Today we continue with our apocalyptic theme. I've covered war and pestilence, and this column will be about Death, the great leveller. Everybody dies, except for adventurers, who die but get to come back via the auspices of a friendly or bribable cleric.
Death, nevertheless, is still part of the world they adventure in, a useful plot device, and in some cases, a reason for why adventurers do the things they do. The first thing a GM has to resolve on a worldbuilding point of view is this: How ubiquitous and accessible is magical resurrection?
A setting where only the rich and noble gain access to resurrection is a very different one where anyone may come back from the dead. For one, the first setting may echo grim reality, more or less, except of course that the poor are dying for want of access to medical care rather than access to resurrection.
Things like accidents and death in childbed would be far less serious in a setting with accessible resurrection, but that might also have the knock-on effect of requiring more intensive farming and ranching to feed a larger population. Would a family permissively allow feeble and weak members to die without clerical assistance, just to be rid of them? That comes very close to euthanasia in a world with ubiquitous Raise Dead, and a forest where the weak and unwanted are left to die could soon be filled with hostile ghosts…
Who does all this resurrecting, anyway? Are temple coffers full to bursting from resurrection tithes, and what is the church doing with that money, in any case? Imagine, if you will an order of priests, solicitors and undertakers, all dedicated to a god of wealth and death. Wills, resurrections and loans all taken care of in the same temple complex. It's a little nervy signing loan paperwork with a skull-masked priest as notary, no?
A setting with less clerical magic and a little more insane invention could have resurrection at the hands of alchemists, which brings more potential fun into the equation. After all, who's to say that insane man huffing mercury fumes won’t mess up his elixir, and bring Bob the Fighter back wrong?
GMs interested in playing up the horror angle of their games could do many wicked things with resurrections. A fixed SAN cost for returning, perhaps, or a limited number of resurrections, with a magical tattoo counting down the number of times a PC’s soul can survive being drawn from the beyond. A PC could face burial in an unhallowed graveyard until they animate as a revenant, shambling and foul. No friendly local cleric with a diamond and a flask of holy water for these folks.
Why and how are the characters coming back from death? The answer could be very interesting - perhaps the afterlife is full, and there is no more room for the dead, so people keep coming back no matter whether they want to. (Makes dungeon-clearing hard, since those kobolds are going to get up again.)
They could have a number of clones in scientific or magical vats, and they officially die once they’re out of clones. Or perhaps they’re already dead and don't even know it. A comedy game could even be played with the ideas of PCs being replaced by badly-practiced understudies every time they die. Great for a one-shot over beer and pretzels, definitely, especially if your players are good with improv humor.
This is all the column space I've got, so please do join me for my next column on the law-enforcement and justice system in worldbuilding.
contributed by M.W. Simmes
Death, nevertheless, is still part of the world they adventure in, a useful plot device, and in some cases, a reason for why adventurers do the things they do. The first thing a GM has to resolve on a worldbuilding point of view is this: How ubiquitous and accessible is magical resurrection?
A setting where only the rich and noble gain access to resurrection is a very different one where anyone may come back from the dead. For one, the first setting may echo grim reality, more or less, except of course that the poor are dying for want of access to medical care rather than access to resurrection.
Things like accidents and death in childbed would be far less serious in a setting with accessible resurrection, but that might also have the knock-on effect of requiring more intensive farming and ranching to feed a larger population. Would a family permissively allow feeble and weak members to die without clerical assistance, just to be rid of them? That comes very close to euthanasia in a world with ubiquitous Raise Dead, and a forest where the weak and unwanted are left to die could soon be filled with hostile ghosts…
Who does all this resurrecting, anyway? Are temple coffers full to bursting from resurrection tithes, and what is the church doing with that money, in any case? Imagine, if you will an order of priests, solicitors and undertakers, all dedicated to a god of wealth and death. Wills, resurrections and loans all taken care of in the same temple complex. It's a little nervy signing loan paperwork with a skull-masked priest as notary, no?
A setting with less clerical magic and a little more insane invention could have resurrection at the hands of alchemists, which brings more potential fun into the equation. After all, who's to say that insane man huffing mercury fumes won’t mess up his elixir, and bring Bob the Fighter back wrong?
GMs interested in playing up the horror angle of their games could do many wicked things with resurrections. A fixed SAN cost for returning, perhaps, or a limited number of resurrections, with a magical tattoo counting down the number of times a PC’s soul can survive being drawn from the beyond. A PC could face burial in an unhallowed graveyard until they animate as a revenant, shambling and foul. No friendly local cleric with a diamond and a flask of holy water for these folks.
Why and how are the characters coming back from death? The answer could be very interesting - perhaps the afterlife is full, and there is no more room for the dead, so people keep coming back no matter whether they want to. (Makes dungeon-clearing hard, since those kobolds are going to get up again.)
They could have a number of clones in scientific or magical vats, and they officially die once they’re out of clones. Or perhaps they’re already dead and don't even know it. A comedy game could even be played with the ideas of PCs being replaced by badly-practiced understudies every time they die. Great for a one-shot over beer and pretzels, definitely, especially if your players are good with improv humor.
This is all the column space I've got, so please do join me for my next column on the law-enforcement and justice system in worldbuilding.
contributed by M.W. Simmes
