D&D 5E My Son's First PC Death (handled it pretty well)

[Nebulous]

D20 was fun too. The damage was massive there, too, but you weren't camp counselors trying to fight Jason Voorhees, like you were in D6.

If that hasn't been an indie game sometime in the past 20 years, it needs to be. It's like Call of Cthulhu, you know you're gorked, it's just when and how and how bad. And if you get any *** first

 

[Nebulous]

That reminds me. Often it's not a death that upsets players, but something else. I was running a modern game and one of the players had his foot blown off. He was SOOOO mad lol. Never seen him angry about a PC death, but with one foot gone? Wow.

Biggest blowout I'd ever seen was between a married couple, when the husband's character made an unwise move that killed the wife's character. Good GOD. Both ended up storming out. Session over. Sheesh.

 

[Riley37]

I think my first "whoops, them's the dice rolls" PC death was... late in high school, in a Call of Cthulhu game? And it wasn't in battle against a Big Bad. He was infiltrating for clues, blew a Climbing roll, fell, was knocked out on landing, woke up in a jail cell, and was charged, tried and executed (not played out in detail) because he was the obvious person to blame for the horrible mysterious deaths which had recently happened. Which makes sense: he's from out of town, he was sneaking around at night, he didn't have a "rational" explanation of what he was doing.

In Call of Cthulhu, I was ready for PC mortality. But it was a more *meaningless and futile* PC death than I expected. The Keeper (DM) wasn't demeaning. He was sad to see a PC fail and die without even learning what they were up against. He made a valid decision, and raised my respect for the integrity of his storytelling.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I guess I'm one of those rare players that has the true skillz* to avoid having any of his characters die. I'm just that good. Legendary even...

Plenty of PC deaths in our group during the middle school/high school era were marked with shouting and dice chucking. Several led to heated arguments but I don't remember anyone steaming off in a huff or anything. Some just immediately rolled up passive-aggressive characters and were kinda dickish about it for a while.

The best reaction I ever got from one of my players, whose character died killing off a major villain and thwarting his nefarious scheme: "Cool. I'm pretty happy with that..."

*True skillz in this case meaning whining, pleading, begging and/or bribing the DM to retcon the death. May also include fudging stats during character creation, 'remembering' a potion of extra healing, and cheating on dice rolls.

 

[Syntallah]

I had a grown man (50 years old!) throw a fit when his Rogue got vaporized by a critical hit Guiding Bolt spell not more than 3-4 weeks ago... So, yeah, tell your son "very good job" at handling the PC death thing.

 

[MortalPlague]

If that hasn't been an indie game sometime in the past 20 years, it needs to be. It's like Call of Cthulhu, you know you're gorked, it's just when and how and how bad. And if you get any *** first

Apparently there's a White Wolf RPG called "Slashers" which handles this. My friend told me about it, and I'm keeping an eye out for it, being the huge fan of horror movies that I am.

 

[Nebulous]

The best death EVER was in our old CoC campaign, the Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep. The character was picked up by the Black Sphinx, dangled above its many maws, went instantly insane, and shrugged nonchalant as he was dropped in and chewed up. "I've seen worse..." were his dying words. Maybe you had to be there, but it was effing hilarious.

 

[TarionzCousin]

That reminds me. Often it's not a death that upsets players, but something else. I was running a modern game and one of the players had his foot blown off. He was SOOOO mad lol. Never seen him angry about a PC death, but with one foot gone? Wow.

I was co-GM'ing an Amber game in which we had four GM's at four different houses throughout town. If you Trump called someone, you called their cell phone in real life. If you "pulled them through" to your location, they had to get in their car and drive to your game location.

The highest Warfare guy was fighting a Black Griffon and losing. He called everyone he could and only one woman answered her phone. She didn't "go through" and drive to his house, so he ended up getting his foot bitten off.

We all found out about it when the whole gang of about fifteen gamers gathered together at the end of the day and Warfare guy described his character limping in with one lower leg missing. Everyone who didn't take his phone call looked embarrassed. It was great.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I was co-GM'ing an Amber game in which we had four GM's at four different houses throughout town. If you Trump called someone, you called their cell phone in real life. If you "pulled them through" to your location, they had to get in their car and drive to your game location.

The highest Warfare guy was fighting a Black Griffon and losing. He called everyone he could and only one woman answered her phone. She didn't "go through" and drive to his house, so he ended up getting his foot bitten off.

We all found out about it when the whole gang of about fifteen gamers gathered together at the end of the day and Warfare guy described his character limping in with one lower leg missing. Everyone who didn't take his phone call looked embarrassed. It was great.

Maybe it was rush hour, and Portland rush hour sucks balls.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Maybe it was rush hour, and Portland rush hour sucks balls.

It was on a Sunday. But having five GM's for ten players meant very little "down time." We tried to keep everyone extremely busy in that campaign, often having ten or eleven GM's for ten players.

To be semi-relevant to this thread, the player took his maiming very well.