When Do You (GM) Kill PCs?

[Hjorimir]

I know from bitter experience that what Hjorimir writes is quite true. Back in the late '80s I inadvertently trained the players in my usual group to rely on the fact that if their characters got into trouble I would intervene in some way to save them--and not just from danger to their lives, but also to their good images. I began to notice that they were playing their characters with dramatically inappropriate aggressiveness and recklessness. They employed neither prudence, nor caution, nor circumspection. So having sacrificed realism and challenge for drama, I lost drama too. It eventually go to be too much when I realised that if the players realised that their characters had bitten off more than they could chew their response was to quickly bite off still more, so as to have the biggest mouthful when I rescued them. If I brought up a big party of soldiers to warn the players that their characters were out of their depth in, say, attacking a castle, they would always attack rather than sneak away. I likened this gambit to the player taking his own character hostage against the GM.

Eventually, of course, my games became completely flaccid, offering nothing much to either the 'gamist', the 'simulationist', or the 'dramatist' taste. I had to start shooting hostages to re-inject rigour into my games. For a year or so I killed a lot of PCs, TPKed a few parties, and let a number of high-stakes adventures and campaigns collapse through the death of a key PC. It was a heavy price, I guess. But now players who know me once more treat the features of my game worlds as needing to be addressed on their own terms, and my games once again present a real challenge and offer real satisfaction.

I played in a Star Wars games (WEG version) like that once. We figured out pretty early that our characters were immortal and the GM paid the price for that. I cannot count how many times my smuggler ran the gauntlet on Imperial Star Destroyers and somehow managed to survive. I even started shooting at sith lords with my trusty DL-44 Blaster Pistol instead of running away like I should have. Not that I would be able to kill those guys, but for some reason they never killed me.

 

[Drowbane]

Let the dice fall where they may.

Players are great at hanging thier own characters... just give them a bit of rope.

I do try to avoid no-win situations however. If I know the PCs can't handle an encounter, their is often times an out. Of course, that assumes the PCs accept that they're outmatched... 9 times outta 10 they will stand thier ground. And die. "I'll quickdraw my Blasters and use Rapidshot and Manyshot w/Fullattack on Lord Vader... he can't block them all!!"

C'est la vie

 

[S'mon]

I increasingly believe in giving players what they want, which is to say:

1. If the players want roleplay & in-depth character development, randomly killing their PC is going to harm their fun. These are not munchkin players, they're the "real roleplayer" or deep immersion players. They're not trying to trash your campaign world. Their lovingly developed PC not dying means more fun for everyone.

2. If the players want to test themselves against the milieu by effectively poking it with a stick to see what happens, it's absolutely vital to maintain versimilitude. Let the dice fall where they may. If the 3rd level PCs try to assassinate the king, it's ok to run it by the book & kill the PCs. In fact, doing anything else will harm the game. If you arbitrarily let them succeed, they realise they can't die and you get Agback's game described above. OTOH if you arbitrarily declare the king unkillable, whether or not you let the PCs live you've inculcated a deep sense of unfairness in the players, potentially ruining the game.

My rules:

1. Never intervene arbitrarily to maintain a setting element. If the PCs kill the king and trash the setting, fine. Run a civil war game & create a new setting.

2. Don't intervene to keep gamist PCs alive if they have chosen to do something that will get them killed.

3. If the players are not trying to destabilise the setting or knowingly doing something suicidal, but are having their PCs behave in a reasonable manner (for adventurers, that means going in search of adventure), then make sure they have a reasonable chance to succeed - eg use the CR/EL system. If necessary use other devices such as Fate Points to give them the best chance of survival.

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

By saving a PC for a "Dramitically appropriate moment", you've effectively railroaded your game. ... If you've decided that the character is unkillable until a certain point, then you have to guarantee that that point will be reached. ... Since I cannot die, I can just keep plowing through, confident that I'll eventually get to the end.

I can definitely see how groups who are more "gamist" (to use Agback's term ;-) appreciate the very real risk presented by the DM who is willing to off PCs in the first session.

I guess for one thing my players like the cinematic feel. It's not really a question of fairness or what the dice say. It's how can we make this a really cool story?

For another thing, they know I'm willing to do a lot of horrible things to their characters before a merciful death would take them. It's rarely a situation where PCs go from operating at 100% one second to stone cold dead the next. It's not fun to rack up crippling injuries, extreme fatigue, loss of supplies, etc. and they do a great job of roleplaying their characters' reactions to such events.

ironregime

 

[ForceUser]

I don't kill PCs. I provide them with the rope, then they hang themselves.

Ditto.

If I knew the DM killed my PC--or kept him alive--for dramatic effect or "story" reasons, I'd get angry at him. Let the dice fall where they may.

 

[ForceUser]

I played in a Star Wars games (WEG version) like that once. We figured out pretty early that our characters were immortal and the GM paid the price for that. I cannot count how many times my smuggler ran the gauntlet on Imperial Star Destroyers and somehow managed to survive. I even started shooting at sith lords with my trusty DL-44 Blaster Pistol instead of running away like I should have. Not that I would be able to kill those guys, but for some reason they never killed me.

Ah, good old Jake. He sure wanted the PCs to be heroes; so much so that he made it impossible for us to get ourselves killed.

 

[Hussar]

Originally Posted by ironregime
Undoubtedly many, if not most, DMs value "story" over "game," and the worst of these DMs think they are the sole authors of the story. Luckily my whole group values "story" over "game," and we see it as a shared creation.

When there is a senseless death, we all feel a bit let down by the story. It would be like watching a version of Star Wars where Luke gets offed by Sandpeople after 30 minutes of setting up the whole story behind him. You'd probably walk out of the theatre saying, "Man, that could have been a great movie. I wonder what would've happened if dumb luck hadn't gotten in the way."

ironregime

Just to back up a sec, but I think that this point of view shows an interesting underlying assumption: the idea that Star Wars without Luke would be an inferior movie. Sure, it would be a different movie, of course, but, would it be a worse one? We'll never know. I'm curious how people juggle the idea of creative freedom with limitations like this.

I guess I just have difficulty understanding a game where you MUST have certain pieces in order to continue forward. To me, the story should come afterward. By placing the story first, there is the underlying assumption that no other story is as good. I'm not sure if I accept that as true. A story which is created during play is much more meaningful to me than a story which is written beforehand and then I act out. I like the idea that the end of the story is entirely out of everyone's hands. Sure, it means that sometimes my character dies ignominiously. That's part of the story.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As soon as they get Res magic, it's open season on killin' 'em. And if they have made some powerful enemies, it would only make sense that those enemies would use their best abilities to destroy them.

 

[DonTadow]

Just to back up a sec, but I think that this point of view shows an interesting underlying assumption: the idea that Star Wars without Luke would be an inferior movie. Sure, it would be a different movie, of course, but, would it be a worse one? We'll never know. I'm curious how people juggle the idea of creative freedom with limitations like this.

I guess I just have difficulty understanding a game where you MUST have certain pieces in order to continue forward. To me, the story should come afterward. By placing the story first, there is the underlying assumption that no other story is as good. I'm not sure if I accept that as true. A story which is created during play is much more meaningful to me than a story which is written beforehand and then I act out. I like the idea that the end of the story is entirely out of everyone's hands. Sure, it means that sometimes my character dies ignominiously. That's part of the story.

Yeah, the point of role playing to me was to get the feeling of those little "make your own adventure" books you had when you were a kid. It sucked, but there were times in those books the book abruptly ended because you chose a bad path. I think the story can still come first without railroading players to follow it. I like the idea of creating an overall time lined story and letting the pc do what they wish in the world, tying thier backgrounds and destinies to particlar events of the world. The overall story is very loose because if the pcs are fully involved its going to change somewhat every week. However, I got a beginning and and end, how the pcs get there is up to them. They can choose to ignore certain things or go for it. I am detailed in writing out a 10-15 session story arch but again, leaving room to change certain things and figure out how to produce the next arch based on the pcs actions. Between archs I take a two week break from the campaign to do some rewriting. Character deaths and other surprise events just make me go back to the overall arch and tweak it a little.

Here's an example. First session of the STar WArs campaign, the party goes to save LUke and the droid. Luke dies. Over the course of the episode the DM writes a what if scenerio that was just as good as the original story. Vader turns Princess Leia, makes her his apprentice and completes the second death star (becaause of our own failure). However we stole blueprints of our own and through some missions to get money, funded and manned a moble rebel death star which we used to destroy the original death star (at the end of the two year campaign) . Many pcs died but every death brought on another layer of good storytelling as we had more reason to accomplish the goals, even if they did by by jar jar binks (please do not ask) There was also a death fight between princess leia (whom by this time had killed both the emperor and Vader) and our own Jedi whom had struggled with the darkside the whole campaign. I can't imagine how much fun I'd have missed if the DM had railroaded us during that campaign, having us ignore Luke's death.

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

the idea that Star Wars without Luke would be an inferior movie. Sure, it would be a different movie, of course, but, would it be a worse one? We'll never know. I'm curious how people juggle the idea of creative freedom with limitations like this.

No, no, the point is, what if you were playing Luke and you just spent all this time creating a really cool character with a bunch of backstory and connexions to the game world. And then you die. Major bummer. It would tend to make you (the player) less likely to invest time and energy into making an interesting character, and it would make the DM less likely to invest time and energy in developing character-based plots.

ironregime