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Let 'em live or die?
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8193154" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I know it's a bit late for providing advice, but...well, I feel like I should speak up anyway.</p><p></p><p>I don't like death as a consequence. I, too, find it boring. I also find the anxiety over whether I might lose my character not enjoyable. (I have enough anxiety in my ordinary life.) But I want to have consequences that matter, I want to not know for sure what the future will bring.</p><p></p><p>So I don't generally kill characters. Or, if I ever do kill one (it hasn't happened yet in my game), I'll offer challenges for BOTH sides on how to fix it. Death should never be a speedbump. But it should also not be a dead end, if you'll pardon the pun. Making death a rare but playable consequence is much more interesting to me than either making it verboten or simply letting it happen flat. Maybe it will be difficult to resurrect the character. Maybe an <em>evil</em> person DOES resurrect the character, and now they have a debt! Maybe seeing things from the realm of the dead has granted that character new insight...or maybe for some reason, Death says, "Oh, it's <em>you</em>. <em>You</em> aren't supposed to be here yet. I have to send you back." Or any of a bajillion other possibilities.</p><p></p><p>If a player really did feel like their character NEEDED to die, and I couldn't see a good direction to take things into the future, I'd roll with it--as you have done. It's cool to have a death happen and work around it, if the player is on board. But I have, for example, talked a player OUT of having his character die. He was about to go on an ongoing hiatus for an indefinite length, and wanted a last hurrah. I persuaded him to take a <em>slightly</em> tweaked approach, which allowed his character to leave the narrative on an unknown-duration basis, while preserving the possibility of his return, should the player wish it. He was quite happy with the result.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8193154, member: 6790260"] I know it's a bit late for providing advice, but...well, I feel like I should speak up anyway. I don't like death as a consequence. I, too, find it boring. I also find the anxiety over whether I might lose my character not enjoyable. (I have enough anxiety in my ordinary life.) But I want to have consequences that matter, I want to not know for sure what the future will bring. So I don't generally kill characters. Or, if I ever do kill one (it hasn't happened yet in my game), I'll offer challenges for BOTH sides on how to fix it. Death should never be a speedbump. But it should also not be a dead end, if you'll pardon the pun. Making death a rare but playable consequence is much more interesting to me than either making it verboten or simply letting it happen flat. Maybe it will be difficult to resurrect the character. Maybe an [I]evil[/I] person DOES resurrect the character, and now they have a debt! Maybe seeing things from the realm of the dead has granted that character new insight...or maybe for some reason, Death says, "Oh, it's [I]you[/I]. [I]You[/I] aren't supposed to be here yet. I have to send you back." Or any of a bajillion other possibilities. If a player really did feel like their character NEEDED to die, and I couldn't see a good direction to take things into the future, I'd roll with it--as you have done. It's cool to have a death happen and work around it, if the player is on board. But I have, for example, talked a player OUT of having his character die. He was about to go on an ongoing hiatus for an indefinite length, and wanted a last hurrah. I persuaded him to take a [I]slightly[/I] tweaked approach, which allowed his character to leave the narrative on an unknown-duration basis, while preserving the possibility of his return, should the player wish it. He was quite happy with the result. [/QUOTE]
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