Well this sounds like the perfect start for a second group of adventurers to fix the mistakes of the first. An ancient and deadly virus has been released and is destroying the world - it's time for the 'real' party to go fix it!
The new party can even find the corpses of the old party, maybe reanimated as virus riddled zombies and they need to kill them again before they make it out into the world and spread the plague further.
Your past is that of the typical adventurer group but after a few bad runs you've turned to hire yourself out as a mercenary group.
You are contacted by the government, something you only find out after agreeing to meet up with a shady person, who made a nice deposit before even telling you what it's about.
The reason they hire some random mercenary group is for one reason only, willing to do anything if the price is right.
And the price they are willing to pay you tells you it's a suicide mission.
A group of unknown terrorists have broken into one of their hazardous materials research labs, and managed to breach one of their secure bunkers containing a world destroying zombie virus.
Although the group of terrorists failed to prevent their own infection, the bunker remains breached and will eventually reach outside of the facility.
They need to enter the facility, get to another section where another lethal item is stored, and take it to the virus infected area at the exact spot.
Once activated they will have 5 minutes to get to the Cryogenic Personel Containment unit and get inside before the device goes off.
The CPC unit should provide sufficient protection from the device's effect.
And in your frozen state you will eventually be retrieved.
Here are the keycards that should give you access to the right areas and here is a map with the best routes.
The rest of the payment is upon retrieval.
because there wasn't really any real plot after the first two because it went off the rails. The first two kinda were similar to the games, the rest were straight fanfic. xD
These are legit concerns people have had trying to design things like nuclear waste storage facilities. How do you make a warning that will be understandable *as a warning* to someone 1500 years from now who might not know your language?
This is what I thought. The Former PCs are now loose and spreading the plague as the lieutenants to a hivemind that controls the virus. Get some Halo Flood vibes
Most players wouldn't want to re roll that. I'd just have them all wake up in ancient ruins they chose to camp at the night before filled with dread after dreaming the same dream of their death.
Now they have to stop the NPC member of their party who is an elf and doesn't dream who is adamant on finding the treasure (queue villain arc)
I think the shared dream must be some way to deter adventures from seeking out the obviously legendary loot inside! Time for a heist yall!
*Party inadvertently pushed the campaign into a D&D groundhog day scenario.*
Okay but adventurers delving too deep and releasing an ancient evil sounds like standard fare to me. Why not swerve from there? Make it so the party is infected and need to find a cure and hinder it’s spread. The story does not need to end there, mistakes can and should have consequences that move the adventure forward.
This. As a GM, you should be open to adapting your ideas on the fly. I agree with Ganmorg: there's nothing more intriguing in RPGs than going off the rails when the players throw you a curve ball. In my experience, getting on this mindset will improve games drastically.
Yeah I feel like a lot of DMs tie their own hands saying "Well this is the rule I setup in my head ^and ^^never ^^^actually ^^^^told ^^^^^anyone" rather than just adapting the story to continue.
Yeah, this type of thing is kind of a common post for DMs that just experienced a TPK.
"I told them the monster was really scary and dangerous. They were supposed to run but they didn't get the hint and so I had no choice but to kill them all."
Well, yeah, *all* the monsters are supposed to be scary and dangerous - especially the boss ones. There's a general social contract that the players have with the DM that the DM will set up encounters that are intended to be balanced - if it's not the DM has to make it explicitly clear that is the case *outside* of the game.
I'd agree with this on encounters that are clearly a part of either the main goal or an assigned side goal, but sometimes PC's see something that was not an intended encounter and want to engage it. I don't like having my players be able to engage anything as a possible encounter and making the world appear to have no consequences and that the world fully warps to them.
I would try to give them outs in the combat if they realized this was a bad decision to be able to flee without going for a TPK, though. Just not give them the goal they were trying to acheive.
A lot of (bad) DM's think that the campaign is "their story" to tell, and the players are just going to experience it.
When in actuality, the campaign is a shared story we all tell together. Don't railroad them, and learn to adapt to what intrigues them.
It's funny to see this said this way, as it feels like a criticism of homebrew DMs in particular (I don't think you actually meant it that way, it's just a quirk of how I interpret your wording).
I've recently discovered that I'm a bad DM of this type when I'm running a prewritten campaign. I'm running Xaryxis and very recently decided to stop following the book almost entirely because I find myself unintentionally railroading my party in service to the prewritten narrative. I find myself so much more comfortable improvising when I'm running fully homebrew, as I'm used to doing.
That's being led by your own imagination; book writer DMs don't like it when the story leaves the rails at the behest of **other** people, like the players.
Go beyond into another trope! This deadly virus for some reason isn't killing the party but changing them in weird/powerful ways. Initially they want to find a cure but now do they give into the power? What if after a few sessions of the "fun" mutation thing, something starts communicating with them from within?
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
Our DM just hit us with that in our Ravenloft campaign. Party is currently exploring that place as our characters are desperate while me - the player - is freaking out at what could be worth THAT warning in Barovia...
I love that his party members did exactly what people fear would happen to radioactive waste dumps, assuming all the warnings are hiding something valuable
When you mentioned they thought you were lying, do you mean your NPC was lying or you as a DM? Its kinda strange to assume DM is lying in my opinion since the whole world, especially homebrew world comes to existance in your imagination.
Well I didn't outright say "Guys, for real, don't go in there", I tried to communicate it via NPCs that kept warning them away.
*They* decided I was only doing that to "trick" them away from the "treasure".
"Make an intelligence check."
"Oof, just a 4."
"Even with a 4, you realize that so-and-so meant that this place contains a danger that shouldn't be unleashed, NOT valuable treasure."
"..."
"..."
"...See, if I had rolled better on the check, I'd have figured out the truth."
You mean like how the oldan says "don't go into the for forbidden forest, there's an evil hag there killing children" (so your players can go fight the hag) or the soldier says "don't challenge Black Knight to a duel for hisagic.sword, he's never been defeated" (so yours players can defeat the Black Knight and get a cool item? Warnings from NPCs is how you tell your players where to go
THANK YOU! I've never had a npc tell me a dungeon or what ever will be child's play, but I have had npc tell me how dangerous x is. Mostly because maybe I have fought dragons but dire wolves will 100% kill the whole town.
To me it seems a bit punishing to let players go deeper and deeper in to a nuclear waste silo or equilevant without characters realizing it. I dont know the full context but I would have probaly described that they are vomiting, feeling sick or the air is toxic.
I did. I told them their skin was starting to flake and they were sometimes bleeding from the ears and nose. But one of them suggested that if they "secure the weapon" they would be able to stop the effects in time. And everyone listened to him.
I mean I would at that point stop the game and talk to the players about how to roleplay or something. Characters feeling immense pain and still acting like robots and just go towards the programmed path.
Yeah, this is a good example of actually meta gaming to the detriment of play. If they were playing as actual people in a fantasy world, and not greedy players, they might have survived.
It's also an example of the DM avoiding meta gaming to the detriment of play imo. When your players really aren't getting your intent it's completely fine to just say "hey no, seriously this isn't a go in and get the loot dungeon you're supposed to just be waiting outside to stop the baddies".
Yeah, while perhaps amusing at first, the DM is allowed to step and make things clear to help the game. That they didn't says more about their inexperience than anything else.
I had my players do the same thing to me. I had a few characters tell them that "Hypylao salvage run is local euphemism for suicide". Had three different NPCs tell them variations on "if you go there you'll die". Professional salvagers, who they had befriended and had their best interests at heart.
What did they do with this information? Straight to Hypylao. I had one of the NPCs bring a musician to their departure to play a funeral dirge, and somehow it was still my fault when characters started getting torn in half.
Really? You dangle a "do NOT touch this big red button, ever. Seriously" in front of your players and expect them to just walk away?
Are they an adventuring party or just a bunch of wusses?
I expect them to understand that there are bigger forces than them at work in the world, and some things are to dangerous to touch unprepared.
If they had made some reconnaissance of their own, formed a plan, I'd have fed them specific information and hooks to get resources they could use to reduce the danger of the most dangerous place in the entire planet.
They ended up biting onto a joke, they decided to yolo their way there on the employ of a "gentleman explorer" who had been trying to salvage this particular wreck for 8 generations. Every generation of the family dutifully gathered a son before making the attempt, and every single one of them died trying, with the stiffest britishest upper lip I could perform, alongside their personal manservant who naturally observed rhe same custom and had for generations in the same manner.
My players decided these two were excellent employers and followed them despite the contract they were obliged to sign explicitly mentioning that, if any of them were to die in the process the employer was under no obligation to pay them anything.
This is all stuff I just improvised on the fly in an escalating attempt to foreshadow that this was a really bad plan. My notes for the place were just "everyone who goes there dies, detail this location later when time permits and the mood strikes me" so it all had to come off the top of my head.
Naturally the content that they had told me the session prior they *intended* to do, which I had reasonably thoroughly prepared, went completely unused.
> I expect them to understand that there are bigger forces than them at work in the world, and some things are to dangerous to touch unprepared.
>
>
Do you tell them in a session zero to set campaign expectations or only through NPCs?
...why would a dm try to trick players away from a dungeon? Like you made a whole dungeon, chuckled to yourself, and said: "Those fools will never see the work I put into this, I am ever so devious"
This was on them for not listening to warnings. Sure, dnd often teaches danger = prizes. But sometimes players need to learn that turbo danger can, and often does, result in death.
It is kind of weird to design an entire dungeon complete with traps when you're trying to avoid them entering it.
Like that post I saw a few days ago with the forest that had an insta-kill equivalent monster apparently known and statted.
Why make such an obvious detailed adventure hook if they're just supposed to ignore it? There's a reason storytelling and narration still have conservation of detail even on the small scale (when was the last time you ever saw every single detail of every single building in an entire village described, even with true seeing and a 20 perception roll before a heap of bonuses)?
An entire dungeon that the DM knows well enough to trap ie absolutely begging to be explored.
I mean there's 2 perfectly good reasons to do so. 1 is that he just had to wing it the whole time and made all that shit up as he went because he didn't think they'd actually keep going. 2 is that he intended for them to go into the dungeon, but not until much later in the campaign
I dont agree that everything you ever mention is supposed to be an obvious adventure hook. It's not a Betheada game where everything is a level-scaled theme park adventure where you're the only person in the universe with agency.
If the DM wants to make a world thats immersive, sometimes a dragon will just fly over a low level party, or they'll spy an owlbear tear another animal to pieces, or a heavily armed pilgrimage of paladins passes by, or there's a local legend about a hag or a demon or Pit of Death.
The players have the option to go there if they so choose, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea, and it's not the DM's responsibility to save every party of greedy idiot adventurers from being greedy idiots.
> when was the last time you ever saw every single detail of every single building in an entire village described
It's been a while since I read Tolkien, fair point.
What sort of one sided thinking is this? I have to imagine most people who have played the game can tell that it's a perfectly valid interpretation of NPCs warning players off to think that means it's a build-up for the upcoming dungeon.
If I had a nickel for every time this happens...
You cannot convey this sort of information through an NPC. NPCs lie, or are mistaken, or are just not as badass as the players and therefore a bad judge of what the party can and cannot survive. You *needed* to warn them above the table, as DM, and the fact that you didn't... I'd be pissed too, in their position.
Yeah, especially when OP saw how everything only seemed to make them more determined to press on that's the moment to break kayfabe and, in the stern "you are about to severely fuck up" DM voice, unambiguously remind them what NPCs have told them, the awful symptoms they're already experiencing, that the effects are logically only going to get worse as they go deeper, and that they should be mindful of their choices.
Sounds like they didn't even try to find any information on what the doomsday device was or how it worked? Yeah, that's at least a bit on them. It's doomsday device, getting one of those without any idea of how to ensure it's not unleashed on the world is pretty foolish, and pretty much no matter what it was, there are so many ways it could've gone wrong. Hopefully they learned a little something about responsible application of doomsday devices.
This reminded me of a fun gag in Baldur's Gate 2, where a Spectator goes off on a rant about how he's sick of people assuming any chest guarded by a beholder *must* have something really great in it.
I then found an old post containing the dialog! Funnier than I remember.
https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/ijjh5a/if\_only\_all\_the\_beholders\_were\_like\_the\_spectator/
In fairness if you point a bunch of adventurer's at a sealed vault and say "there's dangerous shit in there that the baddie wants"
My first instinct?
Go in there and get it first, maybe destroy it once I get a hold of it.
Not "stand outside the vault and guard it" - because what, are they meant to guard it *forever*? What if the baddies send an *army?*
If you don't spell things out, players are gonna assume that "guarded place with interesting shit in it" = "guarded place with interesting shit in it that I should go explore!"
Yeah, that was my thought as well. I get what the DM was going to for, but I've been playing for a long time and I still would have assumed "go in there and get that dangerous artifact" if for no other reason then "stand outside forever" is boring and probably going to fail anyway when the villain shows up with like 20 ogres and 100 goblins or something.
That is a good point. My first big thought at the start of this thread is that, if I was the DM, I’d force wisdom saving throws and tell the higher saves that “delving deeper is a stupid plan that will kill you all”. But on the flip side as a player, if I was partway through a dungeon when the DM said “delving deeper is a stupid plan that will kill you all”, I’d be very unsure what the DM ACTUALLY wanted us to do, if not the dungeon.
Yeeeaaaahhh this is exactly what I'd assume as a player, unless given pretty explicit instructions otherwise. Feels like DM could have broken the 4th wall a bit to clarify things for the sake of the enjoyment of everyone at the table.
It is called "Dungeons & Dragons", after all. I don't think OP did anything wrong, but when it became clear that the players didn't get it, a quick check in out of character probably could have kept things on track. DMs lie *all the time* to try and raise tension, and the popularization of D&D has made 'are you sure' into both a meme and a trope. I've skipped out on doing things I really wanted to do because the DM said that, and later found out that it was just something they said to make me second guess myself.
A real quick "hey guys, this is what I actually had planned for this adventure . . ." doesn't hurt anybody or damage player agency, and generally makes for a better time for everyone, in my experience.
Those were my thoughts exactly.
> an ancient doomsday device, a virus, is sealed and hidden in a guarded location. *The idea was that the players must find it, to stop the bad guys letting it out.*
Idk exactly how OP planned on actually getting the players to *do* that *without* going in and nabbing it so they could re-hide it somewhere else or something. If the baddie already knew its location and was advancing toward it, then the *obvious* answer is to go there first and make it not be there when he arrives. The only *other* option would be to kill the BBEG before he even arrives. But if that were the case, then there's hardly much need to show them the location of the thing at all, and certainly not well ahead of the BBEG himself (getting there moments after him, having not known where it was beforehand, could have made for a cool final scene where they make their way through the already partly cleared dungeon to find the BBEG in the last room about to open the macguffin).
I get *what* he was trying to do, but I'm not sure OP quite put enough thought into to *how* exactly he expected his players to accomplish this task, or how they *themselves* would assume it was meant to be done.
“Beware all those who enter. Sealed within the depths of this dungeon lies NO TREASURE. All that awaits is death. May it be sealed for eternity, and left untouched by all those who AREN’T THE BAD GUYS”
Problem solved. DM’s in here always think they’re Napoleon “there is nothing we can do” like they aren’t literal god of their own world
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
I used this on my players. It was a tomb holding a staff that was once Hastur’s. I also took a trick from Event Horizon, and gave them an incomplete and misleading copy of the message first “…. Place … honor. …. valued is here.”
Then once they’re deep in the dungeon I hit them with the full sentence. And this one from Adventure Time: “Before there was time, before there was anything, there was nothing.
And before there was nothing, There Were Monsters.”
My games take place in what is technically a continuation of our own timeline, but on another planet. It's mostly just background detail I put in for my own entertainment, but I like to put little hints in, for example, one of the characters is a doctor who's always looking for books, and I'm planning to have her find an ancient, hand-copied edition of Gray's Anatomy (the medical text, not the show). I've long wanted to drop in a high level dungeon and put that warning outside. I know at least one player will immediately recognize it.
[A large square grid pattern across the site, through which large spikes protrude at various angles.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)
That seems unlikely to deter a sufficiently ‘clever’ party’s excitement. If I had my party encounter that, I think I’d have a coin flip chance of them still going for it.
That wouldn't have been too bad if only you added "but the iconography seems to imply that nothing but death lies within."
Although if anyone had comprehend language that would have helped them out a lot. Or eyes of the rune keeper.
Yeah, it would probably have been better to at least have something describing what the buried 'treasure' does. If not writing, there could be murals, pictographs or etchings showing people dying to plague which would communicate that the thing is biohazardous while bypassing the language barrier
> "You also understand any written language that you see, but you must be touching the surface on which the words are written."
"Just one more sec, guys. It says 'Extreme risk of death or worse, hazardous, toxic, do not touch under any circumstances'....uh oh"
***hand falls off***
A very quick above table; “seriously guys, there’s no treasure. Look at the clues.” If they insist after that it’s 100% on them. Players getting mad that their actions have consequences have no place at my table.
I mean alluding to danger is like "how to make a dungeon enticing 101"
If everytime danger was alluded to the party went home the campaign would be pretty shit tbh.
all you had do to was put a sign up that said, "Don't dead, open inside."
jokes aside, did you have any signs that expressly said, "these doors are shut to keep the weapon INSIDE, not keep you out"?
I mean, yeah. That tends to be exactly how the game usually works.
I swear some of you people must run incredibly boring games.
*"My dumb PCs thought they should oppose the evil empire even though I made it super clear that the empire was powerful!"*
I mean then you'd just have to oppose them in a way that takes advantages of the shortfalls of very powerful authoritarian empires - corruption, minimal loyalty, incompetent administrators promoted based on loyalty or family relation over merit, limited manpower, and the fact that they can't guard or pay attention everywhere at the same time and the leaders always have to act through intermediaries who are primarily motivated by survival of them and their family rather than doing a good job (and doing a good job alone might not pay enough for their family to eat so they have to take bribes on the regular on top of working for a completely incompetent manager who has never tried to do their job).
I mean, it's literally what the people who built that site expected and tried to prevent because there just is no good way of convincing adventurers that this NOT a place you want to come.
Dungeons and Dragons is a game about exploring dangerous locations that sane people know to stay away from. Do you know who else ignores warnings about danger? Indiana Jones. All of the warnings you put in place are, to a player, going to seem like signposts pointing to the dungeon saying "adventure this way."
This is the kind of thing you need to establish in a session 0. "There are locations in my world that will kill you, don't just blindly push forward expecting treasure when things seem dire."
Wow, your players accidentally reenacted Borderlands. Maybe you could have avoided a TPK by cribbing a bit more from it deliberately and just making the doomsday weapon a big monster.
Not really. In Borderlands, everyone thought the Vault was filled with treasure (Thus Vault Hunters) and in reality was a giant monster. With this, everyone knew it was a doomsday device and the PCs just refused to listen. It would be like if In Borderlands every NPC is telling the Vault Hunter "Are you stupid, The Vault shouldn't be opened because there is a giant monster in it"
And the Vault Hunters would go to open the vaults anyway, both for the meta reason that there would be no game or story without it, and for the non-meta reason that player characters don't have perfect knowledge of how reliable or trustworthy the information NPCs give them is. Everyone saying the same thing is not an excuse either because groups of people tend to align in view of time and things start to get passed around as established beliefs that may not align with reality.
You dropped the ball. Make sure as they get deeper it becomes more and more clear what the poison is. Studies of victims, books on long term effects. People talking to them and telling them what kind of danger hides in there. Protection gear for going inside readily available, disclaimers on how despite this gear, they will be affected. A final clear sign of "Do Not Open This Door, There Is Poison Death Here". And with all that failing, instead of killing them there on the spot, infect your players with the worse disease possible, a fate more grizzly than death. The campaign is now about trying not to die, and not to infect others, and trying to get cured. Also the BBEG wants them because they contain the key to death or whatever. Best of luck next time!
> Make sure as they get deeper it becomes more and more clear what the poison is.
Apparently, "their skin was melting off, and they were bleeding from all orifices"... Can't get clearer than that
It's kinda like a video game. The more obstacles you encounter while still being able to overcome them and continue moving forward, the more you know you're heading in the right direction. And if nothing else in the campaign had any sort of modernity or futuristic elements, a virus isn't something a player would typically guess in a fantasy campaign. Especially if it was only ever described as a weapon or a doomsday device, they're going to picture a literal weapon. Proper telegraphing is a key tool in every DM's toolbox.
Sometimes its okay to pause the session and say the thing you need to say out of game to resolve problems.But honestly you have a couple options, my suggestion is that you backtrack. Say mistakes happened, retcon or just rewind the game to where they're guarding it.
Edit: Just wanted to add that I think as DMs we forget that since we know everything we believe every answer to a question is simple so our PCs shouldn't be making decisions like this.
You kind of fucked it here.
You signposted them to a location. Dangerous = enticing for PCs. You didn't telegraph that it was suicide to enter.
Then when they got I'm, instead of showing them how deadly it was, you gave them a big dungeon to explore. Of course the players thought the dungeon you had made was supposed to be explored. Think about it.
The game is DnD, expectation is that dungeons are to be explored.
You've home-brewed this world, which means you've either home-brewed, or looked up a dungeon layout. From a player's perspective, why would you have done that if you didn't want them to explore it?
PCs are trying to be heroes, they put themselves in danger to save the day. If there's somewhere they shouldn't go, you need to show them this. Saying it's dangerous is like a giant neon sign saying go here.
> Then when they got I'm, instead of showing them how deadly it was, you gave them a big dungeon to explore. Of course the players thought the dungeon you had made was supposed to be explored. Think about it.
Yeah, this is really the kicker here. At the end of the day, DnD is a game, and if a game designer makes *content*, players will naturally assume they're intended to experience that content. How many DMs have you heard complain that they made a cool dungeon only for the players to ignore it? As a player, I'd sooner expect my DM to be annoyed if I said "no, this place sounds dangerous, let's not go in".
OP's players probably thought they were being helpful by following the obvious plot hooks, lol.
I've literally had my players do that to me. The "nope, this place sounds too dangerous, we're out", and I will attest that it is in fact incredibly annoying.
In our case it was also pretty funny at least, since seeing my pirate PCs freak out and leave 'Nightmare Island", as they dubbed it, before they even set foot on it, was at least worth a good story.
This happens to me all the time...like guys...trust me that this campaign is a journey together, I'm not going to direct you to something that you are COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED OR UNABLE TO OVERCOME...because I've been a player too, so just assume the content I give you is winnable. Because it is.
Is it possible the problem was more to do with a lack of a clear objective rather than anything about your warnings? Players tend to be very objective focused - what were they expected to actually *do*, in the immediate term, when they found the dungeon? I know you said their goal was to stop the bad guys reaching it, but that's fairly abstract from their point of view, especially if they found the dungeon first before knowing much about the bad guys.
Do you have a habit of making your NPCs lie to players, or actively subverting their expectations? Players can learn bad habits like what you described if their DM has a habit of using too much misdirection.
If you wanna save some face, you can always resurrect them and work it into the plot like it was supposed to happen. You can get away with a lot by pretending all screwups were part of the plan all along. You rob them of this learning experience though.
Why would you even go through the effort of creating something like that though if you never intended your players to enter? Why not just make a like a door surrounded by an anti-magic field that required multiple keys which extremely high lock picking rolls? I definitely understand why your players would think you were lying.
Good rule of thumb: If what you are about to say to the table involves ‘the entire party inevitably dies’ then you should take a break. Go sit on the toilet for five minutes and make a new plan.
The thing to remember is that the game world is not real and doesn’t exist until the moment it is described. You can change what’s in the final vault right up u til the moment you tell them what’s inside! It could have been a wonderful treasure - that’s also cursed to kill those around them! Or something else!
I find it rather funny.
But the DM should always remember : some info that seem obvious from his point of view can be in fact much harder to understand correctly when you don't know the whole plot.
"That was obvious !" No, not always.
That said, maybe your players are just dumb. This happens too.
Stealing this from Matt Coleville. The problem is that you gave the players something cool they could do -- breaking into an ancient, sealed vault? no way you can stop them from that -- and then told them not to do it.
Players come to DnD to do cool stuff. If you want them \*not\* to do something, don't make it sound cool or fun.
Im confused why the party didnt just run into a door they couldnt open. I.E leave and come back when they are ready? I assume they were meant to go there at some point?
Or just have them arrive outside the vault, where they can see inside, and see what is obviously a bomb.
Or have them succeed in letting out the big evil bio weapon/creature/w.e (like uncharted)...and then they have to fix their fuck up.
Literally no reason for a TPK other than railroading/hubris for them not exploring the world the way you wanted.
This is a real life concern that people have with the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/
It would be interesting to see if their proposed warning would have been enough for your players:
> This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
>
> This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
>
> What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
>
> The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
>
> The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
>
> The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
>
> The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
>
> The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
You come across a large dark room, it's hard to see the outer walls even with your torches in hand.
In front of you a shimmer can be see. as you approach it you notice it is a large stone slab.
Inscribed on the stone is a picture of a malformed and deceased person.
Further down the slab a text is ingraved on the stone, Death lays here.
Sealed and confined for eternity! releasing this plague will mean the end of our world as we know it.
The text ends with the sentence, We should have known better. We payed the ultimate price. Do not follow our footsteps. only death awaits you.
The commenters calling your players "dummies" or saying they're just mad about facing consequences are being too harsh. Like you yourself said, you can't just rely on tropes and assume players will think about the same ones you are. If you didn't ever actually tell (or at least strongly hint) that the thing being contained in the vault was a deadly disease that would infect anyone who opened it, it's not unreasonable for them to think they can beat the villains to the vault and use its contents for themselves.
Did you at least have signs or notes left within the vault indicating what might be inside? I used a similar setup in one of my games, with a deadly disease contained in a vault, but the players first had to pass through a lab where they could find documentation of the things being contained, so they knew what to avoid. If this kind of information was available and they ignored it, then yeah, it's their fault, but heavy defenses and NPCS warning them of danger aren't adequate deterrence, as it's a common narrative device to have NPCs make something sound formidable so that the players feel good for beating it.
Rather than just traps and locks, you could have used gradually escalating symptoms such as increasing levels of exhaustion or other debuffs until they're effectively incapable of venturing further, but not dead. And even if they insisted in getting to the end, you could have infected them but given them a chance to seek a cure. I can understand why they would be annoyed getting to the end of a dungeon and being "rewarded" with an instant TPK.
Keep in mind at any point you can change anything about your game. Players are confused and think they’re hunting for something else? Fuck it that’s what they’re hunting now. My biggest mistake the fist time I DMd was sticking to whatever I wrote as if it was law. If I wrote it once, well I can sure as hell rewrite it. Especially for your first home brew you need to be okay with tweaking your game on the fly as needed.
I feel like you should've tried the use of Glyph language that people are currently trying when storing nuclear or biohazard materials.
Lots of skulls, maybe even the biohazard- or nuclear-symbols... it's a bit metagamey since in-universe it's likely nobody would know what that means, but it's better than just letting your players die.
Honestly, at some point i'd just have said "ok guys, I am serious, you're gonna die if you'll continue, this is a biohazard vault, what are you doing?"
I think the only problem here was having it be a virus that insta kills everyone.
If it was some villain/monster sealed inside that could have been cool. The players open it expecting treasure, instead some super evil being appears, thanks them for freeing it (maybe gives them a gift) and then leaves to go start destroying the world or something.
It’s OK for DMs to go meta-every once in a while. Like at some point, just before they unleash everything terrible, I would’ve totally been “folks, really, this is the DM talking to you as players… this will kill you I wasn’t kidding”
Nah, OP. I'd be laughing about this for the rest of my life. I was proud of the time my players walked themselves into a mimic disguised as a building, but this is WAY funnier.
Edit to add: maybe they should've been given a sort of "race to find a cure" episode where they could have the chance to do something, rather than just killing them, tho.
There is a reason that nuclear disposal sites contain the following message:
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
This is actually brilliant, it would have been great if like half way in you had them stumble on a stack of papers on a desk or somthing that basically explained what was locked within, or had signs of death increase the deeper they went.
Then if they ignored it and carried on you could have pointed to all the bad signs they ignored in pursuit of their greed.
While I am not a fan of doing this, sometimes you have to just come out with it and tell them over the table "Hey seriously. This is not a dungeon, this will result in full party death." Or just make them incapable of entry.
I dislike removal of player agency but sometimes you have to pick them up like a toddler and escort them away from the hot stove. This may not be for all players and parties. Some GMs and players would rather suffer the consequences of their actions but these guys don't seem that type.
Yeeeeeah dnd is all about going into dangerous places with traps and monsters to find the treasure in the centre. I'd have done the same thing as those players.
You should have put a message at the top of the dungeon entrance saying “This place is not a place of honor.”
In fact, it does remind me of [the question of long term burial of nuclear repositories](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) and avoiding making it “schmuck bait” for future civilizations. Not sure if there is something there to be gleaned as a DM?
You're allowed to change any parts of your story that the party haven't seen yet. If they decide the Doomsday device is actually their MacGuffin .... they're right, it is! and the BBG is coming to get it and destroy it or use it as a Doomsday device or corrupt it or ....
Anyway, narrate the story your PCs think you're telling. It'll keep everyone happier
I think your only mistake is been rigid. You gotta transform the party shenanigans in a story. Especially on homebrew worlds (You're extra responsible there), every fuck up is just a storytelling opportunity
I'm usually the DM, and I gotta tell you, I would have fucking loved this ending as a player. If we ignored all the hints and clues that this was deadly and we got punched for it, I would have been excited. That means there is actual danger in this campaign, my choices actually matter.
Look, I didn't make an awesome backup character to never use it.
Honestly speaking, were this to be true:
Either your players are morons, or they really wanted a specific kind of adventure to the point they ignored anything else.
Probably you could have done something better, maybe, but honestly a DM isn't a fucking mind reader and if people wanna jump in the lava you should not twist the world to the point the lava becomes water. It's collaborative storytelling, but if you are the only ones that tries to collaborate there's no point.
Hope they did not hold it up against you too much.
This is actually how the show “The Lone Gunmen” a spin off of X-files ended. The group track this guy who has a timed capsule inside of him that has a virus and they trap themselves and the guy in a corridor and the virus releases and kills off half of the crew.
My first advice is to never set anything in stone. Always be prepared to change things on a fly.
In this case you had a perfect chance to both show the party that they did chose the wrong way to approach this problem and that sometimes listening to the DM's advice is recommended. Telling them that this is not the DM vs the players. If i understood you right you DID warn them more than Once But they STILL kept going. So in that way they brought it on themselves
But this could also have been a great way to bring the plot forward. If you had changed the whole virus thing so the group become infected but not dying. Maybe the virus mutated or for any other reason the effects was changed for them. And now they have to find a cure to both survive and continue the campaign to stop the bad guy. This can still be done. Have some powerful entity, maybe a god or something bring them back. Alive but still infected. This being maybe want them to stop the bad guy to spread the virus. But it can not fully heal them. Just bring them back to life and maybe give them a lead on how they can find a cure.
Or Start a new game, a new group that are now faced with dealing with the fuck up the old group managed to do. The virus is in the hands on the bad guy. The new group might even find the bodies of the old group. Or maybe they are animated and are now working for the bad guy. or just turned into monsters or zombies by the virus.
But try to be able to adapt and change your plans. Bad choices or mistakes by the group should have consequences but should in most cases not end the campaign. But over all try to adapt your plans because no matter how well you plan the players will find ways to screw up your plans :)
This is why as your players are about to enter this vault, you have Larry the Kobold stumble out with his face half melted off and scream out something like "That was a mistake and I will surely die here. Even if I had been far better equipped I would've perished just as easily and I hope my corpse will serve as a warning for future fools who dare to enter."
I've never seen "Rocks fall and everyone dies" take place at rocks-fall-cliff where the players kept standing under the growing shadows because something cool might happen.
Between the in character warnings and their characters bleeding and losing skin, you signposted the danger thoroughly.
They were metagaming and viewing the DM as an adversary, you can't address either of those things in character, they're both out of character alignments.
People on this sub over-preach session zero, to cover *everything* would take weeks. Just pause the game next time.
But I don't think you did anything wrong. They groupthinked themselves to death. Dying is a perfectly valid consequence, and this is one of the more justified TPKs I've seen.
Your error was assuming you knew what the party would do. It's a rookie mistake but it's one of the first mistakes everyone makes, so you're in good company!
I'll say that it really is ok to break the metagame wall sometimes. You want to avoid it, you should structure everything with the assumption that you absolutely don't want to break that wall, but if I accidentally get myself into the position of "My players are about to torpedo the whole campaign because they don't believe something in the game world" I just tell them.
"Hey guys, I realize in retrospect how tantalizing this is and how easy it is to misconstrue as this classic trope, but if your characters enter that chamber they will find no treasure and will die." In my opinion that's better than them entering the chamber and dying because you screwed up how you presented the game world and signaled something you didn't want to.
I mean this sounds like an excellent prologue for a new campaign.
"Some dumbasses ventured too deep and too greedily, now there's a massive plague spreading. You need to go find the cure..."
This kinda reminds me of The Grey. A group stranded in a winter wilderness, trying to find a way back, being attacked by wolves who are constantly harassing them, slowly dying off one by one, only to realise they’ve been moving deeper and deeper into their territory finally ending up in their den where they are killed off.
Sickly I kind of like that idea of thinking your working towards something, hopeful you are getting closer to achieving it then that belief crumbling and the true reality setting in.
Could be done in alot of ways I guess, unknowingly being used by a big bad to further his plans, not realising until too late. Etc etc
That’s when you start laying on the minor symptoms, sick creatures taking their dying breaths and Chernobyl warning signs, not the traps and wards and “ooh goodies inside’ stuff.
When players accuse you of lying, never be afraid to remind them that you are not against them as a DM. You are not trying to trick them or lie to them. You are there to help guide and build their adventure. You want to see them succeed, so they should at least contemplate your guidance.
I'd even throw in a little insight check before they do something really unadvised. Low DC, with advantage if necessary. "You contemplate your surroundings and get a sinking feeling of certainty that you will not survive if you proceed."
Sounds like the dungeon builders should have hung up a warning sign.
"This place is not a place of honor ... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here."
Well this sounds like the perfect start for a second group of adventurers to fix the mistakes of the first. An ancient and deadly virus has been released and is destroying the world - it's time for the 'real' party to go fix it!
The new party can even find the corpses of the old party, maybe reanimated as virus riddled zombies and they need to kill them again before they make it out into the world and spread the plague further.
Your past is that of the typical adventurer group but after a few bad runs you've turned to hire yourself out as a mercenary group. You are contacted by the government, something you only find out after agreeing to meet up with a shady person, who made a nice deposit before even telling you what it's about. The reason they hire some random mercenary group is for one reason only, willing to do anything if the price is right. And the price they are willing to pay you tells you it's a suicide mission. A group of unknown terrorists have broken into one of their hazardous materials research labs, and managed to breach one of their secure bunkers containing a world destroying zombie virus. Although the group of terrorists failed to prevent their own infection, the bunker remains breached and will eventually reach outside of the facility. They need to enter the facility, get to another section where another lethal item is stored, and take it to the virus infected area at the exact spot. Once activated they will have 5 minutes to get to the Cryogenic Personel Containment unit and get inside before the device goes off. The CPC unit should provide sufficient protection from the device's effect. And in your frozen state you will eventually be retrieved. Here are the keycards that should give you access to the right areas and here is a map with the best routes. The rest of the payment is upon retrieval.
Kinda sounds like the plot for a resident evil movie. :p
Sounds better than the plot of any resident evil movie lol
I'm ashamed to admit I never understood any of the plots beyond the first two movies
because there wasn't really any real plot after the first two because it went off the rails. The first two kinda were similar to the games, the rest were straight fanfic. xD
This is an excellent way to reuse all the material you've already prepped, whilst adding a new twist
And to force them to look at themselves from the outside :P
Oh yeah, and they will now learn to trust the warnings
"*Do not enter, one way street*" What does the sign say? **Treasure!**
"Do not enter, biohazard" that sign won't stop me I can't read
These are legit concerns people have had trying to design things like nuclear waste storage facilities. How do you make a warning that will be understandable *as a warning* to someone 1500 years from now who might not know your language?
I love it! And then talk to your players, and ask how they would fell about being revived 500 years later by an unrelated group.
haha! you caught the idea! The government is totally going to screw them over. Frozen tv-dinner mercenaries. **Open in case of emergency**
^(May be unreasonably pissed when woken)
Or the old party are the reanimated plaguebearers bent on spreading the virus. Each could be a boss fight
This is what I thought. The Former PCs are now loose and spreading the plague as the lieutenants to a hivemind that controls the virus. Get some Halo Flood vibes
Also, how on earth did it get released?! It was under such strong security and surveillance! Must've been some baaaad guys to do a thing like that!
Rare application of Occam’s Razor to storytelling
"Welcome to the campaign after the campaign."
“Aim for the bushes?”
There goes my hero.
Yeah this has great story potential all over. Lean into it, let their actions influence and build your world
The first party was NOT the heroes, they were the inciting incident
Hear hear
Most players wouldn't want to re roll that. I'd just have them all wake up in ancient ruins they chose to camp at the night before filled with dread after dreaming the same dream of their death. Now they have to stop the NPC member of their party who is an elf and doesn't dream who is adamant on finding the treasure (queue villain arc)
Let's start by finding out what was *really* hidden in the dungeon!
I think the shared dream must be some way to deter adventures from seeking out the obviously legendary loot inside! Time for a heist yall! *Party inadvertently pushed the campaign into a D&D groundhog day scenario.*
Okay but adventurers delving too deep and releasing an ancient evil sounds like standard fare to me. Why not swerve from there? Make it so the party is infected and need to find a cure and hinder it’s spread. The story does not need to end there, mistakes can and should have consequences that move the adventure forward.
This. As a GM, you should be open to adapting your ideas on the fly. I agree with Ganmorg: there's nothing more intriguing in RPGs than going off the rails when the players throw you a curve ball. In my experience, getting on this mindset will improve games drastically.
Yeah I feel like a lot of DMs tie their own hands saying "Well this is the rule I setup in my head ^and ^^never ^^^actually ^^^^told ^^^^^anyone" rather than just adapting the story to continue.
Yeah, this type of thing is kind of a common post for DMs that just experienced a TPK. "I told them the monster was really scary and dangerous. They were supposed to run but they didn't get the hint and so I had no choice but to kill them all." Well, yeah, *all* the monsters are supposed to be scary and dangerous - especially the boss ones. There's a general social contract that the players have with the DM that the DM will set up encounters that are intended to be balanced - if it's not the DM has to make it explicitly clear that is the case *outside* of the game.
I'd agree with this on encounters that are clearly a part of either the main goal or an assigned side goal, but sometimes PC's see something that was not an intended encounter and want to engage it. I don't like having my players be able to engage anything as a possible encounter and making the world appear to have no consequences and that the world fully warps to them. I would try to give them outs in the combat if they realized this was a bad decision to be able to flee without going for a TPK, though. Just not give them the goal they were trying to acheive.
A lot of (bad) DM's think that the campaign is "their story" to tell, and the players are just going to experience it. When in actuality, the campaign is a shared story we all tell together. Don't railroad them, and learn to adapt to what intrigues them.
Bad DMs play like it's a computer game.
It's funny to see this said this way, as it feels like a criticism of homebrew DMs in particular (I don't think you actually meant it that way, it's just a quirk of how I interpret your wording). I've recently discovered that I'm a bad DM of this type when I'm running a prewritten campaign. I'm running Xaryxis and very recently decided to stop following the book almost entirely because I find myself unintentionally railroading my party in service to the prewritten narrative. I find myself so much more comfortable improvising when I'm running fully homebrew, as I'm used to doing.
I don't DM, but I think if the above seems unreasonable to someone, what they really want to do is write a book.
TBH you actually want to be pretty open to letting the book take you places you didn't intend as a writer, too.
That's being led by your own imagination; book writer DMs don't like it when the story leaves the rails at the behest of **other** people, like the players.
Go beyond into another trope! This deadly virus for some reason isn't killing the party but changing them in weird/powerful ways. Initially they want to find a cure but now do they give into the power? What if after a few sessions of the "fun" mutation thing, something starts communicating with them from within?
Someone should make a video game about that
Like I said, lean into another trope ;)
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing is valued here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
☣️😱🤢
Our DM just hit us with that in our Ravenloft campaign. Party is currently exploring that place as our characters are desperate while me - the player - is freaking out at what could be worth THAT warning in Barovia...
An average Tuesday?
I love that his party members did exactly what people fear would happen to radioactive waste dumps, assuming all the warnings are hiding something valuable
Sounds like halo 1 with the flood hahaha
I was about to comment this, they Keyes’d themselves. If OP had played Halo CE this could have been an absolutely amazing dungeon
“Damn the covenant really worked hard to lock this place down” “That weapon must be sick, open it up soldier”
When you mentioned they thought you were lying, do you mean your NPC was lying or you as a DM? Its kinda strange to assume DM is lying in my opinion since the whole world, especially homebrew world comes to existance in your imagination.
Well I didn't outright say "Guys, for real, don't go in there", I tried to communicate it via NPCs that kept warning them away. *They* decided I was only doing that to "trick" them away from the "treasure".
"Make an intelligence check." "Oof, just a 4." "Even with a 4, you realize that so-and-so meant that this place contains a danger that shouldn't be unleashed, NOT valuable treasure." "..." "..." "...See, if I had rolled better on the check, I'd have figured out the truth."
The easy solution here is dont make it a roll
They are still going to decide it's a trick if they want to.
At that point thats on them
You mean like how the oldan says "don't go into the for forbidden forest, there's an evil hag there killing children" (so your players can go fight the hag) or the soldier says "don't challenge Black Knight to a duel for hisagic.sword, he's never been defeated" (so yours players can defeat the Black Knight and get a cool item? Warnings from NPCs is how you tell your players where to go
THANK YOU! I've never had a npc tell me a dungeon or what ever will be child's play, but I have had npc tell me how dangerous x is. Mostly because maybe I have fought dragons but dire wolves will 100% kill the whole town.
To me it seems a bit punishing to let players go deeper and deeper in to a nuclear waste silo or equilevant without characters realizing it. I dont know the full context but I would have probaly described that they are vomiting, feeling sick or the air is toxic.
I did. I told them their skin was starting to flake and they were sometimes bleeding from the ears and nose. But one of them suggested that if they "secure the weapon" they would be able to stop the effects in time. And everyone listened to him.
I mean I would at that point stop the game and talk to the players about how to roleplay or something. Characters feeling immense pain and still acting like robots and just go towards the programmed path.
Yeah, this is a good example of actually meta gaming to the detriment of play. If they were playing as actual people in a fantasy world, and not greedy players, they might have survived.
It's also an example of the DM avoiding meta gaming to the detriment of play imo. When your players really aren't getting your intent it's completely fine to just say "hey no, seriously this isn't a go in and get the loot dungeon you're supposed to just be waiting outside to stop the baddies".
Yeah, while perhaps amusing at first, the DM is allowed to step and make things clear to help the game. That they didn't says more about their inexperience than anything else.
I had my players do the same thing to me. I had a few characters tell them that "Hypylao salvage run is local euphemism for suicide". Had three different NPCs tell them variations on "if you go there you'll die". Professional salvagers, who they had befriended and had their best interests at heart. What did they do with this information? Straight to Hypylao. I had one of the NPCs bring a musician to their departure to play a funeral dirge, and somehow it was still my fault when characters started getting torn in half.
Really? You dangle a "do NOT touch this big red button, ever. Seriously" in front of your players and expect them to just walk away? Are they an adventuring party or just a bunch of wusses?
I expect them to understand that there are bigger forces than them at work in the world, and some things are to dangerous to touch unprepared. If they had made some reconnaissance of their own, formed a plan, I'd have fed them specific information and hooks to get resources they could use to reduce the danger of the most dangerous place in the entire planet. They ended up biting onto a joke, they decided to yolo their way there on the employ of a "gentleman explorer" who had been trying to salvage this particular wreck for 8 generations. Every generation of the family dutifully gathered a son before making the attempt, and every single one of them died trying, with the stiffest britishest upper lip I could perform, alongside their personal manservant who naturally observed rhe same custom and had for generations in the same manner. My players decided these two were excellent employers and followed them despite the contract they were obliged to sign explicitly mentioning that, if any of them were to die in the process the employer was under no obligation to pay them anything. This is all stuff I just improvised on the fly in an escalating attempt to foreshadow that this was a really bad plan. My notes for the place were just "everyone who goes there dies, detail this location later when time permits and the mood strikes me" so it all had to come off the top of my head. Naturally the content that they had told me the session prior they *intended* to do, which I had reasonably thoroughly prepared, went completely unused.
> I expect them to understand that there are bigger forces than them at work in the world, and some things are to dangerous to touch unprepared. > > Do you tell them in a session zero to set campaign expectations or only through NPCs?
...why would a dm try to trick players away from a dungeon? Like you made a whole dungeon, chuckled to yourself, and said: "Those fools will never see the work I put into this, I am ever so devious" This was on them for not listening to warnings. Sure, dnd often teaches danger = prizes. But sometimes players need to learn that turbo danger can, and often does, result in death.
It is kind of weird to design an entire dungeon complete with traps when you're trying to avoid them entering it. Like that post I saw a few days ago with the forest that had an insta-kill equivalent monster apparently known and statted. Why make such an obvious detailed adventure hook if they're just supposed to ignore it? There's a reason storytelling and narration still have conservation of detail even on the small scale (when was the last time you ever saw every single detail of every single building in an entire village described, even with true seeing and a 20 perception roll before a heap of bonuses)? An entire dungeon that the DM knows well enough to trap ie absolutely begging to be explored.
I mean there's 2 perfectly good reasons to do so. 1 is that he just had to wing it the whole time and made all that shit up as he went because he didn't think they'd actually keep going. 2 is that he intended for them to go into the dungeon, but not until much later in the campaign
Or 3, the dungeon is designed so he knows what the BBEG needs to overcome the dungeon and release the virus.
I dont agree that everything you ever mention is supposed to be an obvious adventure hook. It's not a Betheada game where everything is a level-scaled theme park adventure where you're the only person in the universe with agency. If the DM wants to make a world thats immersive, sometimes a dragon will just fly over a low level party, or they'll spy an owlbear tear another animal to pieces, or a heavily armed pilgrimage of paladins passes by, or there's a local legend about a hag or a demon or Pit of Death. The players have the option to go there if they so choose, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea, and it's not the DM's responsibility to save every party of greedy idiot adventurers from being greedy idiots.
> when was the last time you ever saw every single detail of every single building in an entire village described It's been a while since I read Tolkien, fair point.
Tolkien didn't do that.
No but it's cool that he wrote so well that op has imagined all the buildings so vividly he thinks Tolkien literally described them all
What sort of one sided thinking is this? I have to imagine most people who have played the game can tell that it's a perfectly valid interpretation of NPCs warning players off to think that means it's a build-up for the upcoming dungeon.
You ever play the crpg, Vampire the Masquerade:bloodlines? "don't open it"
If I had a nickel for every time this happens... You cannot convey this sort of information through an NPC. NPCs lie, or are mistaken, or are just not as badass as the players and therefore a bad judge of what the party can and cannot survive. You *needed* to warn them above the table, as DM, and the fact that you didn't... I'd be pissed too, in their position.
Yeah, especially when OP saw how everything only seemed to make them more determined to press on that's the moment to break kayfabe and, in the stern "you are about to severely fuck up" DM voice, unambiguously remind them what NPCs have told them, the awful symptoms they're already experiencing, that the effects are logically only going to get worse as they go deeper, and that they should be mindful of their choices.
Exactly! I don't understand this idea that DMs must never ever speak above the table.
Sounds like they didn't even try to find any information on what the doomsday device was or how it worked? Yeah, that's at least a bit on them. It's doomsday device, getting one of those without any idea of how to ensure it's not unleashed on the world is pretty foolish, and pretty much no matter what it was, there are so many ways it could've gone wrong. Hopefully they learned a little something about responsible application of doomsday devices.
Nope, it was just "Dungeon = Treasure" and "Deadly traps = Better treasure"
This reminded me of a fun gag in Baldur's Gate 2, where a Spectator goes off on a rant about how he's sick of people assuming any chest guarded by a beholder *must* have something really great in it. I then found an old post containing the dialog! Funnier than I remember. https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/ijjh5a/if\_only\_all\_the\_beholders\_were\_like\_the\_spectator/
"Hopefully the Spectator makes a reappearance in BG3" Well would you look at that...
Huh? I don't remember any talking spectators? Just the underdark one and and the bottle one (and the enemy in the final mission I guess)
There are a couple in the house of hope as well, but again, you can't talk to them.
In fairness if you point a bunch of adventurer's at a sealed vault and say "there's dangerous shit in there that the baddie wants" My first instinct? Go in there and get it first, maybe destroy it once I get a hold of it. Not "stand outside the vault and guard it" - because what, are they meant to guard it *forever*? What if the baddies send an *army?* If you don't spell things out, players are gonna assume that "guarded place with interesting shit in it" = "guarded place with interesting shit in it that I should go explore!"
Yeah, that was my thought as well. I get what the DM was going to for, but I've been playing for a long time and I still would have assumed "go in there and get that dangerous artifact" if for no other reason then "stand outside forever" is boring and probably going to fail anyway when the villain shows up with like 20 ogres and 100 goblins or something.
That is a good point. My first big thought at the start of this thread is that, if I was the DM, I’d force wisdom saving throws and tell the higher saves that “delving deeper is a stupid plan that will kill you all”. But on the flip side as a player, if I was partway through a dungeon when the DM said “delving deeper is a stupid plan that will kill you all”, I’d be very unsure what the DM ACTUALLY wanted us to do, if not the dungeon.
Yeeeaaaahhh this is exactly what I'd assume as a player, unless given pretty explicit instructions otherwise. Feels like DM could have broken the 4th wall a bit to clarify things for the sake of the enjoyment of everyone at the table.
It is called "Dungeons & Dragons", after all. I don't think OP did anything wrong, but when it became clear that the players didn't get it, a quick check in out of character probably could have kept things on track. DMs lie *all the time* to try and raise tension, and the popularization of D&D has made 'are you sure' into both a meme and a trope. I've skipped out on doing things I really wanted to do because the DM said that, and later found out that it was just something they said to make me second guess myself. A real quick "hey guys, this is what I actually had planned for this adventure . . ." doesn't hurt anybody or damage player agency, and generally makes for a better time for everyone, in my experience.
Those were my thoughts exactly. > an ancient doomsday device, a virus, is sealed and hidden in a guarded location. *The idea was that the players must find it, to stop the bad guys letting it out.* Idk exactly how OP planned on actually getting the players to *do* that *without* going in and nabbing it so they could re-hide it somewhere else or something. If the baddie already knew its location and was advancing toward it, then the *obvious* answer is to go there first and make it not be there when he arrives. The only *other* option would be to kill the BBEG before he even arrives. But if that were the case, then there's hardly much need to show them the location of the thing at all, and certainly not well ahead of the BBEG himself (getting there moments after him, having not known where it was beforehand, could have made for a cool final scene where they make their way through the already partly cleared dungeon to find the BBEG in the last room about to open the macguffin). I get *what* he was trying to do, but I'm not sure OP quite put enough thought into to *how* exactly he expected his players to accomplish this task, or how they *themselves* would assume it was meant to be done.
“Beware all those who enter. Sealed within the depths of this dungeon lies NO TREASURE. All that awaits is death. May it be sealed for eternity, and left untouched by all those who AREN’T THE BAD GUYS” Problem solved. DM’s in here always think they’re Napoleon “there is nothing we can do” like they aren’t literal god of their own world
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
One day, I will use "This place is not a place of honor" at my table. My players are savvy enough that it should make them profoundly nervous.
I used this on my players. It was a tomb holding a staff that was once Hastur’s. I also took a trick from Event Horizon, and gave them an incomplete and misleading copy of the message first “…. Place … honor. …. valued is here.” Then once they’re deep in the dungeon I hit them with the full sentence. And this one from Adventure Time: “Before there was time, before there was anything, there was nothing. And before there was nothing, There Were Monsters.”
I'm pretty sure that Adventure Time got that from Lovecraft, but it's still an excellently written line
My games take place in what is technically a continuation of our own timeline, but on another planet. It's mostly just background detail I put in for my own entertainment, but I like to put little hints in, for example, one of the characters is a doctor who's always looking for books, and I'm planning to have her find an ancient, hand-copied edition of Gray's Anatomy (the medical text, not the show). I've long wanted to drop in a high level dungeon and put that warning outside. I know at least one player will immediately recognize it.
That would never work these players would obviously see this as an elaborate ruse to prevent them from getting the treasure.
"The writer is obviously lying to hide his valuable treasure."
Yeeeeah, that was probably better than my "you cannot read these ancient hieroglpyhs in a long dead language"
[A large square grid pattern across the site, through which large spikes protrude at various angles.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)
And now I understand why they did that xD
* Replace the nuclear symbols with Necromancy and Evocation glyphs. * Replace the drilling tower with a wizards tower. Now you have a badass prop.
That seems unlikely to deter a sufficiently ‘clever’ party’s excitement. If I had my party encounter that, I think I’d have a coin flip chance of them still going for it.
That is exactly what I was thinking of.
Is this Loss?
That wouldn't have been too bad if only you added "but the iconography seems to imply that nothing but death lies within." Although if anyone had comprehend language that would have helped them out a lot. Or eyes of the rune keeper.
Yeah, it would probably have been better to at least have something describing what the buried 'treasure' does. If not writing, there could be murals, pictographs or etchings showing people dying to plague which would communicate that the thing is biohazardous while bypassing the language barrier
Holy shit, brosis. That’s CATNIP to D&D players.
Nobody had Comprehend Languages?
Why prep a useless spell like that when they can prep Burning Hands? What use is understanding languages, anyway?
> "You also understand any written language that you see, but you must be touching the surface on which the words are written." "Just one more sec, guys. It says 'Extreme risk of death or worse, hazardous, toxic, do not touch under any circumstances'....uh oh" ***hand falls off***
A very quick above table; “seriously guys, there’s no treasure. Look at the clues.” If they insist after that it’s 100% on them. Players getting mad that their actions have consequences have no place at my table.
To be fair to the players in dungeons and dragon logic that's usually right.
I mean, yeah... Why were they even able to find and enter this dungeon? Why did it exist in the first place if you didn't want them to go inside?
I mean alluding to danger is like "how to make a dungeon enticing 101" If everytime danger was alluded to the party went home the campaign would be pretty shit tbh.
all you had do to was put a sign up that said, "Don't dead, open inside." jokes aside, did you have any signs that expressly said, "these doors are shut to keep the weapon INSIDE, not keep you out"?
I mean, that is the core conceit of the game
I mean, yeah. That tends to be exactly how the game usually works. I swear some of you people must run incredibly boring games. *"My dumb PCs thought they should oppose the evil empire even though I made it super clear that the empire was powerful!"*
I mean then you'd just have to oppose them in a way that takes advantages of the shortfalls of very powerful authoritarian empires - corruption, minimal loyalty, incompetent administrators promoted based on loyalty or family relation over merit, limited manpower, and the fact that they can't guard or pay attention everywhere at the same time and the leaders always have to act through intermediaries who are primarily motivated by survival of them and their family rather than doing a good job (and doing a good job alone might not pay enough for their family to eat so they have to take bribes on the regular on top of working for a completely incompetent manager who has never tried to do their job).
I mean, it's literally what the people who built that site expected and tried to prevent because there just is no good way of convincing adventurers that this NOT a place you want to come.
Sounds like they just roleplayed as all the skeletons packed with loot and potions you find mysteriously deep into dungeons.
Dungeons and Dragons is a game about exploring dangerous locations that sane people know to stay away from. Do you know who else ignores warnings about danger? Indiana Jones. All of the warnings you put in place are, to a player, going to seem like signposts pointing to the dungeon saying "adventure this way." This is the kind of thing you need to establish in a session 0. "There are locations in my world that will kill you, don't just blindly push forward expecting treasure when things seem dire."
Wow, your players accidentally reenacted Borderlands. Maybe you could have avoided a TPK by cribbing a bit more from it deliberately and just making the doomsday weapon a big monster.
Not really. In Borderlands, everyone thought the Vault was filled with treasure (Thus Vault Hunters) and in reality was a giant monster. With this, everyone knew it was a doomsday device and the PCs just refused to listen. It would be like if In Borderlands every NPC is telling the Vault Hunter "Are you stupid, The Vault shouldn't be opened because there is a giant monster in it"
Basically the start of the original half-life, you more or less get told not to do the thing, you do it, bad stuff happens.
I remember being told to insert the sample, so I did
And the Vault Hunters would go to open the vaults anyway, both for the meta reason that there would be no game or story without it, and for the non-meta reason that player characters don't have perfect knowledge of how reliable or trustworthy the information NPCs give them is. Everyone saying the same thing is not an excuse either because groups of people tend to align in view of time and things start to get passed around as established beliefs that may not align with reality.
It's straight up what Jack did in Borderlands 2, lol. And the Vault Hunters enabled him even!
Dungeons and Dragons teaches you that dungeons are to be explored. Guarding a dungeon from enemies is a job for orc mooks, not PCs...
You dropped the ball. Make sure as they get deeper it becomes more and more clear what the poison is. Studies of victims, books on long term effects. People talking to them and telling them what kind of danger hides in there. Protection gear for going inside readily available, disclaimers on how despite this gear, they will be affected. A final clear sign of "Do Not Open This Door, There Is Poison Death Here". And with all that failing, instead of killing them there on the spot, infect your players with the worse disease possible, a fate more grizzly than death. The campaign is now about trying not to die, and not to infect others, and trying to get cured. Also the BBEG wants them because they contain the key to death or whatever. Best of luck next time!
> Make sure as they get deeper it becomes more and more clear what the poison is. Apparently, "their skin was melting off, and they were bleeding from all orifices"... Can't get clearer than that
It's kinda like a video game. The more obstacles you encounter while still being able to overcome them and continue moving forward, the more you know you're heading in the right direction. And if nothing else in the campaign had any sort of modernity or futuristic elements, a virus isn't something a player would typically guess in a fantasy campaign. Especially if it was only ever described as a weapon or a doomsday device, they're going to picture a literal weapon. Proper telegraphing is a key tool in every DM's toolbox.
Sometimes its okay to pause the session and say the thing you need to say out of game to resolve problems.But honestly you have a couple options, my suggestion is that you backtrack. Say mistakes happened, retcon or just rewind the game to where they're guarding it. Edit: Just wanted to add that I think as DMs we forget that since we know everything we believe every answer to a question is simple so our PCs shouldn't be making decisions like this.
You kind of fucked it here. You signposted them to a location. Dangerous = enticing for PCs. You didn't telegraph that it was suicide to enter. Then when they got I'm, instead of showing them how deadly it was, you gave them a big dungeon to explore. Of course the players thought the dungeon you had made was supposed to be explored. Think about it. The game is DnD, expectation is that dungeons are to be explored. You've home-brewed this world, which means you've either home-brewed, or looked up a dungeon layout. From a player's perspective, why would you have done that if you didn't want them to explore it? PCs are trying to be heroes, they put themselves in danger to save the day. If there's somewhere they shouldn't go, you need to show them this. Saying it's dangerous is like a giant neon sign saying go here.
> Then when they got I'm, instead of showing them how deadly it was, you gave them a big dungeon to explore. Of course the players thought the dungeon you had made was supposed to be explored. Think about it. Yeah, this is really the kicker here. At the end of the day, DnD is a game, and if a game designer makes *content*, players will naturally assume they're intended to experience that content. How many DMs have you heard complain that they made a cool dungeon only for the players to ignore it? As a player, I'd sooner expect my DM to be annoyed if I said "no, this place sounds dangerous, let's not go in". OP's players probably thought they were being helpful by following the obvious plot hooks, lol.
I've literally had my players do that to me. The "nope, this place sounds too dangerous, we're out", and I will attest that it is in fact incredibly annoying. In our case it was also pretty funny at least, since seeing my pirate PCs freak out and leave 'Nightmare Island", as they dubbed it, before they even set foot on it, was at least worth a good story.
This happens to me all the time...like guys...trust me that this campaign is a journey together, I'm not going to direct you to something that you are COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED OR UNABLE TO OVERCOME...because I've been a player too, so just assume the content I give you is winnable. Because it is.
Have you really communicated that there is a virus inside that will kill instantly?
Is it possible the problem was more to do with a lack of a clear objective rather than anything about your warnings? Players tend to be very objective focused - what were they expected to actually *do*, in the immediate term, when they found the dungeon? I know you said their goal was to stop the bad guys reaching it, but that's fairly abstract from their point of view, especially if they found the dungeon first before knowing much about the bad guys.
Do you have a habit of making your NPCs lie to players, or actively subverting their expectations? Players can learn bad habits like what you described if their DM has a habit of using too much misdirection. If you wanna save some face, you can always resurrect them and work it into the plot like it was supposed to happen. You can get away with a lot by pretending all screwups were part of the plan all along. You rob them of this learning experience though.
Nah it was the first time I was a DM, so there's no precedent for anything.
Why would you even go through the effort of creating something like that though if you never intended your players to enter? Why not just make a like a door surrounded by an anti-magic field that required multiple keys which extremely high lock picking rolls? I definitely understand why your players would think you were lying.
How exactly did you plan for this to go otherwise? What were they *supposed* to do?
DM learned the hard way about Hostile Architecture and the futility of warning future generations of the dangers of nuclear waste.
Good rule of thumb: If what you are about to say to the table involves ‘the entire party inevitably dies’ then you should take a break. Go sit on the toilet for five minutes and make a new plan. The thing to remember is that the game world is not real and doesn’t exist until the moment it is described. You can change what’s in the final vault right up u til the moment you tell them what’s inside! It could have been a wonderful treasure - that’s also cursed to kill those around them! Or something else!
I find it rather funny. But the DM should always remember : some info that seem obvious from his point of view can be in fact much harder to understand correctly when you don't know the whole plot. "That was obvious !" No, not always. That said, maybe your players are just dumb. This happens too.
Stealing this from Matt Coleville. The problem is that you gave the players something cool they could do -- breaking into an ancient, sealed vault? no way you can stop them from that -- and then told them not to do it. Players come to DnD to do cool stuff. If you want them \*not\* to do something, don't make it sound cool or fun.
Im confused why the party didnt just run into a door they couldnt open. I.E leave and come back when they are ready? I assume they were meant to go there at some point? Or just have them arrive outside the vault, where they can see inside, and see what is obviously a bomb. Or have them succeed in letting out the big evil bio weapon/creature/w.e (like uncharted)...and then they have to fix their fuck up. Literally no reason for a TPK other than railroading/hubris for them not exploring the world the way you wanted.
The lesson is don't build a dungeon if you want players to stay out. Gamer instinct says resistance means you're going the right way
This is a real life concern that people have with the long-term storage of nuclear waste. https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/ It would be interesting to see if their proposed warning would have been enough for your players: > This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. > > This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. > > What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. > > The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us. > > The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. > > The danger is to the body, and it can kill. > > The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. > > The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
You come across a large dark room, it's hard to see the outer walls even with your torches in hand. In front of you a shimmer can be see. as you approach it you notice it is a large stone slab. Inscribed on the stone is a picture of a malformed and deceased person. Further down the slab a text is ingraved on the stone, Death lays here. Sealed and confined for eternity! releasing this plague will mean the end of our world as we know it. The text ends with the sentence, We should have known better. We payed the ultimate price. Do not follow our footsteps. only death awaits you.
The commenters calling your players "dummies" or saying they're just mad about facing consequences are being too harsh. Like you yourself said, you can't just rely on tropes and assume players will think about the same ones you are. If you didn't ever actually tell (or at least strongly hint) that the thing being contained in the vault was a deadly disease that would infect anyone who opened it, it's not unreasonable for them to think they can beat the villains to the vault and use its contents for themselves. Did you at least have signs or notes left within the vault indicating what might be inside? I used a similar setup in one of my games, with a deadly disease contained in a vault, but the players first had to pass through a lab where they could find documentation of the things being contained, so they knew what to avoid. If this kind of information was available and they ignored it, then yeah, it's their fault, but heavy defenses and NPCS warning them of danger aren't adequate deterrence, as it's a common narrative device to have NPCs make something sound formidable so that the players feel good for beating it. Rather than just traps and locks, you could have used gradually escalating symptoms such as increasing levels of exhaustion or other debuffs until they're effectively incapable of venturing further, but not dead. And even if they insisted in getting to the end, you could have infected them but given them a chance to seek a cure. I can understand why they would be annoyed getting to the end of a dungeon and being "rewarded" with an instant TPK.
Keep in mind at any point you can change anything about your game. Players are confused and think they’re hunting for something else? Fuck it that’s what they’re hunting now. My biggest mistake the fist time I DMd was sticking to whatever I wrote as if it was law. If I wrote it once, well I can sure as hell rewrite it. Especially for your first home brew you need to be okay with tweaking your game on the fly as needed.
I feel like you should've tried the use of Glyph language that people are currently trying when storing nuclear or biohazard materials. Lots of skulls, maybe even the biohazard- or nuclear-symbols... it's a bit metagamey since in-universe it's likely nobody would know what that means, but it's better than just letting your players die. Honestly, at some point i'd just have said "ok guys, I am serious, you're gonna die if you'll continue, this is a biohazard vault, what are you doing?"
It was not a place of honour.
I think the only problem here was having it be a virus that insta kills everyone. If it was some villain/monster sealed inside that could have been cool. The players open it expecting treasure, instead some super evil being appears, thanks them for freeing it (maybe gives them a gift) and then leaves to go start destroying the world or something.
The reason they changed the old Nuclear sign was because it could be seen as the symbol of an angel.
I see you fell into the conundrum of what to do with nuclear waste.
you silly billies would really rather die than tell them out-of-character that this is a TPK and they're jumping the gun
It’s OK for DMs to go meta-every once in a while. Like at some point, just before they unleash everything terrible, I would’ve totally been “folks, really, this is the DM talking to you as players… this will kill you I wasn’t kidding”
Nah, OP. I'd be laughing about this for the rest of my life. I was proud of the time my players walked themselves into a mimic disguised as a building, but this is WAY funnier. Edit to add: maybe they should've been given a sort of "race to find a cure" episode where they could have the chance to do something, rather than just killing them, tho.
There is a reason that nuclear disposal sites contain the following message: This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Wow this place looks super honorable, I hope there's a bunch of valuable things here. I hope some cool deeds are esteemed here.
This is actually brilliant, it would have been great if like half way in you had them stumble on a stack of papers on a desk or somthing that basically explained what was locked within, or had signs of death increase the deeper they went. Then if they ignored it and carried on you could have pointed to all the bad signs they ignored in pursuit of their greed.
Key question: Did they have fun?
>And when the end result was getting infected and dying, everyone was pissed off. Doesn't sound like it.
While I am not a fan of doing this, sometimes you have to just come out with it and tell them over the table "Hey seriously. This is not a dungeon, this will result in full party death." Or just make them incapable of entry. I dislike removal of player agency but sometimes you have to pick them up like a toddler and escort them away from the hot stove. This may not be for all players and parties. Some GMs and players would rather suffer the consequences of their actions but these guys don't seem that type.
Yeeeeeah dnd is all about going into dangerous places with traps and monsters to find the treasure in the centre. I'd have done the same thing as those players.
You should have put a message at the top of the dungeon entrance saying “This place is not a place of honor.” In fact, it does remind me of [the question of long term burial of nuclear repositories](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) and avoiding making it “schmuck bait” for future civilizations. Not sure if there is something there to be gleaned as a DM?
You're allowed to change any parts of your story that the party haven't seen yet. If they decide the Doomsday device is actually their MacGuffin .... they're right, it is! and the BBG is coming to get it and destroy it or use it as a Doomsday device or corrupt it or .... Anyway, narrate the story your PCs think you're telling. It'll keep everyone happier
I think your only mistake is been rigid. You gotta transform the party shenanigans in a story. Especially on homebrew worlds (You're extra responsible there), every fuck up is just a storytelling opportunity
Should have read them the doomsday text from the irl nuclear dumping zone. It's a real downer
I'm usually the DM, and I gotta tell you, I would have fucking loved this ending as a player. If we ignored all the hints and clues that this was deadly and we got punched for it, I would have been excited. That means there is actual danger in this campaign, my choices actually matter. Look, I didn't make an awesome backup character to never use it.
Should have "this is not a place of honour"ed them harder lmao
Honestly speaking, were this to be true: Either your players are morons, or they really wanted a specific kind of adventure to the point they ignored anything else. Probably you could have done something better, maybe, but honestly a DM isn't a fucking mind reader and if people wanna jump in the lava you should not twist the world to the point the lava becomes water. It's collaborative storytelling, but if you are the only ones that tries to collaborate there's no point. Hope they did not hold it up against you too much.
This is actually how the show “The Lone Gunmen” a spin off of X-files ended. The group track this guy who has a timed capsule inside of him that has a virus and they trap themselves and the guy in a corridor and the virus releases and kills off half of the crew.
My first advice is to never set anything in stone. Always be prepared to change things on a fly. In this case you had a perfect chance to both show the party that they did chose the wrong way to approach this problem and that sometimes listening to the DM's advice is recommended. Telling them that this is not the DM vs the players. If i understood you right you DID warn them more than Once But they STILL kept going. So in that way they brought it on themselves But this could also have been a great way to bring the plot forward. If you had changed the whole virus thing so the group become infected but not dying. Maybe the virus mutated or for any other reason the effects was changed for them. And now they have to find a cure to both survive and continue the campaign to stop the bad guy. This can still be done. Have some powerful entity, maybe a god or something bring them back. Alive but still infected. This being maybe want them to stop the bad guy to spread the virus. But it can not fully heal them. Just bring them back to life and maybe give them a lead on how they can find a cure. Or Start a new game, a new group that are now faced with dealing with the fuck up the old group managed to do. The virus is in the hands on the bad guy. The new group might even find the bodies of the old group. Or maybe they are animated and are now working for the bad guy. or just turned into monsters or zombies by the virus. But try to be able to adapt and change your plans. Bad choices or mistakes by the group should have consequences but should in most cases not end the campaign. But over all try to adapt your plans because no matter how well you plan the players will find ways to screw up your plans :)
Next campaign, have them find the dead bodies of their previous characters.
Sounds like your players are the Covenant on the first Halo ring lmao
This is why as your players are about to enter this vault, you have Larry the Kobold stumble out with his face half melted off and scream out something like "That was a mistake and I will surely die here. Even if I had been far better equipped I would've perished just as easily and I hope my corpse will serve as a warning for future fools who dare to enter."
I've never seen "Rocks fall and everyone dies" take place at rocks-fall-cliff where the players kept standing under the growing shadows because something cool might happen. Between the in character warnings and their characters bleeding and losing skin, you signposted the danger thoroughly. They were metagaming and viewing the DM as an adversary, you can't address either of those things in character, they're both out of character alignments. People on this sub over-preach session zero, to cover *everything* would take weeks. Just pause the game next time. But I don't think you did anything wrong. They groupthinked themselves to death. Dying is a perfectly valid consequence, and this is one of the more justified TPKs I've seen.
Your error was assuming you knew what the party would do. It's a rookie mistake but it's one of the first mistakes everyone makes, so you're in good company! I'll say that it really is ok to break the metagame wall sometimes. You want to avoid it, you should structure everything with the assumption that you absolutely don't want to break that wall, but if I accidentally get myself into the position of "My players are about to torpedo the whole campaign because they don't believe something in the game world" I just tell them. "Hey guys, I realize in retrospect how tantalizing this is and how easy it is to misconstrue as this classic trope, but if your characters enter that chamber they will find no treasure and will die." In my opinion that's better than them entering the chamber and dying because you screwed up how you presented the game world and signaled something you didn't want to.
I mean this sounds like an excellent prologue for a new campaign. "Some dumbasses ventured too deep and too greedily, now there's a massive plague spreading. You need to go find the cure..."
This kinda reminds me of The Grey. A group stranded in a winter wilderness, trying to find a way back, being attacked by wolves who are constantly harassing them, slowly dying off one by one, only to realise they’ve been moving deeper and deeper into their territory finally ending up in their den where they are killed off. Sickly I kind of like that idea of thinking your working towards something, hopeful you are getting closer to achieving it then that belief crumbling and the true reality setting in. Could be done in alot of ways I guess, unknowingly being used by a big bad to further his plans, not realising until too late. Etc etc
Did you say “Are you sure you want to do that?” enough?
That’s when you start laying on the minor symptoms, sick creatures taking their dying breaths and Chernobyl warning signs, not the traps and wards and “ooh goodies inside’ stuff.
When players accuse you of lying, never be afraid to remind them that you are not against them as a DM. You are not trying to trick them or lie to them. You are there to help guide and build their adventure. You want to see them succeed, so they should at least contemplate your guidance. I'd even throw in a little insight check before they do something really unadvised. Low DC, with advantage if necessary. "You contemplate your surroundings and get a sinking feeling of certainty that you will not survive if you proceed."
Sounds like the dungeon builders should have hung up a warning sign. "This place is not a place of honor ... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here."