The ripping of character sheets

Byrons_Ghost · Jun 9, 2006

In our old college Cthulhu games, we used to burn character sheets when they PC died. Cthulhu's a pretty different game, though. This was more like giving them a good send-off.

For that matter, we'd generally burn the body IC as well, or at least what was left of it. Can't be too careful, you know.

Naturally, we'd loot the bodies first. This occasionally led to interesting questions such as, "Why did Jim try climbing down the volcano shaft with his hands when he had a good length of rope?"

Aaron L · Jun 9, 2006

Crothian said:
It's a sheet of paper. If someone rips a piece a paper and a person jumps over the table to get the ripper, I see the potential assult quite an over reaction. Just becasue the guy ripping the sheet is in the wrong, doesn't make over reacting right.

Well now, of course starting a fight over it is asinine, but getting upset over it as an unresonable act is well within bounds.

JRRNeiklot · Jun 9, 2006

Shortly after 3e came out, I played in a living Greyhawk campaign at a con. after my pc died due to a 12 year old player hacking at bugs crawling over me and hitting me instead and then refusing to even attempt to heal me, the dm ripped up the sheet. The theory was that since I'd accumulated exp and items that a ssrting first level character shouldn't have, using that charater again in an LG game wouldn't be fair, especially since anything that happens in a Living campaign affects the whole game world. I can't say I liked seeing him rip it up, but what the hell, it was a one shot at a con with 2 kids who ruined it for the rest of us anyway. I'm not saying kids shouldn't play - Hell, I started at 12 -, but SOME kids shouldn't be allowed within 100 yards of a game.

Rothe · Jun 9, 2006

Well, we usually just extinguish the player's torch when they die and ask them to leave the building; but to each their own drama queen gesture.

Remathilis · Jun 9, 2006

We usually save them, and toss them later if they have no value.

Course, one really annoying player had his character sheet "save vs. paper shredder". He rolled a 1. :evilgrin:

GwydapLlew · Jun 9, 2006

In the LARP community it's this wierd symbolic gesture. It's either meant to mean, "It's just a piece of paper, it doesn't bother me," or "[CENSORED] [EXPLETIVE] [EDITED] you for killing my character!"

I've never done it myself, nor would I ever do it to a PC. It's juvenile and overly melodramatic.

Hypersmurf · Jun 9, 2006

I remember one occasion... goodness, nearly twenty years ago now. My mother was playing an elf in a 1E game, and the character died. Elves couldn't be raised, so she knew it wasn't coming back, and tore up the sheet.

Five minutes later, we won the fight against the creature that had killed her, and one of the other PCs tried a few empirical tests to identify a ring it was wearing.

One of the tests was "I wish the elf was alive again."

As it turned out, a wish could bring an elf back from the dead...

-Hyp.

Ed_Laprade · Jun 9, 2006

Li Shenron said:
Now that I think about it... I think I would feel offended as a DM if one of my players himself ripped his own PC sheet apart after dying. It would seem to me like he's showing despise at me and the game like "did you want to see my PC dead? here it is!".

I've done that once or twice when a character died because of some rule that I thought was really stupid. Because, yes, that's exactly how I felt about it.

As for the OP, if the sheets are the personal property of the player then it isn't just rude, it's illegal. I would be extreamly upset by this, as I too, have sheets for dead characters going back over a quarter of a century.

Ed_Laprade · Jun 9, 2006

Crothian said:
It's a sheet of paper. If someone rips a piece a paper and a person jumps over the table to get the ripper, I see the potential assult quite an over reaction. Just becasue the guy ripping the sheet is in the wrong, doesn't make over reacting right.

The Declaration of Independence is "just a sheet of paper". They'll shoot you if you try to rip it up. Guess they're just over reacting, eh?