However, most popular heroic fantasy storytelling in particular, outside of gaming, does not usually see its main protagonist(s) die: Conan, Drizzt, Bilbo, Aragon, they all survive their ordeals. In a game where each player's PC is the main protagonist, how to reconcile PC death with the storytelling?
Serial books need to keep selling. Kill off the main character, and you won't sell any continuation book, you'd have to find a new idea for another story. Tolkien obviously didn't need to do that because he didn't write book series, but for example Forgotten Realm novels won't likely kill off the most popular characters.
Also, what do your games look like with regards to personal agendas/quests for PCs, as opposed to common quests? I love it when PCs have individual reasons to be in the story, and individual goals, as long as the group has reason to stick together and pursue a common goal of course, and the personal agendas don't interefere too much. Does this happen in your groups? If so, how do you reconcile the loose ends, or unifinished chapters of those personal agendas or quests, when those PC's die?
Not every player is interested in personal agendas, but for those who are, the agendas are neverending. Reach one goal, they figure out another. It doesn't matter if they die between goals 3 and 4, or between goals 7 and 8.
There is a thread presently running on the question of
fudging dice, and this topic somewhat coincides with this one: in my experience, a lot of die fudging by DM's occurs to avoid PC death. I have no survey to rely my assumption on, but it seems to me like a DM saving a PC from death by fudging the dice, has little to do with avoiding the creation of a new PC by the player, a task that is usually quite enjoyable. I think it probably has more to do with (a) the DM expecting that the player is attached to his or her PC and would not take well to the PC dying (I won't go into this aspect here), and (b) to the point of this thread, that the story spun around that PC will not work anymore.
I don't fudge dice to save a PC from death.
Instead, I just let a player choose between death and some other penalty.
Of course, the tension in the RPG is often a result of the possible death of PC's. There is suspense in not knowing whether you PC will survive, as a player. And you must select your strategies when you enter battle, instead of being foolhardy or disinterested, if only because you wish for you PC to surive - notwithstanding having fun playing and wanting to create an interesting story during that battle also. So the possibility of death is always present and, moreso, is an interesting part of the game.
The tension is still there, even if I would let live a character that has technically died. Players don't like penalties, and they don't like feeling they are bad at the game.
That said, I've played in several short and campaigns of the last 4 decades where no PC died. And in others where many PC's died. In both cases, there is the real or perceived impression that the PC's can die at any time. This is part of the RPG premise, at least in a vast majority of games presumably. Have you played in games where PC's simply don't die? Where the DM deploys sometimes obvious efforts to make PC's survive? (I have.) If so, does this kill the suspense and otherwise negatively affect the gaming experience for you?
Yes, the DM fudging or helping with ex-machina intervention has a negative effect. That's why I don't do those.
Negotiating a penalty instead of death is not the same. A price to pay for the player is still there.
And actually if you think about it, when you enforce PC's death, there is nothing a DM could do to prevent a player create a new character that is basically identical to the previous. If the DM just says no, it feels an unfair intrusion over character creation, and will have a negative effect on the game too. If the DM says yes, it still feels very sour from a story point of view (e.g. the old "turns out my PC had a twin who is now taking over" is really bad).
So if the player has the intention of creating essentially a copycat PC, it's just better to let her keep playing the previous. It is generally accepted by players to receive a penalty in exchange for this.
Before that however, I actually encourage players to let their PC go, and see it as an opportunity to play a different characters. There are 12 classes, 9 races and 40 archetypes in the PHB to try!
So, in the end, how do you reconcile death with the storytelling? Not all deaths are heroic gestures that save the day to the expense of the PC's life. Some seem pretty insignificant, sometimes the consequence of a sequence of unlucky rolls or bad decisions. The PC death is likely to leave some loose ends and unfinished business: that PC had reasons to want to achieve the general goal, and reasons to interact with some PCs and NPCs that are still part of the story. How do you reconcile that, in your gaming groups?
I remind the players that for every unfinished business they have, as a DM I probably have at least 20 unfinished businesses
Other than that, agendas and goals are good also when they are aren't achieved, because they serve as a
compass. I always say that, as most things in life, the journey towards a goal isn't a mean to the end... it's the goal that works as a mean to make you take the journey, which is the real end.
