Your character died early. What do you do?

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Lessa

Lessa

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The "High Lethality in mechanics" thread got me thinking. I was never a PC-death guy myself, because I usually create characters with personal stories I want to develop through play. I NEVER LOST A CHARACTER in my whole RPG life ( I hope Butcher isn't listening haha). The idea of getting at a friend's house for a night of gaming, snacks and jokes, to see my char dying in the early moments of play sounds like a huge bummer.

So, for those who like your games lethal: What da hell do you do when you lose a character early or midway into the session? Say, in the first couple hours. Do you simply leave and go home? (and do you find that okay? /Don't feel bad for losing the night you anticipated?) Something else entirely?

Of course, I'm assuming mid- to heavy-crunch games here where you can't swing a new char in minutes, so no oD&D, PbtA, etc. Also no games with contingency plans for death, like Paranoia or Pendragon.
 
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If I know there is a good chance player characters will die in a game I'm running, I make sure to have some interesting NPCs they can take over until they make a new one. Alternatively, some military games (Only War and Band of Blades) require players to have "battle buddies" or multiple characters for this reason.

As a player, if I know I'm playing a lethal game, I just make a couple of characters from the start.
 
I only 'kill' characters if players want them dead. Otherwise, I contrive a way to keep the campaign going with said characters.
 
silva said:
The "High Lethality in mechanics" thread got me thinking. I was never a PC-death guy myself, because I usually create characters with personal stories I want to develop through play. I NEVER LOST A CHARACTER in my whole RPG life ( I hope Butcher isn't listening haha). The idea of getting at a friend's house for a night of gaming, snacks and jokes, to see my char dying in the early moments of play sounds like a huge bummer.

So, for those who like your games lethal: What da hell do you do when you lose a character early or midway into the session? Say, in the first couple hours. Do you simply leave and go home? (and do you find that okay? /Don't feel bad for losing the night you anticipated?) Something else entirely?

Of course, I'm assuming mid- to heavy-crunch games here where you can't swing a new char in minutes, so no oD&D, PbtA, etc. Also no games with contingency plans for death, like Paranoia or Pendragon.
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If you are setting the ground rule that the game must have time-consuming character generation, seems pretty clear to me that I'd spend the time working on a new character. All the books are going to be out. All the players are on hand if I want to run ideas by them to link backgrounds, and the GM is there to approve any unusual ideas.
 
Usually I've seen players working on new characters as Baulderstone described, usually that takes long enough that either the session ends or an opportunity comes up for the new character to be introduced.

Unless it's an OSR game - in which the game basically stops for a few minutes while the new character is rolled and everyone watches curiously before the game recommences and the new PC is introduced at the earliest opportunity.

I've not really seen players take on NPCs except in combat. Despite the fact that I really like Troupe play, in my experience, it's actually just doesn't seem appealing to most players. In general, I find they'd rather start thinking of their next character and wait rather than just play with what's available in the meantime.
 
I've seen all the above done. In my longest childhood campaign there were always a few henchmen around. If you died you started working on a new character while also playing one of the henchmen should combat or some other time consuming activity happen.

I works nicely as someone sees all your rolls, can help with character questions and any approvals can happen fast.
 
The only character deaths I've suffered going in recent-ish were party wipe outs. In all instances the respective GMs were all stunned and dismayed but the outcome. In all instances that was pretty much a game/campaign ender.

The worse was Runequest. We had sinngularly disorganised GM who took hours to get everyone characters and the game to get going. The game itself lasted no more than 15 minutes as well all go killed in the first encounter.
 
silva said:
So, for those who like your games lethal: What da hell do you do when you lose a character early or midway into the session? Say, in the first couple hours. Do you simply leave and go home? (and do you find that okay? /Don't feel bad for losing the night you anticipated?) Something else entirely?

Of course, I'm assuming mid- to heavy-crunch games here where you can't swing a new char in minutes, so no oD&D, PbtA, etc. Also no games with contingency plans for death, like Paranoia or Pendragon.
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If it's one of Those Games, where character creation is a long and arduous process that you have to endure so that you can actually play the damn game (I fucking hate "here's a big pool of points now create your character" character gen), you're getting Ladybird The Second, or at least Ladybird The First But With A Few Details Changed. I've already paid the fun tax, I want to play the damn game now.

Stevethulhu said:
By taking more and more ridiculous risks and then saying you don't want your character to die.

You never played with munchkins? Anything you can think of as something to make play better, someone else can abuse.
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That's a "problem player" issue, though, rather than an issue with the concept itself.
 
You make a new character or play the rest of the session as an NPC/henchman if the party has one.

Oddly enough, folk who like the risk of the finality of death don't take their ball home and sulk if their character dies. At least IME.
 
Stevethulhu said:
By taking more and more ridiculous risks and then saying you don't want your character to die.
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Woah wait a minute. No death doesn't equal No consequences/setbacks/shit happening. Being humiliated by that Saxon, getting a scar so big people vomit when they see you, or seeing your family longhouse burned can be as interesting and dramatic as anything.

Your character won't die, but I'll make your life so miserable you would prefer he had died. :hehe:
 
A mix of the various options above... toss them an NPC or have them make something new. Even with complicated chargen they can usually jump back into the game with just a name and some basic stats... it's not constant combat and dice rolling, I hope.

The first time I ever had a PC die in a game I was running, I had him play the group's trusty warhound. He went with it and made it fun.
 
Stevethulhu said:
By taking more and more ridiculous risks and then saying you don't want your character to die.
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And? The character is still going to be out of commission for a while.

Stevethulhu said:
You never played with munchkins? Anything you can think of as something to make play better, someone else can abuse.
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But not killing characters is NOT making the game 'better', just last longer. There's no real rules benefit for it. And I have played with munchkins, I can control them.
 
Chris Brady said:
But not killing characters is NOT making the game 'better', just last longer. There's no real rules benefit for it. And I have played with munchkins, I can control them.
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You and I seem to have very different experience of munchkins. Also, the idea of controlling people during a game session isn't really my bag. I've had bad experiences with overly controlling GMs. And when I've tried being the GM in control of the munchkin, it hasn't ended well.
 
Stevethulhu said:
You and I seem to have very different experience of munchkins. Also, the idea of controlling people during a game session isn't really my bag. I've had bad experiences with overly controlling GMs. And when I've tried being the GM in control of the munchkin, it hasn't ended well.
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By controlling I mean not letting them ruin the game for the rest of the table. It's not any imposition of rules, or other heavy handed measure. It's called 'Communication'. You talk, and explain how you want to run the game, you know basic things, like 'We're all here to have fun together!' really simple stuff. Most people are reasonable, I've found.

And if the person can't handle that, then they can find another game. We're not all going to fit well together.
 
Chris Brady said:
By controlling I mean not letting them ruin the game for the rest of the table. It's not any imposition of rules, or other heavy handed measure. It's called 'Communication'. You talk, and explain how you want to run the game, you know basic things, like 'We're all here to have fun together!' really simple stuff. Most people are reasonable, I've found.

And if the person can't handle that, then they can find another game. We're not all going to fit well together.
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Most are, I agree.

But then you get the guy who goes "HE'S MONOLOGUE-ING! KILL HIM!" Or, my particular favourite for how to be a dick player while remaining absolutely 100% in both the letter and spirit of the game.

So it's 1998 or so. We've been playing L5R for a few months and the longest standing character is a Scorpion clan PC. Who decides that because his clan are enemies of the Crane, he's going to kill the Crane PC. Over and over again in various shady ways that could never be traced back to him in character. Climaxing with a battle in which the Crane PC goes down. But it's ok, he has a Great Destiny! Which means once per session, he doesn't die, he goes to 1 hit point and stays there.

Only the Scorpion PC was going round the battlefield killing the wounded. Guess who got shanked?
 
Stevethulhu said:
Most are, I agree.

But then you get the guy who goes "HE'S MONOLOGUE-ING! KILL HIM!" Or, my particular favourite for how to be a dick player while remaining absolutely 100% in both the letter and spirit of the game.

So it's 1998 or so. We've been playing L5R for a few months and the longest standing character is a Scorpion clan PC. Who decides that because his clan are enemies of the Crane, he's going to kill the Crane PC. Over and over again in various shady ways that could never be traced back to him in character. Climaxing with a battle in which the Crane PC goes down. But it's ok, he has a Great Destiny! Which means once per session, he doesn't die, he goes to 1 hit point and stays there.

Only the Scorpion PC was going round the battlefield killing the wounded. Guess who got shanked?
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That's when everyone talks to the player to see how it's uncool to do that stuff. It's not that hard to do. You sit down and explain how you want the game to be, you set down the expectations. That's it. If I'm running a Flash Gordon game, in which no one major dies (as per how the old strips) then they know that Ming will always escape somehow. Talk to the players. It's not that hard, especially if they're your friends.
 
Chris Brady said:
That's when everyone talks to the player to see how it's uncool to do that stuff. It's not that hard to do. You sit down and explain how you want the game to be, you set down the expectations. That's it. If I'm running a Flash Gordon game, in which no one major dies (as per how the old strips) then they know that Ming will always escape somehow. Talk to the players. It's not that hard, especially if they're your friends.
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Communication was never the problem. Have you ever met a guy who says things like "I'll give you a quid if you let me stab you on the leg with this pencil?" And his counterpart who accepts this transaction? I used to have playets like that.
 
silva said:
So, for those who like your games lethal: What da hell do you do when you lose a character early or midway into the session? Say, in the first couple hours. Do you simply leave and go home? (and do you find that okay? /Don't feel bad for losing the night you anticipated?) Something else entirely?
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We normally played RuneQuest, so I'd wait and see if my PC was dragged back to the Healers and was Resurrected. As our campaign became higher level and we became Rune Lords (Soltak Stormspear became a Rune priest first then a Rune Priest-Lord afterwards) we got better Divine Intervention and death no longer counted as death, as we came back immediately.

If it took a long while to come back, or a long while to get to the healers, we would stick around and offer helpful advice, almost like little ghostlings whispering in PCs' ears. We never went off in a huff, as we always wanted to know what happened and wanted to beg other Players to drag us to the healers.

Quite often, we played 2 PCs, so could just play the other PC when the first one died. In that case, the other PC often suggested we take the first one back to the healers.
 
Depend on the game, my interest in it, and if that looks to be a trend. If it's likely to stay high lethality, I may bow out. Most of the time, I'm willing to roll up a new character. But there is a caveat here--I usually don't play high crunch games.
 
Appropriate responses to a character death:

1) go grab another case of beer and a pizza for the table
2) roll up a new character and jump in and/or take over a henchman or other NPC who is already 'in scene' as your new PC.
3) get over it; getting upset over a dead rpg character is one tiny step less infantile than throwing a tantrum because your monopoly piece landed in jail.
 
Gronan of Simmerya said:
High lethality plus lengthy character generation is imbecilic.
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And yet, people expect to roll up D&D characters as if they're not lengthy. (Not speaking of the Little Brown Books, I have no idea as I've never seen the system, but AD&D on up, a level 1 character can get somewhat intensive, especially if you're making a Thief or a Magic-User. Unless you have years of experience.)
 
Chris Brady said:
And yet, people expect to roll up D&D characters as if they're not lengthy. (Not speaking of the Little Brown Books, I have no idea as I've never seen the system, but AD&D on up, a level 1 character can get somewhat intensive, especially if you're making a Thief or a Magic-User. Unless you have years of experience.)
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That can be an issue, sure. I played in a game of Hackmaster with a fun, but particularly lethal GM. That game has some involved character generation, and I bowed out of the campaign after a few deaths. I didn't have an issue with my character's dying, in fact, I had a couple of highly entertaining deaths. I just got tired of the generating new ones.

It's notable that the two editions of D&D that are most influential in the OSR are OD&D and B/X, both of which have dirt simple character generation.

I ran the new edition of WFRP a few weeks ago, and while I like it on the whole, the character generation for that is more involved than I remember the 1st edition being. Partly, being new to the system and organizational issues in the books was part of the problem, but I am going to find a way to streamline it next time I play.
 
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Stevethulhu said:
Communication was never the problem. Have you ever met a guy who says things like "I'll give you a quid if you let me stab you on the leg with this pencil?" And his counterpart who accepts this transaction? I used to have playets like that.
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Don't play with idiots or psychopaths.
 
The short answer for me is that you quickly roll up another character, or choose from a list of pregens who are appropriate to the situation during the campaign.

It is, however, a criticism I had of the Dread RPG. In this game, the mechanics had you using Jenga Towers instead of dice to simulate essentially horror stories of the slasher variety. If you drew badly and the tower fell this would simulate a character death in the narrative. Leaving aside the gimmick of the Jenga Tower (in practice, we actually just found playing Jenga more fun), the problem of what a player would do in the game when his character was killed wasn't really resolved for us.
 
silva said:
Woah wait a minute. No death doesn't equal No consequences/setbacks/shit happening. Being humiliated by that Saxon, getting a scar so big people vomit when they see you, or seeing your family longhouse burned can be as interesting and dramatic as anything.

Your character won't die, but I'll make your life so miserable you would prefer he had died. :hehe:
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Nah. The character is in a worse place, true, but a story guy lives for that shit, it’s why you play games with those dramatic mechanics and don’t want actual death that isn’t dramatically satisfying. Authors put their beloved characters through all sort of horrific shit, comes with the job description. Depending on how/if you’re roleplaying, it may also suck, but let’s not pretend for an instant a narrative player won’t relish a dramatic twist, no matter how terrible it is to the character.
 
If the game has light chargen...get to rolling up your new character.

If the game has medium to heavy chargen...
  • Make a food/drink run.
  • Play henchmen, hirelings, NPCs, hell, even the monsters.
  • Just hang out.
  • Go play video games.
  • Paint miniatures.
  • Leave.
Whatever you do, if the death hit you hard, get the fuck over yourself and don’t bring everyone else down. Act like an adult.

Some people get invested in their characters, even if it’s fast chargen, and need some time to come up with a new character concept, which is fine. Any campaign worth anything will have the players entertaining many alternate character concepts, even if they need some time to think about it.
 
Tommy Brownell said:
And if they’re having fun The Wrong Way, that shit is unacceptable and needs to be called out.
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Nah, just bullshit needs to be called out, like pretending adversity can be worse than death for people into it for the story. :devil:
 
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