Quote from: thenorm42;226313In Nobilis, you can very easily render your character Immortal (it costs 6 out of your starting 25 points). This is pretty comprehensive personal invulnerability - a very small number of powerful weapons your opponents use can still harm you, you might still be able to kill yourself, and the Immortality might be a bit shaky away from Earth. However, you can still suffer from Flower Rites, which gradually destroy the concept that you embody, eventually taking you with it. Having what you stand for corrupted, destroyed and eventually made impossible to even think about is a much bigger deal than mere death.

Not to mention that even your pettiest rivals can still drain away your strength through Nettle Rites which work by ruining anything that you might care about. ("You have many things that you love. Remember, when it comes time to face us, that they are not immortal.") The same mechanics apply equally to all characters, of course: the immortality of a PC can be circumvented by the same means as that of an NPC which the players for one reason or another want dead, typically by making deals with things of the Beyond that may come to haunt them later. It's a quirk of the setting rather than a special privilege reserved for player characters.

T%he combats my homies still talk about after 10-15 years are the ones where combat got so crazy, some or all of the party got killed. And this they remember fondly, with no bitterness.That speaks volumes to me. From silly, accidental deaths (like the Bard that fell off a roof while singing to the Duke's wife-to-be and broke his neck in MERP) to the heroic, but ultimately doomed, battles (like the charge up the cliffside path to destroy the Goblin strong point in Hackmaster, which resulted in three PCs retreating back to town humiliated and three other PCs dead and gone), they remember those the most fondly.

*shrug*

Maybe that's just my network of friends? I doubt it though. Hell, my most favorite character ever, a Dwarf Battlerager in AD&D 2e, met his death valiantly and damn it brings a smile to my face. YMMV.

-=Grim=-

After having played a few additional times without the possibility of character deaths, I have to somehow correct my initial post a few pages back. After the first few times it really seemed like a great idea and the players enjoyed it (they still do). The problem is that I as the GM feel a bit crippled. The game feels much more laid back. It reminds me of a video game with respawn points. It's fun BUT it is very difficult for me to build up real excitement and tension .The risk of losing equipment IS NOT the same as the risk of losing your life. That was a wrong assumption. To use a sports analogy: It's like the difference between a friendly match and a qualifier. You can enjoy the friendly match simply for the beauty of the game but it still feels a bit "hollow". It's not "the real thing".
So, yeah, I'm going back to killing the PCs in my campaign as often as possible.

I've heard the idea that it's related to the amount of time it takes to create a new character, and how distinct they are.

In a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, you usually just make three dice rolls. You're not expected to even give the character a name. And the expectation is that you'll die most of the time (if you get through, the book has very little replay value).

In a modern game, it can take a whole session to create a character, and you're often expected to give it a unique personality and backstory.

Quote from: Age of Fable;226668I've heard the idea that it's related to the amount of time it takes to create a new character, and how distinct they are.

Obviously approaching the character as a long-term project to be developed slowly, possibly over years, doesn't quite fit in with the possibility of a random and arbitrary end to the saga. On the other hand, if it's meaningful continuity in the storyline rather than the fate of an individual character that the players insist on, there's no real reason why just about any game couldn't follow the "dynasty" route taken by Nobilis and mentioned earlier: after an untimely death, someone related to the deceased PC can then follow in his footsteps, and this successor might even be groomed and trained in advance while the old character is still alive.

Come to think of it, in some of my CoC games I've had the players prepare "last wills and testaments" for their characters, which served much the same purpose. As an added bonus, that also drives home the very real possibility of defeat.

I've had pretty good luck with players who can roll with having terrible things happen to their characters... so I almost never kill them off. I figure that's the easy way out.

Seriously, though, I've never permanently killed a PC without the player's consent. It hasn't really been an issue. I can only think of one TPK and that was a one-shot anyway.

As to why some people would not want player death?

Some players are in it for the experience of play rather than the play itself. The rolling of dice, the acting in character and improving stats. The implication of Danger is enough for them.

RPG's have removed the threat of death since the earliest times. With resurrection spells and clones available aplenty. You'll notice most of the most successful RPG's have the option to remove PC death: D&D, Shadowrun, Traveller. It's definitely a valid way to play.

Interestingly enough, Exalted has no PC resurrection.

Quote from: KrakaJak;226952Interestingly enough, Exalted has no PC resurrection.

Or time travel, canonically, which could provide another way to save a character. It does feature a cycle of reincarnation, though, and Exaltations move on after death.

Praedor has nothing of the sort, by the way. "Dead is dead": there's no proof of an afterlife or immortal souls despite the claims of various cults and religions, and even the so-called "living dead" are actually immaterial entities from alien realities bound magically to animate corpses. As far as anyone can tell, death is the end for all.