Dungeon Design Tips: Find A Reason For PCs To Survive (And Try Again)

In the early days of RPGs, death walked with every character as a constant companion. All it took was a single bad tumble of the dice, or the wrong word spoken to the wrong NPC, and it was time to roll up a new character. As games have grown and changed, though, a lot of us have gravitated toward the party-as-main-characters model, where the party are the cast of the novel that is your campaign.

However, while it's a lot harder to kill PCs in most modern games (as long as you aren't playing an OSR game, or something deliberately lethal), it can still happen. Which is why it's a good idea to make sure you have something in your back pocket in case the dice roll hard against your players, but you don't want their stories to be cut short just yet.

You're in a dungeon, after all.

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To The Dungeons With Them!

Consider, just for a moment, some of the standard low-level adventures that you often go on. We've all likely been through:

- Bandit hunting

- The goblin cave

- Orc raids

- An evil cult

There are dozens of other options out there, but these will work to illustrate what I'm talking about. So, your players have gone off on one of these missions, and they either bit off more than they could chew, or the dice really went against them, but they find themselves on the wrong end of the stick. If that's the case, ask what happens to prevent this from being the end of their stories.

- The bandits gather the party's gear, and haul in their unconscious bodies. They can always kill them later, but anyone with the skill and bravery they showed might be worth a ransom... the boss is the one who gets to decide that. So they get their wounds treated, and might have to escape from a stockade in order to get their gear back, and take the fight to the bandits.

- The goblins felled the ones who thought they could stop them. They could just kill them, but they want to play with them. Dragging the party to the shaman so they can be healed, the party is now forced to participate in gladiatorial combat for the goblins' amusement, or they get shoved into a cage with wargs, or something else deeply dangerous. An opportunity to escape and retake the advantage is what they need... but will they get the chance?

- The orcs managed to smash the party. Do they awaken hours later, their gear taken, but each of them left with a weapon as a sign of respect? Or do the orcs take the party, healing their captives whom they intend to make into slaves, as is their right as the victors in combat?

- The cult realizes the party is going to be a serious problem... but it's also what they represent. They need to interrogate them to find out who else knows about the cult, and who will be expecting the party to surface again. They may need to torture them, and as we saw in The Princess Bride, they need to be healthy before the torture starts. And when the cult has all the information they need, the party will make for potent sacrifices... they just need to escape before that happens.

Let's see... what other plot twists can we create?

Of course, low levels aren't the only times characters can meet unfortunate or unexpected ends. Especially since high-level encounters can feel like a game of rocket tag where one bad save can lead to your character being down for the count.

And while death may not be the end in a lot of RPGs, there are things you can do to make their escape from the jaws of defeat more dramatic than just forking over some diamond dust and having a cleric cast a spell... especially if you wind up with a TPK. So consider the types of creatures your party is fighting, the current plot they're part of, or even the location they happen to be in.

As an example, if your characters are involved in conflict with fey, is there some obscure rule of hospitality that means they cannot be slain outright? Must this matter be escalated to one of the high nobles, and a ruling established? Perhaps requiring a trial by combat, allowing the party to take their best shot in a different arena?

Alternatively, if you're running a more traditional, Chosen One sort of game that expects these specific characters to press forward and save the world, do they have the ability to try to escape from the Underworld? While this might become a secondary dungeon crawl, or a combat against one of the psychopomps that try to usher souls to the other side, it can give your players a sense of purpose and power over their own deaths by having to fight their way back to their bodies... literally as well as metaphorically. And if this is a plot you intend to run, I'd recommend checking out The Black Ballad by Storyteller's Forge, as it's a great resource for this sort of thing. There's also a Pathfinder Conversion Pack, which can be useful.

Lastly, consider the place the party meets their ends. If they're in a place that's rife with undeath, does dying in this location curse someone, giving them a kind of dark resurrection? Perhaps adding one of the half-dead racial templates found in my supplement Moüd, City of Bones (available for Pathfinder and DND 5E)? If they're on holy ground, are they offered a bargain by the god, goddess, devil, or demon this place is dedicated to (or was dedicated to, if it's been forgotten)?

It All Depends On You And Your Game

Some groups like it when death has teeth, and the end is final unless someone survives and manages to resurrect or reincarnate the dead or defeated party members. However, it's often a good idea to have some dynamic plans so that defeat and death don't just feel like an arbitrary roll of the die... especially if that puts major kinks into the story you're all trying to tell!

But as with all things, make sure you talk this over with your group to be sure you're all on the same page before it's time to start rolling dice.

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