Dungeon Master Inspiration
DMI is a podcast made to share the tricks of the trade of DMs with a wide range of experience levels, from fresh, new DMs to wisened masters of the position.
We focus on exploring topics within the world of DnD that consistently pose problems to DMs, such as developing characters, the use of monsters & NPCs, and combat. You'll hear from a variety of DMs speaking on a plethora of intriguing controversial issues in-depth.
No matter where you are in your DnD journey, we've got something worth listening to.
Dungeon Master Inspiration
Embracing Mortality: The Role of Death and Resurgence in D&D Narratives
Step into the realm of the unknown with us and our erudite companion Wyatt Griswold, as we confront the often eschewed topic of mortality in Dungeons & Dragons. Through the veil of this episode, we promise an expedition that not only debates the merits of character demise but also enlightens you on how such finalities can enrich your gaming experience. Grasp the concept that the true weight of adventure lies in the risks and decisions that come with the looming specter of death, lending a more profound meaning to every action your character takes.
Wyatt and I unravel the complexities of player deaths, examining how varying levels of experience between Dungeon Masters and players dictate the approach to this delicate matter. While we traverse this tricky terrain, we share insights on setting clear expectations and employing compassion when dealing with the potential heartache of a fallen hero. By striking a balance between challenge and enjoyment, we navigate the nuances of when to let a character's story culminate and when to potentially reverse their fate, ensuring the game's inclusive spirit endures.
As our odyssey nears its end, we address the controversial phenomenon of Total Party Kills and the resurgence options that can twist a campaign’s tale in unexpected ways. We challenge you, our fellow adventurers, to stoke the embers of creativity by sharing your inventive death mechanics, which may just become part of our future discussions. Join us on this epic venture where we celebrate the journey, honor the fallen, and maybe—just maybe—learn to embrace the reaper as an old friend in the grand saga of Dungeons & Dragons.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you are interested in seeing more content like this check out our YouTube! We also post weekly game articles on our Patreon and have an active Discord community.
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Alright, everybody. Welcome back to DMI, welcome back to Dungeon Master inspiration. I am the Joe 2o here and we have Wyatt Griswold once again with us, absolutely every single time I will be here without every single time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gonna be great. You're gonna be hearing lots from me, I'm sure lots from Wyatt Griswold, everybody.
Speaker 1:We today are gonna be talking about a little bit of a different topic. We're gonna be moving on to a different kind of subject, to move away from some of the stuff We've been talking about recently, and I'd like to talk about death today. Now, death is an interesting concept because it's something that a lot of DMs are afraid of, some things a lot of DMs are afraid of and it's sort of seen as a bad thing in the in the D&D community as a whole roughly, I would say. But it is actually, I think, an integral part of the game. That adds emphasis both to the everyday gameplay and Also emphasis to every single character With which enters your game and I think a big part of it is.
Speaker 2:This is for me and death in D&D Death has no finality. In D&D I mean by base rules and I don't follow these. I make this a lost magic or for some reason. I take this out of all of my games because I hate it. You can go to any town and spend 500 gold at the town center or the town shrine and resurrect Anyone and I hate it.
Speaker 2:I don't think that that's how the game should be, and especially if you're playing one of the older books that or you're playing in an old setting that was more prevalent in the past. Death was not a thing in the D&D world in the past, and the only way to guarantee someone can't be resurrected is by a red wizards blade and or like a necromancer's blade, and I dislike that.
Speaker 1:I think it's just bad for the game and if you have a homebrew setting, you don't have red wizards, which is rough, but why? It kind of brings up one of the first things that I think is very important with death, which is the fact that Death doesn't mean it's the end of a character. So why don't we do death? Why do a lot of DMs not do death and try and avoid putting the players in a scenario in which death is possible? Maybe it's not likely, but it's possible that a character, if they make the wrong choices, does end up dead, and A lot of that has to do with how both the DM and the players Get invested in any one character, whether it's an NPC or whether it is a player character.
Speaker 1:You get so invested in that character that you don't want to see them die. However, this opens up additional avenues, so I think first we should start with what kind of why. It was talking about a little bit, which was how do you circumvent death?
Speaker 2:So there's a couple of ways to circumvent death and I I know before the episode we kind of discussed a little bit of a game plan. I want to talk from the least amount of players all the way up to most amount of players. So when you have one player that dies, I think it's really important to question If you want to bring that character back from the dead. In the real world we have this whole thing where when you pass away, unfortunate truth is sometimes there's going to be Things you're gonna want to do that you're not gonna get to do. There's this whole kind of finality of death that is really hard to cope with and makes it kind of rough. But in D&D characters it's gonna be the same thing. You're not gonna get to go make it through your whole character arc sometimes, and I think that that's where it can have a lot of value and an impact to the players. Maybe you haven't gotten to your redemption arc yet and that can be hard.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's something where it's understanding the setting of the death. If the death happens and one of your players chooses to sacrifice their character so the rest of the party can live, unfortunately, don't bring them back, have them do another thing. Don't Undermine that, unless the whole party is gonna go on an adventure to save their friend. That's where I would do that. But if the character, for example, like you're letting someone play a child in your campaign and they get knocked out because they have those hit points because they're a kid and you follow the optional rule of them having lower hit points, maybe the whole party makes a deal with the devil to bring them back to life. And that's one where now they're all trying to hide that from that little child while they're all being cursed themselves. And that can be a story point and really push forward your campaign rather than just being oh, we're gonna retreat to town and bring them back to life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and Similar to what Wyatt was saying with, like the devil is what? If there is something that the party then has to accomplish in Order to bring that player back, maybe they have to take the body to somewhere Important or somewhere which they can bring the body to the plane that the soul is on, like the Shadow fell, and so you have to take the body, get to shadow fell. From there you have to find the soul, put them back together and then that player character is back to life.
Speaker 1:The consequence of this is the player died, but the real cost now is a, the danger that you put the players Into in like the shadow fell, and be the amount of time it takes for them to set things right Now. That's if you want to bring the player character back. What if you don't? Or you don't want to give that Sort of out per se and you want the death to be meaningful and you want it to just end. Some of the best characters, some of the ones that stick with people long after the campaign ends, are the ones who are given a. They just take one for the team. They sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They sacrifice themselves for the rest of the party to go on. That's totally fine. It's totally fine that that character may never come back again.
Speaker 1:This opens up some avenues for every other player, because now Every single player character has to grapple with that loss and each player character could feasibly do it in a different way. Alternatively, if this is a situation where a villain has killed that player and they have gotten away with it, or maybe they don't get away with it, now they hate that person even more. So let's say they don't get away with it. We save the day. At what cost we lost a dear friend. This changes up the entire dynamic like that, put in a snap sound effect. I can't snap snap for me.
Speaker 1:There you go, put that in, put that in like I did that, but. But on the other hand, let's say that villain gets away. The party dynamic has forever changed, the party themselves has changed and now they have a villain that they need to get even with and that's something where it's going to be dependent on your setting.
Speaker 2:Now, another way you can do this and this is kind of just a general concept, so I'm gonna mention it here at the beginning is I ran a campaign where the party was adventures. They were true adventures, like think is a kind of anime adventures just out fighting monsters for the sake of fighting monsters to save humanity. And like keep trails clear, like Serving the community by destroying things, not really having a big bad in an adventurer's life in a dungeon or some life trying to make money doing this and fighting monsters and having adventures. It's a dangerous life, it's not one. So what I did is I made my party a bunch of tables and we sat down and we made characters in 10 minutes, 10 minute character sheets. You're not as invested in the character. Then you have that rotating realm of a table and like obviously I let them customize them as they wanted, but we did it in short frames of time so they weren't as invested and the character grew as they played it. But they always knew that there was a chance that that character is gonna die. They're gonna make a new character sheet and they actually, in order to make it not feel as bad. They always had two character sheets at all times, so if one died, come back up, swap into the new character it was.
Speaker 2:It was realistically something where it was a rotating character, but it also made it feel so, so real because I did it in a dungeon and campaign where if you're on the 20th level and you step into a trap, you might lose one, two, three people.
Speaker 2:Not everyone's gonna die. Tbk's weren't common in that. Because their adventures they're gonna be thinking, well, this is gonna be a trap. They're gonna have those things in mind, especially when they were lower levels and the higher levels of the dungeon and they didn't know what I had packing for them. They died a little more frequently but as they got deeper they got more experience. They were less likely to die. The ones that stayed in the party the whole time but also that reflected their level, their experiences, adventures and really the stories and the scars on those characters made them feel Real and they were truly invested in every character, even though they knew they could lose them at any time and they already had the next one prepared. Nobody had a throwaway character where they were like I want to feel fine if this just gets tossed in the trash.
Speaker 1:And that that, right there, that's the weight that happens, that's given from death. Because if, let's say, death is not possible in any combat, then a You're not gonna be thinking as optimally as you could, you're gonna, you're gonna be making a lot more mistakes. Because what does it really matter if there's no sense of danger, if we can just cast magic and swing swords to win, well then it makes the adventure Feel less impactful.
Speaker 2:And so I'm gonna. I'm gonna button here for a moment. This is something where this podcast like realistically, we have a decent size audience now, but it's geared towards both new and veteran A veteran dm's. If you are a new dm but your group has played lots of games and it's just your first experience DMing, this is a situation where I would not recommend, I would avoid killing, because if you are brand new to the game, and so is your entire group, and you have someone where this is their first or second campaign, you're gonna kill a character and they're gonna be like well, this sucks, I spent four days dreaming of this character and it's their first characters, when they want to remember fond.
Speaker 2:So that's where I avoid death. But if you're a veteran group, that's on like your 20th campaign and you've got hundreds of hours, warn your players. Be like look, I want to do a high death campaign, we're gonna do it this way and we're just gonna. If people die, people die, we start again and older dnd players people have been playing it for a couple of years are gonna be Okay with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is not an episode that advocates for you to send players to the gauntlet.
Speaker 2:I mean that can be fun. But that could be very fun, just warn them though. Like, yeah, and it's about communication. A lot of being a good dm is communicating, which, even if you don't have the best communication skills, as long as you're transparent with people, people are very, very forgiving, I would say, especially within this community. This community tends to be a pretty forgiving and a pretty open one. So that's, that's kind of my feelings, at least in my experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah and if you start dnd, like I did and where we just finished a video on new players For new players, if you're starting where I am, where you want to get your friends into it and none of you have ever played it before and because you're the one who came up with the idea, you have to DM for the first time. So I would recommend doing is, if you think the party's gonna die, just hone it back like you're brand new to this or be like hey guys, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to be a tpk. I'm learning with you can to do, just want to rewind before the encounter and I give me a day or two to change it and we'll do a little more story thing or go two rounds back or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and give them those options and kind of try to be forgiving with both yourself and them, because you're new at this. That's where I had to start and it's it's hard and it's frustrating, but you're learning with the players in that kind of a situation, like I was in, and that's where death, death should be something you ignore. And, joe, you played in a campaign with me a one shot where I literally told you no, you don't die.
Speaker 1:Yeah like.
Speaker 2:You can also do that if you don't want death I.
Speaker 1:I had a. I had a player, um, in one campaign where we were like right at the end and it was close and instead of us being like, well, let's do the math, let's figure it out, I just said, nope, that player is fine, because that person in real life would be Pissed at me if I killed the character. They would be so upset they would be crying for a week at minimum.
Speaker 1:They still send me art of that character. That campaign has been done for two years, um, and so it's in that situation where If somebody is attached to a character that much, if they're just the only one to die, create that round. If the player character, uh, is more kind of on the fence, I would say keep the death and if your player is new to the game, don't kill them. Don't do it. Don't do it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it because, realistically, you want them to keep playing the game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because then you have another player and and that's when your first character dies in a combat. You don't know how to use your abilities optimally, you don't really know what you're doing. You're kind of fumbling through combat, even though for us like a lot of us who are veterans it seems really really simple combat so easy. I can Realistically make a hundred damage happen at level three pretty, pretty easily. Let's, I've done it.
Speaker 1:I'll hold on. Let me just drink this, uh, this cup of coffee lock. Which is a that? That's? That's a power gaming strategy.
Speaker 2:Don't do it, yeah, like coffee locks, uh, padlocks are another one, sorcery dens are another one. Like if you are a experienced player and you are level three, you can make a Miracle happen. That being said, if you're a brand new player or you're playing something for role play, they're not going to be able to figure that out like, and a new player Realistically doesn't have the tool set and the knowledge of spells and abilities. And even if they're playing something simple like a barbarian or a fighter, I mean, it's hard to remember what all the abilities do. Like. You may not Optinally use your action surge to be able to get the maximum amount of attacks off. You may not be have grabbed a feat level level one. If you're trying to do a max damage output With a variant human, you may have chosen a weaker race because it's fun and it's what you want to do and you may have not.
Speaker 2:Even if you, even if you did know to power game as your first character and grab variant human and grab a feat, you may have grabbed a feat like tavern brawler where it makes Improvised weapons better rather than something like Warcaster or lucky or one of insert X. Broken Feet here because there's a lot of them.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of them.
Speaker 2:And so that's where you need to forgive those players, otherwise they won't keep playing the game, because death can ruin an experience if you're new and you don't know what you're doing, because you feel like the dm didn't give you a chance.
Speaker 1:So so kill your players.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's not what I said just not the new ones kill your veteran players, kill your veteran players. And realistically. If you're playing a campaign and you're introducing it, you know you have new people.
Speaker 1:Bring two of your friends who know how to power game and have them be there to protect the, the, the dnd babies you know would be a cool idea is if you had, uh, you had like one power gamer and you had them as, like you know, clearly that power, that power gamer or veteran, would be a A sort of like the leader of the party. You know, let's say, you got three players, uh, or four. We'll use four players. Maybe one has played a little bit before, two are new and then one's a veteran. The veteran's going to take more role playing charge, kind of going to be more of the leader of the party, um, but maybe, whether it's I would even plan it Uh, maybe after a few months into the campaign you kill the veteran player and Now that party has lost their Gandalf, that party has lost their Dumbledore, that party has lost the Obi-Wan, the character that was central to them being able to Figure out.
Speaker 1:You know, what are we gonna be doing? What are we trying to do? How are we gonna save the world? And by losing that, now the entire party has a huge problem and maybe that guy makes a new character, but maybe that character is more inexperienced, or maybe that veteran player. That's the whole input. That was the whole plan that they had for that campaign, but that's a cool idea.
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna toss in an idea that's kind of Interesting with the finality of death and how you should use death. What if, if you do allow them to resurrect, every time they resurrect they lose two levels? How would you feel about that being a cost for coming back to life? And bringing the character back is dropping levels, because that can be horrifying, because the rest of the party is not gonna go. All right, let's go back to the beginning area.
Speaker 1:There's there. I think that's a neat idea. The big problem that I see with that idea, though, is Having to go back. What if you didn't write down how many hit points you gained from those two levels? I have a player who does that. I didn't tell him to do that, and he's a new player for this campaign. He's never played before but he does it, and that would work for him. But most of my other players are gonna be like I don't know if I gained eight hit points or seven hit points. You know you could easily do a few of the changes, but then what if you took an ability score improvement and you don't know what that improvement is anymore, or something like that.
Speaker 1:I have, however, seeing I think this is in the Tal'Dorei reborn book some rules on what happens if you resurrect more than once. This is an optional rule that, basically, your body gets weaker and weaker. You have like minuses to Strength or dexterity, or maybe your mind, your brain, literally Is a little more mushy. So your Wisdom, your intelligence, when you roll those skills, you have to subtract a bit from those skills, because your body has decomposed a bit and it's become a lot weaker in between you being revived and then this continues on. If that character dies two or three more times, it gets harder and harder, or for that Person to play the character so my issue with that is that it is a little too punishing for my taste.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, if I was gonna do something like that with stats, like realistically, if that's a wizard you get, you get boned. Yeah, you get boned hard, but what you could do instead that I think could be a little bit fun is there's one stat that only affects one thing in the entire game of D&D Constitution, constitution, because there are ways of resurrecting people where you don't need the body either yeah so what if every time that you resurrect somebody they lose three Constitution and I say three specifically because that's Realistically an ability score improvement gives you two.
Speaker 2:So if you're constantly putting it into constitution so you can be resurrected again and again, then you can't really remove one. Removing two makes it net even, which feels kind of weird. Three guarantees no matter what your player does, it's always going down every time they're resurrected and you lose more.
Speaker 1:Then you gain from a level up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and there's this rule in D&D that a lot of new DMs don't know about because it's, and I think it's on a Page in the like hundreds number of the DM handbook, and I think it's mentioned in the PHP 2 if any stat falls to zero, your character dies. Constitution you're not gonna be a obliterated for having a constitution. That is in it. Like, realistically, if your constitution is too, you're not completely screwed. It's gonna be hard, but there's items that give constitution to. There's a belt of fortitude that gives ten constitution.
Speaker 2:There's ways to make it happen, but then your players on a ticking time bomb or they can't come back, so I Think there are interesting ways to do it. That being said, you kind of have to decide what the rules at the table are and if you have new players and veterans. Regardless, it's something that I feel like should be covered in session zero. Before you start the campaign, talk about how the resurrection system is gonna work if there's a chance characters come back when they die. If they don't, and Be honest with them in advance on how frequent you think they should, that they should prepare for a character to die. What are your kind of thoughts, though, on that avenue?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is definitely one of those session Zero session, negative one style.
Speaker 2:Hey.
Speaker 1:This is. This is what I'm expecting. This is how we're gonna deal with Death. Can you do this at all? Is this gonna be a case by case basis? That's actually why in the rules it's written the. The resurrection Spell is written a certain way. The spell itself Says that it has to be a willing soul. The soul has to be willing to return to the body. You cannot forcefully even if you do the ritual successfully you cannot force that soul back to that body. If that person, that person wants to stay dead, they are dead.
Speaker 2:That's half true, because there is the temple Route. Very God forcefully does it to you which, to have a God Forcibly bring someone back from the dead, by standard rules only recover Only requires a level 7 paladin or cleric to go to the temple and as long as they have good favor with the God, they can pay a retribution of 500 to a thousand gold pieces to forcibly resurrect someone and don't need the body.
Speaker 1:And that's something that isn't very common but it is in the possible that says the rules is written, and then that would be something that at the start of a campaign this one seems it'd be a little harder because this is a more niche rule. This is one that I have continuously forgotten, because it's so niche that, hey, you can't do this. You will not be allowed to do this. If you try and take a body to a temple, you cannot revive it that way. Yeah, I.
Speaker 2:Actually do like that. The rule is in there, though, as I've used as a story piece before, where my players asked well, this character, we accidentally killed a monster that we wanted to bring back for intelligence. It was one of the high ranking officials, the big bad, so we missed it. How could we get him back, to get information out of him? Well, you could go to a temple and your cleric, who is level 9, can go and pray to their deity and ask them for either Claire Vaughn needs to meet the person or if they'd be willing to resurrect them and then interacts with the, with the god of the cleric, and it gives the cleric a nice story moment and he gets to feel as though he truly helped. The party and paladins can do it too. I would. Personally, I would let any kind of religious cast or do it like. I feel like even a warlock could do it with their patron and maybe even a sorcerer, depending on the origin of the sorcerer.
Speaker 1:Maybe maybe your draconic sorcerer, tiamat Bahamut obviously more Bahamut, probably, than Tiamat. But I Think, yeah, it's a case-by-case basis and in that situation that really works well because that creates role play, that creates the interactivity. That Is why we play the game.
Speaker 2:I Feel like if you're gonna have a sorcerer, do it. One way you could kind of Finaigle it. Where the sorcerer is able to do it is if they are Looking for help from Like an archfiend or something, or let's say that they're. They're an asymar. Let's say they're an asymar, so they're basically an angel. Realistically, any God may, very well, if they're half as more. Take that request because of who they are and also just for viewership.
Speaker 1:What if they're an asymar? All right.
Speaker 2:Okay, we'll keep saying as a mar.
Speaker 1:But what I know people get upset about and they're like oh, it's a mar. I think it's a samar, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know that's. It's one of those things. And again, for me, I've been playing for a long time, but I did learn this entire game from reading the book. So you're gonna get some of that of like man, this is a weird funky word that I, I don't, I don't know, and I I'm gonna just pronounce it this way, and now it's so just ingrained in me that it's never coming out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is it a deku not? Or is it a deku not? I would say deku not say I say deku not, but I think you're valid for saying deku, not just like you're valid for saying Asymar or asymar. But anyways, you're saying about yeah resurrecting.
Speaker 2:If you're like from one of these more like religiously entwined backgrounds or Something like that, you might be able to do it. What you could actually do, and and I'm gonna mention this because I think that they're so important because they have such a strong history in D&D's lore if you're running a Mindflare campaign, maybe one of your characters is a mind flare. Maybe they have the dead body and they implant it with a tadpole and this is kind of a not rules as a written, this is more of a humbrew thing Maybe that player gets resurrected as a mind flare and it's one free resurrection, basically, but they lose their race in their entire racial abilities change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or in the Wild mount book there is the. It's not a race, it's also not a feat, but there is In the race section near the tortles. I forget the name of it, but it basically is this person has no soul, but their body got back up and it's. It's very much similar. It's very akin to like the dark souls, undead or the, the Elden Ring style. You are dead, but when you take humanity or you get enough runes, you feel a little more like you're alive, but you are an undead being. It's not necessarily a zombie, but you're even registered as an undead. And they have a thing where, if they get knocked down and they're rolling death saving throws, if they get a 19, that actually counts as a success.
Speaker 2:Weird. I like that. Yeah, I think there's a couple of interesting ways to do it where, like, the player loses their soul or something. But again, all of this is individual. If you lose one player, you do this. Once you start losing two, three players, the story really does change. And I would say, if you're losing two, three players in levels one through three, like not not trying to throw shade, but like you should be tweaking your encounters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're having too many deaths, that's not fun. That devalues your game almost as much as I would say having no potential of death, because then you start to try and get detached from your character because then they're too afraid of death. Or, alternatively, are they still gonna want to play your game?
Speaker 2:Now actually a fun kind of idea that I that I actually ran with at one point and this is a campaign that, unfortunately, I wanted to have you in but it didn't work out time wise, I banned all Necromancy spells. There was no Necromancy spells, necromancy was a lost. So I took the time and I I got weathered paper and I rolled them and I made textured it so it felt like old paper and it was. It had burnt ends. So it was all fancy and I put every single Necromancy class spell into on those pages. I printed them out and I rolled them and so they were actual scrolls and so as you were going through the dungeon you could open chests and there was a chance to find a lost magic and one of them did you find?
Speaker 1:did they find cure wounds?
Speaker 2:they did find cure wounds, but it took a long time. Cure wounds was one of the ones that I really hid, because I didn't. I wanted it to be interesting.
Speaker 1:Necromancy wasn't something that was available for context for viewers that don't know in older editions of D&D cure wounds and I think, healing word to we're both Necromancy spells so is false life actually false life. False life is still on Necromancy spell.
Speaker 2:Yeah there's a lot of really interesting things, because there's so many healing spells that are Necromancy and that was struggle. That was a struggle, bus but then it's.
Speaker 1:It's like finding the item of the dungeon Zelda. It's like once you get cure wounds you're like, oh my god, our lives have just gotten so much better like. I could imagine players genuinely crying tears of joy and and just being so excited to see a spell scroll for cure wounds now what I did for that campaign.
Speaker 2:That was actually really fun and I can go more into depth with people like leave comments I they're interested in this. I actually attach each and every spell to a spell modifier so cure wounds only had one spell modifier could be cast off of it. I wasn't always the one for the class that it was from, but anyone could learn the spell once they found the scroll. So almost like wizard, like if they're studying the spell but they innately kind of learn it like a sorcerer would. So realistically my sorcerer might be the one with cure wounds. Well, the cleric doesn't have it and the cleric has.
Speaker 2:I know it's not a necromancer spell but like fireball or chilling touch yeah these kind of things, that these mismatches that people weren't kind of expecting, and it was a lot of fun. I actually really liked that route of going because then so like for one of them, I think what was it called I'm trying to remember which spell I did it with. I actually think I did it with him flicked wounds, which is another cleric spell. I think I made it based on Constitution so they ended up giving it to the barbarian. So it was kind of fun and everybody really liked it. But in that campaign to make death feel more real, the resurrection scrolls were the only way to bring people back from the dead and every time you did it they burned. And when I got that weathered paper I made sure I got one of the ones that was like flash paper so went poof and literally we would light them right there on the table all that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I really liked that and I'll get into kind of some of the stuff I did for like campaigns, like that and props, but like I thought that was a brilliant way to do it where there were only so many of the scrolls I think in the campaign total there were six there's six chances to come back from the dead. There was no other way to bring somebody back and they didn't even have healing spells. That was a rough slug but it was fun how many did they use?
Speaker 1:they used three.
Speaker 2:They didn't find two and there was one leftover oh god, they were probably.
Speaker 1:They were their, their butts most of them clenched when they used that third one and they're like we only have one more. Oh my god, but that's. But that's the fun, that's, that is that value that we've been talking about. That, like, all we have left is this one resurrection scroll. So if two more people die in a Wyatt Griswold campaign which is possible, we could genuinely be screwed like, and that that that fear keeps players invested more than you know alongside.
Speaker 2:Hey, I like my character, because I really like my character well, the second death of that campaign was really stressful because of the fact that they had a rogue who was a lawful evil character and he didn't tell anyone that he had picked one of them up, so they thought they only had one. They had no idea how many were in the dungeon. And then they were like they were like to bring him back from the dead or not and they started searching his body to decide whether he was a value. And when they and then they found the scroll and they're like, oh we have two of course.
Speaker 1:Oh, and it was really funny.
Speaker 2:But then the whole party was mad at him for hiding that he had found one in a chest and he lost his scroll, while the lawful good fighter kept the other one away from him and so it was constantly this point of contention where he wanted to keep one for himself so that he could resurrect himself for nobody else right and I liked it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then that that creates like party in the like conflict in the party. That's good. Conflict in the party, you know, it's not that like one player is upset at another player, it's that player characters are upset at another player character, and that's.
Speaker 2:That's the good shit oh yeah, and it was. It was a really fun way to have a campaign. I have really fun memories of that one and it's been years since I played that one. That was like when you and I were still working together all the time and I miss those campaigns because it was, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun but there's some challenges with running a campaign like that, because that doesn't account for TPKs. Tpks are the ones where things start to get really different yeah, tpks.
Speaker 1:Tpks are a less desirable thing than death. I would say dance, you can kind of move on from. Tpks are tougher and I think with most TPKs you let you rewind the clock. However, I think it also depends on the context of the TPK.
Speaker 2:So so do you actually want to know when I'm most okay with TPKs?
Speaker 1:yeah, when your time, when are you most okay with it?
Speaker 2:final boss lights really the end of the campaign. I think it's the best time for TPK because, realistically, your heroes might not save the day. What happens if they all get wiped out and if you have your party die at the end of the campaign? Realistically, let's start over in the shadow realm, level.
Speaker 1:One again, like realistically we're going to the next one, if, if people don't feel done with the character yeah, you just move into the next one for sure I, when it comes to TPKs, at least at the final boss, I feel like I owe the players a bit of fulfillment on a promise. So a lot of times in like stories, stories start with a promise. This is from Brandon Sanderson, who's a professional writer. He's written quite a number, quite a few nonfiction or, sorry, fiction books and Brandon Sanderson, you know, has talked about in this class that he did once that he taught about like romances, the promise of romances. Two characters get together, indiana Jones. What is its promise? By time you already get to Indiana on the plane with John and then he goes back to.
Speaker 1:Harvard, where Yale, wherever he teaches at. You know that basically the entire movie is gonna be. Indiana Jones goes on a fun adventure for a historical priceless treasure and he might not get it, but he'll get out with his life and it's a fun adventure along the way. So I feel like I promise my players a satisfying conclusion to a story, just like you would a satisfying ending to a final fantasy game. So I wouldn't TPK on a final big bad boss, because I feel like that. That is the crescendo, the climax moment where they save the day and then that's the end. So I wouldn't do it, but I don't think it's a bad idea see, my thing is is.
Speaker 2:I don't view it like that. I view it as an experience, an adventure and for my final bosses, I want them to feel like this immovable mountain that has to be toppled I mean, think Kaido from one piece if there wasn't a Luffy to fight him like. That's what I want it to feel. Like is I want you to feel like you're the ashura samurai. If you all die and fail, you fail like realistically. Then we go to an epilogue and I always have two epilogues written, one first they won and one first they fail. And if the player, like in the epilogue, has to be satisfied, if the players die, the world can't be like, oh, nothing happens. If they die, the world goes to ruin. No one have time to get there another kind of interesting idea.
Speaker 1:Puffin forest actually did this for one of his campaigns where his players lost against the final boss, but they decided that they were gonna come back and basically, instead of starting a new campaign with the same characters again or just saying TPK, that's the end of it, they basically had all the characters separated. They had to get back together and then, once they got back together, they tried again at the final boss. It was basically instead of a new campaign in which it's from the ashes of the failed party of the first campaign, or a retcon, it was a extended arc.
Speaker 2:It was a final final arc before they finally beat the big band, which is another cool idea another way to do it is where the players resurrect, at the town, where they're praying for the success of the players, because in D&D the prayers of people have value. So, realistically, if there's a bunch of people worshiping them basically and praying for them, believing in them, that has magical power in D&D and that might resurrect them. So there's there's ways to retcon it in D&D lore, but I don't, I don't know. I think it depends on your group, which one you're gonna.
Speaker 1:Yeah and also this is just TPKs at a big bad. So let's talk about the bad TPKs. I think if you're in the middle of a random calm combat and you accidentally TPK your party, I think you should, for the most part, retcon it. But I think you can kind of play it by your a little bit. If you're in a boat and it's a wooden boat, in lava and your wild magic sorcerer casts fireball on themselves accidentally with wild magic surge, retcon that, retcon that one. But when it's something like you're fighting a villain or you know, maybe it's some like weird situation where you didn't intend to TPK but like the party didn't see the way out and they all die, in that situation you keep going kind of like what Wyatt mentioned earlier is with his everybody in the shadow realm. You can place all of the player characters somewhere else in the world.
Speaker 1:It's a planar game. So what if they die and all the player characters are sent with no items but there's their levels to avernus? What if they're sent to the shadow fell? What if they're sent far beyond? What if, maybe the God who collects souls to take them to one of these realms? What if he's been kidnapped and so your character has just been in between. What if, a month after the events, some random item that they had brought them all back to life and they're literally crawling out of their coffins? These sort of things are a turn in the game dramatically, but then make it interesting.
Speaker 1:Especially I love the Avernus one because that one it's it's kind of like Kratos in God of War 2 on the PlayStation 2. There's a moment where he dies after being, I think, cast out of the Greek Pantheon and he literally crawls up out of Tartarus on the bodies of already dead people in the underworld and he crawls all the way up back to the world of the living. And imagine if, let's say a villain, let's say he's pompous I'm sorry, party, but it's over for you and he kills them. That solves that. Let's just move forward. I have much bigger goals than mine now. And suddenly, after maybe a few months of playing IRL, your party gets out and they return and they see that villain that killed them the first time and they get to see that villain react in a really satisfying way and the party feels satisfied because they had to literally go from hell and back to get back to where they were after the TPK.
Speaker 2:So do you want to know a fun one that I actually had?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do, yes, I do.
Speaker 2:There's a part, there's a campaign I want to run where you slam yourself directly into the final boss level 5 and you instantly all die.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then you're in the shadow, felt, and the whole goal would be to re-level up to a point where you're all big enough and you're wizard or your spellcaster can cast wish and they wish for you to come back to the moment where you died. And then, and then he's like I just killed you all. And then your pompous, arrogant jerk, thinking that he's fighting a level 3 party, gets smacked by a level bunch of level 15 adventurers and it's really fun because it makes the final boss feel really like oh my god, he just used power word death on all five of us. How are we gonna deal with this?
Speaker 2:and then you're in a bay wild for like 10, 12, 13 levels. Yeah, you pop back and then you kill it. It feels better and also then it burns that spell slot so they can't use wish in the fight.
Speaker 1:That's a smart idea yeah and then they can't use wish in the fight. Yeah that's.
Speaker 2:That's. That's one of my spells I don't like is I don't like wish, because you can wish for a lot of things in D&D and like. I don't like telling players no, so I don't want to be like oh man, you use your ninth level spell slot to wish for more spell slots. I don't, I don't like telling them no to that. I feel, bad when I tell players no, so I try to circumvent them being able to ask me for things that are horrific.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wish is one of those things that like. Really I haven't dabbled in a lot because it's easy to to fall into a trap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can wish for anything. Basically you, the only thing you can't explicitly wish for in D&D is to be a god, because a ninth level spell is not strong enough to make you a god. There is a spell that can make you a god, but it was only ever cast once, and when it did it broke the weave, and so in D&D lore. That's why you can't become a god, because there was a spell that did that once.
Speaker 1:Is that the story of the guy who tried to cast a tenth level spell and it broke everything?
Speaker 2:He cast a tenth and a twelfth level spell. He cast a tenth level spell to instakill a god. He basically did a power word death on a god and then he cast a level 12 spell to take its place as a god and that broke the whole weave. So when the gods of time and magic slipped it all back together, they took away the ability for mortals to cast anything above ninth level.
Speaker 2:That being said, key word in there is mortals, so if you're running a campaign, you can always have a god cast like a level 14.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or maybe like, maybe, like that's what your main villain of a campaign is like trying to do. Is he's trying to Voldemort himself lich style or in by some other mean, or maybe he tries multiple different plans to become immortal and then, by becoming immortal, he tries to cast a higher level spell and the party has to stop him, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely really like that idea. I think that there's just so much to do with how you can make death feel good in a campaign, though it just it's really challenging to kind of balance it with, like in a conversation in a setting like this. It's really hard yeah because I don't. I don't know what these like, what the tables environment's gonna be.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that's that's where conversations like this are really fun, and I hope that we inspire people, but I can't really tell you what to do in your setting and that's, I think, the importance of like why you listen to this, why you listen to a whole bunch of people on in this in the D&D community, is they are all giving you different ideas, and I think Matt Colville put it really well once. He said I'm not telling you through his DM videos how to run the game, I'm giving you ideas, I'm presenting you with thoughts for you to react with. And whether that's wow, I think that's a really good idea and I really like that, or it's I really hate that idea. Here's how I would do it instead. That pushes what we do already, makes it even better or we learn.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work. And here's why it doesn't work, and that's, I think, the really fun thing and why you shouldn't. You should listen to other people so you can get those ideas, and I hope that that is how this is treated and that's exactly why, like when we were sitting down and planning this podcast and everything I mean.
Speaker 2:Like again, I agree with them you shouldn't be telling people. That's why we named the podcast Dungeon Master inspiration and we named the YouTube channel Dungeon Inspiration. It's meant to inspire you, not tell you. And if you have other ideas on how to run death, leave them in the comments, because I want to expand and learn and if I see one that I really like, I'll make a short about it and give you a shout out now.
Speaker 1:One thing that we do take a hard line on here is Wild Magic Sorcerer is the best and most optimal class, and that if you aren't playing one, this is a waste. You're wasting your time in D&D, and this is an objective truth, thank you yeah, of course and with the next episode we're, and with that we're gonna wrap up the episode.
Speaker 2:So thank you everyone that listens. Again, we are so grateful for all of our patreons and our subscribers. You really make it so that we can do this. If you have anything you want to leave, please drop a comment down below. We would be happy to read them, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'm kidding you, you, you, you you.