Negative Continuity in Gaming

 "As you may recall, our last episode had nothing to do with the previous episode. Or this one either."

—The Pigs in Space announcer, The Muppet Show

Last year I wrote a post about rebooting certain adventure locals in my games. 

I discussed my decades of trying to remain true to a certain continuity in my world. Such as when the Isle of Dread was explored for the first time, that locale would no longer by as in the book. The island was now a know commodity, and ships would sail to it from time to time looking to trade with the local tribes that had been placated by the original visitors. When it gets visited now there is a mainlander company outpost among the native huts to serve visitors after the long and dangerous journey. 

But in the most recent decades I stopped worrying about it so much. I mean, since around 2010 I've used the Lichway twice, making for a total of at least 3 times I've used it. And when later characters got there, no, there were no legions of undead roaming its halls. I simply reset the location. I've done the same with my long used adaptation of Runequest's Apple Lane. I've used it close to a half dozen times as is. And why not? My player roster changes fully every few years (with the notable exception of my oft-mentioned long time player "T"), so who was I fooling? Just reuse the shit, nobody cares. Most importantly me. 

So I was using the term "reboot" or "reset" for this concept, but I recently learned a new term that sounds much better to me, and most people won't even know what it means in the way the automatically do when you say "reboot."

That term/concept is "Negative Continuity."

We've seen it for years in things we enjoy in the media. We saw it in the Simpsons for decades. And my earliest experience with it was probably the evil dead movies. The second one was big time a full on reboot, but if you squinted your brain a little you could find ways to tie in the first. And the ending of 2 lead into Army of Darkness, although that was tweaked big time (Ash became a hero to the English knights he encountered at the end of 2, and at the start of 3 he's actually beaten and enslaved by them).

But my first exposure to the term was in my Lupin the Third fandom. In a previous post I talked about having discovered Lupin, and my full-bore love of the series. There have been 6 series of the show, the first in the early 70's and the most recent from last year. And though most elements stay the same (Lupins gang members Jigen and Goemon, and the betrayals and obsessions related to femme fatale Fujiko Mine), the series are very different, and often offer different origins of the characters and how they came to meet. While you cannot directly tie in each series, based primarily on the time periods set, newer episodes have given some fan service to episodes decades prior (such as Goemon and Lupin being enemies at first and scenes of their old fights). But they are different animals altogether. Each series kind of living in its own little dimension. 

And of course as a comics fan you grew up very aware of the concept, but that was kind of baked into both Marvel and DC. Fans called it "Retcon." That lead directly the popularity of the "Multiverse" both Marvel and DC movies are tapping into. Its no new idea to us old comic book wonks. 

So the Lichway, Apple Lane, its all negative continuity. Reset. Reboot. Whatever. Though with Apple Lane, I'm keeping a certain amount of continuity from past games. Years ago, in my last use of Apple Lane's Rainbow Mounds portion of the adventure, I had an enchantress become involved with the characters, and she herself entered The Mounds, to eventually be killed by the players, along with White Eye and the other inhabitants. So of course White Eye and company will be there, and the enchantress will be resurrected as well. But as she was a newer addition to the setting, I'm going to have her be vaguely aware of her situation and previous experiences, but her sort of cursed to not be able to leave the place unless she survives and White Eye and his forces are all killed. If the characters want to converse with her, I'm going to have her perhaps talk to them about her situation, and the timeless nature of Apple Lane and The Rainbow Mounds. The repeating nature of it all. It seems like it might be fun to kind of parody what I've been doing with the location over the decades. And if a character should die in there, well, he can be a part of my next use of the location (although the next game might be the penultimate and final use of the location, unless I ever run Runequest again). 

But "negative continuity." It has a nice ring to it. 

Cheers. 

TOTAL PARTY KILL!!!

Total Party Kill. Just the words together like that harkens to late 80’s/early 90’s sci fi movie techno-thrillers with phrases like MDK - Murder Death Kill or TNP - Take No Prisoners. Cold and scary.

When I was kid, the concept of an entire party of adventurers getting destroyed seemed a bit like an urban legend, and usually a slaughter at the breath weapon of some dragon that was too strong to kill. Back then we didn’t have a term for it.

I personally cannot remember one instance when I witnessed it, but I’m sure I did at some hobby shop or convention game room at some point. But maybe not - I didn’t spend much time at those places once I had my own regular groups and also started getting laid on a regular basis. Having seen it and remembering it would have meant the deaths had meaning, and in my personal games death always had big meaning. Hell, it almost never happens so when it does happen to a player in my game it is bigger than shit.

Am I just too easy-going as a DM? I’m not sure my players would describe me that way, but I’m sure they would say I am a player-friendly DM. In my AD&D games, I have a general rule that no player character will die in their first game – at least by my hand. If they end up into the negatives (as almost always happens in the first game to somebody), I just hold them up at around -5, and when they are healed they have some appropriate set-back (a few games ago a first level fighter got the shit stung out of her by a giant spider. When she got back to the positives in hit points, she had a nice little poison susceptibility). I also tend to molly coddle characters a bit until they hit 3rd level or so, trying to let them expand a bit as a character before they risk true deadly danger.

But we aren’t talking about being a nice guy DM here, we are talking about TPK, which has a tendency to occur at mid to high levels. They don’t always seem to necessarily happen at the climax of an adventure, unless that was the DM’s aim all along.

Columnist Roe Adams described it like this:

"A full TPK (total party kill) is an appalling abandonment of the players to the whims of gaming fate. It is a failure to be worthy of that trust they offered you when they sat down."(Adams III, Roe R. (2003-08-25). "First Night" (in English). RPGA Feature Article - Wizards of the Coast).

Wow. Well, it kind of is on the DM’s head, unless the party makes some foolish mistakes. I imagine it just cannot be helped in some cases. Poor strategy, bad roll, good DM rolls, all kinds of things enter into it. I decided to do a bit of research by starting a thread about it over at rpg.net. It got a big response, with lots of great stories of TPK. Here are a few excerpts from some responses:

… Most more often, one or two characters gets disabled, and the others keep on fighting in an attempt to turn the tide, and one by one they all drop as well…

… the characters completely misread a situation and blunder wildly, causing them all to be taken out of the game. Something like a pit of lava, but the characters somehow get the idea that the pit of lava is a gateway, so they all jump in (and they all die)…

…D&D 3.5 party beset wolves. the players wanted a 'straight up' fight, no DM fudging. nothing behind the screen, all rolls on the table. they lost…

… DnD 2e: Party of 1st-2nd level characters vs. one ghoul. Paralyzed all but the elf due to poor saves and mauled the elf to death. Party assumed to be eaten at leisure…

… Tomb of Horrors front entrance; party vs. a small flock of cocktrice. Failed saves aplenty and ended up with the mage up a tree trying to fend them off with a dagger….

… As GM: 3rd D+D. 5 players (2 totally new). 2nd level PCs, standard orc-ambush turns horribly bad. The scout goes ahead, gets caught in a trap (one he knew was there but wanted to see what happened anyway?). Others rush forward to save him, everybody dies no matter how much I fudge. The longest series of bad rolls ever…

… Cyberpunk 2020: With the smart players dead due to a variety of mishaps (including a headshot from a sniper) the remaining characters smart off to the cops after they get stopped for a traffic violation. After a couple of dead cops and a freeway chase SWAT gets mobilized and toasts the party van with the minigun from a AV-4…

… He wiped out the party at the climax of each of them. Sadly not because of anything the players did wrong but because he liked the whole "you think you've succeeded but you haven't" schtick and was loath to let our characters survive his campaigns. I think he was trying to teach us players something about life. The only lession we learned was how much arbitrary TPKs by a GM piss us off…



In looking at these and many other responses, I’d say the three most common reasons for the phenomenon of TPK are:

3) a miserable, asshole manchild GM with delusions of power who delights in making games shit for players. How do these guys get players coming back?

2) An encounter that is just too much for the groups power level (usually they have the option to run away, but do not.). A creature, like a ghoul or carrion crawler, that can paralyze multiple times, are common things I have heard killed low level parties.

1) A fair encounter, but the players roll terrible and the GM rolls great. Seems to be the single most common thing. More often than not, the players also have a chance to escape things, but often don’t realize how bad things are until too late. Things just happen too fast for them.

Is it best for the GM to fudge and save them? Very often I have heard of the GM just saying “ok, instead of killed you are all captured.” Or, amazingly and it happens more often than you think, the GM starts the entire scenario from scratch and let’s the party have another go at it.

Yeah, I have fudged once or twice, but in very minor ways, and never to save a character. Having said that, a side of me is a die roll purist. If you fudge things too much, you take away a lot of the chance aspect of the game, and as part of that you lose some of the life simulation aspect.

I thought about the whole Total Party Kill concept a lot in the last week, because the party in my AD&D game may be facing the possibility. A first in my games.

You see, in The Rainbow Mounds cavern, a PC hobbit cleric is tied up in a cave with a couple of old enemies, an orc troop leader, and a half elf enchantress, have her at their mercy. The enchantress (a high level illusionist) goes into her private room to freshen her make-up so she will look nice for the nasty things she is going to do to the hobbit. When she and her two charmed fighting men step away, the Orcs offer to let the hobbit go if she helps them “kill the bitch.” She is untied, gets her gear on, and the enchantress steps out with her men. The fight is on! Well, I stopped it there, because things were not going quite how I planned, and wanted to get back to it next time.

You see, the hobbit and the orcs are not much of a match for the Enchantress. As a high level illusionist, she is capable of some powerful things. Luckily, the hobbits friends are charging through the cavern system, knowing of her trouble and coming to save her. I have a certain time-frame, and the party has wasted a bit of time, including doing things like stopping to body search the few orcs they kill on the way, just for handfuls of silver. They know this hobbit chick is in need of help, but they will get there at best around 8 or 9 rounds after the fight has started, when my original “run like hell to help her” timeframe would have had them show up a round or two into the fight.

So what do I do? Fudge? Let them just show up on time, or delay them to show them the consequences of picking up chump change when a friend is in trouble. They will have a chance against the enchantress, but not as good if the hobbit and the orcs are dead when they get there and can’t assist them in the fight.

I think I’m going to let the chips fall where they may. And doing that, I may just be looking at the first TPK in my games.

"My favorite D&D module was a Runequest adventure” - Apple Lane

As a kid hanging out at the local game shop Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, I played a lot of Runequest. I maybe ran a handful of games for friends outside the shop, but I never really got a campaign going. As an adventure pack, Apple Lane (by Greg Stafford, first printed in 1978) provided some outstanding encounters, NPC’s, and situations. In the sleepy orchard town of Apple Lane, Your first encounter may just be getting mugged by a Trollkin (as humorously portrayed on the cover). Trollkin haunt the area outside of town, but small raids have been made in the last few weeks on homes around the town fringes. Lead by a big Trollkin named White Eye, the little pests have been a nuisance, even going so far as to kill a little old lady. The Tin Inn is the focal center of town, and here is where you are likely to meet Gringle, a Rune Lord who has settled down to run a pawnshop in town. Gringle will hire you to guard his shop while he and his assistant, Duck John, are out of town for the night. A tribe of Baboons (who can speak in Runequest) have threatened to attack the shop, and a harrowing night fighting them off will be the first real adventure scenario in town. Included are schematics for the three levels of the shop, and entrance points for the Baboons to break in are indicated. The major adventure is to go to an area called The Rainbow Mounds and get a bounty on White Eye offered by the sheriff. In addition to the Trollkin, a once great race have devolved into The Newtlings, froglike beings who live in the waterways of the Mounds. These creatures worship an idol in their main cave, and if the party finds the missing piece of the idol (hidden amongst the warrens of the large rock lizards who also inhabit the caverns), the person who places the piece upon the idol will be crowned King of the Newtlings. This kingship comes with little in the way of power or treasure, but it is a cool way to cap off an adventure. The Rainbow Mounds is really a great dungeon setting. In addition to the main water cavern and some underground rushing rapids and waterfalls, special rooms include a classic D&D style mushroom chamber, and an alter to the Dark Gods of the Trollkin. It’s just a series of caves, but they are set-up really well, and provide multiple pathways for the players to choose. I liked the setting so much, that after getting the book I almost immediately modified things to use it for D&D. I changed some names, such as Lemon Tree instead of Apple Lane, and turned the Trollkins and Baboons into orcs, but most other things I kept the same. Gringle, however, became a high level wizard, and his assistant Duck John became Hobbit John. Over the decades I used the setting several times. White Eye having been killed several times, and the Newtling idol found and a king crowned again and again, was a bit of a stretch. But the problem got solved when I decided that the Newtlings had a curse on them that kept the idol pieces and White Eye in a constant loop. No matter what happened, an idol piece would eventually be lost and found, and no matter how many times White Eye was killed he would return to menace anyone who came to the Mounds. A group of characters are in the Rainbow Mounds right now during my current AD&D campaign (continuing tonight!), and the party includes Kayla, a hobbit who has been there before, and personally killed White Eye in that past adventure. In a game in the late 90’s she came to Lemon Tree, adventured in the Rainbow Mounds, killed the orcs, and eventually married Hobbit John. She has recently returned to find White Eye alive, the Newtlings again waiting for a new ruler, and a disturbing fact: having been to the Mounds multiple times, she risks become part of the curse cycle of the Mounds herself! So, I very much recommending getting a copy of Apple Lane and modify it for use in your D&D games. It is really a fairly simple but elegant setting, and it can be adjusted for various character levels. It actually is a great place to start new characters in, and if you poke around online you can find fan-support for it, including great alternate maps (even a 3D one) for the areas included in the module.