How do you feel about death?

[Callan S.]

Sorry if I confused anyone, I think I may have put more weight on the subject than was intended. I suppose discussions about death might tend to do that ^^;

Heh, I think your right! I had vaguely thought to ask if it's about winning, but the death thing totally distracted me. In that context, it sounds cool - the character lives for awhile, to get to know him, but he'll die - it's like the bishop in chess moving on angles only - it's just how things are!

Also remember mutant cronicles started as a board game then they produced an RPG latter. The board/card game can always either  expand into an RPG or have an edition with RPG like elements latter on, if you want. So it's good to make a card game. Good luck with it, it sounds interesting already, even at a brief description

[flossy]

There is something coming to mind about a game where you effectively played a magic weapon. That magic weapon was obviously intelligent and guided the wielder of it. I kind of like the idea of following the history of a magic weapon and playing though the variously historic figures who wielded it. Obviously it would be possible for the weapons to have been forged together and intended to fulfill different roles.

Actually just remembered about a series of crowns in Shadow World, however it is a bit of a spoiler if you play Shadow World with Role Master.

[JoyWriter]

This reminds me a little of hot war, which I believe uses the relationship system to have the effects of someone's death ripple out through to those they are close to.

If you do something like this, in a way you could be setting up new characters for yourself every time you build relationships, discouraging the "sultry mysterious loaner" archetype (personal plus for me!).

Now such a system is not designed along a "PCs as pawns" paradigm, more on the basis of exploring characters as self motivating things. I suspect one way to inject purpose into such a system would be along the lines of creating factions, schools or legacies as you suggest.

As to the main question; about whether I feel cheated, that totally depends on how you explain the characters role to me: Certain activities require an amount of time to be completed, and if your time required to complete them is less than the mean time between deaths, then yes probably I would feel cheated.

So if you work out what things you want players to be doing, then you can set up forms of relationship that allow them to extend that task beyond the lifetime of a character. For example if you are using a character to learn about the world, then instead of risking that knowledge becoming "metagame" and so unusable (depending on the system obviously), you could give the lore-seeker a protege, who can continue their researches with the full advantage of that previous experience.

If you do set up such a system, it might be good to set up a contrast with the existing character when you set up the similarity in the relationship; whatever else he is, this guy is dedicated to his teacher's cause of destroying the lizards plaguing his towns, but he is more willing to form bands than just go it alone, etc.

In this way you avoid making the same character, but explicitly relate them to the previous one.

For the crazy barbarian guy, you could create a rival, who seeks the same objective through different means. He could be emboldened by his adversaries defeat, but mainly I suspect with such a character very little continuity would be required: Many such characters are focused on survival or being the best, just requiring the rival to be of near equal level would be enough for many players while still being fairly apropriate. I'd also require them to add a reason why they don't just team up to get it, which is just there to insure they actually are a rival and not another way of hitting the same cause. Actually that is a balance point, in that when you create these options, the best option should be the obvious one, so that it is not the best way to get someone loyal to your cause by being their rival, although it may a be pretty good one.

Finally on a pretty different note, people sometimes set up grand romantic plots and then get annoyed their character gets killed. Surely he would behave more cageyley if he wants to survive for his loved one, in other words sometimes the dilemma between long term goals and short term adventure can be addressed directly at a character level, all assuming they are able to make real choices at that level of course!

[David C]

As a GM, I very rarely kill anyone anymore.

As a player, I want my GM to kill me.  I don't care if it's because of some sort of "Russian roulette", but every time my GM asks me what my HP/Health level is, I cringe.  Every time I fire a ray of disintegration, and the the dragon turns the other way because he's already hit me a bunch, I lose a little faith. Danger pulls me in. Playing without death is like telling ghost stories with the lights on.

I've tried to address this in my game by making it so that players *know* when they're in danger of dieing. I don't just mean, low HP, but that they're skimming the boundaries of death, and they know it. I don't know if this illusion would be broken if they played long enough... but so far my players have been afraid for their lives in nearly every encounter I've set them against. (I use a system where you can be inflicted with a mortal wound.  Without a mortal wound, you cannot be killed with the next hit.  With a mortal wound, you can be killed with any hit.) 

In my case, if I hit a player with a mortal wound, I GM-cheat and don't hit them hard enough to kill them, unless I think it is a suitable time to do so (ie. it is good for the plot or they were really asking for it.)

[flossy]

I to tend to make death meaningful, unless it would break the suspension of disbelief.

I try to make sure that the players are aware just how risky something that they are attempting is or if they are playing the odds once to often. A death which I was GMing for always comes to mind. It was Role Master, there was a gnome arcanist who has constantly pushing how much he could overcast by. So there they were down in the sewers which had nasty villains and the occasional ancient monster, the gnome made him self invisible and ethereal and insisted in walking at a 90 degree angle with just his head popping out of the wall, then he saw a group of villains and decided to overcast an element bolt at them. He failed, the result knocked him unconscious for longer than the duration of his ethereal spell. There he stayed to the spell dropped and pop went the gnome when the ethereal spell dropped and he materialized in solid rock. How could he not die at that point ... I think I would have lost credibility if I had arranged his survival at that point.

[Daniel B]

I'm with David on this, that as a GM I hate to kill but as a Player I hate the genuine threat of death to be removed. However, I also think regular deaths of a PC turns the game into an arcade. I certainly wouldn't devote the same amount of attention to each character; they'd be pages of hastily-generated stats.

Surely there's a middle-of-the-road way to get the best of both worlds. Whenever this subject comes up, I can't help but think of Banjo-Kazooie, a now older N64 game. When you died, you lost your progress within the level but not the game. PCs make progress, in a way, but I can't think of a way to pull off a similar kind of "death" without making it seem artificial. Any methods I can think of for keeping characters alive seem artificial as well.

[JoyWriter]

A thought occurs to me; this type of thread is probably more suited to actual play, and I think it's a fair bet that if we post it there someone will have a huge set of archived threads relating to it.

Why is it more "actual play" than "first thoughts"? Well we're discussing an element of play in general based on our various experiences. That's a perfect fit for an actual play thread. Next person who thinks of a comment could start a new thread and link back to this one, or better, a mod could move this.

[Ron Edwards]

Whoops, have to edit myself.

This thread stays here, because it is about the game in design, mostly. But in terms of discussing death in play, if someone wants to make a sister thread in Actual Play, that would be excellent. It also stands a good chance of someone digging back and finding useful older threads for reference.

Bobert, long posts are totally cool as long as they're substantive, which yours are, so that's all good.

Best, Ron