Death of Player Characters

[Edgar Ironpelt]

If your playing a game with a mechanic like hit points, combat and death: then your game is made for random death all the time. It is the whole point of all those rules. It is a basic part of most games.

Anyone who wants to play a game fairly with good sportsmanship would accept such rules. Again they are part of the game.

And I'm going to respond with an old USENET post. Not by me, but I agree with it.

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RPGs and video games differ from most ordinary board games in that there doesn't have to be a loser. I think it's reasonable that they attract mindsets which aren't very interested in losing; and a lot of RPG groups successfully cater to this.

If I enter into playing, say, chess with the expectation I will never lose, I'm being an idiot and I'm bound to be disappointed. Not even the World Champion gets that. But if I enter into Heroes of Might and Magic IV (which is what I'm currently playing) with the expectation that I won't lose, I'm not hurting anyone, and it's not unreasonable that I may get what I want. (Especially if I turn the difficulty down--and I may yet do that, because the losses are really more annoying than challenging.)

Whether the player still wants it when she gets it is another question, but for at least some players in some situations the answer is "yes." I don't think I would still be playing Heroes if I lost even 1/3 of the time. In a board game, I know I have to give my opponent a fair shot, but here there's no such obligation; the only thing against winning all the time is that it may detract from the challenge, and for me, right now, I'd rather win than have a really strong challenge.

If this is a personality flaw it's an awfully common one; I think it's better just regarded as a preference.

A common problem with such games is that they are entertaining for the players but not for the GM. I get tired of having my NPCs wiped out time and again; I spoiled a campaign recently by engineering a TPK in the attempt to make things "a bit more challenging." Clearly I overshot, but by game contract I shouldn't even have been trying.
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[DragonLancer]

As a DM for many decades, my view has always been that I want the characters (and likewise, their players during game) to have a fear that death is just a dice roll away. I don't however, want to kill their characters. I just want the players to have that feeling that it could happen. I don't want characters to die though or to get that TPK because it then causes issues for the story being told at the table. If it happens, it happens, but I won't engineer it.

As for when it does happen, they get a new character at the same level as the rest of the party but with reduced starting equipment/gold value. I run milestone levelling and it's better not to have a new character come in weaker than the everyone else and the threats they are facing.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

In the upcoming Ravenloft campaign that I'm planning to DM, I want to allow player characters that die to come back as a 'reborn' which is one of the official lineages in the Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft book. Only if the player wants to of course. It would fit right in with the lore of the setting.

You could also do this in Eberron by making the dead character come back as a Karrnath undead warrior. Or if you are an elf from Aerenal the spirit of your dead character could come back and act as a ghostly advisor to your new character. I can also imagine a warforged being put back together and maybe reimbued with life if the rest of the party can find the necessary equipment.

In the BladeRunner or Alien RPG if you choose to play a replicant/android/synthetic character, you might have a 'backup' of your mind, personality etc and you could get your character 'remanufactured'. Or even if your character is human and dies, a clone could be made using DNA records. Role playing that could be interesting, for both the player character who died and the other players.

 

[cranberry]

Clearly the sentiment has shifted from 1E where death of a PC was common to 5E where people seem highly invested in their PC's story, and would be quite upset at a character death.

So, that being said, it depends on the players, and is one of the topics that should be covered during session 0.

 

[dragoner]

Every character death is time to pause and reflect, do I want to continue? Usually I like any death to have meaning, and not them killed out of hand, such as a simple you're dead. Also it is a lot different is character generation takes fifteen minutes, or two hours.

 

[Celebrim]

RPGs and video games differ from most ordinary board games in that there doesn't have to be a loser. I think it's reasonable that they attract mindsets which aren't very interested in losing; and a lot of RPG groups successfully cater to this... But if I enter into Heroes of Might and Magic IV (which is what I'm currently playing) with the expectation that I won't lose, I'm not hurting anyone, and it's not unreasonable that I may get what I want.

One problem with this argument is Heroes of Might and Magic IV is a single player game and tabletop RPGs traditionally have at least 2 participants, and usually have more. And the original author here I think gets it entirely wrong when he pauses to think about this. The problem is not that a game in which the player participants always win isn't fun for the GM. I'd argue from a perspective of 42 years as a GM that the GM tends to suffer more from PC death than even the player of the PC. Every PC death harms the GMs game and vision in very tangible ways. GMs are just as interested and often more interested in advancing PC stories as the player is because from the GM as story teller perspective, the PCs are the GMs protagonists and to lose them is to lose all the investment around those characters and to harm the GMs overall narrative. Generally speaking, protagonists in heroic fiction don't randomly die outside of the climax in the story or other meaningful event. If they do, then that fiction tends to be harmed - less enjoyable to relate or transcribe.

The real problem with a tabletop RPG where the PCs don't or can't lose is it interferes with other aesthetic desires of the participants that are almost universal in RPG play, namely the expectation of verisimilitude and the expectation of agency. There is an unstated near universal expectation that the outcome of choices made by the partici2pants will be meaningful and the logical result of the choices made in the fictional situation, and there is a nigh universal expectation that the participants will be allowed to make meaningful choices. It is these two expectations that inexorably lead to game supporting failure as an outcome including total failure such as death.

If you design or run a game such as that it violates these expectations, even if every agrees death would not be a desirable outcome, the game loses its excitement and sense of value for most tabletop participants. A common compromise is to rely heavily on Illusionism as a technique where the players believe or are led to believe that they are playing in a game with high agency and verisimilitude but where behind the screen the GM is manipulating outcomes in such a way as to avoid undesirable failures, including undesired deaths. However, Illusionism is a fragile system of play because if something happens to reveal the illusion it has all the fun of realizing that you were winning Chess solely because your opponent was throwing the game. The story you made has been cheapened because the verisimilitude or agency you thought you had turns out to not be there. Depending on the expectations of the GM, this can also cheapen the GMs experience if he knows he is using illusionism to a high degree, because he suspects even if the players don't that the hypothetical "reader" of his story will see the deus ex machina and other coincidences as a story flaw.

Another common way to deal with the problem is turn down the difficulty level just as the original writer suggested with a single player game, setting up the math in such a way that failure is statistically improbable. One of the easiest ways to do this historically was run a "Monte Hall" type campaign where the GM generously gave vastly more resources than were necessary to overcome the challenges. This is a little bit better of a solution than high levels of Illusionism, but again depending on the aesthetics of play the resulting story can be unsatisfying. While there are stories with protagonists that are never meaningfully challenged and go from scene to scene displaying their prowess by easily overcoming the challenges that limits of such story telling are generally regarded as juvenile and such ego validating or ego driven narratives can be tiring or even dysfunctional if you have more than one participant contending for the awesomeness spotlight.

In short, the real problem with player death is participants in an RPG often have complex expectations and desires that conflict with each other, and the more participants you add to the RPG, the more of a potential problem this becomes.

 

[Mr. Lahey]

In short, the real problem with player death is participants in an RPG often have complex expectations and desires that conflict with each other, and the more participants you add to the RPG, the more of a potential problem this becomes.

This. Of course, this is exacerbated by the fact that the most popular RPG around is a derivation of a war game and the entire system is geared towards combat. Whatever players’ expectations, it seems utterly contradictory that people would play this game with the thought that character death is off the table, or be limited to rare, non-random occasions. And yet, that seems to be the case for a great many people.

While there is a broad range of play styles that D&D can accommodate, I question whether a significant number of players would prefer something other than D&D that is not based on combat.

 

[Committed Hero]

Is it?

It should be at least discussed prior to play. Some players put a lot of thought and time into their characters and could be really discouraged into doing it again. Even an X of Cthulhu campaign - as opposed to a one-shot - with quick death ignores the descent into madness which makes the setting unique.

 

[tetrasodium]

This. Of course, this is exacerbated by the fact that the most popular RPG around is a derivation of a war game and the entire system is geared towards combat. Whatever players’ expectations, it seems utterly contradictory that people would play this game with the thought that character death is off the table, or be limited to rare, non-random occasions. And yet, that seems to be the case for a great many people.

Since the thread is about PC death specifically... I'd add that said RPG is also (at least still currently☆) designed in such a way that it violates the idea that risk & consequence stemming from player action are things that are even potentially on the table. Design choices like that are so incredibly obvious that it results in PC death frequently looking like an execution on the odd chance it happens. With other negative consequences of note falling into a fairly similar non-chance, the most popular RPG itself almost encourages players to internalize the idea that players should expect death & consequence to be off the table.

While there is a broad range of play styles that D&D can accommodate, I question whether a significant number of players would prefer something other than D&D that is not based on combat.

Potentially, but I think somewhere between a plurality & majority of those players are just channeling what they feel like is expected & normal. I've actually seen a player show up late missing a big fight that notably injured the on time players → Get told by the GM what happened & that they were going to be at half health because the encounter was scaled back due to his absence→ Get caught not tracking hp during the next encounter & tell the GM they were at full health when questioned about current hp, & then do absolutely nothing when the GM reminded them of the half health plus the crit damage they just took in the last round of the fight → That went for a bit with the player not even acknowledging the GM's efforts to impress the importance of tracking HP until the player actually said "no" in regards to updating their PC's current HP. → Said player was eventually shocked and actually asked why they were being told that they are no longer welcome at the table so needed to find something else to do that doesn't involve showing up to join the group on whatever day/time we played.

☆ With only one of the three core rulebooks it's hard to guess how & if that might change

 

[Gorgon Zee]

For me, it's just a feature that needs to be discussed and agreed on up front. Not controversial, not a problem. I just generally ask my players what rate of character deaths they consider to make the game fun. Usually it's about 1 for group per 6 months of play as my players and I like well developed characters and a higher rate limits roleplaying opportunities.