This guide will give you all of the knowledge you need on the acronym TPK, including its meaning, example sentences, origin, and more!
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Kevin
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February 14, 2021
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What does TPK stand for?
The most popular definition of TPK comes from roleplaying games. Here, it stands for total party kill, according to Urban Dictionary. Simply put, everybody on one team is dead. Here, the entire party is destroyed by either the other team of an environmental monster. This is commonly used in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, often abbreviated D&D or DnD.
In roleplaying games like this, there is no hope of the party being brought back to life, according to Dungeon Solvers. This is one of a slim number of scenarios that can bring a campaign, or a series of play sessions that form a complete RPG story, according to WriteUps, to a full stop.
After a TPK, everyone playing at the table had to work together to decide how to proceed. They can either try to pick up the pieces of the failed campaign or they can just decide to start over completely. There are both fair and unfair TPKs.
A fair TPK is one that people in the party could have prevented, and occurs from either a tactical error or mistake, or by the party getting in over their head, or even simply an unlucky dice roll. However, these situations are within the players’ control. An unfair TPK is when what happens is outside of anyone’s control. The Dungeon Master, or DM, is determined to kill off a party and will not rest until they do. If a DM is creating multiple TPKs in a row, they may not be suited to be Dungeon Master and the table should have a discussion with them.
Permanent TPKs can be avoided during gameplay. Players can have a friendly NPC, or non-player character, find the dead party and bring the bodies to a cleric or mage to bring them back to life. The villain or BBEG (big bad evil guy) could decide that the party is more valuable alive, and can keep them from dying.
If one is at the beginning of a campaign, they may just decide to start the campaign over since they haven’t invested much time into it. However, if this is a long running game in which an entire party has been killed off, they are more likely to try and find a way to bring the party back since they have invested a lot of time and energy into the campaign.
TPK also has a variety of other meanings outside of RPGs or MMORPGs. The abbreviation TPK can stand for any of the below, according to The Free Dictionary and All Acronyms.
· Turnpike – According to Oxford Languages, a turnpike is an expressway that usually has a toll or charge on it.
· Town Portal Kill – According to Urban Dictionary, this is a term commonly used in the videogame Diablo 2 to describe when someone tricks others into being swarmed by enemies in a sneaky tactical move.
· Tasavallan Presidentin Kanslia – In Finnish, this means the Office of the President of the Republic, or President’s Office.
· TechnologiePark Köln – This is a German Technology Park in Cologne, Germany.
· Them Pesky Kids – This is a rock band featuring Mark Westlund, Mark Woerpel, Steve Soderstrom, and Kohnny Keyte.
· The People’s Key – This is a Bright Eyes album released in 2011, featuring songs like Firewall, Shell Games, and Jejune Stars.
· Tai Pui King Memorial College – A college in Hong Kong.
· Trading Partner Kit
· The Psychopath Killers
· Turns Per Knot
· Tummien Perhosten Koti – A Finnish novel.
· Trabb Pardo-Knuth Algorithm – An algorithm that illustrates the evolution of computer programming languages, according to Geeks For Geeks.
· Ten Peaks Coffee Company Inc – The stock abbreviation for this company in the Toronto Stock Exchange is TPK.
· Terrain Production Kit
· TPK Medical Definitions according to All Acronyms:
o Therapeutic Penetrating Keratoplasty, in ophthalmology
o Tyrosine Protein Kinase
o Tau Protein Kinase, in neurology
o Thiamine Pyrophosphokinase, in biochemistry
o Threonine Protein Kinase, in hematology
o Tyrosine Phosphokinase, in endocrinology
How can TPK be used in a sentence?
TPK is most commonly used during RPG gameplay. This can be used as a noun or a verb. Below are a couple of examples for how someone could use TPK in a sentence.
Mattie and Sandy are roommates who play Dungeons and Dragons together. The night after they have played, they discuss the previous night’s gameplay.
Mattie: That campaign got crazy last night!
Sandy: I know! I can’t believe we almost got TPKed twice. Tony isn’t the best Dungeon Master, it kind of seemed like he had it out for us.
Mattie: Yeah, he gets really intense about DnD.
The next night, they are mid-gameplay and have the following discussion.
Sandy: Tony, you can’t honestly try and TPK us again right now!
Tony: Rules are rules. I don’t make them, I just enforce them. I can’t halp that you’ve had bad dice rolls and poor planning.
Mattie: Tony, we’re just trying to have fun.
Overall, TPK most commonly stands for total party kill and is frequently used in RPGs, or roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons. This term is used when an entire party is destroyed with little to no hope of coming back to life. There are many other abbreviations that one must get accustomed to when beginning to play RPGs, like GM meaning game master, DM meaning dungeon master, HP meaning hit or health points, or MP meaning magic points, according to All Acronyms.
Sources:
- https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/TPK
- http://www.thempeskykids.com/
- https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15111-the-peoples-key/
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/trabb-pardo-knuth-algorithm/
- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TPK
- https://www.allacronyms.com/TPK/medical#:~:text=Hematology-,TPK,Biochemistry
- https://www.allacronyms.com/TPK/military
- http://acronymsandslang.com/definition/7488001/TPK-meaning.html
- https://www.writeups.org/glossary/
- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TPK
- https://www.allacronyms.com/role-playing_game/abbreviations/
