In order for a game to truly feel rewarding, player characters need (to be able) to die. The problem is, what was once a gaming situation now becomes a "people management" problem since one of the people, physically sitting at your table is effectively out of the game. Even if there's the possibility of resurrection or reincarnation, you have a period of time in which one of your players is unable to participate, and possibly emotionally charged.
How do you cope with this at your table?
I tend to wrap things up and call the session shortly after the death, but I feel like I could do better.
After reading a bunch of threads on another forum in which DMs proudly declared that they fudge dice, I began to think that some DMs are quick to fudge dice, and slow to let their players die because they don't know how to handle the PERSON at the table once the death happens. So I was thinking that maybe sharing some good "people management" techniques could lead to a decrease in dice fudging and ultimately, richer play experiences! :D
-p
I really hate player death at the table. Calling 911 and dealing with grieving relatives really puts a crimp in the session.
Quote from: pandesmos;600304In order for a game to truly feel rewarding, player characters need (to be able) to die.
No they don't.
Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;600306I really hate player death at the table. Calling 911 and dealing with grieving relatives really puts a crimp in the session.
You mean you don't keep one of these in the house?
(http://i.imgur.com/TOzse.png)
I've edited the thread title to make it less scary!
Quote from: pandesmos;600308You mean you don't keep one of these in the house?
Please tell me that is a real thing?
Character death in my games is somewhat infrequent, but certainly it happens.
The most common result is the player accepts the death, and creates a new character.
In that rare situation that the player really, really wants to keep the dead character, I do one of two things.
1) Build an adventure around the raise dead effect used to restore them.
Meaning, the actual raising is quick, but the payment might be far reaching; an adventure in itself.
2) Bring the character back with some cool aspect that fits the setting.
Perhaps the Wizard that perished in the nine hells cut a deal with a devil.
Many possibilities.
Fundementally it's about what is fun for the players.
we have a decent amount of death and dismemberment.
Here is the Player page for the online Steel ISle Group (http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14956323/Steel%20Isle%20online). you can scroll down to the deceased portion.
First off, I don't feel like player death is necessary for a good game or for all play types. However, it is necessary for mine. I like that feeling of accomplishment when a PC survives a while, which is part of the game I grew up with that, no matter the other changes I make, I need.
In the livr group, it happens the same way. Players lose characters. It sucks but it heightens the feeling of relief and accomplishment for the surviviors.
Plus, we drink a lot of wine and socialize a lot. And since all our rules are on line, the player in quesiton normally grabs a glass of vino, then gets a PC to authenticate their rolls and starts working on the next character.
Usually, the player of the deceased PC will start running a henchman or hireling until his PC is raised or he rolls up a new one.
PC death sucks. You fine-tune this machine to work how you like it, and some days just aren't as bright as others and you might go down. However, it's usually the player you have to deal with. I am lucky that my group is always thinking. They don't take PC death too hard, even if they loved their character.
Roll up a new guy, we'll bring him in next session and carry on. Were the deceased character's achievements noteworthy? He may be written in to further adventures as an example of "doing it right". A legacy is nothing to snuff at either. When you can roll up a character, and the littlest detail like "Son of X", or "Ancestor of Y" and get people at the table excited, you're doing right.
I'm a big softy so characters rarely die. IF they do, it is after several chances at living.
Quote from: pandesmos;600304In order for a game to truly feel rewarding, player characters need (to be able) to die. The problem is, what was once a gaming situation now becomes a "people management" problem since one of the people, physically sitting at your table is effectively out of the game. Even if there's the possibility of resurrection or reincarnation, you have a period of time in which one of your players is unable to participate, and possibly emotionally charged.
Quick question: does that mean that players at your game table are engaged and active (as in, making decisions and speaking) at all times? That they absolutely turn their brains off as soon as someone else's talking? That they just can't get in the game unless THEY are doing stuff right-fucking-now? That must be hard to manage indeed with everyone talking at the same time... ;)
Look. Players in a role playing game are waiting for their turn, listening to the action and what others are doing while it's not their turn regularly. In practical terms, only a few people are active in the game at any given moment. A character's death isn't any different in that regard, or at least, it shouldn't be. It's changed because some games now construe the campaign's action as one set of characters going through a story, which creates its own set of expectations and management problems when a character dies unexpectedly, there's no supporting cast (henchmen and hirelings), it takes 2 hours to select feats and bullshit to create a new character, and so on. Hence character death = huge problem in those kinds of games.
I don't have those problems.
Quote from: pandesmos;600304How do you cope with this at your table?
I don't "cope" with it. It just happens. I don't fudge the dice, I don't railroad, I don't mitigate. If you get yourself in a situation where your character dies, well, your character dies. Then you either create a new character, or you already have a back-up, such as an henchman, or a character from your stable (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=24538), and we just deal with the situation in the game. The henchman becomes more proactive. The character from the stable shows up in a way that is consistent with the game's events.
I don't use systems where creating a character takes more than a few rolls and initial choices to be played effectively. If a player can't generate a character in 20 minutes max, then the system's out (I run games like AS&SH, OD&D/AD&D 1e, Vampire the Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, In Nomine Satanis Magna Veritas, Star Wars d6 - generating characters in those systems doesn't take ages).
I don't run plots. I run sandboxes.
I welcome alternate characters, multiple groups, hirelings and henchmen, etc.
I don't use save or die as random punishment, but rather in situations that are deadly by their very nature, with the chance for the players to assess the situation, think on their feet, and be able to not make the wrong choice that would trigger a roll in the first place.
And so on.
Quote from: pandesmos;600304I tend to wrap things up and call the session shortly after the death, but I feel like I could do better.
After reading a bunch of threads on another forum in which DMs proudly declared that they fudge dice, I began to think that some DMs are quick to fudge dice, and slow to let their players die because they don't know how to handle the PERSON at the table once the death happens. So I was thinking that maybe sharing some good "people management" techniques could lead to a decrease in dice fudging and ultimately, richer play experiences! :D
-p
Death in the game is an opportunity for changes, events, drama. If the players fail to use the situation, if the DM doesn't allow for such developments to occur, then an opportunity is clearly missed. Fudging the dice, keeping the characters alive, this is bad DMing. This is setting foot into story-wanking, playing to the participants' entitlement, instead of encouraging them to be responsible of their characters' actions and consequences thereof.
Without meaningful choice, without consequences, there is no game. We might as well write a movie script together. That's not why I play role playing games.
Quote from: Heru;600352PC death sucks. You fine-tune this machine to work how you like it, and some days just aren't as bright as others and you might go down. However, it's usually the player you have to deal with. I am lucky that my group is always thinking. They don't take PC death too hard, even if they loved their character.
Roll up a new guy, we'll bring him in next session and carry on. Were the deceased character's achievements noteworthy? He may be written in to further adventures as an example of "doing it right". A legacy is nothing to snuff at either. When you can roll up a character, and the littlest detail like "Son of X", or "Ancestor of Y" and get people at the table excited, you're doing right.
Fine tuned machine?
Most of my characters are either hopelessly valiant and heroic, or a basket case :)
Point and laugh, usually.
I game with my good friends, so it's not as though someone is going to pack up and go home if their PC dies. They'll just hang out, work an NPC, or roll a new PC, or just drink beer and mock everybody for the rest of the night.
There are a lot of "Ifs" in my answer.
If it is a 1st Edition D&D game and the PC has henchmen, then the player plays the PC's henchmen.
If it is a 3rd Edition D&D game and the PC has taken the Leadership feat, then the player plays the PC's cohort.
If it is either a 1st or 3rd Edition game and there are no henchmen or cohorts (respectively) and the PCs are traveling with an NPC ally, then the Player can play the NPC ally.
If none of the above situations is true and the party is close to town, then the party may go back to town and recruit another of the Player's characters.
If the player doesn't have a readily available PC or the party is too far from home base, then the player has a number of options:
1. He can assist the DM for the rest of the session by drawing maps, setting up and tearing down terrain, or running/playing monsters in combat.
2. He can build a new character to be inserted into the campaign at an appropriate time.
3. He can skip out early and head home. (This is only likely if the character death occurred toward the end of the session.)
There are probably some other scenarios that I am forgetting about, but that's the gist of it.
Quote from: vytzka;600307No they don't.
Precisely, it's total bullshit that death needs to be on the table for a "rewarding" roleplaying experience.
In four years of playing with my current group, PC death hasn't come up yet. No one has been in apparent danger of dying in any of the half-dozen games we've played so far.
One of my PCs came closest in D&D4e, failing two of three death saving throws, but that's about it. In WFRP2e all the PCs were killed in the climactic final battle, but came back to finish off the Big Bad; one PC decided to stay dead after that, but the others returned to their lives.
Death means two things in our club:
1. You sit out the rest of the evening while you drum up another character.
2. Your name is entered into the Death Roll.
The Death Roll is a binder we keep with all the character sheets of the deceased within. The first few pages is a register where the characters' name, the player and the cause of death and the date is written down.
Usually, when a character is pronounced dead with no hope of resurrection...we all do the "DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN" sound effect and the roll is brought out. The DM takes a moment and writes in your information by their own hand...this is the final pronouncement of death in our club, and only once under very special circumstances was this overturned by a DM...but it should be stated that those characters were in a "no one could possibly survive that" situation, and they were only revisited to conclude the campaign.
This will not happen again, as it has been ruled by the club that when the DM puts you in the Death Roll that's where you stay.
The first and last entries in the book read:
1. Cephous of the Hold (Greg H.) 8/1/2010 - Fell to Death
*
*
*
52. Lorcc Mac Dubh (Dave) 9/30/2012 - Martyred to the Cause by Chuin
It's almost an honor. I'm sure I'll be adding to it this weekend, when the Temple of Elemental Evil claims its first victims.
We also have an Honor Roll for characters who survive entire campaigns and are retired. That book is much smaller, let me tell you - there are only four entries, and they were the ones dropped from the Death Roll.
I generally play games where either death is not easy and the character takes some time to create, or death is easy and the characters are created quickly. In either case, death is always on the table. I do not fudge rolls. I roll in the open, with no screen. If a character dies, it dies. Many games I run are troupe games, and the player can play another of his characters. If it's a quick character creation game, they can take a few minutes and create a new character. Nothing to 'handle'. The players are adults. They knew the risks before they got into that situation.
-clash
There are so many mitigating factors to this that I can't cover all the possibilities. For example....
Was the Player blindingly stupid and knew better? We point and laugh.
Was the Player a newbie who didn't understand what was going on? They might get a second chance at life with some penalties.
Was it due to some really really bad luck? I can fudge the dice roll, I'm the GM.
Is death common? Are characters easy to create? Kill them in droves!
Is death common? Are characters difficult to create and take a long time? Something else ignoble happens instead of just death. Maybe, if the Player wasn't blindingly stupid and knew better, then we point and laugh.
This is why you have a GM, to adjucate the rules and effects of actions.
Quote from: Benoist;600364Quick question: does that mean that players at your game table are engaged and active (as in, making decisions and speaking) at all times? That they absolutely turn their brains off as soon as someone else's talking? That they just can't get in the game unless THEY are doing stuff right-fucking-now? That must be hard to manage indeed with everyone talking at the same time... ;)
Look. Players in a role playing game are waiting for their turn, listening to the action and what others are doing while it's not their turn regularly. In practical terms, only a few people are active in the game at any given moment. A character's death isn't any different in that regard, or at least, it shouldn't be.
I'm going to disagree with this last part. Waiting for your turn is different than
being dead, because in the first instance, if you decide there's something you want to do, you can do it. In the latter case,
you're dead. No matter what you think you might want to do, or what action you want to take, you can't.
There is a difference between not being engaged at the moment and
not being able to engage the game at all..
Different players handle death in different ways. If death is possible or likely, you should have a plan in place for it. For the places it is most likley (like climatic fights) it's best to put those toward the end of the session, anyways. Then there is not much time (relatively speaking) if a PC bites it before you can figure a solution. At the very least, you probably want to have some 'temporary replacements' made up in advance that will be available. If the PCs don't have a 'back-up' made, you can make an NPC and stick them in the nearest holding cell - when the PCs rescue said NPC, the PC can take over playing that character. After the session they can replace it with 'their own character' or keep playing the new one.
Quote from: Blackhand;600379Your name is entered into the Death Roll.
The Death Roll is a binder we keep with all the character sheets of the deceased within. The first few pages is a register where the characters' name, the player and the cause of death and the date is written down.
I've run a lot of Call of Cthulhu over the years and this is something we adopted. We call it 'The Black File,' its a black binder which holds all of the dead characters that have been part of my CoC universe. When a character dies, the sheet is put into the binder with a note about the circumstances of their death.
Also, as part of the tradition, one of the artists in the group fills in the portrait slot of the character sheet with a tombstone, complete with epitaph. They are usually done in a similar style to Edward Gorey's illustrations and most often the epitaph is a small in-joke about how the character died. Sometimes, if the persons death is particularly memorable someone will doodle an illustration of the event. Such as the time a player tried to use a flamethrower to attack some serpent people. He didn't have any skill with the weapon, also it might have been defective in the first place. That didn't stop him though, he fired it up, pulled the trigger and died shouting his last words "Cherries flambe, bitches!" Yep, that went on his tombstone.
Players often like to flip through The Black File on game night. It's become a kind of family album for the CoC group.
All that aside, when a player dies I have him roll up a new character in the background and work him into the adventure as fast as I can.
If the character died well, we toast his demise and send him onto the afterlife. In fact we've had several intense scenes where a great hero gets to sit at the right hand of his father, lord, god as appropriate.
If it was a foolish death, then there is laughter and certain amount of mockery, which is a good catharsis.
Then its take over an NPC till the end of the session, then create a full blown PC out of them, or create a brand new one. No problems, no issues, and certainly no useless anxiety over a fictional death of a fictional character.
Personally I think a few memorable or tragic deaths adds to a campaign. In fact I've been more upset over times I have not been able to 'choose a fitting death' for my character. :)
Slightly relevant, an actual conversation from a Mutant Future game around our table:
- So, who are you?
- I'm Captain Adam Prometheus Williams the Fourth. I'm searching for my father who looks just like me only he's stronger and less agile.
- Say, would your father happen to be Captain Adam Prometheus Williams the Third?
- Yes! Do you know him?
- We did. I regret to say he died just a few hours ago, not far from this particular cave.
- Oh dear, what happened to him?
- He didn't run when he should have.
- Yes, well, I'm sort of like that, too.
Quote from: deadDMwalking;600386I'm going to disagree with this last part. Waiting for your turn is different than being dead, because in the first instance, if you decide there's something you want to do, you can do it. In the latter case, you're dead. No matter what you think you might want to do, or what action you want to take, you can't.
Well obviously if you are holding your action and interjecting in the middle of somebody else's turn, the comparison doesn't work. :rolleyes:
The point was that all participants are not active, speaking and making decisions, 100% of the time, and that character death isn't any different from not being active at any given moment. The only difference is how long it would take for you to get back in the game, and if you're using bloated rules and not setting up the game environment and structure in a way that allows for quick character replacements well, that's part of the problem right there.
If there are D&D hirelings or henchmen, Vampire ghouls, Rogue Trader crewmen or similar disposable NPCs around, we let the player take over one of them. If not, well, tough luck. Go read a book or something, though sometimes I'll temporarily assign them some random unimportant NPC like a tavern-keeper to keep the occupied (also a sure-fire way to turn a forgettable interaction into a memorable exchange).
The only honorable way to deal with PC death at the table is for the player to immediately commit seppukku. With frisbee.
The game continues without the pc. He either plays a henchman, or ten minutes later, his new pc is introduced as a slave, prisoner, wandering adventurer, or whatever. He generally only misses the rest of the combat.
No pretense anymore?
I love no players/empty table jabs.
"Female dwarves have beards in your game? ENJOY YOUR EMPTY TABLE WITH NO PLAYERS!"
EDIT: Whoops! Wrong of two somewhat similar threads...
So we had a new DM TPK the party whilst in the 1930's as Oklahoma Bootleggers.
My GF showed up for dinner and then wasn't feeling well, so when we ate it I bid farewell and adieu. The next week the DM called me up, thinking I was mad or something. He announced his plans to resurrect the players by saying, basically, we had stuff we didn't know about and it could have saved us.
No one in the group thought this was a good idea. Dead is dead. This was a bad move for the DM, who felt as some do here: that he somehow took our characters from us and, I dunno...felt bad or something. In reality, we only took it bad when he announced our "miraculous survival".
Everyone took it bad. Changed games, changed GM's. He'll be back, but this time he knows the score.
Point is, absolutely no one in my group would play if there wasn't both investiture and penalty.
I think that goes for most groups, but you could probably slide it through with groups that cycle players a lot or have a lot of players new to the hobby.
Maybe it's the wargaming. We move and "remove" a lot of pieces all day long. People like their characters, but in the end...well, most characters have nothing to look forward to but a memorable death.
If there's no penalty, but lots of investiture (character background, fluff and such, including time making the character and learning the rules) then I think it's safe to call it "wank".
Or is that what a "storygame" is? I was never clear on that.
oh no.
Like I said, I'm a softy when it come to character death.
but dead is dead.
As a GM, you can't go back on a ruling, especially one as important as that. It makes you appear weak and shitty.
and if a GM does go back on something like that, they ARE weak and shitty.
Just move on.
Quote from: The Butcher;600412If there are D&D hirelings or henchmen, Vampire ghouls, Rogue Trader crewmen or similar disposable NPCs around, we let the player take over one of them. If not, well, tough luck. Go read a book or something, though sometimes I'll temporarily assign them some random unimportant NPC like a tavern-keeper to keep the occupied (also a sure-fire way to turn a forgettable interaction into a memorable exchange).
I try to minimize the "go read a book" piece, if possible because boring people who are there to game and socialize generally isn't ideal. I'd much rather let them join in sooner rather than later. But maybe it because we are all older and really time crunched so session time is really precious.
I deal with it in the same way I do when the NPCs die. I make a ruling, or use an established policy, if I need to. Then I move on. In this case, the player takes over a henchman or rerolls; the game goes on either way, and if needed then I have the new man enter play when I deem it feasible. Since I prefer to use a West Marches paradigm, that usually means "when the party returns to town" or "an unexpected bonus encounter".
Quote from: Blackhand;6003792. Your name is entered into the Death Roll.
The Death Roll is a binder we keep with all the character sheets of the deceased within. The first few pages is a register where the characters' name, the player and the cause of death and the date is written down.
That is a really good idea.
Quote from: poseidon-anubis;600478as the DM I encourage power gaming and creative stuff
What's creative stuff?
QuoteI do same with bad guy and try to kill off the players
if they die I laugh
You should follow this up by slapping their moms in the face.
When a character dies, my reaction depends a lot on the system and setting, what is emulatively-possible.
If, for example, character creation is a long drawn-out process, I will tell a guy who died he is out for the session, because it would take too long to pause everything to let him make a new guy. Fortunately, most of my games don't run on systems like that.
If the system is faster for character creation, then we'll have the guy make a new character during a short pause as soon as possible, and the new character will get introduced at the next possible moment in the game (which sometimes can be very fast, and sometimes not).
RPGPundit
Faster character creation always is a plus in these situations. If making characters takes time, I usually ask folks to bring back-ups just in case.
Once a character does die, will try to get that player back into the game at the next convenient point. If that means a wait, i will often ask him to manage other aspects of the game in the meantime or play an NPC.
Quote from: Benoist;600364Death in the game is an opportunity for changes, events, drama. If the players fail to use the situation, if the DM doesn't allow for such developments to occur, then an opportunity is clearly missed. Fudging the dice, keeping the characters alive, this is bad DMing. This is setting foot into story-wanking, playing to the participants' entitlement, instead of encouraging them to be responsible of their characters' actions and consequences thereof.
Without meaningful choice, without consequences, there is no game. We might as well write a movie script together. That's not why I play role playing games.
This is what it's all about, and what drove me to make this post in the first place. I tend to troll around on reddit's rpg board and I've seen a number of posts in which some DMs openly boast about fudging dice rolls. I can't stand fudging. It completely undermines, cheapens and even renders the game meaningless as far as I'm concerned, but here in this community of role-players some people were standing up and saying they did it proudly.
My theory had been that this pride in dice fudging was mostly due to the difficult social situations it could cause at the table, but after reading all these posts, and reevaluating things again, it does seem that character creation system bloat may ultimately be the root of the problem.
If it takes Player A, 2 hours to create Gallahad McShitstorm, and then they engage in risky play behavior that should result in character death, the possibility of an awkward social encounter increases dramatically (due to the player's initial time investment) leading DMs with poor people management skills to be more likely to take the easy way out and lie about the dice rolls.
Most of these newer and more bloated systems also don't seem to place as much emphasis on henchmen and followers as the older systems as well which necessitates a break in the action to go back to town and pick up a new party member, or leads to the use of "poof here's a new character" type tropes.
Appreciate the conversation guys! Also, I really really like the Death Roll and Black File type ideas and need to implement something like that myself.
Well, anytime you're on some other RPG board and you find yourself thinking "Good god these guys are idiots!", just come here, you'll find out you were right.
Quote from: CRKrueger;600796Well, anytime you're on some other RPG board and you find yourself thinking "Good god these guys are idiots!", just come here, you'll find out you were right.
I may be missing your point, but there seem to be a ton of really smart people here.
Quote from: Bill;600917I may be missing your point, but there seem to be a ton of really smart people here.
He meant it RE: the remark about reddit's RPG board. If you find yourself on that board and think these guys are morons and then come here to talk it over, chances are, you'll find out that you were right: that they were morons on reddit's RPG board in the first place.
Quote from: Planet Algol;600494I love no players/empty table jabs.
"Female dwarves have beards in your game? ENJOY YOUR EMPTY TABLE WITH NO PLAYERS!"
EDIT: Whoops! Wrong of two somewhat similar threads...
Lol, Go home Planet Algol. You're drunk! :P
Quote from: The Traveller;600368Point and laugh, usually.
Yep.
Most deaths in our games are rare and due to player's taking a bad risk.
I rarely kill someone in combat if there's another option such as taking them prisoner for ransom, etc.
If you die you can either roll up a new PC and wait a while or take over an existing henchman or NPC (including animals) and keep on trucking.
Disappointment is usually the most common emotion, depending on the player.
Our current one shot game, which Heru plays in, is a 0-level funnel.
Each of the four players is in control of five peasants stuck in the dungeon.
They were made aware of how lethal it was going to be and and the fact we will never play these characters again.
So far they've done a great job of setting off every trap in the place by accident and are actually trying their asses off to stay alive even though they have no 'emotional investment' in the future of these characters. They're doing it for fun and it's been great.
If they're aware that death is a real risk or that an amusing demise is the actual objective of the game, they roll with it.
Quote from: baran_i_kanu;601439Lol, Go home Planet Algol. You're drunk! :P
You know what they say:
in vino veritas. Hehe. ;)