D&D 4E Does a 4e Campaign Setting allowing PCs to play when they die appeal to you?

I want to hypothetically discussed a 4e campaign setting that lets characters be played while they are dead. But, I do not want to discuss how to bring Ghostwalk into 4e, instead lets discuss this idea with a clean slate.

How would you design and handle a campaign setting that lets you play when you die? What themes would it explore? What sort of monsters should it have? What effect does death hold in the game? What form should the dead characters take? What changes to a normal D&D game need to be considered?

If you are against the idea of playing a dead character, then why? What would it take to get you to like the idea of playing a dead character?

The poll is to get an overview of the true appeal of the idea of playing dead characters.

Well...

I sort of "forced" the PCs to play their dead selves for a part of my (just finished) 5+ year campaign. It was all a part of the prophecy about their rebirth begin tied to the rebirth of Faerun. I think most players enjoyed the implications and the challenges of playing an incorporeal spirit-type creature - I made a template for them which ended up looking very similar to Ghostwalk's ghost template (which I only saw after the fact).

That entire part of the campaign was set on the outer planes, starting in the Gray Waste and then moving on to Sigil and Ysgard (where they were reborn).

Overall, as a one-off, I liked it. I don't think it'd use it as a regular feature in my campaigns, though. I voted for option (2), as it seemed the closest to my experience.

Well, as DM I see no use for such a setting.

If a single PC is killed I don't want to interrupt the campaign to play out her afterlife until the PC is resurrected. If the player doesn't the character to be resurrected, it would lead to a split campaign for his departed soul. The same holds true for several PC deaths at the same time.

So it would only make sense in a TPK situation. One could imagine a series of adventures in the Great Beyond chronicling the PCs attempt to return to the world of the living. This means that the plans for the original campaign will have to be changed, probably dramatically so. As a rather lazy DM I would avoid such a task.

Of course one could set up a situation where the TPK is part of the story, an unavoidable lead in to adventures beyond the realm of the living. This might work, but holds no intereset for me.

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Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

What about the option you missed, Jan - dead PCs are able to continue adventuring with the rest of the party somehow?

That's pretty much how Ghostwalk did it.

I voted for no campaign setting for dead characters.
I played in one campaign for a game called Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, where you were a government agent charged with tracking down and neutralizing supernatural creatures. It had rules for playing ghosts, vampires and lycanthropes for characters that got killed off or just wanted to play such. There were alot of special rules just for them, bogged down play with a lot of bookkeeping.
If you are talking exploring the afterlife with dead PCs then do they start dead? Do you need the base classes of the core rules if so? Or does a player switch at the death of his character, then what about the rest of the party?

Bel

I like the idea, but it has to be done right. I think it's better as a campaign option for limited use rather than a wholesale campaign setting "quirk."

Once, I had a strong-running campaign that turned into a TPK because of some bad rolls, and I was really disgruntled because I wanted to salvage it somehow. Later, I was hanging out with my sister and we watched Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (how's that for an inspiration for wrongbadfun?) and I got inspired, so they basically quested in the realms of the dead in order to get Death to return them to life.

mhacdebhandia said:

What about the option you missed, Jan - dead PCs are able to continue adventuring with the rest of the party somehow?

That's pretty much how Ghostwalk did it.

Click to expand...

What ideas other than how Ghostwalk did it would work for the dead playing alongside the living?

Mourn said:

I like the idea, but it has to be done right. I think it's better as a campaign option for limited use rather than a wholesale campaign setting "quirk."

Once, I had a strong-running campaign that turned into a TPK because of some bad rolls, and I was really disgruntled because I wanted to salvage it somehow. Later, I was hanging out with my sister and we watched Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (how's that for an inspiration for wrongbadfun?) and I got inspired, so they basically quested in the realms of the dead in order to get Death to return them to life.

Click to expand...

What do you consider doing it "right"?

I thought that PC death had been declared unfun in 4e and had been outlawed ?

So I don't think there will be much need for it, event though this is a good idea (you are a nostalgic of Ghostwalk ?)

Obviously assuming an appropriate cosmology or rationale, I could see a 'living & dead' campaign working. But not with swathes of ghostly PCs/NPCs or ones with many bizarre powers, adjustments, level-based templates, etc, etc.

Deadlands, back in the day, had the simplest approached. The Harrowed were dead characters, more or less zombies, but capable of going on as if human, and had the intriguing (and not game-breaking at all, oh on, not a bit of it) ability to steal supernatural powers from other monsters of the weird west setting.

Now, while the implementation wasn't great, that's the basic approach I'd take. A new 'race' that replaces the old one. It is still physical, and not packed to the gills with odd abilities (a few is fine as long as they don't weight down the game) and the capacity to function just like a normal PC. No 'must sleep 12 hours per day', no 'must drink blood, eat flesh, devour souls daily' though these kind of weaknesses could be used in order to heal, etc. Having to declare them constantly wouldn't be great in play.

I think overall the biggest concern is that D&D has always had issues with undead. They're too vulnerable to turning in early editions, though likewise damned deadly too. In 3.5 they're just complex, drastically so, though there is some cool concepts floating around in all that clunk.

And a last thought for me, does becoming dead mean staying dead? On one hand, maybe it does... You live, you die, you come back as a 'new' race of undead and... Go on as before, but part of an ever-growing undead race. Hmmm... Could work.

Alternately, maybe 'death' is just a temporary state, maybe you Soul Reaver back and forth (perhaps not with anything like that rapidity mind) to access the world of the dead and living alike. Certainly more interesting than waiting for the next rez-capable cleric.