[StarManta]

So, inspired by a certain TV series (you'll either recognize it or you won't, I won't be more specific so as to avoid spoilers), I've been toying with the idea of putting the player characters in a fairly helpless position (in a well-respected meet location that does not permit anyone to bring in weapons, which would normally be safe-ish for meets) where they believe they are safe, then having one of the bad guys (with whom they're trying to make peace) turn on them and try to kill them all. It'd involve either a hostile takeover or blackmail or bribe or something for the owner of the meeting location, something that'd make it worth destroying their reputation as a safe meeting spot.

Then, once everything seems calmest, the bad guys reveal that their guns have not been taken from them, and they go in all-out murder mode. Full-auto suppresion fire, Powerballs, grenades, Spirit engulfment, the works. The team's mage and/or adept might survive, but anyone who depends on guns or their military armor will be pretty well frakked.

The goal of this will be to make an enemy that the players will be driven to want to flat-out destroy, whether they're being hired to or not. Make them self-motivated to accomplish a specific goal for themselves. To help offset any hurt feelings from the PKing, I would give the characters rolled to replace the killed ones some sort of bonus (starting with an extra 60 Karma during chargen, possibly), on the condition that the new character is someone who had a connection to one of the killed characters, who would be motivated to seek revenge.

I don't have any specific questions for the board here, just putting it forward for some general input.

[Razhul]

As a player, I usually develop a strong connection with my character and would be pretty mad at the GM, if he pulled a near-railroaded TPK on us just because he could not come up with a better compelling way to motivate our characters to go after said villain.

Player death in most systems should be a result of the players having made bad decisions that they can afterwards clearly point at and say "oh yes, that was my bad". That could be acting against the GM's advice when jumping from building to building or attacking a foe despite being advised that said foe seems very dangerous etc. It should never be something you can't see coming through the established processes at the table (and by that I mean, you cannot tell them afterwards that they should have mistrusted the host of the club without having had any clue why they suddenly should).

Again, if your group doesn't have a strong connection to theirs chars, then this might work. Otherwise I highly recommend going after something other of value than their life - friends, family, gear, pride, even freedom for a while.

[emsquared]

First of all, lets be honest, you can't really call divulging a 13 y/o story spoiling.

But no, RPGs are not literature. If the players have been playing the PCs a while they'll probably be pissed. Especially if it just bones the Mundanes. And if they're new either to the game or just to the TPKed PCs, they'll probably not get as connected to, and possibly therefore not RP as truly, other PCs they make under you.

The one way I could see it working without some sort of back-fire, was if you told them at the out-set that it was a one-off or purposefully short campaign. Don't have to let them know they're gonna die, just that it... Is intended to be short.

[Mirikon]

First, let me say that if you pull something like this with your group, they would be well within their rights to punch you square in the junk. Repeatedly. With spiked gauntlets.

There really is no way this ends well for your story, and it may cause people to leave your gaming group altogether. This kind of thing works fairly well in a story, but in a game, it is craptacular, and you should never consider it ever again.

[Raiden]

While I agree with said posts here, I will offer a way to do this but not have a tpk. allow an outie. so to speak, a way for the PCs to escape, then they find all there homes trashed ect. ect. this in effect causes IC reasons for "revenge" without having them say, "so no matter what we die? well I am out" and leaving. now if they try t fight, and die its there bad. drop some hints, the guys suit is bulky. the guys they are meeting with are acting slightly shifty, stuff like that. TPKs are never good plot hooks or in any way good for a story, it basically ends the story when you TPK the group.

[RHat]

You cannot "make up" for willfully and with forethought killing your player's characters by offering bonuses to the "replacements" bonuses - it doesn't change the fact that they just lost that character that they may have been very invested in.  If my character dies due to factors that I control, I can handle that.  If my character dies because the GM decided to make it near-guaranteed, I would be PISSED.

This is a Bad Idea.

[GiraffeShaman]

Agreed that it's not a good idea. Much like the idea to capture the PCs that pops up in the heads of GMs heads at times. You can do similar without taking away the players sense of self determination or their valued characters.

1. I almost ran this particular scenario, but the campaign it was for ended early. Their team had done some favors for the Ancients elven go gang and had some contacts with them. They also managed to alienate the Spikes troll biker gang, an enemy of the Ancients. I had planned to have the team invited to a huge party, set at a house near a lake. There was going to be a huge explosion suddenly, killing several Ancients and some hangers on. Then the Spikes were going to attack. (With "Devil Man" playing loudly, which I always had the Spikes playing when they showed up in the game) One of their Ancients contacts was going to ask the runners to escort a famous elven glam rocker out of there. They'd have to escape across the lake in a boat, as the parking area was blocked by the Spikes. Naturally there'd be some boat battles with elite troll gangers. (The Spikes are a large and powerful gang, like the Ancients)

2. GTA Vice City had an awsome opening. Your character is doing a drug deal in Miami aka Vice City, using money that belongs to the Italian Mafia, who he works for. The meet is ambushed, the drugs stolen, and your character barely escapes with his life. Naturally, the mafia is pissed at your characters. So you have not only a revenge motivation, but also the mafia breathing down your neck to find who did this and retrieve the drugs.

3. Create some pre made characters for them to play a short time. These are the characters that die. I saw this done once on an ancient AD&D module. I think it was a Grayhawk one, "Rary the Traitor."

[Black]

I''ve done it for flashback type mission.  The sort were most the players are not playing there own character for the session/scene.  Its sort of fun, to not care if the character lives or dies and to ham up the character and play him 'big'.  But for actual player characters?  Avoid it.  Heck, the fraggers had to debate whether to run from a full on lone star raid recently.  Players are often not lacking in confidence...

[Automaton]

Right, so you have a campaign, the players have their chracters. You kill of their characters and that is supposed to help the campaign along.

Here is where it fails:

A campaign runs on the characters of the players, you kill all these characters to supposidly make those who did the killing a big enemy.
Unless your whole group metaplays (which isnt good) Everyone who would be pissed off so incredibly at these bad guys would be dead...

So a new group of chars (which the players will then have to make) won't have it in for those bad guys.. It will be just another story for around the local runner's cafe.
The chars will go "really? that really happened?... shit I'd never hand out my guns to anyone, what a dumb asses" And thats the end of it.

Unless all the new chracters are next of kin to the ones who were killed or something.

And then there is the point of all the players kicking the GM's ass. WHich they would be totally entitled to in my opinion.

And this is coming from a guy (me) who blew up the van the whole team was sitting in a session ago...

But ofcourse they survived it by getting out in the nick of time and not getting the full blast..

[r4nd0m]

I once GMed a situation that ended up much like this, and managed to turn what could have been a TPK into one of the most hated villains of my Shadowrunning career.  Instead of killing them he ended up using knockout gas and tasers, knocking out the party (You can also use stunball/bolt for this).  They woke up completely stripped, manacled to tables and being rescued by another SR team that the teams fixer had hired.  They lost everything they had on them, they owed their fixer a large sum, the Villain had done unknown things to them while they were out (a total of 3 weeks of missing time), and they now had to live with the shame that he hadn't even considered them a big enough threat to kill.  Their street rep also took a hit.  They were extremely motivated to track down the Villain. :-D

[Michael Chandra]

Also, you should have access to Elven Blood. Check the ... Fifth one, I think? It has some notes on what can happen with the scenario described by Random, though in the Missions' case it's a bit different.

[Belker]

I think you should really, really, really avoid using the Red Wedding to motivate your characters this way.

Use the Operative's method from Serenity: Torch the rest of their lives. Run their friends to ground, and kill some of them. Shred their bank accounts, burn their homes, blow up their cars.

I'm not saying there should never be a TPK. But using one to motivate the characters, is most likely to motivate your players to bail.

[emsquared]

Use the Operative's method from Serenity: Torch the rest of their lives. Run their friends to ground, and kill some of them. Shred their bank accounts, burn their homes, blow up their cars.

I don't think this is really a good way to go about it either. Destroying everything they've worked for is no less destroying the PC than actually destroying the PC. Not to mention, again, it would probably impact Mundanes more and that kind of "bias" is never good. Take them away from those things for a while, sure, maybe destroy one thing they love, alright, but not everything. The first response to the OP said it well in my opinion; these scorched-earth methods are the recourse of lazy GMs.

If it's clearly a reasonable consequence of player actions would be the exception.

[Malathis]

As many have pointed out, starting with a TPK is more likely to create animosity between the Players and the GM than to have the characters, that aren't the ones that were killed, really hate xyz. If you must use this type of scenario set it up where lethal force is used, but tweak rolls to make sure the charachters survive, have someone come in and pull thier hoop out of the fire, whether it be the owner/employees having a last minute change of heart, or a rival of xyz. This could set up a couple of nice contacts for the charachtes and give them some good motivation. The owner would owe the runners big time, since the runners aren't going to blab on the street how the owner let the ambush take place, and the rival of xyz could be a good contact and a source of work. The runners and thier friends and family could be slighty protected from xyz at this point as if they were to start dropping it may cause an all out war which is never good for profits.

[ZeConster]

If I were a player in your game and you as the GM decided to kill off the character I had spent so much time on, through no real fault of my own, "for the sake of the campaign", and you said "hey, it's cool, I'll give you some bonus points on your next character", I would literally, literally flip the table at you, storm out the door, and never speak to you again. There's about 300 better ways to motivate the players to want an NPC dead (simplest one: for each character, murder their contact with the highest Connection+Loyalty sum), and only about 10 better ways to motivate the players to want you dead.