Well, the next game should be interesting...

Two of my players--my wife and son, specifically--wanted to play, and the rest of the group wasn't available.

No problem; I whipped up a short, simple adventure that involved them investigating an old, walled house, east of the marshes. They were looking at it as a possible base of operations.

In the house, 7 low-level bandits (Att 3) were hiding out; six inside and an archer on the roof.
I figured they'd sneak up, spot the archer and take him out, then get the drop on the other bandits. No muss, little fuss, and a new base.

They then proceeded to make one of the worst series of rolls I have ever seen in RPG play*.

The elf went down first, after taking out one bandit and wounding another. The barding then took a position in a doorway and managed to cut her way through two or three more bandits, before they got her.

At this point, the bandits did a coup de grace on them, looted their bodies, and high-tailed it off to meet their friends.

The other PCs and players know nothing about this. Instead of the adventure I planned--and a "by the way, these two got you a new place"--I get to start with, "it's been several days since you've seen or heard from Miriel or Ingmar..."

Sooo, this should be, as I say, interesting.

Anyone else ever have a split-party game lead to something like this? I must admit, it's a first for me, after 32 years of roleplaying.

*For the record: the WORST series of roles I ever saw was in a Star Wars D6 game, in which EVERY ONE of the six players rolled a minimum of two failures (a 1 on the wild die) in the course of fifteen minutes of one adventure.

You can tell how much Warhammer I've been playing recently when my reflexive response is "congratulations."

Yeah, our WFRP campaign ended a couple years ago when everyone in the party died during a beastman attack... except for the halfling, who ran like Hell.

Ouch. No I haven't had this particular situation arise. Since you specifically state that the bandits administered a coup de grace and left, this is pretty much a "They're dead Jim" situation.

From here, almost anything you do is definitely going to be seen as fudging events. Although if your son is particularly attached to his character you might want to do it regardless. Although I would definitely tell the missing players and allow them one free escape from death.

Alternately, you can immediately instigate generational play provided family members are fairly local. Hobbits being the biggest problem as traipsing off to the Shire is a bit awkward.

Whatever you do will, of course, force a complete rewrite of the New HQ Adventure.

Ouch! You coup de grace on your son's character and your wife's character.....?

How'd the couch feel that night???

Seriously - I think a "safer" way to handle this in the future when there are only 2 or 3 people (not a "better" way cuz I don't pretend to attest that one way is better than another) would be to include an NPC in the game that travels with the duo - that way you can at least give a little of a cushion for when fate makes an ugly turn for the heroes.

Bottom line: the few the characters, the more sensitive the balance scale is to be tipped - there's less room for failure and less support to compensate for it.


Alternatively when you saw it going south - you could have opted to capture them or had a new NPC in the vicinity come to their aid - both options come with a myriad of good storyline opportunities going foward - especially if captured and perhaps ransomed. That gives the other players when they return something to do to rescue their friends; allowing your wife and son to play different characters for that game as hired help or something.

Hindsight as they say is like a Beholder's.

I actually don't feel too bad about their characters dying, per se... both my wife and son expressed the opinion that if they died, "it better not turn out to be a dream sequence."

So I think they were a little disappointed, but mostly in their rolls; they both joked about it afterward.

My wife has already made a woodman (a character the party was missing, but which we have some story hook to bring into the game) and my son wants to make another elf (which we can also explain in-story).

I have, like I said, just never had this happen, and it will be kind of interesting to see how all the other players/characters react... especially when they find the corpses of their friends along with a few bandits...

(Where's my evil grin? Ah! This will do...)

One of the things that I love about The One Ring is that without a Coup de Grace you don't really have accidental deaths. I am a bit loathe to kill PCs when it's not really compelling in the story or really climactic. I would have skipped the Coup de Grace and had them kidnapped by the bandits, found by a hermit, saved by an ancient Willow or something along those lines.

I don't think you did anything "wrong", just expressing my opinion.

I dunno, the Beorning in my group loves to stay in Forward stance even when he's wounded and low on endurance. He's come REALLY close to dying a few times (the first was in our first session, and he WOULD have died since the Barding failed his healing roll but I had Radagast save him; this was in the opening fight of Words of the Wise, and Radagast was already tending the wounded Woodmen).

Since he keeps playing risky like that, I'm not holding back the next time it happens.

forgottenking,
Since they're both taking things so well, just move along to generational play or create a new character.

I do agree with some of the other comments posted about handling the situation via some alternative other than a killing blow. I would have either injected an NPC just before the wipe or, more likely, just have ended things in a pulp fiction style cliff-hanger. Thus creating a pocket of time in which to examine things and determine what storytelling event would be most appropriate for the campaign moving forward.


alien270,
I would recommend, before killing the character off (since the player has been warned and is still acting foolishly), that you make a discrete attempt to find out why the player is portraying the character in this manner. The player might actually consider his actions appropriate for the character's persona. Alternately, maybe the player became disenchanted with the character concept after play began and is now attempting to kill the character off - so they can create a new, more interesting, character.

Either way, respond according to your campaign's needs and your player's interests.

It could be fun creating a scene where the party is faced with an overwhelming force of opponents, but are in a superior defensive position. So one lone warrior might hold off the assault long enough for the rest of the company to warn the village... and die a hero.

It has been my experience that Endurance NORMALLY runs out before the character takes a second wound, which puts them out of action. And with the ability to spend Hope on a Protection, test things REALLY have to get sideways or the player is purposefully being reckless or crazy unlucky to actually die from taking a second wound.

That's been my experience in the 10+ sessions I have run in the past year.

Glad to see others who consider dying part of the game.

As far as I can tell he's portraying the character as a warrior who considers himself nearly invincible. He's also playing up his "Bold" trait (especially with staying in Forward Stance even when it's not a good idea). While his actions are consistent with the persona he's come up with, the character's confidence borders on naive, and people like that simply don't survive very long.

As another example, at one point I placed a broken bridge spanning a deep canyon in the party's path. It was meant to force the characters to go either upstream or downstream and lengthen the journey a bit, but the Beorning elected to instead jump across the crumbling bridge ruins with a length of rope so that the others could cross as well. I straight up told the player that he'd need to overcome an extremely high TN (I believe it was 18), and that if he failed he would die (the canyon was 200 ft deep). His Athletics is ranked at 2 or 3, so the odds were steep. He went for it anyways and luck was on his side.

He's definitely not trying to kill his character, because the last time he was close to death I had misremembered the dying rules and thought I'd killed him, and he wasn't happy about it.

Oh yeah, this Beorning also only wears a leather shirt, and I don't think he has a helm of any kind. So his protection roll is pretty wimpy.

He's playing a very risky game, and ultimately his luck can't hold out (and I don't believe in fudging the dice enough to keep him alive indefinitely). Player decisions should make a big difference in the outcome of the game (otherwise why play an RPG?), and if this player is repeatedly and knowingly making bad decisions he should bear the consequences of them (even if it's "in character").

alien270,
Yes, IMO he does appear to be acting a bit too extreme, trait or not. I agree with your original idea - if the circumstance or dice so indicate, kill him without remorse. Bold is one thing, foolhardy is another thing entirely.

So, the rest of the party avenged the deaths of their comrades, and in a way that should lead to some interesting future story possibilities.

The PCs went looking for their friends and found their discarded bodies, along with the dead bandits' corpses.

The night-goer tracked down the remaining bandits, who had joined their allies and were camping some distance away.

He slapped the head clean off of one (one he knew was involved in the death as he carried a Fellowship member's sword) and caught another by the arm and dragged him through the woods to the rest of the Fellowship.

They questioned him and discovered the bandits' leader was away; the next morning, they went in search of the bandits on foot.

As they camped that night, the bandits, with their leader, approached the camp to parley. The beorning told the leader that if he handed over the other bandit involved in the killings, the rest could go.

He did not expect this to work.

It did.

The leader handed him over and the Beorning beheaded him in a "fight."

Any Shadow gained for possibly committing despicable or dishonorable deeds on their quest to avenge their companions?

I've yet to use this though some acts have given me pause to think it might warrant it by the rules. Just wondering how it might have went down with your players if you did...?

Interestingly, they were pretty on-the-straight-and-narrow in this... so no, no shadow points. It surprised me a little, actually, no less so that the Beorning, whose player is usually not the leader type, took charge.