How do you feel about death?

[bobert]

Hello Forum,
I am looking for some feeback on a large mechanic in a game I am working on that I feel might come off as offputting for older pen and paper rpg'ers that grow attatched to their characters. In my game, death is common and fairly frequent(death is a factor in roughly 5% of your encounters) but plays a large factor in the creation of your next character. WIthout spilling too many beans, I will say that there is a system akin to a father passing on skills(in the form of wisdom) and inheritance(weapons, money, junk) to his son. So the question is, would you feel betrayed if the game mechanics killed the character you spent time building up if it would allow you to pass a small part of him to the next character you made? In essence, you play a family, or dynasty of characters and further their legacy rather than just an individual.

[M. Burrell]

This style of play implies that each character has a child who, at some point, he's taught all he knows and managed to hand his equipment to. This either feels like it would become an abstract concept, the practical considerations largely ignored, or would force the players into making certain types of character or perhaps promote a certain type ofrestrictive gaming.

For example:
"My character is Thrug the Barbarian!"
"OK," says the GM, "Thrug has a child and must visit him regularly to impart information and drop off items."
"Well, that wasn't really the idea for a lonely savage I wanted..." Says the player, a little disgruntled.

It strikes me that most players would prefer a character to die and a new one be introduced at a comparitable 'level' to the previous one so they may continue the gaming experience.

[Vordark]

RPGs treat death (or permanent incapacitation) very differently.  In Call of Cthulhu it's considered a given that you'll have multiple player fatalities (or characters going permanently insane) throughout the course of any lengthy adventure.  Other games take the opposite approach and make death either nigh impossible or provide multiple ways to recover from it (resurrection).

In my experience, if death occurs as little more than a random chance, the game doesn't make for a long-term campaign.  Let's face it, if your character has a flat 10% of going belly up each session, with little you can do about it, you're not going to invest yourself in the game personally.

That said, it doesn't sound like you are talking about really playing characters at all.

In Ars Magica, the driving force behind the game are the mages.  But the players rarely play those characters on adventures.  Instead, the players manage a "troupe" that consists of a mage, servants, guards and henchmen.  Anywhere from three to five characters that all work together.  A player only runs one of these characters per session (generally), but if one of the characters dies it's not the end of the game for that troupe.  A lot of people praise the magic system in Ars Magica, but the idea that each player plays a small group of characters has always been my favorite part of the game.

FYI - Ars Magica is now free to download here:  http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=AG0204

In a nutshell, if you manage it right, I think such an approach could be very, very cool.

[bobert]

Perhaps I should clarify a bit more. I did present a fairly restricted approach with the intro. When I say you pass something on when your character dies, I didn't mean it had to be to a bloodline or actual family member. I admit I did say dynasty or family, but that can be expanded to fit what the player likes. For example, you may be a rich merchant who spent too much time counting money and never had a family, but in theory, you could have a benefactor, or in your travels you may come across a really cool race that obvisouly you wouldnt be able to 'mate' with, however, it would be perfectly acceptable to adopt an orphan of that race... prefereably not one who's parents you killed... but you get the idea. All in all the idea is similar to that 'troupe' mechanic (I should look into that btw) only you are one single character who will eventually die and pass on your knowledge and heirlooms to an heir. As one above poster stated you wouldn't be playing "characters" and they were correct in that observation.

The idea is to play a "family tree" and to have it be full of variety. And things do translate well, I've done some work to see to that. Say the merchant has an heir that happens to have a lust for blood and want to be a gladiator, well the skills are set up so that a "fighting" skill can translate into a "trade" skill. Ie: the merchant's "keen eye" skill which let him discern valuable items and tell a genuine painting from a fraud would translate to the gladiators "keen eye" which allows him to quickly identify weak points on an enemy and increases his chance for a critical strike.

Thank you for the feed back, I'm new to this forum and I was expecting to get thrashed and berated. Granted I've only received two replies, but the disagreements have been civil, which is a very nice change from most forums I've visited in the past.

[Vordark]

The idea is to play a "family tree" and to have it be full of variety. And things do translate well, I've done some work to see to that. Say the merchant has an heir that happens to have a lust for blood and want to be a gladiator, well the skills are set up so that a "fighting" skill can translate into a "trade" skill. Ie: the merchant's "keen eye" skill which let him discern valuable items and tell a genuine painting from a fraud would translate to the gladiators "keen eye" which allows him to quickly identify weak points on an enemy and increases his chance for a critical strike.

I think if you have enough mechanics to reinforce the idea of playing a "family tree", with inheriting skills/abilities as one piece of the puzzle, then this could be great.  Status with the government, social class/peer respect, etc.  You could also have "family"-wide benefits that affect every member of the tree but need to be acquired through the effort of two or more "generations".  Just some random thoughts.

Thank you for the feed back, I'm new to this forum and I was expecting to get thrashed and berated. Granted I've only received two replies, but the disagreements have been civil, which is a very nice change from most forums I've visited in the past.

We're friendly!

[Callan S.]

How much establishment of the connection between them would there be. If it's just saying "Oh yeah, that stable boy I talked to once. Him." there really isn't any legacy or tradition being carried on there? Well, most likely isn't and on the slim odds it is, it's pretty damn hard to see.

Does the 'next gen' adventure with the character for some time and some sort of rapour is mechanically made to be on display.

I think the idea has alot of merit, but that connection really needs to be shown prior to character death for it to be passing anything on. Or so I'd say.

[bobert]

The way a character might meet his heir is very circumstancial. By default, it would be someone within your family. This could be a brother, a sister, son, daughter, etc.The main characters are human, so this would be done via the old fasioned method, but it wouldn't really come up within the game. It would be a cultural "given" hopefully displayed through the "mini-stories" written to give the game flavor and history. However, should you decide you later want to play a lizardman or some such, your 'heir' would simply be an egg from a hatchery,(started as a new family completely, like you were taking up a completely seperate second character, or it could be tied to your human family) and this could have certain advantages as well, such as chosing a 'warrior brood' or an 'intellectual brood' etc... but I dont want to get too complicated until it's structured and outlined. For now, I'm focussing on the reception of the general idea of running a "family" one generation at a time. Speaking of time, I see the issue hiding between the lines about how 'time' would be managed as you would be playing several generations over the course of a family tree so I'll try to explain how that is handled.

As far as the course of time is concerned... it's not really relevant in the universe my game takes place in. The planet rotates, and there is day and night, but long periods of time are not really a 'concern' of the citizens and haven't been for ages... even though I suppose they wouldn't say that, as the idea of "ages" would be foreign to them. A large factor in my game's story centers around a fledgling group of colonists leaving their homeworld in search of new places to settle. I should mention that their method of travel involves ripping the universe several new space-holes which has left the flow of 'time' in and around their planet in a mess. As a happy side effect some scientists were able to harness this and use it to establish specific 'growth colonies' enabling children to be raised to adulthood in what would pass as a few days to us. I know it sounds like a bit of a cop out, but with the whole story in context and their fiddling with geometry and energy I promise it makes sense. I'd just prefer not to divulge too much in public forum before getting a proper copyright, whether my game be for personal use or market(should the idea grow wings). The presentation of this concept along with their technological evolution and how it drastically differs from our own would be a couple of my game's other biggest challenges. I am working on the assumption, however, that once read the pitch for this game, the player that picks it up would be interested in learning about those differences, rather than confused by them.

[bobert]

Does the 'next gen' adventure with the character for some time and some sort of rapour is mechanically made to be on display.

I'm sorry, I forgot to address this and the post was getting a bit lengthy so I cut it short. Some characters do play with subordinates such as classes with higher charisma. They can be military tacticians, wealthy merchants who hire mercenaries, or people with higher influence than can get others to fight on their behalf. In situations such as this, these subordinates can be used as an heir if you so chose, or you can pick a completely unrelated character. Character transition aren't dynamic though, so you wouldnt be able to swap in battle. Here are a couple of examples. I will specify how the mechanics are working within the story.

*Ruvian Vesthaes watched in horror as his father Capt Dezdin Vesthaeus rolled mauled by a pack of ravenous wargs. The company is distrought at the loss of their captain and flee into the woods.
[Dez rolls a one and dies a horrible death, there is no medic on scene and he's got fatal wounds, it's game over for him. He's a commander type class and leads a party of 5 or 6 allies. Mechanicly, they are all just simple ally tokens with stats based on whatever the base values on their card read, but the player has decided one of them is the commanders son. As most of the cards are designed to have vague names to be filled in the character's chosen name ie: Dezdin Vesthaeus is being represented by a card that reads "Valiant Commander" and has relevant stats to how the character is built, modified by whatever skills and equipmetn the character has earned. What would happen (simply for the sake of the player wanting rapour, would be a dismantling of the Dezdin deck with exception of the traits and equipment passed to Ruvian, and a rebuilding of the deck as Ruvian, at level 1.] This would be the closest to a dynamic exchange, as the mechanics stand when a player dies in battle if there is no possibility of revival they are dismantled and rebuilt into their heir and the heir's story begins. It could very well pick up where the leader left off, but it is likely the level difference would kill the heir. The leaders are seen as a backbone member of a team and generally do carry the rest of them. More commonly what would happen (explained by culture in the game world) would be the presentation of the dead characters' equipment to their heir either by the group that was with him at death, or by a retrieval team that generally tags along with companies on dangerous outings and will scavenge the battlefield once it's cleared, or in the case of a really dangerous/lucrative monster, the gear could be lost in the stomach of some beast (and yes if you would like to keep track of it, you could tally up all the lost weapons 'in' that beast and retreive them when you finally do kill it, like a giant shark )

Geez my posts are long, I hope this isn't frowned upon

[bobert]

....On another note....I feel bad about posting three times in a row....but here we go

The lack of a rapour can open up just as many options. You may have a decorated war hero who's a third generation military man (btw Vordark mentioned earlier the idea of having bonuses over multiple charcters in the tree contributing to it, that was something I'd had worked out in the idea of "traditions" )but then decide  you want your next character to be a merchant, or scholar. You may say the government retrieval teams brought back the heir's inheritance and he wanted nothing to do with the war hero father who he never knew that was never home so he decides to sell the weapons and start a trading business or buy a series of books in the study of ancient geometry and linguistics. This will break your military tradition bonus, but I feel it allows the player to branch into whatever they like rather than be thethered to their current character, but really it's all a question of flavor. More issues with the storytelling than game mechanics I think.

[Callan S.]

I'm sorry, I think a legacy means to pass on ideas and principles and codes of living onto somone else, and that person keeps practicing them (to various degrees) and passing them on even when the original person who germinated them, is dead. I thought in particular you were getting at this given you said it wasn't just a family, it could pass on to anyone - as ideas can.

As is, I'm not seeing much more than, upon death, making a new character, with a bit of a reference to the previous character. It doesn't seem much different than making a new character with zero reference to previous characters. If you take it that fairly regular character death means lack of attachment - well, I don't see much attachement in "Oh yeah, I had a kid once/caught this pickpocket once, pass my gear onto them when I dead" either.

Are you just doing it to try and placate people who would sour on the whole game if their character dies in about 5% of violent encounters? If your just trying to placate and aren't really interested in doing it, I'd say ditch it - it's going to show that lack of interest.

[bobert]

Hmm... perhaps this question was lacking too much context, my fault of course. Indeed, the idea of legacies and generations of a family holds a heavy weight, but the gameplay and character building isn't as "epic" as that idea might imply. Character building is only as deep as you want it to be. Think of TCGs you play, they have deep stories but most people aren't concerned with the, only the ones that want to be. It's not necessary to know who Reya Dawnbringer is in order to enjoy the game, but if you do know the lore it's that much more enjoyable. I am typically saddened by this trend in gaming now'days, but it does emphasize the point that a game can be enjoyable through the mechanics alone. My game would fall somewhere between D&D skirmish matches and a TCG game.  Your 'character' is a deck of cards and your 'legacy' is a book of a past character decks that allow you to follow the flow of the decks you have created while playing the game. The legacy within the game would be the renown earned by the family through the course of several generations from the eyes of the NPC guilds, factions, etc that exist within the game which earns the character various bonuses and access to new items, dungeons, and other goodies. This is aimed at casual players that may play once or twice a week. Death would likely happen, on average, once every couple of months (Normally about the time I would tweak, or rebuild a deck in my past TCG experience)

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 ^^;

[dindenver]

Bob,
  I don't like character death. I am letting you know my angle, so you can treat my opinion accordingly. I have never had a character death that was meaningful. I have had my character die because of bad rolls. I have had my character die because I didn't understand the situation. But never as part of a noble sacifice, or anything like that. I don't think that limiting character death allows for more contiguous story telling or better character development. I just think that basically, when somoeone's character dies, they don't get to play until two questions are answered:
1) Have they finished making a new character?
2) Can the GM come up with a credible way to narrate them into the current scene?

  That can be a matter of 15 minutes (or less if its a lite game and/or the player really knows their rules) on up to hours. this is not what most people would call "fun time." Don't get me wrong, I get a perverse joy from making characters, but its not really a group activity and it does nothing to make game night more fun.

  Maybe you should take a cue from Paranoia and have the character be clones (or magical dopplegangers if you prefer).
  I mean, if your goal is to take out character 5% of the time in each encounter, then you need to design it such that this does not equal "losing" or does not equal "no fun." Like maybe the character that gets splattered gets some kind of mechanical bonus that makes it worth it? Like maybe they can call upon the spirits of their departed ancestors a number of times equal to their generation (if you lost 3 characters, the 4th character can call on the spirits 4 times)? And those spirits can spy, use OOC knowledge (skills, histories, knowledge from beeyond) or give them a temporary stat boost, something appropriate in game.

  I dunno, I felt like I was rambling. Does any of that make sense? Or Interesting?

[flossy]

Maybe it's just me,  but on occasion self sacrifice has felt good.

What some of the games I have enjoyed have involved having some sort of organization involved. For instance in Call of Cthulhu we have had a group which investigated the supernatural and when someone died, it became part of the history of the organization including passing on information/objects/advise etc.

[chronoplasm]

I think this could be cool in a game involving reincarnation. Your skills could pass on through some kind of past-life-regression or something.

I think the only reason I would have for feeling betrayed in such a game would be if death is too random. I prefer character death to be an important part of the plot rather than just a Diabolus Ex Machina that jumps out when you eat a bad peanut and roll a poor saving throw.

[HenryT]

Some of the posters seem to be focusing on situations where this mechanic wouldn't work, but I think that's the wrong approach.  The question is whether there are some games that could be played in it, and I don't see why not.  If the players know what they're getting into, they can make characters who do have lineages of some kind; true loners might be inappropriate, but that's no different from saying a wizard is inappropriate in a hard science game.

As for me, it's not something I'd want to play exclusively, but it sounds like a reasonable feature for a game to have, and I'd certainly be open to trying it.  You may want to check out Pendragon, if you haven't seen it.  When a character dies in Pendragon, it's not uncommon for the player to go on to play the child (if they have one old enough), with some of their possessions and traits being passed along.  (Naturally, it helps that the characters in Pendragon take their lineage seriously.)