Now, you can have the players need to fight at this point and try and defeat the deity or the deities monsters/henchmen.

This is going to be more exploration focused in some ways as your clues can lead them to various landmarks along the way and put them into unique situations. Also it’ll be an exploration into what the player characters are deciding to do with the other NPC’s that are running about as well. I think that there’s going to be a lot of interesting stories to tell with that, will the PC’s help some less fortunate NPC’s, will they leave an NPC that is injured out there who can be brought back as a nemesis? Is there another group that is their arch rivals? Play around with those emotions and groups of people, heck, even family members.

So, would you run a game like this? Would this be something that you’d do for a whole campaign? For me, this is a higher level campaign, or the second arc of a campaign. If you can set-up the dragons as rulers in the first one somehow, then you could create the paradise/Zenefil part as the second arc at a higher level. It would give the players less competition and more reason to not just worry about their own survival.

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In Dark Sun, magic has failed and corrupted everything. Because of this, casters are despised. But it makes sense in a world where the land has been turned into a desert primarily, magic draws from the life force of the world, and things like metal are extremely rare. Characters are going to be fighting with bone, wood, and obsidian, which are all prone to breaking. The same is true for armor, so no one is really ever safe. With all of that, there is still magic in the world in the way of psionics. More of a mental battle, think of the Doctor Strange weird dimensions that they can get into, almost all races and people have some psionic abilities. Ruling over all the lands are the Sorcerer-Kings. They are the only ones who really have a right to cast spells. And they rule with iron fists. Slavery is common in the lands of the Dark Sun setting. If you’re are able bodied and can be grabbed, you can turned into a slave.

Playing in this setting is going to be about the struggle for survival and making small improvements. You’re more apt to be surviving disasters than you are likely to fix the world. Since magic draws life energy, the world is basically lost at this point. Add in that magic, while a thing, is really frowned upon because it got the world to this point. So if you have a spellcaster in your party, they are going to be an outcast of society. Even clerics are going to be looked at oddly because there are no deities in this setting. Clerics gain their powers from making pacts with powerful elementals, not because of their devotion to a certain deity. It gives them more of a warlock flavor while still having the cleric abilities and this hasn’t even been the case in all editions of D&D. In 4th edition (Dark Sun hasn’t been done for fifth yet), cleric was just not a playable race at all in the Dark Sun settings.

The races also change up as well. Most notably, our friendly halflings now live in tribes ruled by shaman and are cannibals. You can still be a halfling, just know what what means for your character. There are a few other races that were introduced into the world. Thri-Kreen are six legged humanoid mantis folk. Their legs/arms and harder skin allow them to more easily adapt to the dangerous lands of Dark Sun. Aarakocra were another race that were introduced. These are your bird humanoids who are able to fly. Beyond that, you can play most of the normal races without any problem just with slight differences. For example, dwarves in basically all settings are known for their beards and beards can be kind of a status symbol, in Dark Sun, they don’t have hair.

What sort of game would you play in this setting? I would think that it’s going to be heavily focused on survival. Maybe you are a band of former slaves who have escaped their owner, possibly even one of the Sorcerer-Kings, and you need to stay alive. This could mean that you need to stay on the run survive long enough to become strong enough to take on whomever is chasing you down. It could be that you are part of a group who believes that the Sorcerer-Kings are the force that is still corrupting the lands and that if you can take out one or two of them, the lands might return and not be such a wasteland. Or maybe you want to do the D&D version of Mad Max: Fury Road. But, in all the cases, it’s going to be about survival, about making or finding weapons so that you’re never out there defenseless, finding food. It’s going to be a game where you track everything, the arrows you’ve lost, the meals you’ve had, because eventually things are going to run out, will you have found more by the time they do, that’s the question.

So, to wrap this up, would I want to play a game in this setting? Sure, I’d be up for it. The survival nature of the game doesn’t sound highly interesting to me, but because of how the world is created so uniquely, it does seem like it would be a more interesting world to play in. I actually think playing a spellcaster would be interesting in the setting, playing a caster who has the power but doesn’t know if they should be casting spells because of it’s negative effect on the life energy in the world. I don’t know that it would be my first choice, but I’d definitely play in it

How about you, would you or have you played in a Dark Sun game?

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LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOY JENKINS!

The barbarian has now rushed the evil wizard. There is one way that this is going to end, with a TPK (Total Party Kill).

What do you do?

Now, there are plenty of ways that this can happen. The one that I gave above is actually one of the trickier situations because one player, the barbarian, has decided that the party is going to fight. And since it is D&D and the party will generally stick together, that probably means that you aren’t going to have them run away from the fight when the fight gets tough.

Before we talk more about what we do, let’s talk about a few other situations where a TPK might happen. The most likely situation is the final boss fight. It can go one of two ways, either the BBEG kills off all the player characters (PCs) or the PCs kill the BBEG. Another way that it can happen is that the players knowingly start a battle that is over their level. In the first example, if the whole party had planned to fight the wizard, that is the parties choice, and you can leave that choice for a likely TPK in the players hands. And finally, the players might be rolling poorly, and you might be rolling hot.

Let’s talk quickly about two of the examples I gave. With the BBEG or when the players know they are fighting above their level, those the players have chosen. It’s known that with the BBEG, the campaign either ends with their success or their failure, there isn’t going to be a next session, at least with the game world the way it is now. And if the players are fighting the wizard, for example, as a group decision, they know that they might not make it, or they should. So in both of these cases, you just play out the game, and you let the dice lie as they have been rolled. And you can get some epic stories of sacrifice or of triumph coming out of these scenarios, but either way the players are going to remember it.

Now, what happens in the case where you are rolling hot, or the player stumble across a conflict that is too dangerous for them, but they don’t know that. You’re in the situation as the DM where you have a few things that you can do.

First, you can pull your punches, if you want. There are two ways that you can do this, you could, for example, limit the power of a wizard. Maybe, in the example at the top, the wizard has already cast her high level spells for today, so she’ll be a challenge, but not as deadly for the player. And maybe, even the she’s down a few hit points. So this challenge that was clearly too strong for them is now going to be at their level. You can also pull your punches with your die rolling and strategy. If you don’t play optimally, and maybe turn a few more hits into misses or saves into fails, now the players are able to take on a higher challenge than they should be without the TPK happening. But this is a flawed solution, because it doesn’t teach the players that there are consequences for their actions. They are now always going to assume that they can fight anything. And, in fact, with new players who have mainly played computer RPG’s that strongly scale monster level, they are going to assume that in the first place.

Second option is that you can just TPK them. Or try to TPK them, make it clear that it’s so bad that they are probably going to need to run away. In the wizard example, have her target and take down the Barbarian. It’ll give the players a revenge story if they want, and hopefully it’ll remind the other players to just run away before they meet the same fate. And if the wizard takes down the barbarian quickly, you can make the reason that she doesn’t hunt down the rest of the PCs quickly is that they aren’t worth her time. So maybe pull your punches a little bit, just have her disintegrate the barbarian instead of dropping the fireball at 7th level on the whole party. This option, can work better, but is clearly harsh. You might end up in the situation where the players ignore all the road blocks and warning signs and still try it, and now you’ve potentially ended your campaign early if you do end up with the TPK.

So, is there a better option, is there something that you can combo together to make it work instead of a TPK?

I haven’t ever TPK’ed a party, but I have, on multiple occasions knocked them out. When they get into a fight above their level, you can just knock them out and take them captive, it might derail your story for a little bit, but it might be better than a TPK. Just come up with a reason that the bad guy is going to knock them out. This doesn’t work well if you come across a pack of ten wolves and the players are second level, but a pack of goblins, sure, they might not kill the players because they want to turn them into a stew later and everyone but the dwarf is too skinny. But, this can’t be the solution for every situation. Like I said, sometimes the creatures wouldn’t have a reason or the mental capability to think about just knocking out or down the players.

There’s also an option for divine or NPC intervention. With divine intervention, it can work in a couple of different ways. If you have a PC who is a Paladin/Cleric or deeply devoted to some deity, you can have their deity intervene. You can also have a deity intervene by making a deal, almost a warlock style pact with a PC. There’s also the option of just a stronger hero or NPC coming along and saving the players. Both of these should still be used sparingly because if you use them too often, again the players feel like they can just go in and fight anything and they’ll be fine if things start getting hairy. Or, you run into a situation where the players start to feel like you’re setting them up to fail just so you can have your NPC have the hero moment. Either case is less than ideal, so use it sparingly.

Finally, I do like the option of killing a PC. Again, this is used sparingly, because you don’t want the whole party to be new every few months because you keep on killing PC’s when they make poor decisions. But have the monster or villain they are fighting kill off one of them. If it’s a villain, they can kill one of them, and then get bored and leave because the party isn’t strong enough to entertain them. Or, if it’s more of a monster, like a pack of wolves, when the wolves get one of the PC’s down, let the wolves start eating that PC, definitely killing them, but that will then either allow the players to escape, or you can give them advantage on their attacks to finish off the wolves because the wolves are distracted. That one is definitely a bit grizzly (well, wolfy) but it would set the tone for the players that they aren’t safe.

With all of this, I think that you need to set the expectations up front. You need to tell the players that in your game, there are going to be things that might be too dangerous for them to fight and that they might need to run. And possibly remind them once in a while of that, because it’s likely that they are going to forget. And, really, sometimes, a TPK might just happen, if the players know what they are getting into, that’s fine. In the wizard example, if they all make the decision to try and fight, let them fight, don’t take that away from them, but maybe leave them nearly dead and trapped in a prison in that case.

Have you accidentally had a TPK? How do you do combat, is everything scaled to the PC’s level?

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What do you do? What happens in your game?

It doesn’t have to be D&D, it could be a Sith cutting a character in a Star Wars game in half, or anything like that. I’ll just mainly be talking about it in a D&D sense.

Before you get to the point described above, as a group, you need to decide if there is going to be character death in your games. It is a part of every system, but just because it’s part of every system doesn’t mean that you have to use it. You can choose that you are going to have a more epic party or have some sort of resurrection option always available for the players. Or, you can decide that resurrections are extremely expensive in your games and that if a character dies, they are most likely going to be dead for all time. Maybe in the case of the dragon, if the rest of the party can kill the dragon or drive them off, they can steal enough from the dragon’s horde that they could get a spell done, but that would be about the only time they’d have enough money. But this is something to think about as a group or something to adjust accordingly in the game.

Now we’re at the point where the dragon has chomped down on the bard, in our scenario, how are you going to deal with this death exactly?

To me there are a couple of things that will influence this. First, is the player done with the bard, it’s possible, without knowing context, that the player fully knew that their character was going to die, because they wanted to play a different character. That’s totally fine to do in a game and totally acceptable for a player to want to do. However, I would limit it some so that a player who wants to play everything wouldn’t be able to play anything and everything that they wanted as that would hurt party cohesion (I’ll likely write a post about this later).

Otherwise, the other thing to think about would be, what sort of arc has led up to this? Maybe it was obvious what was going to happen, there were hints that they couldn’t try and talk to the dragon and the bard needed to do it anyways because they are a pacifist. So maybe it is a fitting end to a bard who was having troubles accepting the world and life style that she had joined. But if the story built up to this point, not just for telling the story to the players but also the characters own journey directed by the player, it might be a fitting end for the bard, even if she wasn’t completely ready to retire as a character. The story impact can sometimes be that important. This works especially well if you’re planning on going into a combat quickly and have an NPC would the party that the player can control for the battle. Or if you’ve warned the players ahead of time to have back-up characters who can join the game quickly. You don’t want a player sitting there too long, or if it’s a player who doesn’t like combat for some reason, try and keep them engaged somehow though, they may just be engaged in the story.

For example, in the first season of Dungeons and Flagons Finja was killed in the final battle before the end of that battle. Now, Kristen, who was playing Finja, isn’t someone who loves combat, and because the action and emotions that were going on in the scene and in the story were compelling at that point, it made a lot of sense in game for her to drop out of action and Kristen still enjoyed what was going on. I don’t know if it’s on the podcast, but we all agreed it was a fitting end for Finja who would definitely have sacrificed herself to stop a great evil from being fully realized. If we had continued with those same characters, I’m not sure that Finja would have wanted to be brought back or that Kristen would have wanted Finja to be brought it. It was a fitting end to Finja’s arc in the game.

Now, that isn’t always the case, maybe that comes out of no where in your game and it’s a character that the player is very attached to. If that’s the case, find a way, storyline wise to bring the character back from the dead. It could be that someone owes her a debt and will pay for the resurrection for her. It could be in place of a reward that is what the quest giver offers. It could be that a deity says that it isn’t the time or place for the bard to die. If I were to do that last one with the deity, I’d probably hint or give a prophecy about the time, place, or way the bard will die as that would be an interesting character development. Or you could also just end up making it a quest for the players to get back the bards soul. That would work well if you know you’re going to have that player missing for a couple of sessions, you could then have her bard be an NPC spirit in your control and play through that quest without advancing the main plot.

With all of these suggestions and ideas, you’re going to have to read the table. Depending on what has happened in your game, how the players are reacting, and how it was set-up, you’re going to have to judge it for yourself. Hopefully these are some tips that might give you a basis for handling character death at your table.

When you’ve had this happen to you in a game or caused it to happen in a game, a character dying that is, what have you done?

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According to D&D lore, a clerics power comes from being a devout follower of a deity. The character itself doesn’t have magical ability in the same way that a sorcerer, bard, or wizard would where their power is in themselves to some extent. The deity bestows the power upon the character. This actually works pretty well for a player who wants to play a cleric for a little bit or wants to change out characters every so often. They can actually still play the same character, but if they go with a more martial cleric, they can be a cleric for a little while, lose their faith, and become a fighter.

The cleric in a party generally has one important duty. They generally aren’t going to be your most damage focused and combat focused character, but they have their role in combat as the healer. That’s often the role that a cleric gets stuck into though, and sometimes you don’t want to play your cleric that way. You can be an effective combat character if you want, or you can focus more on being scholarly or on you can be a missionary and focus on charisma based traits.

Mechanically speaking, you are a spell casting class. You are going to want to do well at it and put most of your stats into that. Depending on your Cleric domain it’s also possible that you are going to want to focus on constitution and strength in order to be able to do damage and wade in and tank it in combat, especially in a party with a number of spell casters.

Why would a Cleric join a party?

Well, if you are a missionary, then you’d probably want to have some people protect you as you go along the road, or it might be that you travel with a party in order to give last rites and heal the wounded as a charity. There’s plenty of opportunity to want to find a holy artifact or text that has been lost a long time, and you’re helping them out with what they want to do so that they’ll help you out in the future.

What are some backstories that you could use for a Cleric?

Growing up as party of a cult you’ve spent your life hearing about this evil deity who you’re trying to bring back. It had always been a pretty unimportant part of your life until the deity chose you to be their mouth piece and to look for their resting place. Now you’ve had to get help from other adventurers to aid you in your travels to proselytize and to help you when you’ve figured out where the deities resting place may be.

She was too young to see the tragedy that befell her village, but unfortunately, you don’t get to decide how old you are when your parents, your family, your friends, and your village all burn to the ground. It was shocking that she even survived. Sitting there in the ashes for who knows how long she saw a person coming to her dressed in black. It told her that it wasn’t her time yet, that she would live, and that the person could help her. She now travels around finding lost souls who have for one reason or another been trapped here on the mortal coil and giving them the rest that they deserve but there is an abomination in the land who is bringing back the dead against their wills, and she cannot face it alone.

Growing up in the temple is a wonderful and the deity of love should be known by all. I am a priest and my calling is to spread the love. Who wouldn’t want to feel more loved in their life? I am not one to pick up a sword and road is dangerous. I believe that my deity will save me, but I’m also know that they do not want me to be a fool. I’ve been set to the far reaches of the world, and I will need help to make it there.

When it rains, the crops grow. That’s how it’s always been in my home village and that is the way it should always be. But something has happened, my prayers to my deity seem to be going unheard and the crops are dying, the animals are dying, and I do not know what to do. There has to be some force at work, there has to be some reason for this tribulation, but I am a woman of the cloth and I do not know how to investigate or fight. I am going to need to find assistance before all the crops die and the coffers of the church are too empty to be able to hire good help.

Would you play one of those back stories? What type of cleric have you played before?