PC mortality and revival

[Lanefan]

Moreover, I would prefer a system that mandated that a character who did come back from the dead was necessarily changed by the experience - more Buffy or Spock; less "revolving door of death".

I'm not aware of any game that currently does these things. In some cases, I'm not even sure how I'd go about setting them up.

I kinda homebrewed something like this a while back - dreamed up various things that might happen to someone while dead (some good, some bad) and threw 'em on a %-age table that a reviving character now has to roll on.

1-50% nothing happens. 51% and higher, something happened; list includes:

- you have an affinity for/enemity against undead, +2/-2 to turn or control or hit (as appropriate) even if you had no such ability before
- you are noticeably paler, almost translucent
- your spirit has been claimed (or "marked") by a deity for when you next die; the marking deity may or may not be desireable to the PC.
- character comes back carrying a quest (can be anything, instant adventure hook!)
- character can not approach within one mile of where it died; if it does, it dies again
- character gains invisibility to undead - they cannot find its spirit

And so on.

Lan-"a day in the death"-efan

 

[Jimlock]

It is easy for a PC to die, and it is hard to be revived.

Good players should be hard to kill...

While this is a "game", it is no "joyride"... tension, atmosphere and mood are highly dependent on PC frailty.

Players who know there are real risks for their PCs, not only play better but respect the game even more.

.................now... a psychopath DM who takes pleasure from killing PCs.. is something TOTALLY different...

 

[Lanefan]

It is easy for a PC to die, and it is hard to be revived.

Good players should be hard to kill...

Their *characters*, however, not so much...

Players who know there are real risks for their players, not only play better but respect the game even more.

Er...players don't (usually) have players. They have characters.

.................now... a psychopath DM who takes pleasure from killing his players... is something TOTALLY different...

And here I have to ask if you really do mean players getting killed, or characters? There's a significant difference. Usually stated as 25-to-life without paroll.

Lan-"characters die so players don't have to"-efan

 

[Wik]

I'm a fan of hard to die, hard to come back. Or, rather, once you're dead, you're dead, but if you're dead, you saw it coming.

The first example that springs to mind would be earthdawn, but there are many others - d6, Shadowrun, pretty much any non TSR game in the 90s. Death being the final frontier is great in my book, because it does keep fear in the players' hearts.

But giving a bit of a buffer before PCs die, rather than say BECMI's one hit kills, is probably a good idea. If players have a round or two to escape those orcs they thought were pushovers, it allows for better investment in the characters and less "Bob The Fighter" syndrome, which can suck.

Not to mention that a game in which a PC dies every session is only fun for a few sessions before it turns into an "us versus them" situation with the players on one side of the screen and the GM on the other. I don't think that's a healthy atmosphere to maintain in long term campaign play.

That being said, a game in which PC death is very difficult to come across (4e springs to mind, personally, especially at paragon and epic), is not a game I enjoy these days. I think losing the fear of death leads players into getting lazy, and the game suffers as a result.

However, it all really depends on how you define "hard to kill". I find Shadowrun characters hard to kill simply because they have so many ways to avoid getting hit or taking the damage - but once you get down to it, a single bad die roll can kill an unlucky character. Some people would say shadowrun is very much an "easy to kill, hard to revive" setting for that very reason.

 

[The Shaman]

Anyone want to address this?

Easy/easy is Paranoia.

Not sure about the rest.

 

[Umbran]

Moreover, I would prefer a system that mandated that a character who did come back from the dead was necessarily changed by the experience - more Buffy or Spock; less "revolving door of death".

I'm not aware of any game that currently does these things. In some cases, I'm not even sure how I'd go about setting them up.

Classic Deadlands. In this game, by the rules the PCs don't really choose if they get come back from death, and if they do... (spoiler)

Spoiler

... they come back as undead, with some cool powers, but with an evil spirit riding in their body, ever-vying for control.

But this one is rather specific to the genre of the game, and is not necessarily useful elsewhere.

 

[steenan]

I never understood what fun players see in resurrection. I see no way in which it's better than just low lethality. If characters rarely die, but when they do, it's final, death becomes something meaningful. This, in turn, gives meaning to taking risk, to being scared, to putting one's life at stake, to murder, to sacrifice. Significance of death is a source of powerful emotions.

Access to consequence-free or consequence-light resurrection (even if it's costly, requires quests etc.) cheapens death enormously, without giving anything valuable in return. Also, it gives us a setting that's very unintuitive and characters that are hard to relate to. Game either becomes inconsistent, breaking suspension of disbelief, or differs drastically from the tropes we're familiar with.

Of course, sometimes that may be exactly what the game aims for. Eclipse Phase, with personality backups and resleeving does exactly that. But many games have resurrection in them without thinking about the consequences - and that is really bad, IMO.

 

[Umbran]

I never understood what fun players see in resurrection. I see no way in which it's better than just low lethality.

It is sometimes better in that the plot flow will often be different.

In a low-lethality game, the PCs generally win the fight, the villain is stopped. In a game with death and resurrection, the PCs lose the fight, and come back later. However, since they lost the fight, the villain isn't stopped, and whatever the villain was doing advances.

Significance of death is a source of powerful emotions.

Yes. But losing a character you've been working with for a year or more is also a source of powerful emotions, and they aren't necessarily good ones to have at your table.

Game either becomes inconsistent, breaking suspension of disbelief, or differs drastically from the tropes we're familiar with.

Whether the campaign remains consistent depends on the setting conceits, not on the game mechanics.

At the point where you have to deal with this, the player's disbelief is largely busted anyway, as the character is dead and not active in the story.

Most gamers are quite familiar with stories where characters don't stay dead - comic book superheroes being the standard example. Heck, even in perhaps the most iconic of fantasy literature, the Lord of the Rings, the trope is present - as far as the reader is concerned, Gandalf dies in Moria, but shows up later unexpected.

 

[steenan]

In a low-lethality game, the PCs generally win the fight, the villain is stopped. In a game with death and resurrection, the PCs lose the fight, and come back later. However, since they lost the fight, the villain isn't stopped, and whatever the villain was doing advances.

I cannot agree with this. I think this misunderstanding is the main reason why many people avoid low-lethality systems.
"Not dying" is not equal to "winning". I would never, neither as a player nor as a GM, want to play a game with an assumption that PCs generally win. But being defeated is something different from being killed. When more interesting situations and goals are introduced, it becomes perfectly possible (and very fun in play) to lose a fight and live, or to win, dying.

But losing a character you've been working with for a year or more is also a source of powerful emotions, and they aren't necessarily good ones to have at your table.

If the death is random and senseless - I agree. But that does not happen in a low-lethality game.
If the character dies because the player decided to put everything at stake during a climactic conflict - than they are exactly the emotions we want to have at the table.

Whether the campaign remains consistent depends on the setting conceits, not on the game mechanics.

It depends on both. You won't have a consistent game if the system you use does not fit the setting. You will have to either override the mechanics on the fly, or to let the system violate setting consistency. Of course, in many situations it is possible to find some solution to this. But why play a game which forces you to conjure such convoluted explanations instead of just simply working well?

Most gamers are quite familiar with stories where characters don't stay dead - comic book superheroes being the standard example. Heck, even in perhaps the most iconic of fantasy literature, the Lord of the Rings, the trope is present - as far as the reader is concerned, Gandalf dies in Moria, but shows up later unexpected.

It does not address my point.
What players do not know - and what neither superhero comic books nor LotR help them with - is how people think and act in a world where real death is not present. The problem is not accepting that someone may return; it's incorporating this into how you see the world.
You don't need to have resurrection available for everybody. It's enough to have it happen from time to time to put any typical setting on its head. Nearly all "common sense" assumptions about religion, law and lifestyle need to be challenged in face of resurrection. And if you just handwave it, the effect is much more jarring than the famous example of useless castles in a world of dragons and flying mages.

 

[Umbran]

"Not dying" is not equal to "winning".

I think, to first approximation, they are equivalent. You are correct that death isn't the only way to not win, but really, if the PCs are going into the hazardous scenario to stop the bad buy, they live and the bad guy dies, generally, that means the PCs won. It is a broad generalization, I admit, and applies more strongly to the "beer and pretzel" gamer than to the highfalutin' types we get in these parts, but we are perhaps in the minority.

When more interesting situations and goals are introduced, it becomes perfectly possible (and very fun in play) to lose a fight and live, or to win, dying.

Can we substitute "complicated" or "subtle" for "interesting"? I expect it preserves the meaning you intend, without speaking to what others find interesting.

If the character dies because the player decided to put everything at stake during a climactic conflict - than they are exactly the emotions we want to have at the table.

Well, the emotions I'm thinking of you don't ever want at your table. The scenario you're talking about can avoid the emotions I'm talking about, yes, but that scenario is only one way of dying among many. You're not just talking about the general frequency/ease of death, but of *how* the character may die.

It depends on both. You won't have a consistent game if the system you use does not fit the setting.

I don't think we are disagreeing in essence here. Surely, not all settings can be well-reproduced with all systems.

Let me take D&D as an example. In D&D, there is magic that revives characters from the dead - those powers are in the rules. How many clerics the world has to use those powers, and their willingness to do so, are setting conceits, not given by the rules. How the world reacts to those powers (or if the world even knows they exist) is likewise a setting issue, not a rules-issue.

What players do not know - and what neither superhero comic books nor LotR help them with - is how people think and act in a world where real death is not present.

I think you've jumped to a particular setting conceit - that "real death is not present".

You don't need to have resurrection available for everybody. It's enough to have it happen from time to time to put any typical setting on its head.

I think maybe your version of "from time to time" may be different from mine, and maybe you have a different vision of how well real information travels through a world.

In the *real* world, where as far as we can tell nobody ever comes back from the dead, virtually every culture has myths and legends that it happens. I think that, for far-pre-information age cultures, where documenting an event is mostly an issue of hearsay, I don't feel the issue is as big as you paint it.