D&D 5E When it all goes wrong

I'm going to preface this with the fact that, while there are probably things I can do to prevent these kinds of scenarios, and that certainly I may have made some bad DM choices, I'm not really asking for criticism or advice (though you can certainly provide either at your leisure!). Nor am I asking for sympathy, though I'm sure many of us has been here. I've had a few sessions not go the way I wanted them to lately, and I feel the need to share the experience with anyone who cares about such things.

-

So I just got back into DMing after several years of just being a player. I tried not to be too ambitious- I took some old adventures I own and updated them for the modern version of D&D and did my best to bring my A game to the table. But things haven't been going quite as smoothly as I'd like- maybe I'm rusty, maybe my group isn't synching with my playstyle (or vice versa). Anyways...

Two weeks ago, my players encountered Duergar in a small dungeon. After a Medium and a Hard encounter back to back, they were trapped by a cave-in. I told them they only had enough air to take a short rest before they would have to unbury themselves, but they came up with an ingenious idea and so were able to take a long rest.

I considered the design of the Duergar sector. It had been set up with roving patrols (random encounter) and there were several more major encounters ahead. But now that the Duergar had the party trapped I realized there was going to be a super encounter that would surely kill them.

This is my first problem- the classic dungeon design is to go encounter by encounter, but it's all too easy to put the entire place on alert, resulting in a massive deadly encounter that is very likely going to be a TPK. I tried to warn the players about this, but, well, I'll continue.

So they extricate themselves from the cave-in, fully rested, having recruited three NPC prisoners to join their cause to find that the Duergar had sealed off the immediate escape route to funnel them towards what I hoped would be a hard encounter with either a short rest before the next one, or a chance to negotiate with the leader to avoid it entirely.

That's not what happened. The party had a rough time with the CR 1 Duergar I'd put in their path, supported by a caster. During the fight, one player thought it would be a great idea to run past the checkpoint, where they blundered right into the second encounter. Seeing a lone, wounded PC, the leader decided to press the advantage and so the second encounter started with some stragglers from the first and the party on the back foot.

They won, but it was a very close thing, and the whole production took up most of the game session (4.5 hours). Everyone was exhausted afterwards (IRL and in game) and while they earned a ton of xp for their troubles, I've been second guessing myself the whole time since. Should I have just let them retreat rather than force these fights? Did I give the Duergar too much of an advantage to prepare for the party? Should I have used weaker tactics or not put the spellcaster in the first encounter? Should I have held back even when the lone PC ran past the chokepoint?

Was the second encounter too brutal? Should I have not used one of the monsters the adventure provided (an Umber Hulk, which proved to be way more deadly than I expected). Is there a problem with the encounter design? Was the encounter builder lying to me about the fight difficulty? Did the inclusion of NPC allies just make the proceedings take longer?

Should I blame the PC's for not coming up with a better plan (I'd told them they'd need one last session)? When one player ran late, should I have weakened the encounter? I have the power to adjust things "off-camera" as it were, if the players don't know how many foes lie ahead, I can always swap things around. Whether or not a DM should has always been a hot debate- whether to treat the game as a game or a world that doesn't adjust itself to the players- I try to use a combination of both approaches, and even if the PC's know exactly what lies ahead, Orc #6 could always be sick that day, desert, go to the bathroom, or slip off to hook up with his lady friend, right?

I don't think there is an answer here- no matter how carefully you plan, things can go wrong- you're rolling dice, and in the heat of the moment, both the DM and the players can make wrong decisions. Maybe I should take pride in the fact that the players did succeed, and the game can proceed- certainly, a TPK would have been the worst possible outcome!

But at the same time, when I only have 5 hours every two weeks, a session like this doesn't feel like it's really advancing the adventure either. Anyways, that was my experience

Sounds like a GMing refresh and lessons learned. I dont usually do adventures that lead to assaulting army barracks and things that can quickly get overwhelming for the PCs. I know some folks view things differently, but I always imagine the PCs like a commando squad running special ops as opposed to being a 4 man army. So, adventure and challenge design are one part of being the GM, the other is the adventuring day needing so many damn encounters in 5E that lead folks towards situations like these. So, I agree there arent any perfect answers because part of it comes down to play and GM style.

Might write more later once I'm off mobile but at a glance sounds like you didn't do anything (to) wrong.

At the heart of it the PCs went into an organized den of intelligent beings, killed some of them and then waited 8 hours for the missing people to be noticed and the rest to organize. Long resting inside a dungeon of intelligent creatures before you clear the section is a, generally, bad idea.

If the party were trapped in a cave-in with only enough air to last an hour but somehow managed to extend that to eight hours, why did the duergar not assume they'd either died in the cave-in or subsequently suffocated?

D&D really needs mechanics to let the PCs be defeated in combat but not all die. Retreating or being taken prisoner allows the story to continue even if the bad guys won this fight, but the system makes a TPK the most likely result if the PCs lose in combat.

Sorcerers Apprentice said:

D&D really needs mechanics to let the PCs be defeated in combat but not all die. Retreating or being taken prisoner allows the story to continue even if the bad guys won this fight, but the system makes a TPK the most likely result if the PCs lose in combat.

Click to expand...

On the flip side its a bit weird if the PCs get defeated and captured a dozen times over a campaign. One still needs to put a lot of thought into adventure design.

payn said:

On the flip side its a bit weird if the PCs get defeated and captured a dozen times over a campaign. One still needs to put a lot of thought into adventure design.

Click to expand...

Or the players need to put some thought into what challenges they take on, once they understand that they are allowed to lose.

Anyway, the A-Team gets captured and locked up in a shed pretty much every episode, so the story can work even with regular setbacks like that

Sorcerers Apprentice said:

Or the players need to put some thought into what challenges they take on, once they understand that they are allowed to lose.

Anyway, the A-Team gets captured and locked up in a shed pretty much every episode, so the story can work even with regular setbacks like that

Click to expand...

It can but, lol I dont want to play A-Team the RPG and im pretty sure my players dont either. I do agree that some onus is on the players in how they tackle situations, but its the GM that designs them so be careful how much rope you give them.

Sounds like a great session to me. I mean, that's a brutally long combat encounter, but that's the nature of 3.x and beyond rules. Other than that, it sounds incredibly memorable.

It is possible, however, that there's a style mismatch. It sounds like maybe you're wanting to run a very tactical game where careful planning is rewarded, and your players maybe don't want to play that way.

Desdichado said:

Sounds like a great session to me. I mean, that's a brutally long combat encounter, but that's the nature of 3.x and beyond rules. Other than that, it sounds incredibly memorable.

It is possible, however, that there's a style mismatch. It sounds like maybe you're wanting to run a very tactical game where careful planning is rewarded, and your players maybe don't want to play that way.

Click to expand...

Yes, could be this. Though, I question if even the OP wants a strategic/tactical game themself since it eats up entire sessions.