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...