u/Delicious_Watch8429

Hi all, DnD DM here who struggles with some experience with deadly situations:

I came from the FFG Star Wars Game with my group which is really player friendly concerning character death, as it is harder to die there than f.ex in DnD just by the rules.

We started DnD later and at the beginning I told them to remember that in DnD, they could more easily die. Everyone knows and is fine with that.

But I see how they get attached a little more to their characters.

As I teddy bear DM, I often twist the narrative from deadly encounters when I see them being over the edge. Sure, sometimes one or more players get down and need to be resurrected, but besides a one time assassination scene (they loved it), it seems hard for me to implement like REALLY (random or not) deadly encounters where they won't beat the adversary at all. I know that this is also not the target to throw TPKs at them, and I dont want to kill their characters by force, but I think this would add some spice to the game making them remember (now after some months) that they could really lose their characters and not take things for granted.

They are now in a twisted forest and already fought a first wave and I discovered a potentially really deadly Adversary who would surely kill them.

As the players also have agency, I was thinking of throwing it on them and see how they react, hoping to flee, but also dont want to forcefully kill one of the playercharacters....

Do you other DMs know about these dilemmas?and how often do you involve really deadly (TPK danger) threats? What are your experiences with TPKs in general: did this affect the RL group/persons?

Love to hear from you all!

Hi all, I try to make it short:

- my group was in the capital of the land and intervened the ongoing assassination of the emperor, he rewarded them and gave them some emblems to get access to most places and to be bothered by guards etc.

- their main goal of the campaign is to seek and gather the missing four artifacts from the gods to get the land back into balance.

- the emperor asked them, on their way to another province capital (for the main quest) to gather information about "the spider" who seems to be responsible for the planning of the assassination. He is the contact person of the imprisoned assassins and they only had contact through mail post orders and never met him. It is said, that "the spider" is located in the town on their way

- this town is located next to the river where they arrive with a ship. It is a wood economy city with some nobility ruling it.

Now my need of help:

Regarding my experiences as a DM, I feel lost of filling in the clues/nodes/Points of interest for the players to get informations for this "side quest". Am even unsure if the spider should be obviously in this next city (350km afar) or if he should be kept more secret for later gameplay.

Anyways....can you guys give me some ideas on how to make an open sandbox investigation session in the city? I dont want to railroad them into obvious clues.

Thanks in advance!