[The Heartbreaker War] Character Death

[Simon C]

The Heartbreaker War is my character creation/fantasy setting thing, where you play through a fictional war in a fantasy setting, to create characters with interesting relationships and compelling history.  You learn the history of the setting as you play, and also create a background for a character, which you can then use to play a fantasy game using the system of your choice.  It's kind of like the "lifepath" system from Traveller, but more detailed, and without being tied to a particular system.

Like the system from Traveller, characters can die during the process.  Part of the concept is that characters who die become an integral part of the setting.  They were the friends and family of surviving characters, PCs and NPCs.  They're dead, but they still have an influence on the game.  The player keeps going through the process with a new character, but the old character is not forgotten.

Currently, there aren't any rules for what happens when a character dies.  Various situations can lead to a character being killed, and the player just makes a new character and moves on.

What I want is a mechanic for death scenes -  a small rule that encourages/forces you to notice the death of a character.

In general the way I'm trying to make the rules work is that describing stuff is an essentail part of making the rules work, so you can't play without describing stuff.  It's like the difference between

1) "choose a category on this table, and then describe what happened"

and

2) "describe what happened, and then someone else chooses a category from the table based on that".

In the first case, all the choices are made before you describe stuff, so it's an afterthought, and you can skip it.  In the second case, the game can't go on until you describe something.  So I want the same effect for death scenes, I think.

Something I was thinking about was whether it would be better to instead of describing the death scene, have people describe their characters' reactions to the death.  I feel like that's the more important thing, since those characters are the ones we care about now.  I'm wary of putting too many mechanics around that though, because I think leaving characters' emotions unstated is an important thing.  I don't want a rule telling you how your character feels, just a rule that makes you notice how they feel, if you know what I mean.

I guess I'm wary of treading on the game's "fruitful void", which is the effects that the fictional war has on the psyche of the characters and their relationships to one another.  The rules tell you what happens. but how that affects the characters emotionally is up to you.

So it's tricky territory.  I want a way to highlight the character deaths, to make them visible, and to make the players think about how those deaths effect their character, but I don't want something that crudely pigeon-holes the emotional fallout of the event.

Ideas?

[Lance D. Allen]

Maybe it can be done as something of a memorial.

Either it can be an actual event in game, or it can be a series of moments, where the characters share something that they remember about the dead character. It's not about the death. It's about the life. The memories can be things that already occurred in play, or they can be things that are made up, but which fit in the fiction.

The sharing should be in character, but brief. An example:

Character's A and B are sitting in a trench, peering through the darkness to try to see any flickers of movement that will denote a night ambush. They're exhausted and hungry, but talk has run out. They're sitting silently, concentrating more on keeping their eyes open than what's in front of them.

A: Hey, B?
B: Ungh?
A: You heard about Charlie?
B: Yeah. Real bummer.
A: I know. I didn't really know him well, but he seemed like a good cat.
B: Yeah. We were in training together.
A: Yeah?
B: Uh huh. He saved my ass once. I'd snuck out to meet my girlfriend at the fence for a little kissy-kiss.. (A snickers) The Drill Sergeant was making his rounds when I got back, and I thought I was toast.
A: So what happened?
B: Charlie was on duty. He told the Drill that he'd woken me up to carry a message up to HQ.
A: That was cool of him.
B: Yeah, Charlie was good people.

A few scenes like that and the death will be remembered.. More importantly, the character's life will be remembered.

[Simon C]

Thanks Lance,

Yeah, that's the kind of scene I'd be interested in seeing, but how to make rules that provoke such scenes?

[Lance D. Allen]

Do you need anything more mechanical than saying "Whenever a character dies, all players need to frame and/or participate in a scene where they share a memory of the fallen character." Maybe with an example to show what you mean?

[Simon C]

Yes I do.

I guess it's my philosophy that players don't do anything in the game that they don't absolutely have to.  Just saying "describe something" without any mechanical teeth behind it is the kind of rule that gets ignored or skipped over. 

It's like the difference between throwing a punch in Dogs, and throwing a punch in Contenders.

In Dogs, you put forward your dice, and you say "I punch him in the face" or the like.  You've got to say that, because if you don't, we don't know what kind of fallout the other guy is gonna take.  We've also got to know exactly what you're describing, because otherwise the other player doesn't know whether to take the blow, give, see, or what.  You can't play Dogs as just a dice game, if you're playing by the rules.

In Contenders, you lay down the cards, and that's all we need to know.  The rules say "describe what's going on", but if you don't, the game keeps going.  That means (and I've seen this happen at the table), that after a while, especially if a fight's been going on a while, or if the outcome is obvious, or it's the end of the night and no one is that invested, that people stop describing stuff, and just lay down cards.  You can play Contenders as just a card game.

So for The Heartbreaker War, I'm trying to go for the Dogs approach as much as possible.  Because it's mostly just a bunch of tables, and there's no GM forcing players to interact with the fiction, there's a big temptation to just skip through the rules, describing as little as possible to get to the next year, and get it done.  That's why I'm writing as many rules as I can to require some narration before you can continue play.  Not in the sense of "the rules say narrate something" but in the sense of "the content of what you narrate is essential to applying the rules of the game.  Until you narrate something, the game literally cannot continue".

It's ok if a few rules don't 100% require narration to work, but I figure those are the rules that people will skip past if they need to, and linger on if they need to.  I feel like these rules for characters dying is one of the places where I want to make sure people linger. 

[Selene Tan]

I don't know if you have traits in Heartbreaker War, but if you do you could handle memorials like flashbacks in 3:16. So if a character dies, you can choose to have a short scene remembering that character in some way, and based on the scene you get an extra trait.

[Lance D. Allen]

Simon,

To get a little pedantic here...

You can't play Dogs as just a dice game, if you're playing by the rules.

As the rules tell you to narrate, you're right. But if you skip over this rule because you don't absolutely have to follow it, it's completely possible. You push forward two dice, and say "talking action" or "shooting action". Is it lame? Absolutely. But you can play Dogs purely as a dice game, if you're not invested. If you're skipping rules in ANY game, you're not playing by the rules, unless the game specifically calls out a rule as optional. If you're skipping rules that are designed to make the play cool, memorable and fun, then you probably shouldn't be playing that game at all.

I'm not saying not to add mechanical bits to this. I'm just saying your stated reasons for wanting to do so are supported by pretty flimsy assumptions.

Because it's mostly just a bunch of tables, and there's no GM forcing players to interact with the fiction, there's a big temptation to just skip through the rules, describing as little as possible to get to the next year, and get it done. 

This in particular drives home the point for me: If people are tempted to do this, why the HELL are they playing this game? For that matter, why the hell are they playing a roleplaying game? So often, the best, most memorable parts of gaming are the parts that don't have a direct tie in to the mechanics. That's something that I think we're forgetting, and it's a damned dirty shame. The mechanics should absolutely support what the game is about, but sometimes, it's nice to do things just because they're fun and cool, rather than because we're playing a game.

Mini-rant aside, Selene offers a workable solution. I'll put my own spin on it, based off of how I'm having character traits work in Mage Blade, which is an idea I stole from somewhere else again: You get traits based on what you remember about the dead character. Their life marked you somehow, so you get a trait. If you call on that trait later on in some appropriate situation, then you get a small bonus.

[Simon C]

Selene,

The Heartbreaker War isn't a game in itself, so there are no traits per se.  It's a system for creating a backstory for a group of characters, and learning about a fantasy setting. 

Your idea is still workable though.  I especially like the idea that you can choose to have a scene remembering the character, but that it's not mandatory.  So when a character dies, you can choose to have a scene, and you gain... ...something.  Ideally, it would be something based on the scene you just had.  You're right that traits would be great here, but I don't really see a way to make them work in the system, without adding a whole bunch of complexity.  Most of the other rules in the game are "roll a d8 on this table", so it's possible you could get a +1 bonus to your next roll on a particular chart, and the chart you get the bonus to is based on something about the scene.  That seems workable, but maybe a little more complex than I'd like.

In particular, I don't like "flashbacks" for mechanical bonus.  They always feel forced and weird to me, so I'd be likely to make the scenes happen at the time the character died.

Lance,

This is a pretty big topic, and it's probably beyond the scope of this thread.  Do you read Vincent's blog? He's had a discussion of this issue recently.

I wrote about this issue with regards to D&D4 in my blog, here: http://simoncarryer.blogspot.com/2009/06/4e-and-fictional-causes.html

There are links to Vincent's blog there.  I'd really love to talk about this some more, because I think you're making some good points, but I'm not sure I agree entirely.  Maybe one of us should start an Actual Play thread?

[Lance D. Allen]

Simon,

I don't read blogs, except Livejournal and such. I don't like the idea of having to chase all over the internet to stay current on people and ideas, so I accept that I'm going to miss things.

WRT the topic at hand.. Perhaps what you can do is have a call-on trait for the course of your game, which, when called upon, grants a 1-time bonus. You can still keep the trait as a descriptive bit, and possibly translate it into whatever game you end up playing, if the game has rules for such.

I still think this concept deserves to be its own game, though.

I am in no way opposed to discussing my mini-rant above (I tried to cut off before I veered too far off topic) but I have nothing to really start with. If you want to create an AP thread, we definitely can.

[Simon C]

Hi Lance,

I know what you mean about blogs.  Luckily, a lot of Indie-focused blogs are aggregated at http://planet-sg.ogrecave.com/ so I just added that feed to my reader, and I'm all set.  I like to read blogs a lot though. I understand not everyone is crazy about them.

A call on trait for just the game might work, but I wonder if it's more complex than I need.  Here's a sort of roughly formed idea that I thought of just now:

If you have a scene remembering the dead character, after the scene is over, the other players (or GM) choose a category that best describes the relationship:

Mentor: Get a +1 to one dice roll in the future.
Friend: Give a +1 to another character you're aiding in a future dice roll.
Lover: Get a +2 to one dice roll in the future.
Enemy: Shuffle a red card back into the deck.
Blood: Take highest Precedence for one year.

or something like that.  Specific relationships and their accompanying bonuses would have to change.

Does that seem like a good idea? I'm kind of inspired by the Burning Wheel mechanic where relationships are cheaper if they're complicated and messy.

Thanks for your advice in this thread, Lance.  I really appreciate the conversation, even just as a sounding board. 

[Lance D. Allen]

Sounds fine to me.

Better question, does it sound like it will solve your issue?

I do rather like that you're allowing for non-positive relationships.

[Simon C]

I think it will solve the issue.  I'll have to playtest it to find out for sure.

The non-positive relationships are something I'm really excited about too.  I'm gonna make sure the rewards are even for both kinds of relationship, so that they all show up.  What'd be especially interesting is seeing these relationships flagged before characters die.

Hmm.  Lots to think about.

Thanks Lance!