Yeah.... I am sorry I threw the grenade. Well not really.....

"I guess the real threat to our safety were the friends we made along the way."

Seth's player: I am going to throw a grenade. Me, a long time viewer: oh no

I like how they wanted to run away from the mummies, yet the real threat was themselves.

Ah grenades. The cause of and the solution to all our problems.

My daughter has taught our Animal Crossing villagers to say "Dweebles". So he lives on.

The last scene is a fade in on the ruins, a subtitle tells us it's 2021. A team of archeologists are excavating the ruins as what was once Dweebles rises up from underneath the rocks the team is displacing. A blue gem is clutched in his desiccated hand...

-Mike: "Oh damn, I shot my friend!", -Todd, sadly cocking the Tommy: "Im gonna have to put you down, buddy.."

“Oh god, I accidentally killed my friend!” “Then I’m afraid I can’t trust you to not kill me too.”

"Luck is probability taken personally." --Penn Gillette

"This is not how to shoot your buddy, THIS is how you shoot your buddy". Died laughing.

"In that sense they won." I cried laughing at this story, absolutely incredible.

"I can't believe you just shot our friend in the back of the head!" "I'm sorry, it was an accident!" "So is this." *raises Tommy Gun*

Man, CP2020 fumbles are no joke. Whisper's head is still floating around in an Arasaka jar somewhere in Asia because of those.

Nazi Mummy: "That adventure was terrible, downvote."

So, a literal example of: "Rocks fall, everybody dies!" 😁

Hello Seth, commenter here, and today I'm going to boost your algorithm.

Totally true that we remember the big fails way more. In our group we have "famous last words" references all the time. "Maybe they're friendly?" - they were not... "Throw whatever you have that's stronger!" - bad idea when it's a lightning bolt in a closed space... While the group is resting "I'll just open this door and see what's inside" - death! etc.

i love how the greatest threat to the pcs was the pcs themselves XD

I love to see you playing different characters.They all look so independent and aware of their surrounding characters.

Most memorable story: When I died in first action of first round of combat in the first combat of a brand new campaign. And I was never attacked. So story time: We were starting it, the campaign start was we were on a task to protect a tower where monks prayed from a bandit threat. I am a ranged combat ranger in 2e. So I roll high on initiative and go first when bandits showed. So I shoot! 1... Roll on our fumble table... 1... Break weapon... Okay, well I got melee backup, so I am going to use move action to climb down the ladder so I can assist next round. "Make a climb check because it is combat and you are in a hurry..." 1... Make a reflex save to catch yourself from falling. 1... Okay.... you fall and take.... (30 ft) of fall damage. ... I am level 1.... and.... dead! Fortunately GM was a nice guy, and said I fall and splat to the ground beside the cleric. Seeing this, the cleric is able to cast a heal on me before I am dead dead because reacted so fast.

It's fitting that the mummy's curse would take until the far future to finally be broken. As an aside, Mummies In Space is a cheesy horror concept that, to my admittedly limited knowledge, has not been attempted yet. You can either run it as "normal" human mummies from ancient Egypt that have risen in the far future, Dracula 3000 style. Or it could be alien mummies from a dead alien civilization. EDIT: Wait, no, I forgot about the Necrons. In my defense, though, those are _robot_ alien mummies. I'm talking about regular mummies.

Nice video. A player in my game "I'm the only one trained in thrown weapons. Everyone hand me your grenades". The same player: "You know that pile of dice you told me to roll for the grenades? They've all turned up 1". Me: "A pin lands neatly between the group of vampires the team is ambushing. You notice your friends backing away from you"

If this adventure and conversion rules was made into a pdf or a physical book I’d totally buy it.

I actually have only had a TPK in oneshots where PCs are likely to or supposed to die. I did a hidden agendas oneshot where one player was the murderer and he managed to kill every NPC and every other player while remaining hidden. The other players were pretty surprised to find out they were getting killed by one of their own.

At last another war story! Thank you!

Oh yeah, Cyberpunk can be brutal and unforgiving as it should be. Awesome war story.

War ... war never changes ... well until it does due to a fumble :P

3:36 Ooh, I'm torn, do I want to play Christian Slater or Steve Buscemi?

"Aw man, I shot Dweebles in the face."

Your "Keep calm and bombshell" t-shirt cracked me up.

I have never laughed out loud while watching a video about RPG stories. Today was the last day I could say that line.

First game I ever ran. First session. First combat. Grenade. Fumble. Every player but one goes down. The curse is real...

Love war stories Seth, thank you! Have really been finding use in your Call of Cthulhu videos, my players appreciate you as well.

The theatrics when he dropped the grenade, top notch! xD

>Laws of probability drakerejection.jpg >RULES OF NATURE drakeacceptance.jpg

I ran a Hackmaster campaign years ago. More characters died in that campaign than all of my other campaigns combined. I had a player character take an hour and a half to build his character and then died 45 minutes later.

"...figured I'd share another war story video, with you guys." I think I can speak for everyone when I say, feel free to think that way as often as possible.

This needs to be a short film. The ending can read "Based on a true event."

My first TPK: Call of Cthulhu + idiots with dynamite and failed luck rolls

my first tpk was in the warhammer 40K ttrpg, my players found a land raider ( basically a tank on steroids) and drove it at full speed in a hive city. They drove int a house, that crashed on top of them, critically damaging the transport, that then proceded to blow up.

"Sorry Dweebles."

My first TPK was also a direct result of the PCs. Specifically one player, who thought it was smart to start a fire with lots of oil splashed about in the hold of a pirate ship whilst they were many days away from shore... THEN proceeded to attempt a heist on the captain's quarters. The best quote (in retrospect): "We die?! But you didn't even roll for damage!" Wish it had not been said seriously.

1. This video is great. 2. The production values are increasing, but not in a "take away from the fun" way. 3. Seth's quaran-hair game *STRONG*

War stories is my favorite. I love seeing Seth, "Mike", "Dweebles", and "Todd" showing us how role-playing should be done. Fun and deadly to all.

Seth is such a great GM that his 1st TPK is pretty much a triple TPK + a victory of the PCs!

Seth. Wanted to let you know that I took this adventure idea (stole it) and did a one-shot Delta Green adventure. IT. WAS. AWESOME!!! Thanks Seth for all you do for TTRPG and me secifically.

My husband has the WORSE dice luck. Doesn't matter which system or if it's an electronic dice roller from a forum. I keep telling him he needs a rubber chicken foot... ;)

The first TPK I ever witnessed was in the first RPG I ever ran which was the first one I ever played. If you've ever played Keep on the Borderlands you'll know there is a bit of a "humorous" encounter on the way to the Caves. Yup, that hermit and his little kittykat took out the first adventuring party any of us had ever seen. Don't know how I ever got my players back round the table.

My first TPK was in the CoC module Mr. Corbitt. I was running a one shot where my PC were teens during summer break who all lived in the same neighborhood and ended up befriending Mr. Corbitt and the module took a WAY different route. But they all died when they failed too stop Yogg-Sototh from being summoned and died. It was a great time and we still talk about it too this day.

Plot twist. Every character made was a descendent of those Nazi Mummy experiments, and this was all part of an ancient curse to up the mummy’s numbers.

By 5:00 or so I was doubled over with laughter. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

I laughed out loud once I heard Dweebles say that he´d use a handgrenade. I just knew it´s gonna go south!

I remember playing Apocalypse World, my character, a Driver, trying to save a team mate while he was throwing grenades to an apocalyptic vegetal monster... He kept fumbling and making both of us take damage until we both died... "Let me save you!" Was my phrase and a running joke for a time...

I was deep in the bowls of KZfaq yesterday...as one does during an Ice Storm... and found a Kiwi KZfaqr with the channel name "Scott Brown Carpentry" I got a good chuckle out of it.

My last TPK was in D&D, when the group couldn't buy a hit off of some snakes and the snakes couldn't miss. I just decided that the snakes slithered away and the players woke up an hour later.

My first TPK was literally the first time my group played 5e. My friend had convinced us to try it out, which we were reluctant to do because we had long been fans of 2e. He ran the Death House part of the Curse of Strahd. On the way to the house, he rolled up a random encounter. It was a Revenant. We were level 1. We all died.

My longest fumble chain was as GM for TSR's original Marvel Superheroes back in the 80's. It was a reverse fumble-chain. Every roll I made for the villains was one the best rolls I ever did...which was brutal on the heroes. Even the random events like traffic and weather went against the poor schlubs. A nice palette-clensing mini-adventure turned out to be a drawn out massacre leaving one hero without an arm and everyone else hospitalized, de-powered or comatose.

Hitting your own party is the funniest shit ever. Our dnd party was in a pretty epic battle, the wizard was moving up to get in range for some serious fireballs, then my fighter threw a throwing axe, got a nat1. Rolled a d8 to see where it would go, and hit the wizard right in the back, dropping him prone. In our minds, the way it played out, had us crying hysterically for a solid 3 minutes.

Seth made a deal with cuthullu, evolving beyond the need for a chair and a desk...

Its this sort of scenario that brings home that there is no real winner when a player cheats to avoid "failure" and messing up like this. From the way you described your story it seemed like you had a blast, your players had fun and they really went in with it. Maybe its the fact it was a 1 shot and they went in with low expectations for survival, but its still telling that they got into the spirit of things and joking around with their own comedic deaths as it all went to hell.

I had a similar TPK in which I was a player. We were playing d20 CoC where we were part of an investigative expeditionary force that was secretly funded by a shadow government, think Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove. Because of our connection, the GM decided to open up the d20 Armory for us. I wasn't too interested in it until they showed me the body armor but two of the players went nuts with it unbeknownst to the rest of us. So, we're at the start of the first session and the GM gives us the mission to go investigate sightings of abominations near a small town in the Appalachians. Our first combat starts when we encounter two hillbillies trying to drive us off of their land with a shoot first and ask questions later attitude. The player who I will refer to as 'K' decides to open combat by throwing an incendiary grenade. Which he fumbles and drops on himself. The GM, then, asks to see his equipment to check if he was carrying anything else that could ignite and add to the hijinks of blowing oneself up. The GM's eyes grow large as he looks over the list of equipment, he looks up at us and plainly says "There is a massive explosion and you are all dead. In fact, there is now a massive wildfire blazing through the mountains uncontrollably." The rest of us are dumbfounded, surely K is dead but all of that? GM then shows us K's equipment list so we can see that he was carrying several bundles of flares, grenades, and about 30 sticks of dynamite. For shits and giggles we rolled out the damage and concluded that we all took roughly 400 damage each. So, the session ended during the first encounter before the GM had rolled a single die. Afterwards, we forbade K from carrying any explosives.

Sounds like a real laugh! :) I feel obliged to point out that the laws of probability don't state you shouldn't see fumble chains; in fact they imply that given enough rolls, it's impossible *not* to see a fumble chain of any length. Definitely part of the fun of these games!

Even knowing it was coming, it still hurt.....

Nervous Arabic Accent: "..It is.....it is THE MUMMIES CURSE!!!!......." Btw, Zombies = All Flesh Must Be Eaten (A great RPG using a system that melts away in game play, its the best Zombie game) And Nazi Zombie = Hellboy GURPS yes there was a Hellboy RPG (brownie points if you can find it in the limited edition hardcover) "You'll get yours Beni!"

Don't forget to write Fumble Doom on your grenades. And always remember, once you pull the pin Mr.Grenade is no longer your friend.

Always cracks me up when Todd says "We are getting our asses kicked!" and I'm like "Noooo, you are kicking your own asses!".

The deadliest monster you never want to encounter: a fellow player with a fumble streak. The GMs wish they could homebrew something half so terrifying.

Now more than ever I am in love with the idea of naming one-shots with B-Movie titles

When it comes to the probabilities of dice, I’ve found it doesn’t matter how much you may “know” about statistics and the randomness of just rolling polyhedrons. Even with post-graduate level education in math and probability, some people will still roll a bunch of dice, and choose the ones with the highest result, proudly proclaiming, “This one rolls high, so it shall be mine this game.” One of my old GMs also used to say you had to try using all of your dice over time, otherwise the abandoned ones who cry themselves to sleep every night will seek their revenge when they return.

The first time I ever used a grenade in an RPG it ended the entire encounter on the first initiative count. The enemies were bunched up and the system was Savage Worlds which means damage die can explode (aka when you roll the highest result you can roll again and add the result). Long story short, one MVP damage die kept exploding a bunch of times, so the 3d6 damage turned into something ridiculously high. Those were supposed to be difficult enemies too - hard to hit, harder to damage, dangerous attacks and fast movement but no such luck for our DM

My first TPK didn't actually have any deaths. It was a CoC game, and my group had to break into a museum to get a cursed artefact out before an exhibit which would turn people crazy. Unforunately, they were incredibly unlucky, and not very sneaky. They got caught by security, fought back, kept running, tuned on MORE alarms, and then the police came. All of my three players got caught and sent to jail.

Thanks for this, as it's reminded me of one of my friends at university, whose actions in several games resulted in the common response "I can't believe you did that!" (one of which resulted in an all-but-one-PK in an Earthdawn game).

One of my players wanted to take over for a while to do "Descent into Avernus." We were tpk'd in the first combat encounter. I laughed it off, but not everyone was so amused.

I remember when you first mentioned The Fiendish Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich in a video, and I was disappointed I'd never get to hear the story of it. But I never in a million years thought the adventure would exceed my expectations. Well played, Seth.

First TPK: Horus Heresy campaign, Raven Guard Legion players falling on a Slaanesh Demon Pit with a World Eater PC in rage killing two of them and leaving the rest for the Keeper of Secrets

PC psychology: throwing the grenade and collapsing the tunnel brings this disastrous one-shot to a quick end.

Rewatch here. I still find this super funny.

War Story! Great. And glad to hear you are fine despite the weather. Wish the best for your fellow texans who have it worse.

Grenades are a death curse in coc. My first tpk, the dnd group wanted to go dragon hunting.

My first TPK was similar in that the party ran down a dead end, got cornered and killed. But they did wander into a boss battle without resting and they could have easily retreated, rested and come back, so I didn't feel that bad about it. Other than the decision not to rest, the party didn't kill themselves though.

Hah! I laughed when you talked about grenades and Traveller. It was during the first time I played Traveller that I muffed up a grenade toss, fumbling and dropping it at my feet. Yeah the carnage was awesome and it did so much damage to my party that the adventure ended prematurely! Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not!

My dice are evil. They kill my PCs with extreme prejudice when I'm dming and fail everything I try when I'm playing

That's a really awesome one, especially as they did achieve the objective ;D

A large collection of stooges vs an assortment of zombies

This is an instant classic.

If this was my group we'd all probably think that this was the best session ever, like it sounds like an absolute blast if you're willing to just laugh at character deaths.

"That's not how you shoot your buddy, this is how you shoot your buddy!" Brilliant.

I had one player who just had running bad luck for years which forced me into going with a sort of "Immortal " style character like Higlander for him ( though he didnt know that part till a long time later) it was the only way i could come up with to keep to keep the long campaign running . The number of ways he would die are long and comic indeed

Once I saw nine 20 in a row...and it was to hit roll from wizard to a fighter as a result of a fumble.

"Yep. Killed him."

In this campaign I was running, in a single battle, there were about 100 minions in a group, so a character decided to drive a motorcycle off a cliff over them and drop a grenade in the middle of them. He killed 50 of them and walked away. A minute later I had one of the survivors throw a grenade at him and it ended up rolling into the middle of their formation killing the rest of them. Gotta love grenades

I am not at all sure that I have ever....ever... in years... had a TPK that was solely due to the players killing themselves.... This was GOLD!

"The dice, despite the odds, decide to murder us" hahahahaha loved it :D

I had a great instance in a GURPS game where one PC was in a desperate grapple with the equivalent of a T-600, so another PC, after failing to damage this thing with his guns, decided to throw a grenade at it. Specifically, a Russian RPG-43, which did the job, but also killed his friend as well as the other two friends who just stepped around the corner to help out.

I’d totally buy this adventure!

Good thing there didn't happen to be a showing at that tomb that day...

Hahaha, awesome. What a night that would have been to experience! The TPK I remember most fondly, was many years ago. I was a fairly new player, and had inherited a Druid from a previous player. This was in AD&D. We had to rescue our contact, who was trapped in a dungeon. We managed to sneak in and find him, but stuff went wrong and we were captured(basically, dude was deaf, and made so much noise during our attempts to explain the escape plan that we were discovered). Instead of killing us, the bad guys did some kind of ritual that created duplicates of us and then turned us really old. We were then locked up seperately. The rogue managed to get out and kill his duplicate(which turned him young again). He freed my character, then tried and failed to backstab my duplicate - promptly getting killed. I was alone, hidden in the garden and trying to come up with some kind of plan, when the bad guys marched our contact out in front of the castle to execute him. I panicked and rushed through an ill-thought-through plan to free him (involving fog-spells, entanglements and burning) and got killed. Our contact was executed and the rest of the party was left to rot in the dungeons, eventually dying of old age. Best part was about 4 years later, with a new group (same DM), and our adventure started feeling vaguely familiar. I didn't realize that it was the same one until we'd already been caught and turned old(this time before attempting to rescue our contact. The rogue managed to escaped and kill his duplicate, then saved 2 others from the group. They tried rescuing our contact... and got caught when he made so much noise during their attempt to explain the escape plan that they were discovered. Dude was executed (again), and the party left to die of old age in the dungeons - again. It was hilarious. ... no-one ever thought to shush him and communicate through notes or something.

"...I know... but I can only do it ONCE..."

"The Fiendish Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich" should definitely be a module.