People Your'e Not Gonna Like
Publisher's blurb:
Sometimes in an RPG campaign, things go wrong. The ultimate expression of this from the player side is the TPK – Total Party Kill, where every character is slain in an encounter that wasn’t supposed to go that way. (And yes, sometimes everyone is supposed to die, because there’s an adventure to be had in the afterlife, or it’s scene one of a Frankenstein-inspired campaign, or whatever—that’s not what we’re taking about here). Similarly, unplanned instances of an entire party being captured (the less well known “TPC”), ships sinking, well-liked PCs and NPCs dying or being lost in a bottomless void of darkness, or a companion animal being sucked down into the Swamp of Sadness (look, that movie scarred some of us for years), are examples of times when the situation is much, much worse than anyone (GM included) intended for them to get.
In short, sometimes, PCs fail.
Now, that’s not always a bad thing. But sometimes a campaign would benefit from PCs being able to reach some deep, expensive reserve of effort, and make a big, extra push to win.
Sometimes, everyone has more fun if a PC can double down.