Character Death

Gladly.

What was very instructive for me – a chase through the mountains

We were fleeing from ogres and had to reach a destination in time. When we reached a small bridge, I left my character (paladin) there to allow the others to escape.

The GM decided that my character would die and only allowed the group two rounds because all the ogres had a large stone to throw.

This was the 1980s - extremely unsatisfactory for me, but very educational for my own GMing...

I also like "A fire engulfs the western door then spreads on each of its turns"

Had a rogue fall into a shallow basin of water and drown because of a series of nat 1s. People that tried to save him (we rolled a bit too much) also failed with a nat 1. Miss Fortune wanted the rogue dead, and I'm not gonna argue it after that.

Another rogue died by skeleton firing squad. We were being loud and he threw open a door with no caution. The pincushion corpse fell back as a fair warning to the rest that such things were a bad idea.

These were both table games from back when I started playing TTRPGs. If I lost a character I just cracked open the rulebook and started working on another. Sometimes if things are close I'll start brainstorming early. It definitely happens less often nowadays.

One that lives on in my brain is a monk from my old live game who thought that simply speaking to animals was enough to gain their favor. So one night while he was on watch, several dire wolves—who had been skulking around their camps for a few mights—was lured closer by the monk and some dried rations. He stood outside of the campfire light and spoke with the giant, hungry beasts, and was never heard from again. Aside from a failed initiative roll, no rolls were needed.

And the player loved it! Because the fun he had with that experience meant he was at the right table!

I once had players walk into a classic Shadowrun-style double-cross, and when the big bad said that he's not going to pay, that he's in fact not even their employer, and he's going to take the item now, the players casually responded with "well, in that case we are leaving with the item" and began to slowly roll the item back into the truck because they thought the big bad was standing there at the meeting place alone while saying all that. There were of course cloaked snipers all around and even a stealth mecha, while the characters were loose ends. That game was a one-shot, though, and all players were explicitly warned from the start that survival is unlikely but they are welcome to try. The educational moment was that despite the extreme challenge level all characters managed to survive until the very end and only died when they relaxed, thinking it was the epilogue.

In the old days, I was a little loath to kill PCs because most often, it wasn't their fault. If you played by the book, then they could suffer from sucky stats, and step-and-die traps aren't really fair. Nowadays, since I use point-buy, traps are more fairly balanced, and I try to ensure that encounters are balanced; it's usually on them if they die. If they are stupid enough to ignore all warning signs that an ancient red dragon lives in the area and insist on going dragon-hunting, then let the dice fall where they may! Likewise, an unlucky roll is just the way the dice roll. If an NPC peasant gets a lucky hit and caps a PC, them's the breaks.

One reason that I enjoy Savage Worlds so much is the randomness of the die mechanics. The Wild Die gives even an unskilled character a 50% chance of success, and with the exploding dice, you never know how a battle is going to play out and in whose favor! I have seen a Novice character take down a giant with a lucky roll, and I have witnessed a Legendary character die from a single shot from a .22 pistol!

If there is no risk, if you know that you will succeed no matter the odds, what's the point of playing? Maybe I'm jaded by Call of Cthulhu, where you knew it was just a matter of time before you died or went insane. If you played well and were lucky, you might accomplish a small victory or two first, but sooner or later, your character was doomed. That was just the nature of the game.

Like the man said, "Don't take life too seriously. No one gets out alive."

When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, my English teacher taught me and my friends how to play Traveller. We were playing out an assault on an armed encampment, and my character had this hefty, man-portable fusion gun. We saw they had a nuclear generator at the centre of the camp powering all their gear, so we decided to shoot it to take out the bad guys in one shot. The plan worked too well. We nuked the camp, but we were down wind of the fallout, and we got irradiated. We failed our rolls, couldn't get back to our ship in time to treat the radiation poisoning, and died.

Later that day in the IRL locker room before PE class, one of my fellow players was telling the story that we had shot a generator and caused a huge explosion. Now, growing up in rural Canada, that is a plausible form of entertainment, so the rumour got started that I was quite the marksman and liked to blow stuff up! As a painfully nerdy kid, I rather liked this new, edgy reputation over my usual boring one and did nothing to dissuade this rumour!

But in RPGs, the way the scenario played out fascinated me. It was so fun that the world, through the referee, reacted to our crazy plan. We could affect the world any way we chose, but the consequences of our actions mattered, and the stakes were real. I was hooked.

I guess if it were 1/8 members survived it would have been an horror story instead of epic fantasy 🤔

… and that is sort of the line between accepting or not character death for me. Epic heros are expected to mostly survive (modern fantasy games) dungeon looting mercenaries (old school fantasy) are expected to randomly drop dead, horror games? Like WntKnt said, pray you can live to tell the tale. Social gossip character interacting games in high school? Why would there be any risk of death? (Well, I guess they should look twice before crossing the road🤷)

That, and how long the campaign is. Death is easier to take in one-shots or in a decade long campaign when you are tired of the character than the in 6-12 months games where you are still fully invested in the character arc.

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I didn’t really get to die (in this particular instance) but sometimes playing stupid is fun.

I mean, what’s the point or having a sphere of annihilation in a dark hole if no one is going to put their hand in there? If you don’t want to use it, don’t put it there. Of course, if the GM was going to punish me too hard for exploring the setting I would have not done it. But these stupid moves just add to the sense of danger and sometimes make for great moments.

… that’s how one famous legend of the one-arm dwarf was born in the forests of chult 😆

Ah punishment. I am not a masochist.

Death can be meaningful. It doesn't have to be comical. But when it is shelled out like lint at a laundry mat it is just comedy.

A horror is not about death and dying, that is grindhouse comedy. Horror is about teaching why you should fear. Grindhouse is a legitimate form of entertainment. But its just not for me. I prefer things that are more serious.

Death isn't a lesson to the corpse.

Preach, brother! Great story, Len. I've been busy this weekend or would have chimed in on this thread. Obviously, it depends on what game you're playing, what fiction you're modeling, and the agreement everyone has at the start of the game. Tales From the Loop? If you're playing RAW, death is simply off the table -- but all sorts of other terrible things can happen! OSR? Better have the undertaker get warmed up. Playing Fate or one of a variety of superhero games? Death is often only on the line in dramatic, comic-book-appropriate moments.

I quite like suddenly and unexpected PC deaths in OSR-powered horror / modern games. KCC does too, I think!

I have a lot of ideas for characters floating around in my head, so the more the merrier, so if one drops, I have another to replace, so I don't feel terribly bad about death of a character. Sometimes I find it interesting to assume death is the inevitable likelihood; if not by retirement and old age, then by lethality. So, I play with that mentality and assume a short life for the character and wonder where their end will be and how their dynamic story will come to a close.

In roleplaying, that's what I try to make happen as a player and as a GM - make the best out of the play make meaning for however long the character(s) live, so there isn't a sense of meaninglessness if the character dies. I am not one to spare characters from die rolls just for plots sake...the dice make fate and fate make plot in a sense partway on their own. If you disallow the random ups and downs of dice fortune, that blows away some of good story telling.

It's like if they didn't kill Sturm in Dragonlance, just for the sake of some glorious knighthood story, which they could have gone with, instead, sometimes characters have sudden death syndrome and there's nothing really you can do, but eat the dice, trap, situation and roll up a new one, but at least the memories are there. It's up in part to the player to make things memorable, and to the GM to give a player opportunities at the least. If this happens, then the dice fall where they may and that's just part of the game, better luck next time. That's part of the fun of good dice rolls when you get them, and sometimes it's more fun when a disadvantaged character gets a string of good luck, and does amazing things; not to speak of point-buy where if you have a chosen character, then there isn't much to complain about, the game is the game...the GM shouldn't have to be bullied and pressured to bail your precious character out. I'm largely against coddling that sort of thing.