Player Death

[Mark Johnson]

Have you ever had a player die in a long term campaign?  Does the campaign continue?  Does the player's character remain alive in the campaign?   Does the player's character get a big send off?  

What if the player was the GM?  Has anyone ever tried to continue a GM's game after the GM's death?

I have never seen this issue addressed, if you have any links please post them.  Clearly, social contract mediates all of this.  I am just wondering if any of you have ever dealt with this and what happened to the campaign afterwards.

Regards,
Mark J.

[ffilz]

Hmm, is there any reason to treat this differently from any other reason a player leaves the campaign?

I had a player in my high school campaign die, but I think it was after I went off to college and the campaign pretty much died before going off to college.

In general, I would expect the campaign to continue. I expect most people would like to think that their friends won't just abandon something because they checked out.

Now the case of the GM dying is different. In that case, I would think it best to start a new campaign, perhaps borrowing from the previous one. Trying to take it over and continue is unlikely to succeed due to differences in style.

One could look to things like sports teams, bowling leagues, and such for other examples of how close knit groups deal with death of a member.

Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

Whoa - good question.

Frank, that's a little superficial, don't you think? "Would have" or "should" aren't going to carry much weight.

Let's have some people who've experienced this let us know what happened.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

We never had a player die. We did have a couple who were core members of the group break up, and she refused to game anymore. He greatly appreciated that we kept the games going with him after she was gone.

When players leave my D&D groups we keep the characters around as sort of NPCs. When they leave the Multiverser games, their characters just remain wherever they were until they return. In both cases, if the players return, they get their characters back, although the NPC option means the character has changed.

Some players don't want anyone else playing their character. I would retire them. In regard to a character of a deceased player, you'd have to ask yourself whether the player would be pleased to know he's remembered as part of the ongoing campaign, or whether he would have wanted his character removed from the game. At the same time, you have to consider how the other players feel about it. Is it comforting for us to have his character around to remind us of the good times we've had, or would we all feel a lot better if every time we played we didn't have to remember that terrible loss?

So it's an individual thing, really.

--M. J. Young

[SlurpeeMoney]

Well, I've never had a player die on me, personally, but one of my longest running groups lost their GM to suicide, and let me tell you, gaming is the last bloody thing on your mind after that. A few of them never played again. Those that did constantly compared the current campaign to the one he ran (he was the Game Master of a long-running Palladium Fantasy game, back when Palladium Fantasy was still cool), and the feats of that original group got bigger with every telling. As with any social activity, the death of a player or game master is going to have far-reaching affects quite apart from the game.

Universally, they all stopped playing for quite some time. The first back into the fold took just over four years to dust off his dice, and the rest followed over the course of two years.

Your results, as always, may vary.
~Kris

[jdagna]

I have a couple of friends who were in a group when the GM (and designer of the homebrew system they were playing) died - I don't recall why, but I think it was suicide.

In that case, the group stopped playing the game, but they decided to finish writing the game in honor of their friend.  They worked on it off and on, but it came to a point after more than a year where they were both losing enthusiasm and starting to clash over the "true way."  The friend's mother essentially gave them permission to stop (not in so many words, but when she said that she appreciated the chances they'd given her to see her son's world, and that was all she wanted, they all knew what the subtext was).

I was also in an online game where one of the players died, but it was a game with over 250 of us playing, so it didn't have the personal effect of a small face to face group.  In that case, the game's leaders chose to have the character die, and conducted an in-character memorial service.

In a regular face to face group, I'm not at all sure what I'd do.  It would very much depend on the person, the group and the general situation.

[contracycle]

I have not encountered this situation exactly.  But one of my most experienced fellow gamers died a couple of years ago quite suddenly, and young.  I would not be happy keeping one of his old characters in a game, or carrying on with such a  character.  It would just feel disrespectful to me, as if the artifact they created were taken to be more important than the creator.  I also think it would likely make it harder to progress through the grief process, if you are constantly reminding yourself of those you have lost.  Kinda like setting an empty place at the table.

[Factor 8]

Another player died in a game I was playing in a long while ago.  Everyone quit the game and the campaign ended.

[Ron Edwards]

Factor 8, can you give us some more details on this? Why, exactly, do you think the game ended? I'm interested especially in what happened among the people - did some try to keep playing, and some not? How did they interact about it?

Furthermore, I'm not sure from your post whether the group ended. Did the group continue to play together, just not that particular game, or did you all stop role-playing together entirely?

Best,
Ron

[Blankshield]

The only occurance of this I've had was in regards to LARP when a fellow gamer died.  For obvious reasons, her character was no longer played.  The game continued in the main, although some individuals dropped out or shifted their involvement down several notches.  Primarily the ones who were very close to the girl who died.

The absence of her character (characters, actually: she played in multiple LARPs) was treated very low key.  Plot lines that rotated around her character faded into the background and disappeared, her role in other plot lines did likewise.  This is much the same reaction as is typical (around here) to a player leaving a LARP, with the primary difference being that it happened silently, by tacit agreement instead of explicit "Well, Doug's gone, what are we going to do with (plot X) now?"

Relevant background: Edmonton has a very strong LARP community with typically every weekend in a month taken up by one or two on-going chronicles, often (but not always) based on something White Wolf.  Game attendance ranges from 15-20 for a small game to 50+ for a large popular game.  There are also one-day and full-weekend one shots that tend to get larger draws.  These are rarely drawn from the WW games and are usually a locally developed fantasy system/setting.

James

[daMoose_Neo]

I wasn't a part of this game, but my cousin was-
Back in Middle School for me, a friend and his mom were killed in a plane accident coming home from a vacation. The game was an online, like MUD or so, but I know there was quite a reaction, amongst his friends online as well people who didn't really even know him before that. Tis my understanding they got together online for a 'farewell'. My cousin didn't even know the kid, but told me what had happened later.

[Factor 8]

I just realized last night :  Not only did ' player x ' die in that one game, and the game ended ( yes it was all over )  But that I used to run a game and that two of the players in that game have died, and I blocked the whole thing out.  That game, my game, ' player y ' died and we stopped playing.  We were playing at ' player z's ' house,   ' player z ' is dead now too.   This was mostly due to ' player hiv '

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I just realized last night :  Not only did ' player x ' die in that one game, and the game ended ( yes it was all over )  But that I used to run a game and that two of the players in that game have died, and I blocked the whole thing out.  That game, my game, ' player y ' died and we stopped playing.  We were playing at ' player z's ' house,   ' player z ' is dead now too.   This was mostly due to ' player hiv '

That's the funniest horrible thing I've ever read!

[Riff Raff]

I was in a game where one of the players died. He committed suicide and most of the players were pallbearers at his funeral. Really tragic and emotional stuff. We kept playing. The game master had his character ride off and never return, although this was his call rather than any kind of group decision. I remember at the time being quite uncomfortable with it, but as I type it now it seems like it was the most appropriate thing to do. Retire the character but keep the game going