Character Death

Character death is always a delicate issue in any campaign. It rarely appears in most RPGs, but it always has a powerful impact when it shows its ugly face. Below is some advice on how players should deal with the death of a beloved character and how GMs may use character death to improve their campaigns.

The Player

First of all: never, NEVER, take a character's death as a personal offense. Even if you're totally sure that the GM was unfair, tyrannical, cruel etc. You could even be right, but GMs are as human as you are, so even them have the rights to have a bad day or make mistakes. Do not ruin a friendship due to the death of an imaginary character that lives in your GMs imaginary world and only exist in his and his player's heads. It's just a game.

Once you're over it, start thinking on how your old character's passing can improve your next character. Avenging familiars/lovers/friends may not be the most original characters out there, but their motivations are always powerful and dramatic, and they always have a very plausible excuse to join the old character's group. And if it was enough for Shakespeare in Hamlet and Macbeth, it should be enough for you. Another good idea could be making a character related with the person who's guilty for the old character's death. Maybe he's a noble knight trying to repair his father's evil work, or maybe he's an honest cop who would like to help those harassed by his corrupt police department; the possibilities are endless.

Don't be one of those players who have the annoying habit of always playing the same basic character type, no matter the campaign or game they're playing. Although it may be easy, and even funny, to play the same character over and over again, it shows a complete lack of imagination and respect for the old characters, since, instead of many different and colorful memorable characters, your RPG memories and experience to a single, repetitive universal character. Instead of doing this, the next time your character dies, make the new one totally different from the old one. This way, you can explore aspects of role-playing you couldn't with your old character, while at the same time you make your fellow players and your GM happier by giving more color and variety to the campaign.

Resuming, if your character dies, get over it and try to use that tragedy for something useful. It may be the end of a journey, but also the beginning of another.

The Game Master

Players always think they have the hardest part. Yeah, they are the unlucky guys that must overcome the death of those beloved characters, but you are the poor and heartless monster that must decide when, how, and why killing those characters will improve the campaign. And after doing it you feel all guilty and dirty, and must face those fiery and blaming stares from your players.

First rule when killing PCs: never kill a character because you dislike his player. This is a game, and if you have a score to settle with someone either don't play with that person or resolve your differences outside the gaming table.

Never feel guilty, no matter how unfair your players think you're being. They may be right, they may be wrong, but you're the idiot who spends part of your precious free time preparing next week's gaming session, and I think that's more than enough to allow you to make some mistakes.

Do not let the death of a character occur if that would make the whole gaming experience less enjoyable. What's the point of killing a character in meaningless encounter whose only objective was to wake your players up? Maybe your most important job when dealing with the death of any character is to make it important and meaningful to the plot (not counting games whose style require death to be meaningless, or at least trivial, like Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia). Would Star Wars have been such a blast if Obi-Wan died in his violent first encounter with the Stormtroopers? How good would King Arthur's legend be if he died fighting some Saxon chief instead of having his final showdown with his son Mordred? Do not let a lowly die roll dictate the course of your campaign. If a player fumbles his horse riding skill roll and the dice say he's dead, ignore them and say that he was just knocked out. If that Stormtrooper has a roll good enough to kill Luke Skywalker, fudge it and leave the character a few paces from the doors of death, barely alive but healthy enough to be saved by a helpful friend. In other words: if you don't like the result the dice are showing, cheat.

Of course, you shouldn't be too obvious when using the above paragraph's techniques (that's why GM's screens were invented in first place). After all, if the players are shure that, no matter what they do, they'll only die in highly dramatic situations, death will no longer be an issue for them, and the game would lose half of its fun. One solution to this is to introduce a very important and useful NPC into the character's group, only to kill him later ("the Obi-Wan technique"). Fates worse than death itself are another good technique. Among these we find things such as crippling injuries (Luke losing his hand when battling Vader), imprisonment (Han Solo's carbonite freezing), being responsible for the death of millions of innocent people (to use Star Wars for the last time, "the Alderaan technique"), insanity (read Lovecraft) etc. Hurt them so badly to make them 100% shure that you'll kill them if you feel like it.

Complementary to the tricks above is the "never make healing an easy thing" maxim. A certain fantasy RPG is especially guilty in this department, with its benevolent clerics and resurrection-addicted gods and infinite healing potions. If you want your characters to fear death (without actually kill them), you should make every wound you inflict them count. Fast and immediate healing makes this proposition kinda difficult. But much, much worse than fast healing is easy-to-get resurrection. I for one hate to do it in my games, since it's essentially a very good way to trivialize death in your campaign. If you really must do it, make it really, really difficult. Make the characters go to the end of the world (or universe, or galaxy, or alternate reality etc.) if they want to resurrect their companion. And when they finally have the means to bring their friend back, make them think twice. What if his soul is peacefully resting in a heavenly paradise? What if the resurrection gizmo doesn't work very well, and the character returns changed (which could range from crippling to zombification to demon possession). Make healing difficult, and death will be an even bigger fear.

Conclusion

Whatever players and GMs do, character death should always improve your campaign. Players may use it as a tool to create their next character, while GMs can be shure that it is one of the most dramatic devices in their toolbox.

Eduardo Penna is an experienced roleplayer (10 years) living in the boring capital of Brazil, Brasília. He has the bad habit of being addicted to the things he likes, which include RPGs, the Internet, computer games and Japanese animation. His Chinese Zodiac sign in the Monkey, and he loves cold pizza, silver objects, and the number pi.