Astro Artificer- The Silence is worse than the TPK
- Why do TPKs even happen?
- Who actually feels TPKs the worst?
- The Two Sides of the Same Table
- Avoiding the Total Party Kill
The Silence is worse than the TPK
I once was a victim to a total party kill. It felt awful. My friends and I were on the verge of the apocalypse. Tragic heroes attempting to hold back Ragnarök. We barely held on as we gutted the BBEG, holding onto the hope that the end had been postponed. We were wrong. A horde of reanimated gods came to devour us, and our heroes never saw the light of day. Only the darkness of their gaping maws. We were really pissed. We had fought through all those encounters, did everything right, and we still lost in what amounts to the post credits scene? Seriously?
Yeah, it felt annoying. It felt frustrating. But it all pales in comparison to the pain I feel when another TPK happens. However, instead of rocks falling, an unbalanced boss fight, or an incredibly deadly trap, it looks like this. Unread messages. Chronic phone distraction. Apathy at the table.
There is no worse TPK than when your table falls apart.
“It’s the ghosting that kills you. We had a guy just stop responding to the group chat. For three weeks, we didn’t know if we were playing or not. The DM finally just called it. No fight, no drama, just… silence. It felt worse than a TPK.”
— u/SilentBardPlays
At least when I got TPKed, the story had an ending. With real life, there are no endings. The lack of a closure leaves things unanswered. As a DM, you are often left wondering, “Could I have done more?” , or “Did my players really hate my campaign that much?”. This former forever DM put it best.
"I built a whole world in World Anvil. I commissioned art for the PCs. After one session, a player complained that the combat was 'a little boring.' That was the only feedback I got in a month. I canceled the next session and never rescheduled. I was just… done."
— u/ForeverDM_NoMore
As a GM, you feel the pain. You’ve invested hours of prep and care into making a campaign that your players can enjoy. And for that hard work and effort, you are rewarded with empty stares and blank faces. You shouldn’t be responsible for the enjoyment at the table. But you’ll feel it the most, nonetheless.
The experience is just as jarring as it is for players. For some players, a table falling apart is like losing a place to belong. It’s losing a Friday when you see your friends. It’s losing something that's actually fun to look forward to.
And I'm feeling super bummed by all of the sudden this thing I looked forward to all month just vanishing … What did you do when a campaign ended not because the story ended, but because too many people bowed out?
"We never get to face the BBEG, were always one session off, keep putting it off until I'm the only one left trying... now I get super depressed on Fridays."
Some players get depressed. Others try to cling onto what’s left. Others grieve. Some try to look for new games. And most of all, they’re left with one question. Why does this hurt so much?
For being such a universal experience, the experience isn’t so universal. Everybody grieves in a different way, because it feels different to everybody. We all try to move on, but ask anybody about their grief, and they’ll give you a deeply unique perspective.
"Just like any loss — friends, jobs, TV series — there's nothing you can do but try to move on."
I didn’t want to find out why campaigns failed. I wanted to find out why it feels so devastating. And just who feels it the worst? To do that, I asked 500 players whether or not they were finding a table that they fit at. Then, I simply waited to see who showed up. This is what I found.
Why do TPKs even happen?
"time commitments' is the DnD equivalent of 'creative differences' in the movie business: both are used as a pretext to mask other things."
— u/[deleted]
TTRPG players are quick to blame the usual suspects. Scheduling. Life. Shiny object syndrome. If you looked at the advice space for D&D, you’ll see everybody give tips and tricks for how to make prep easier, avoid burnout, and make campaigns more interesting for players and GMs. But that fails to ask the real question. What’s causing people to feel that way? The usual excuses are hiding a quieter, more subtle cause of campaign death.
So, what are people actually saying then?
“oftentimes people can't really articulate or even know exactly what they want"
— u/PM_ME_MEW2_CUMSHOTS
The real problem is that most players agree to a game without knowing what they want from it. With a growing population of newer players, this problem is getting larger, not smaller. Even players who are veterans are sitting down at tables with people who want a different game from them, but say the same thing on paper. “I want roleplay” means different things to a player who wants emotionally engaging dialogue vs. a player who wants to roll through the persuasion skill checks. “I love combat” means something different to the player who prefers when the GM doesn’t track hit points in favor of cool story moments, vs. the player who meticulously memorizes the stats of every creature in the Monster Manual.
These players will sit down at the same table. Then they will wonder why the game is going in a direction they didn’t like. It’s because they didn’t know what the game meant to others and themselves.
Who actually feels TPKs the worst?
Earlier this year, I ran an experiment. I created a compatibility quiz for TTRPG players, based on their playstyles. ~500 players have completed it. The Player Archetype quiz measures five axes of player personality, how you engage with the table, what you need from it, and what losing one costs you.
This is a lot of data. But it hides one of the most important things that nobody mentions. There’s a single axis that describes your emotional investment in the game. It measures the anguish you feel when your player character dies. It details how much of yourself you pour into the game. It determines whether or not you enjoy the game as just a game, or if it feels deeper than that. It’s Casual vs. Immersive. Casual players are in it for the fun. A session is a great way to spend time with people, roll dice, eat some snacks, and enjoy a shared activity. When a campaign ends, it is disappointing, as they just lost a hobby that they built with effort. Immersive players have an emotional attachment to the campaign itself. They deeply feel the story, the characters, and the relationships between them. When a campaign dies, a little part of it dies within them too.
Of the 500 players, 57% skewed Immersive, while 43% skewed Casual. Nearly even. One would guess that immersive players would skew higher, especially since it feels worse. But the data suggest something else. If anything, it suggests that the population of TTRPG players is very evenly split. When you sit down at a table with a new group of players, it could very well be that it’s mixed with both players, and they don’t even know.
Compatibility isn’t just one group’s problem. Everybody experiences it. They just experience it differently.
The Two Sides of the Same Table
The group that showed up most were people-oriented archetypes. These players prioritized narratives and relationships. They make up 59% of respondents. Among those players, the Immersive variants dominate heavily.
Archetype | Casual | Immersive |
Storyteller (EAPPl) | 7 | 39 |
Observer (IAPSp) | 17 | 44 |
Improviser (EAPSp) | 14 | 40 |
These are the players who are feeling it the hardest. The ones who are writing Reddit posts at midnight about a campaign that ended three months ago. They are the ones who grieve it the most.
"We never get to face the BBEG, were always one session off, keep putting it off until I'm the only one left trying... now I get super depressed on Fridays.”
— u/beholder_dragon
Of these people-oriented players, Observers (IAPSp) feel it most acutely. The quiet ones, who are a bit introspective. They are the players who will ruminate on why a campaign ended. Ironically, they often blame themselves, despite having the self-awareness to see the problems in the first place.
For these players, the campaign isn’t a game. It’s a relationship. That’s why a fizzled campaign feels like an ex that they never got closure from.
Let’s take a look at the other half of the spectrum. Mechanics-coded players made up 32% of the respondents, and were almost entirely Concrete rather than Abstract (2:1). That makes sense, as D&D is a Concrete Mechanics game. There are spell slots to track, action economy to plan, and condition tables. With rules so tactile and specific, it makes sense that players would be attracted to it. These players showed up in the data, not because they just resonated with the message, but because they recognized compatibility intellectually. They knew something was wrong, even if they didn’t feel the same way about it.
The largest Casual archetype in the entire dataset was the Thinker (ICMPl) at 7.3% of the total. These are the players who are well known for being methodical and planning out their turns very carefully (sometimes a bit too carefully). So, it can be a big shock to them when they spent time making sure everything on the table goes perfectly, only to find that everything off the table isn’t. When campaigns fizzle, they get confused.
Before you assume that Mechanical players don't get attached at all, they do. It may look different, but they are still present. At 10% of the total survey, Immersive Mechanical players do get emotionally invested in the game. To them, the system, their build, and their craft are deeply personal. It just looks different to a community who typcially focuses on the roleplaying aspects.
That’s why fizzle is so universal, despite the experience not being universally the same. It’s because each player experiences it differently. The Immersive player is grieving something they can barely name. The Casual player is frustrated that their game keeps on ending up nowhere. The Mechanics players are looking up from their character sheet, wondering why the group isn’t meeting. And People players are wondering if they can still be friends with the other players.
Different feelings. Same broken table. Nobody had the language for it.
Avoiding the Total Party Kill
Many TPKs are a combination of the wrong party at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Real life will never stop throwing random events at you. The question is, are you at the right party to handle that?
Before you can even know if you have the right party, you have to understand what you actually want from D&D. Not a surface answer, but a real one. What makes losing a campaign feel terrible to you? After you’ve learned your relationship with the game, can you understand your party’s. Notice their strengths and weaknesses, where they shine in a campaign, and where they don’t. By understanding what makes your party work well together, you are better equipped to handle even the worst encounter on the random encounter table. That’s what the Player Archetype system is working towards, and what 500 players took the time to find out. The ones who finish campaigns won’t be the ones who are lucky with scheduling. They’ll be the ones who know who they were sitting down with.
Until next time,
— Astro