Character death

[elf23]

I find myself wondering how people feel about character death in old-school D&D. Specifically from the point of view of a player. (I'm always a DM, so don't have much of a perspective on this issue.)

As a DM I'm very keen on the idea of PCs being fragile -- there being an especially high risk of 1st level characters dying. I love the kind of almost throw-away approach of quickly rolling up characters, giving them some wacky/unusual background or personality, and laughing when they get disintegrated by energy beams or eaten by spiders.

I wonder how many players enjoy this kind of play too. Maybe I'm just a killer DM!?

I guess this perhaps ties in to my limited experience as a player in D&D, where I find that I have fun playing a PC for a session or two, and tend to lose interest after that!

[Ynas Midgard]

It depends. I rarely play D&D as a player, but only a few of my PCs died (not only was I smart but very lucky). However, I don't think I ever reached 4th level (agan, mostly not because of character death).

My Dragon Age character, however, almost died at the end of the very first session - now he's 5th (or 6th?) level; I had to be very cunning and observe every situation very carefully, lest I had to depend on sheer luck.

As a player, the death of a character whom I played with more than one session just sucks. Knowing that I can always create another one in 5-10 minutes and jump back into action helps it a lot. And one always learns something in the process (unless it was just an unlucky series of rolls); plus by time, it becomes hilarius how those poor characters died.

[verhaden]

Without death, there's no risk. It helps that I play a lot of rogue-likes.

As a referee, I always make sure my players always have at least some chance to avoid it (however large or small, given the circumstances).

[Finarvyn]

Back "in the day" my high school friends and I encountered character death on a regular basis. We figured that dead is dead. We shrugged it off and started anew. I suppose this goes back to playing army or cowboys/indians in grade school where we used to act out elaborate death scenes.

Now I play with my family and some different friends. My wife, sister, and daughter are not of the same mindset and take character death very seriously. My newest mode of thought is that zero hit points is "knocked out" instead of dead.

[Finarvyn]

Dec 9, 2012 9:30:43 GMT -6 @dubeers said:

I was a wargamer before OD&D was published (though I was really awful at it). I moved into OD&D thinking of my character as a glorified game-piece and was pretty detached from the ignoble fates that befell some of them.

"Oh, he failed his saving throw? Hand me 3d6..."

Yeah, that's it exactly! My high school group all did wargames and miniatures and so we weren't as attached to characters.

[verhaden]

Dec 9, 2012 8:15:02 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Now I play with my family and some different friends. My wife, sister, and daughter are not of the same mindset and take character death very seriously. My newest mode of thought is that zero hit points is "knocked out" instead of dead.

I've done this before in the past. Any damage that would take you to below zero or at zero would render your character incapacitated.

Of course, to kill an incapacitated character, all anyone has to do is simply declare their intent to kill them (no rolls). If players win the initiative, there's a chance someone could cast a spell or pour a healing potion down the incapacitated character's throat.

But if I win the initiative round or the character is still incapacitated by the time it gets to me, well, here's a new character sheet. (This is assuming someone goes down during combat and there's still an active enemy within distance that's out for blood. If it's a rock fall or trap, different rulings may apply.)

[giantbat]

I play and DM about equally, so I've got a fresh view from both sides.

When I'm a player, I take the "laugh at death" attitude. I aim to survive, but when a character dies it's just part of the fun.

When I'm the DM, I kill a lot of characters. I'm not an adversarial DM, and I'm often a bit of a softie, usually providing a saving throw before death by any means, even if not called for by the rules. That doesn't keep plenty of characters from dying. Death is the wages of first level characters. I sometimes feel bad about killing a character, but my players know that it only happens through fair play and fate of the dice, so they don't begrudge it. While I might be generous in my rulings, I never fudge the dice for any reason.

[havard]

I tend to prefer long lasting campaigns where the players keep the same characters over months or even years of real time play. Frequent PC death games tend to lend themselves better towards tactical play where the focus is to see "who survives the dungeon", whereas I am much more interested in exploring the world, getting to know recurring NPCs, thinking about my character's motivation etc. I have played and enjoyed both styles of games, but prefer the latter.

-Havard

[rjkuntz]

AH, what was that I heard? If you are not challenging the players with the "threat" of death then, hey, just hand them the game, why participate in an illusion of play? If they don't grow through value-added experience they won't be much use at higher levels anyway. In both our Castles in the play-test of D&D there was always the threat of death in the air. You build it with mood, example it with situations they get to choose from, and if they choose incorrectly this sometimes leads to death. But how can you expand your situations, your own horizons as a DM, if in turn the PCs are not learning? How do you grow if you throw really great challenges at them only to let them off the hook because you have been letting them off the hook from the beginning?

The best thing to do is to inform players right away that, hey look, this is a game. It has challenges. I'm going to fairly throw throw challenges at you. I want you to rise to those challenges so we can all grow together. Learning, as EGG stated many times in relation to the game, is fun, too. But when it's not there, the PCs will point their fingers at you when something to the contrary comes up, or, worse, you'll become a softy DM serving exactly and always what the players want for too simple entertainment only, and not actually what you actually both need to reach higher levels of positive game growth.

[makofan]

I have high character-death campaigns yet I always have more people wanting to play than I can handle. In fact, they won't even let me cancel long-running campaigns even after I want to!

[mgtremaine]

My opinion is character death is a necessary part of the game. With out the threat of death much of the challenges have no meaning. Having said that as a player and a DM I do not subscribe to disposal characters. As player when I make a character I invest a lot of effort into defining that character in all aspects. This allows me to attempt to “run” the character as a fully realized personality. As DM I invest heavily into creating stories and events to help shape and a define the player’s character(s). If I treated them as disposal I would not bother.

However as I said in the first sentence DEATH IS NECESSARY. Death can be an opportunity. This is first thing I tried to teach my son about RPG, death will happen at some point how you react to it shows your level of maturity

Some anecdotes:

The first D&D game I ever played in I had two character a Dwarven Fighter (Zorro I) and a thief (Ozar). We had no idea what we were doing but with 6 or 7 players and 2 characters apiece we had plenty of fodder to learn with. Zorro died fighting about mid way through the dungeon in a room of berserkers. His death was heroic and I loved it. Ozar being much more cautious almost made it, he was one of the last 3 (out of 14) making their way out. Unfortunately at the exit/entrance was 3rd level fighter who had been imprisoned in the dungeon and we refuse to release him. What was left of the party was 1 Elven Fighter, Ozar, and 1 Human Wizard with no spells left. Long story short the Ozar and the Elf died and amazingly the Wizard lived. He rolled 3 hits in a row to stab the fighter to death. That Wizard was the sole survivor of the first dungeon and went out to become the most powerful character in our first campaign. It was the deaths around him that made him so amazing and memorable. In the next game I rolled up Zorro II and Ozar II, they both went on to long and prospers adventuring careers.

When I first joined another game in high school, after I had moved, I made a dwarven fighter. A few games into it I made bad choice, I ran into a room where we saw a small lizard, thinking it would be my pet. [The DM had just given away tribble in another room]. The lizard was an illusion and there was really a red dragon that breathed on me and killed me. d**n!. Back to the drawing board, so I took a few weeks off the game for some reason and rolled up a new character an Elven Fighter/Mage named Triadd. This character went on to become my all time favorite character, and the most powerful character I ever ran. With out death I would not run this character, I would have had another Dwarven Lord who would always be an imitation of Zorro II. So in this case Death was an Opportunity to try something new, to learn and improve.

As DM I run a game that favors players, however if they do dumb things, or just get really unlucky they will die. In the current C&C game I run we’ve had a handful of deaths. I will use 1 players hobbit rogue to illustrate, first he thought it was smart to go into a room solo and shoot the young red dragon with his bow, the return fire breath was too much for him and he died. The same hobbit after being raised failed to check for traps in ancient gnome academy and tripped a Phantasmal Killer Trap, I rolled a 20 to hit and he rolled 2, he died again. The player questioned weather he wanted to play in my game after that, shrug, death is necessary.

-Mike

[rjkuntz]

mgtremaine quoth:

"As DM I run a game that favors players, however if they do dumb things, or just get really unlucky they will die."

That's about it in a nutshell.

[blackbarn]

I've only had one character of mine get killed that I can recall, but I am often the DM. No problem with it, personally, and it's usually fun or amusing.

I don't fudge dice rolls or anything as DM, but in our most recent game no one has died yet (they are 2nd-3rd level). One of the players told me she is kind of disappointed no one died yet.

[elf23]

Thanks for your thoughts everyone!

One theme that I see mentioned by a few people is the emphasis on the game aspect of D&D. I guess this is where I'm coming from -- for me the main pleasure is simply that of getting together with friends, rolling dice, making up hilarious nonsense, describing weird monstrosities, and seeing where we end up (which may include dead ).

mgtremaine:
"That Wizard was the sole survivor of the first dungeon and went out to become the most powerful character in our first campaign. It was the deaths around him that made him so amazing and memorable."

Absolutely. Death really is character building... Nice example!

rjkuntz:
"The best thing to do is to inform players right away that, hey look, this is a game. It has challenges. I'm going to fairly throw throw challenges at you. I want you to rise to those challenges so we can all grow together. Learning, as EGG stated many times in relation to the game, is fun, too. But when it's not there, the PCs will point their fingers at you when something to the contrary comes up, or, worse, you'll become a softy DM serving exactly and always what the players want for too simple entertainment only, and not actually what you actually both need to reach higher levels of positive game growth."

Excellent points! I guess one of the DM's worries nowadays is that there are lots of RPGers around who have grown up on more "forgiving" (shall we say) games, and thus perhaps have different expectations, and will perhaps be put off when the odd PC ends up dying. You're right that simply being up front about what players can expect, and why it is that way, is the best thing.

[elf23]

Dec 9, 2012 16:11:33 GMT -6 blackbarn said:

One of the players told me she is kind of disappointed no one died yet.

Haha, nice!

[Chainsaw]

If PC death is not a genuine threat, then I'm not that interested in participating as DM or a player.

[havard]

Dec 9, 2012 11:37:17 GMT -6 rjkuntz said:

AH, what was that I heard? If you are not challenging the players with the "threat" of death then, hey, just hand them the game, why participate in an illusion of play? If they don't grow through value-added experience they won't be much use at higher levels anyway. In both our Castles in the play-test of D&D there was always the threat of death in the air. You build it with mood, example it with situations they get to choose from, and if they choose incorrectly this sometimes leads to death. But how can you expand your situations, your own horizons as a DM, if in turn the PCs are not learning? How do you grow if you throw really great challenges at them only to let them off the hook because you have been letting them off the hook from the beginning?

I agree that the risk of death has to be part of the game, but IMO the exact odds can vary. Also, could there be other ways a group could fail than dying?

In one game I played in, a village was getting destroyed by raiders. The opposing forces were overwhelming, so our task became to escort as many villagers into safety as possible. While dying was also a possibility, the real risk was getting the NPCs under our protection killed. It was a pretty exciting session actually.


-Havard

[rjkuntz]

Dec 9, 2012 16:44:18 GMT -6 havard said:

Dec 9, 2012 11:37:17 GMT -6 rjkuntz said:

AH, what was that I heard? If you are not challenging the players with the "threat" of death then, hey, just hand them the game, why participate in an illusion of play? If they don't grow through value-added experience they won't be much use at higher levels anyway. In both our Castles in the play-test of D&D there was always the threat of death in the air. You build it with mood, example it with situations they get to choose from, and if they choose incorrectly this sometimes leads to death. But how can you expand your situations, your own horizons as a DM, if in turn the PCs are not learning? How do you grow if you throw really great challenges at them only to let them off the hook because you have been letting them off the hook from the beginning?

I agree that the risk of death has to be part of the game, but IMO the exact odds can vary. Also, could there be other ways a group could fail than dying?

In one game I played in, a village was getting destroyed by raiders. The opposing forces were overwhelming, so our task became to escort as many villagers into safety as possible. While dying was also a possibility, the real risk was getting the NPCs under our protection killed. It was a pretty exciting session actually.


-Havard

Been there Havard. Good deeds are part of the game, as is the possibility of death. One does not exclude the other, that is, unless you are playing specifically one OR the other way.

Cheers!

RJK

[Ghul]

Dec 9, 2012 16:44:17 GMT -6 Chainsaw said:

If PC death is not a genuine threat, then I'm not that interested in participating as DM or a player.

I understand this POV, chainsaw, but I did run something like this that was successful for about 5 years. It was my campaign that I called "Immortals of Faewood" in which the characters began as modern day teenagers from Earth. They found an old armoire in a vacant "haunted house", and like Chronicles of Narnia, they stepped within and were transported to another world, which, as it turned out, they were natives of -- all dopplegangers switched from birth. The fantasy world on the other side was more like Mid-World from the Gunslinger, a realm that was in fact ruled by the great wizard, Aleister Crowley. It took a while before the teenagers developed into actual character classes, this building from the sorts of individual choices they made on the "other side". At length, when the first character death was suffered, they discovered their immortality: they were sucked back to the other side, to Earth, naked, like the Terminator showing up. There were consequences involved with each "death", and these grew as the campaign grew; not the least of which was the loss of all material possessions, and world of separation from the rest of the party that required again finding the armoire to return. Also, the in the world-between-worlds (passing through the armoire), there was a sort of purgatory that could be quite hazardous. So, I suppose what I'm getting at here is, you can have characters survive death and still maintain a campaign that keeps them on the edge of their seats.

[havard]

Dec 9, 2012 17:42:48 GMT -6 rjkuntz said:

Been there Havard. Good deeds are part of the game, as is the possibility of death. One does not exclude the other, that is, unless you are playing specifically one OR the other way.

Sounds like we are on the same page here Rob! I wasn't arguing for some extreme deviation from the typical D&D campaign, just slight shift away from the TPK heavy campaigns that some enjoy.

-Havard

[rjkuntz]

Dec 10, 2012 9:08:54 GMT -6 havard said:

Dec 9, 2012 17:42:48 GMT -6 rjkuntz said:

Been there Havard. Good deeds are part of the game, as is the possibility of death. One does not exclude the other, that is, unless you are playing specifically one OR the other way.

Sounds like we are on the same page here Rob! I wasn't arguing for some extreme deviation from the typical D&D campaign, just slight shift away from the TPK heavy campaigns that some enjoy.

-Havard

I don't believe that TPK was mentioned, but hey, whatever.

Cheers!

RJK

[Deleted]

" I guess one of the DM's worries nowadays is that there are lots of RPGers around who have grown up on more "forgiving" (shall we say) games, and thus perhaps have different expectations"

OR, translated, "A lot of modern day players are whiny-@$$ little crybabies."

Firstly, I HATE the whole "first level play suckes" meme. I even MORE hate the whole "first level Magic Users suck" meme. I took Lessnard the Magician into THE THIRD LEVEL OF GREYHAWK at FIRST LEVEL! I had a torch, a dagger, 3 HP, and a Charm Person spell.

I triumphed. There are no bad characters, only bad players.

Secondly, in my NYC OD&D game, I rolled all combat dice in the open. Dame Fortune ruled the day, and she's a fickle strumpet.

However, the Patriarch of Cuthbert in the nearby town had himself quite a racket giving Raise Dead spells to low level characters... always with the words, "One day... and this day may never come.... the Temple of Cuthbert will need a favor...."

I had a great group of players, and to them, an "Unspecified Quest" meant "a cool adventure later down the line."

Bottom line is yes, death has to be a possibility.

And I second what was said about being wargamers first; we all had the expectation that you can't win a battle without exposing your troops to danger, and if you expose your troops to danger, you're going to lose some.

[benoist]

I made it crystal clear to the players as we started our current AS&SH game: "This is a game. It is predicated on the notion you will encounter challenges and have to make it through them somehow by making choices for yourselves. This means that there is a penalty for failure, and that penalty may be death. I will not change dice results. I will not rewind actions in the game. But I can promise you I will be fair, and role play the opposition to the best of their AND my abilities. The game will reward your role playing and your brains. Use them. It's not going to be a piece of cake, but if you actually make it, you'll know you didn't make it because I 'allowed' you to. Does that sound like fun? Do you want to play that game?"

Everyone said "yes." First fight, first man down. The player felt the pain at -4 HP. He didn't die (per the rules) and was saved in time by the other players, but that was a rude awakening. They get it now, I think. They tend to be a little bit paranoid, but that's good. They know that if they screw up, that may be their last characters' moves. Makes the game a LOT more exciting for them now.

[rjkuntz]

Dec 10, 2012 10:43:32 GMT -6 benoist said:

I made it crystal clear to the players as we started our current AS&SH game: "This is a game. It is predicated on the notion you will encounter challenges and have to make it through them somehow by making choices for yourselves. This means that there is a penalty for failure, and that penalty may be death. I will not change dice results. I will not rewind actions in the game. But I can promise you I will be fair, and role play the opposition to the best of their AND my abilities. The game will reward your role playing and your brains. Use them. It's not going to be a piece of cake, but if you actually make it, you'll know you didn't make it because I 'allowed' you to. Does that sound like fun? Do you want to play that game?"

Everyone said "yes." First fight, first man down. The player felt the pain at -4 HP. He didn't die (per the rules) and was saved in time by the other players, but that was a rude awakening. They get it now, I think. They tend to be a little bit paranoid, but that's good. They know that if they screw up, that may be their last characters' moves. Makes the game a LOT more exciting for them now.

In summary, it's all about value-added experiences. Without them...
Well, we all know the sum of that...

[benoist]

Yes.

At the same time, I try to be accomodating to the players' fantasies, in the sense that I feel the game is more rewarding when you actually care about your character (within reason, of course). So when a player asked me "well, I would like to play something like the sorcerer of 3rd ed but that isn't in the game" I just went with "you know what? I always wondered how that'd work in a First ed type paradigm. Let's try it." Later a player had this idea of building a bola out of flasks of oil, kind of an explosive bola weapon. I was like "sure, you can craft this thing." Who knows what kind of moments that's going to lead to? I want to find out! And so on.

Ultimately it makes the game more valuable to the players, and there are therefore more things in the balance for them to lose, which makes them play better to keep them. They basically feel like the game rewards ingenuity and welcomes their parts (characters) into the campaign, but at the same time there's no guarantee they'll keep that stuff going forever if they make senseless, reckless decisions playing it.

[Sean Michael Kelly]

Dec 10, 2012 9:55:25 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Dame Fortune ruled the day, and she's a fickle strumpet.

Michael, that quote alone has made my entire day. That's going to have to go on a sign to hang above the gaming table.

[Deleted]

Dec 10, 2012 11:45:43 GMT -6 benoist said:

Later a player had this idea of building a bola out of flasks of oil, kind of an explosive bola weapon. I was like "sure, you can craft this thing." Who knows what kind of moments that's going to lead to? I want to find out!

"If you succeed you will find it awesome. If you fail I will find it hilarious."

There should be a chance to wrap it around the target and cover it with flaming oil, and a chance for the flasks to break and spray flaming oil all over the party. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[rjkuntz]

Dec 10, 2012 8:11:47 GMT -6 Ghul said:

Dec 9, 2012 16:44:17 GMT -6 Chainsaw said:

If PC death is not a genuine threat, then I'm not that interested in participating as DM or a player.

I understand this POV, chainsaw, but I did run something like this that was successful for about 5 years. It was my campaign that I called "Immortals of Faewood" in which the characters began as modern day teenagers from Earth. They found an old armoire in a vacant "haunted house", and like Chronicles of Narnia, they stepped within and were transported to another world, which, as it turned out, they were natives of -- all dopplegangers switched from birth. The fantasy world on the other side was more like Mid-World from the Gunslinger, a realm that was in fact ruled by the great wizard, Aleister Crowley. It took a while before the teenagers developed into actual character classes, this building from the sorts of individual choices they made on the "other side". At length, when the first character death was suffered, they discovered their immortality: they were sucked back to the other side, to Earth, naked, like the Terminator showing up. There were consequences involved with each "death", and these grew as the campaign grew; not the least of which was the loss of all material possessions, and world of separation from the rest of the party that required again finding the armoire to return. Also, the in the world-between-worlds (passing through the armoire), there was a sort of purgatory that could be quite hazardous. So, I suppose what I'm getting at here is, you can have characters survive death and still maintain a campaign that keeps them on the edge of their seats.

I can see that as a special instance, like adventuring in the Greek version of Hell after death, etc., which I saw proposed many years ago. But perhaps not all DMs are so interested in pushing the exploratory levels of such a concept, which is, in a way, unfortunate.

I still believe that the theme that most often pervades "Regular D&D" is very limited to and inundated with Western socio-religious concepts, concepts I distanced from back in 1974 when designing Kalibruhn. When you died there, there was a chance of entering the quasi-spirit realm of Dream, slim, but still there.

As an aside, this whole death issue vs, wanting to maintain a growing pool of interested players vested in their characters probably relates in part back to the time strictures that are now prevalent compared to BitD when the rules were initially designed. Different socio-economic dynamics at work then; and which I pointed out in a recent thread.

Good interjections, Ghul.

[Chainsaw]

Ghul: I should have elaborated, because what you described sounds fine - there are still meaningful, possibly severe, consequences to poor play. I played in a 4E game, back it when first came out, where I soon discovered that all the PCs basically had "plot immunity" for the duration of the train ride. I struggled through it for a while because some of the folks were my friends and I was slated to run my own game once it completed... but eventually it was too much and I left.

[rjkuntz]

Well it all comes down to form and what single DMs are interested in, this based upon numerous factors, including time they and their players have, or are willing to expend, for play. DMs are human and tend towards the positive aspects, we all do. I don't like PCs getting offed; even EGG didn't prefer it. It's just that PCs as a group are beholden to the consequences of only one, just one, ill-timed, inane action that can in turn effect the whole. This is how most parties or PCs died in Castle Greyhawk or El Raja Key. It is also one of the main reasons why Robilar took to solo adventuring when he could... Managing a party from a leadership level within it can be frustrating if all folks are not on the same page (i.e., group first and/or tactically minded), so I've seen the negative side of that result in near TPKs many times. As I noted up thread, adventuring is a dangerous occupation. Understand it up front or learn through it, either way, but don't blame the game or a fair DM. It's the nature of the beast.