>you are DMing a game
>you have set up what you believe to be a reasonable storyline and moderately difficult final encounter with some BBEG
>the players just happen to have shit luck while you rolled beyond average rolls
>they lose in the last fight
>in terms of how the BBEG would act, there is no reason for him to ever let the players go whether because he hates them, knows they will come to ruin his day in the future, or is intelligent enough
What do you do in such a situation? Make some kind of excuse to let them live? Fudge dice? Go with integrity of dice rolls and "ICness" and have the party wipe?
What game have you DMd where this happened? What did you do?
Iacta alea est
I believe it's "alea iacta est", but you're right. The dice has fallen. If OP doesn't want rolls to decide his games he should play in a game where consequences don't matter, or there are no dice.
NTA, I don't know which one is the original one but both are in use and both are correct
Unless the villain is a showboat movie bad guy looking to humiliate the party, I kill them. Sometimes you lose due to bad luck. A future game will take into account that the heroes failed and the villain succeeded. The players will be angry they've lost but this will serve as motivation in the next game to undo the horrors of the past.
Why would that even be a problem? The game is ending there anyway.
If you design an encounter not knowing what would happen if the character fail against it you're not writing a game scenario but a fucking story.
If this encounter has some cathartic significance there should be tension beforehand that would not make a couple of shit rolls anticlimactic. Back to the drawing board OP.
OP literally says they'd have set up a storyline. It's not how I'd ever run or play an rpg, I admit.
In 50 years the world has changed. The minions of the invincible overlord rule the cities, while those who disobey are executed in grim public displays.
But all is not as it seems. There are enemies both within and without. Will you play as the last pockets of resistance, or as contractors for the government, here to clear out the wilderness for further expansion or perhaps as agents sent to root out dissident voices?
>you have set up what you believe to be a reasonable storyline and moderately difficult final encounter with some BBEG
First mistake
>What do you do in such a situation?
They probably die or are captured. There's only so much you can twist things. But two things.
First, Everything this guy said
Second, Why are your characters so isolated from the world nobody else is coming? I mean I get it, I guess the "One true chosen heroes," format is just what games ARE to people, but if it's the bed you made, you're going to have to lie in it.
>In 50 years the world has changed. The minions of the invincible overlord rule the cities, while those who disobey are executed in grim public displays.
If only it weren't for one foolish samurai with a magic sword ...
>"game"
>"storyline"
>dice decide the outcome
I wouldn't be running a session like this in the first place.
But in the case of this hypothetical, I'd commit to the shitty scenario and shitty way things were run, and have mister beebeg kill everyone.
Party is dead, imprisoned, or otherwise unable to stop him, BBEG's scheme goes along, with results depending on how much they sabotaged him on the way to the final conflict.
Figure out the consequences and start putting together the notes on the sequel.
It's important to remember that just because they lost, that doesn't mean they didn't kill a bunch of the big bad's best minions, damage his mcguffin, or otherwise manage to delay his plans, and one also needs to ask if he had any other enemies, traitorous right-hand men, etc. that might prevent the world from being destroyed or dominated outright.
>literal divine intervention
Or
>the parties allies bust into the room and rally them
Or
>the BBEG kills the one he hates the most and imprisons the others
Or
>he takes them captive so he can try to torture them to death
Or
>the evil power he's channeling takes over his body entirely, he sprouts wings and flies off to kill orphans
Or
>unstable evil magical forces cause the battleground to start collapsing and EVERYONE has to flee
Or
>he kills them all and you just have to deal with the consequences
Or
>you roll up a new party and do an adventure tied to the same plot only you're on the same timeline as the original and your new characters come busting through the door at the climactic moment, your villain gets his second wind and both parties have to face Uber Satan
The heroes of legend lost, an age of darkness ensues. How could you possibly justify saying anything else? Especially when the campaign is over anyway, and this was intended from the start to be the last climactic battle, how could you even think about fudging out a good end?
Rewrite the history books.
The hero bravely slew the alliance of evil.
Actually that's really good. You describe the PCs deaths to them (maybe one survives and his/her fate is a mystery until much later in game2), imply that a dark age is coming, then you start game2 by telling the tale of the selfless heroes who bravely sacrificed themselves to stop the BBEG. Odds are the BBEG is still alive and is just pretending to be dead, but you don't tell them that, you make them find out in-game.
No, I mean for the follow up you recast the villain as the hero of legend
That's cool too (and was in fact clear from your choice of words, my head must have been elsewhere).
I'm a sucker for "evil man with good intentions" villains so even if they're defeated, the BBEG is more likely to take the party alive just so they can see him succeed in his plans and accept he was in the right after all, giving them a chance to plan an escape and regroup for a rematch.
If they fail to the point where it's no longer possible to drag this further, I pull out the party's sheets from the start of the game and act as if the campaign restarted, but making things look slightly off.
I did this once.
You demonstrate big-dick energy and you have my respect.
>having a BBEG in the first place
This sounds like a 'you' problem. There are real problems in the world, like slavery and climate change, and it's far more interesting to work to solve them than try to defeat some Palpatine knockoff.
Kill them
>ohhhh nooooo that would make a power vacuum and a worse person will show up
Keep killing whoever's in charge
That's how you solve societal problems.
hi youtube
I would do whatever I had prepared for the event the player party was defeated by the main villain, amending based on the players' individual and collective acts.
If he's the sort to go "no, don't kill them yet, I want them to suffer" you can do that, followed by an escaping prison arch.
Alternatively let it happen, shit happens.
Either way even if you avoid killing them I'd make sure there are consequences, otherwise it's like a death in DBZ in the sense that "who cares? They'll come back in the end"
>Bot generated thread still struggles with narrative, trying to present basic anecdote as any sort of problem
Fucking figures