The Quick and the Dead

Question: How do you handle player death in your games? How often does it happen and under what circumstances? Do you allow the remaining players the option of undertaking an underworld quest to revive their fallen comrade - and if not, then how to you re-integrate the player back into your game with a new character?

A well-timed question indeed, considering that the madness that was Ragnarok just happened. Some PCs lived, some died, some went on vacation to inactive status for a while, and it was all very emotional (and no, we're not telling who's who. You'll just have to wait for the story!).

PC death does indeed happen in our games, and while it isn't a commonplace occurrence, it's always a danger. Like all Storytellers, we have to walk a fine line; we don't want the players to feel like the odds are stacked against them and they always have to play it safe or risk losing their characters, but on the other hand we also don't want them to think that death is no threat to them. A game in which nobody can ever die doesn't have much immediacy, and players can easily start feeling like there are no consequences to their actions; but a game in which everybody dies all the time can leave people discouraged.

We do our best to try to minimize PC death by helping the players out as much as possible. If they haven't thought of a way to survive their current predicament or seem to have forgotten about that life-saving power they have, we make sure to point it out (gently, and only if they seem to genuinely be struggling) before everything goes south. Occasionally we'll do a little timeline fudging if the situation warrants it, but only if it makes sense for the characters involved - i.e., Aiona would have been smart enough to realize that Zwazo Fou Fou needed heals some time in the last several ticks and she had extra Multitasking actions, so we'll let her bust off a retroactive Restore on him that prevents him from dying, but we probably wouldn't give the same consideration to Eztli, who is unlikely to have had spare actions or the wherewithal to notice Zwazo's mortal problems. Finally, if the PC in question has a parent who is associated with Death, we've been known to let them have one "reset" because their parent has specific power over life and death - a good example would be Kettila, who upon getting killed at Legend 6 was resurrected by her extremely perturbed Death-god father Tlaloc. But even Death gods don't have the time or energy to resurrect their kids all the time, and children of gods who aren't aligned with Death are unlikely to have anyone riding to their rescue, so such saves are pretty rare. All of these methods can be used to minimize random PC death, which is often helpful for keeping the game on track and the players happy, but none of them should be abused too much; again, a game in which no one fears death is much less exciting and important than one in which they are aware that their actions might have very final consequences.

But, all that aside, sometimes a PC just has to die. Sometimes they've painted themselves into a corner from which there is no escape; sometimes they're intentionally giving up their lives for some greater cause; sometimes they just misjudge an opponent and go down fighting the good fight. We've had a total of eighteen characters die during the course of all our games, about 30% of all our PCs; a few of them got back up, but most didn't. It's usually an isolated PC in a band, who either sacrifices themselves (often to help their bandmates, sometimes for their own purposes - you'd be surprised how much well-intentioned suicide we've seen on the part of PCs) or is the one weak link (or even strong link that gets battered the most) that takes too much punishment and is lost despite their bandmates' efforts. More rarely, an entire band might go down, as was the case for the Jolie-Pitt kids and their lemming-like charge against Jay Ortiz, but that doesn't happen much, usually because someone will identify the situation as hopeless and start a retreat before things get to a full-party-death level. Players are usually pretty inventive when they don't want their PC to die, so a full hopeless wipe of the slate doesn't happen except in the rarest and most dire of circumstances.

The option of making an Underworld visit to try to regain a lost comrade is always there - but, strangely enough, nobody has ever yet taken that option. Going to the Underworld and convincing a death-god to release a dead person sucks, even if it's a comparatively nice Underworld, and as a result only extremely dedicated or attached PCs will probably go for it. It sounds awesome - invade Hades! rescue your friend! - but when it comes down to it and everyone's emotionally withered from dealing with a comrade's death and they have to confront what they're going to do, often it's simply not worth it. This was the case when John Doe died - his band (possibly excepting Vivian) hated to admit it, but they were kind of relieved that he was gone, and in no mood to go messing around in Hel on his behalf. Woody certainly mourned and blamed himself when the Jolie-Pitt kids died, but he knew he wasn't equipped to go haring off into Mictlan after them, and by the time he was high enough Legend to do so, he had his own more pressing issues to deal with. Terry's recent death certainly strongly upset some of his bandmates, but as budding young Heroes they aren't even aware yet that trying to haul him back out of Mord Keshvar is even an option. And so on and so forth; Underworlds suck. Someday (perhaps someday soon) we expect that PCs will go after a slain friend, but at the moment they only go down there when somebody forces them to, never voluntarily.

Which means that, when a PC dies, the player usually needs a new character and needs to get involved as quickly and seamlessly as possible, which can be no mean feat. For each game, we decide which pantheons are "open" for a player who loses a character to create a new one in; restricting it down to pantheons that are already involved in that game's plot helps make it easier to get the new PC integrated and find reasons for them to be there. We generally have him or her build a character at the same Legend as everyone else from the base template for Hero, Demigod or God, and then have them spend a roughly equivalent amount of XP to what everyone else in the game has gotten, so they can come in at close to the same power level and avoid being a drain on the band. We normally discuss with them what things the band needs most - are they heavy on fighters but could really use a healer or a thinker? Are they all intellectual monsters but could really use some help psychopomping around? - and see if any of those are roles they'd be willing to take on. We try to prevent them from creating the same kind of PC they just lost, instead encouraging trying out a new role or pantheon to let them start fresh without any lingering baggage.

Past that point, it's on the Storyteller to come up with a good reason why they're there, what they're doing and why the band should accept this newcomer as their own. It helps to do background work with the player and his or her new PC; learning what kind of background and personality they're thinking of can help provide motivations for either the new PC or their parent to slot them into the situation. In the past, we've had new PCs come in as protectors sent by another PC's parent to help them, as foreordained replacements for the dead PC revealed by prophecy, as muscle to help a band that has been struggling with achieving its goals or as solo agents who intend to use the band but end up being a part of it before too long. Will came into his game specifically looking for Aurora in order that she use her prophetic powers to aid him in finding Freyr's sword; Penelope came into hers after being "killed" by her father and punted halfway across the country, sullenly following his instructions to aid his allies' children because she apparently has no choice. Each character reintegration will be different, but the fact that there are already other gods with a stake in the band's success usually helps.

Character death is a delicious spice; it makes any game matter more, makes any scene more important and emotional, and there mere possibility of it makes the adrenaline flow freer and the characters act with more brilliant desperation. But it's still a spice that should be used incredibly sparingly, like cloves, because overdoing it can be discouraging and, even if it's part of a totally awesome story, it's still disruptive to the game's plot in most cases and shouldn't be something that happens every day.

But, like a nice ham roast, as a Storyteller you can learn to love the smell of character death. It's not always a bad thing. Whether it starts them on their way on a heroic jailbreaking quest or sees their characters' personalities and reactions change in response, it always has an electrifying and interesting effect on a game, from the death of the first character until long after the introduction of the new one.

Avete vos, kids, and better luck next time.