Ron asks for:

An application of game design that permits the player still to participate even though the character dies (and never mind kluges like resurrection, I mean Dead-death) awaits a good thumping on the Design forum one day.

Mike,

All those are same-old same-old, or dodging the question (the Universalis option). I'm talking about Bob, playing Bartholemew, in plain role-playing style. And Bartholemew dies. No Spider-Clone to replace him. No resurrection to bring him back in time for Oktoberfest. No ghost hovering around who can still use mental powers. None of that.

In most traditional games, fudges aside, this means that Bob is shit out of luck. Whether he "lost" or not isn't the issue; the main point is that he is "out" and cannot now play. He can watch (ooooh).

The difference, in this (hypothetical) game, would be that Bartholemew has kicked the bucket but Bob is still a player. Let's take a look at this (hypothetical) character sheet, which has some item like "hero points" or whatever you'd like to call them. Can Bob still use those? Sure, why not? They never represented anything special about Bartholemew in the first place. They were a means for Bob to re-roll or adjust a success level or something like that. So why not have Bob still make use of those hero points, to aid any roll or outcome that he is interested in during play?

And look, here's another item - something about a goal, or alignment, or purpose, or obsession, or any other ideological description of Bartholemew. Can Bob still make use of this? Sure, why not? In this case, we are talking about something that was special for Bartholemew, and why not have it roll over favorably for some other character? Maybe Bartholemew was able to say just the right thing to Sebastian (Sam's character) and thus Sebastian gets to make a single use of Bartholemew's Sanity score at the time of death, which we may conceive as more-or-less "hovering" in the game-room, when Bob says so. Not a bad idea if Sebastian goes low on Sanity, eh?

So I'm talking about Bob continuing to utilize elements of play that were largely Metagame to begin with, even when Bartholemew is gone.

Best,
Ron

Two ideas (one a kludge, and one not):

Kludgy idea:
The setting for a game is such that characters have immortal souls or spirits. The flesh husk can be destroyed, but the spirit lives on. Perhaps this spirit could interact in the real world until it gets a new body (made with magics, or, hell, bought at the body store), or perhaps the spirit is sent to another realm, and has to struggle its way back.

Non-kludgy idea:
This idea requires a game system with some sort of narrative-driving currency. We'll call these Story Points, and they can be spent to initiate a scene by any player, whether or not their character is dead. In this example, a player with a dead character maintains his pool of Story Points, and can use these to initiate scenes with his character. Since the character is dead, these would have to be flashback scenes, but they could be extremely empowering. The player could initiate a scene where he told his friends the location of the big McGuffin, or a scene where he had gifted another PC with his magic dagger, or a scene that just reveals something about another character, granting that character a descriptor that could be used later (like the Confessionals in Inspectres.)

The cool part is that the player could gain Story Points for using these in a dramatic manner, indefinitely playing with a dead character. He could even spend them to initiate an entire flashback session, allowing him to play his character for an entire game. If you were to design a system that used this, I'd implement a Story Point cost for creating a new character and inserting him into the group. This cost would buy you a scene to drive the insertion.

Damnit, I like this.

(Edit: And Ron posts a similar idea seconds before me. Argh.)
_________________
Clinton R. Nixon
Heartburn Games, www.acid-reflex.com

[ This Message was edited by: Clinton R Nixon on 2001-12-27 16:35 ]

Since the character is dead, these would have to be flashback scenes, but they could be extremely empowering.

Or he could Dr. Manhattan himself back alive by making it plausible through flashback.

Paul

Hi Mike,
The new version of Dead Meat works like this, somewhat... As Personas die off, a Players' Character increases (think of Character as "Strength of Character" in DM). If all three of a Players' Personas die off, they can get another Persona from a Player that has extras, or NPC's the Director was planning on offing later, and additionally, they can still "play" by spending any leftover Help they have on living Personas (played by other Players)... They can also help frame scenes with the Director/GM, or they can take care of failed Death Sequence narrations...

I.E. - The rule's provide a few different ways the Players can continue on in the game after their Persona's be dead.

Sigh- I need to get some time in finishing this dang thing up... After the terrible holiday season...
Sean

Y'know, I really like the idea that just because a player's character is dead, the player isn't "out" of the game. For example, Story Points (or Hero Points or whatever you want to call them) could be spent by the player to assist other player characters, without any "in-character" justification (although I really like Clinton's flashback idea). The only real problem I see is the cry of "but then it's not a roleplaying game, cos you have to have a character for it to be a roleplaying game". Which I see as a valid criticism on one hand, & on the other I don't--the player had a character, why can't s/he keep playing just because the character is dead?

Another idea that just popped into my head is a pool of Story Points that belong to the PCs as a group. Even if one PC dies, the player can still have access to the group pool & spend them to effect the story.

I suppose this is the moment to give credit where it's due and remind everyone that Soap has already done this ....

(All now bow heads toward Europe - hi Ferry!)

And it's no problem at all to apply the same principle to a game with a different atmosphere/theme/feel.

Best,
Ron

A concept I've been tooling with for The Wheel (which uses a point system sort of like SOAP, Baron Munchausen and others) that I call the Fifth Wheel. I call it this thanks to the term Fifth Business found in the Interactive Toolkit, which Kubasik says is a theatre term for, essentially the supporting cast or at least the members of the supporting cast that are important for moving the story along. (I think. I cannot find a reference to it on Google)

In either case, how the Fifth Wheel works is player take turns setting up scenes and playing them out. Players may either interact directly with the story or, if a secondary character is introduced, may purchase the right to play this character. This is the Fifth Wheel. Buying into the scene using a character that is not you player character.

Now if only I could find some players in my area not so completely hung up on D&D, Mage Knight or Magic: The Gathering so I can see if this works.

Well, here's a plug for Courts & Corsets ... in the game if you reach your "goal" (basically a Triumph or Tragedy for your Court Member), the PC is dropped to NPC status and the Player then gets to concentrate on the other members of the story (aiding or hindering their eventual Triumph/Tragedy).

Courts & Corsets

The Questing Beast allows players whose Heroes are not in a scene to still be active by using other Motifs from their story (other characters, items, ideas, etc.).

James V. West
The Questing Beast

I took a completely different road that what's been tossed around so far in my narrative game, Family Ties (100% on the back burner while I scramble to get Devils Cay and the Grand Chat done & tested to satisfaction before GenCon).

I started thinking about a system where dead characters could become ghosts, and still have an effect on game and playability. Since the premise of the game involved all of the characters being members of an extended family struggling through crisis ala "drama-genre movies", there would be times and places where ghost pcs would be more than appliable, but I didn't want them as starting characters, only as developed characters who died.

But I didn't get very far in the actual system design for this before postponing the project.

Laurel

Hey Laurel,

Have you seen Philippe Tromeur's rules for ghosts in Wuthering Heights? They're very cool. Similar?

Didn't Leibniz and Newton both invent calculus independent of each other?

Paul

Thanks to Laurel (cheers!), I had a little idea. This is mostly just woolgathering.

It's not quite the meta-game proposals above (spending hero points to keep the group alive), but what about a setting a bit like Zero (lovely game, may it rest in peace)?

The group begins as artificial beings with three different levels of consciousness: Personal, Group and Racial.

Each squad is composed of 5 members, each from a different caste. Let's say we go with Zero's castes of Worker, Drone (average, unspecialised), Technician, Warrior, Medic.

Ordinarily, the players get to decide on what their characters do. Simple. That's Personal consciousness, personal decision-making.

In times of moderate stress, the players vote on what each individual member does. Each player gets one vote. That's Group consciousness.

In times of great stress, the GM gets, say, 6 votes of his own, which he can apply anywhere he chooses, playing the Race's say in what happens: Racial consciousness. He can overturn or veto any decision the group makes (presumably for the good of the race).

Now, when a character dies, they no longer contribute to the Group mind. The remaining players get to vote on each other, and nothing untoward happens.

In times of stress, though, this unfortunate player gets half of the GM's Racial votes. He plays some of the Race's racial consciousness. As more PCs die, so they also share in the votes and influence the future of the Race.

Hmm, I'm going to write up some more of this while it's fresh...

Joe.

Wow! Thanks for pointing that out to me, Paul. That was indeed the general idea I had. Once again, Wuthering Heights serves as a source of inspiration.

On another front of same topic:
In Devils Cay, the dead (including PCs) can be brought back to life when someone trades away part of their soul in exchange and remain alive- provided both the person who died and the person making the Contract never leave the island. The Soul-Trade is the phenomenon that lies at the heart of the game. I deliberately included raising the dead as an example 'miracle' a character could achieve through selling part of their soul to offer players the opportunity to reincarnate beloved PCs and NPCs, which is especially useful in PVP games.

Hey Laurel,

In Devils Cay, the dead (including PCs) can be brought back to life when someone trades away part of their soul in exchange and remain alive- provided both the person who died and the person making the Contract never leave the island.

That is very cool. One of my strong current interests is in mechanics that build character relationships through gameplay, and this is a great one. It's the kind of thing that's been utterly absent from roleplaying mechanics until very very recently. The typical system manages characters that move about in an envelope of damn near isolation, developing their own knowledge and skills, acquiring status and possessions, and exploiting no-brainer type mutually beneficial relationships when they present themselves, safety in numbers, that kind of thing, and completely neglects the exchange and sharing of consequences and parasitic aspects of human relationships, where perhaps a person's freedom is somewhat curtailed by what he gives to the relationship.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor." And it's an amazing truth recognized and exploited by politicians worldwide. When someone does a bit of work on your behalf, they tend to protect their "investment" from that point onward. Having given a kidney to my cousin, I find myself picking him up from work every day, just so I know he's not caving to his neurochemistry and esteem issues and stopping for happy hour. I shudder thinking of the narrative potential of a game that provides options of real importance to the player that aren't accessible through his personal character and that create real, not just financial or logistical, consequences for the benefactor character run by another player. Woohoo!

Paul