Character Death
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I love a good Actual Death For Realsies. It contributes to the scene, it raises stakes, it opens the door to the idea that this isn’t a sandpit of make-pretend toys, and it can evoke strong feeling, which is always one of my highest goals as a storyteller. Even an Actual Death For Realsies that is in-universe pointless has an OOC effect.
- I’ve had at least two characters die who could have escaped their fates quickly and easily but they would have had to give up their pride/wrath/ego/etc. The natural end to their character arcs was being unable to overcome their flaws and succumbing to them.
- I’ve had one die to bad rolls in a hellish combat scene. I made a snap decision in the moment to kill him off because I thought “something’s lacking if everyone survives this”. His death wasn’t dignified or heroic, he just met his end the same way a sentence meets a full stop.
- I’ve killed one off because it kicked off combat in a hilarious manner, and no one was sad to see that wanker get eaten lol.
While I do get attached to characters, and there are some I would never kill off no matter how much they deserve it because they’re too fun, it’s sometimes refreshing and electrifying to sacrifice a character you’ve invested in for the sake of the story. Sometimes it’s a snap decision, sometimes it’s calculated and planned as a story beat.
And to be fair if I’m retiring a character to make way for an alt I like to kill them off in a good story for the benefit of others. I say this, knowing that one of those deaths got my next character tangible XP benefits, so perhaps I’m biased!
I do believe a character’s Actual Death For Realsies should be in the hands of the player the vast majority of the time. The times where it isn’t? That’s when we get “Aim for the bushes” from @MisterBoring, with whom I disagree, reading that I thought it was very funny.
After thinking for 5min, you could probably make a short Consent To Actual Death For Realsies checklist:
- Does the player agree to Actual Death For Realsies?
- If not, is the risk of Actual Death For Realsies clear, apparent, conveyed, and as blatantly clear as crystal?
If those two points are not met, then there is no Actual Death For Realsies.
So yes, I love this topic, I love exploring it, and I love seeing it done for many many reasons. I could ramble about this for hours but my RL time to post this has run out lol.
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@Prototart said in Character Death:
@MisterBoring said in Character Death:
@somasatori said in Character Death:
I feel like there can be this push to misery-porn WoD games
I want a push to a different kind of WoD game. I want a WoD game that focuses very deeply on the struggle to maintain basic utilities when you’re a walking reality bending monster.
all i want is to run up the side of a building while wearing ten inch heels and then cut off an angel’s head with a gigantic praying mantis arm and nobody will let you do that anymore
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@Prototart said in Character Death:
@MisterBoring said in Character Death:
@somasatori said in Character Death:
I feel like there can be this push to misery-porn WoD games
I want a push to a different kind of WoD game. I want a WoD game that focuses very deeply on the struggle to maintain basic utilities when you’re a walking reality bending monster.
all i want is to run up the side of a building while wearing ten inch heels and then cut off an angel’s head with a gigantic praying mantis arm and nobody will let you do that anymore
I will Demon with you if you Mum-Rah with meeee~
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@Jennkryst Can I be a Mekhet vamp mummy cultist whose bloodline serves your tomb?
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@labsunlimited said in Character Death:
@Jennkryst Can I be a Mekhet vamp mummy cultist whose bloodline serves your tomb?
Absolutely! My only regret is that as walking corpses, I forget if they can Blood Doll.
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While I’m a big proponent of character-death-when-it’s-appropriate-to-the-story, one thing that I think needs to be talked about a little bit is how that death will impact other characters. Do the players of your character’s loved ones (family, significant others, packmates, etc) want to play out grief?
While I think that character death should pretty much always be done with player consent (except in the case of Aim for the Bushes, but I consider that consent-by-continuation-after-warnings), there’s also the non-death effects on everyone around the character to consider, and a lot of folks (myself included) who have gone for death-for-drama’s-sake haven’t always considered the knock-on effects.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in Character Death:
Do the players of your character’s loved ones (family, significant others, packmates, etc) want to play out grief?
Take this with the extreme sarcastic tone as it is intended to have… people can’t mention real life events on channels because it reminds everyone else that the real world is shit and we are on games for pretendy-good-fun-times. Grieving over dead characters just reminds people that death exists and the real world is shit and we are on games for pretendy-good-fun-times.
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@Roadspike said in Character Death:
Do the players of your character’s loved ones (family, significant others, packmates, etc) want to play out grief?
I think that question is ultimately answered by asking a second question:
Do the players of your character’s loved ones understand your approach and willingness to participate in character death?
I think it’s a serious conversation that needs to happen anytime someone wants to play a PC with an emotional bond with another PC. How much grief are you willing to deal with as their bonded PC? This goes beyond character death and into just the consequences of failure or social conflict in general. Are you okay with witnessing a character your character is bonded to in some way going through all manner of tragedy and tribulations?
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I love rping eulogizing a dead character. Non-sarcastic. I got a lot of practice at this and discovered I really enjoy it. Real characters are best, I also did a spider funeral at one point but that was for specific IC reasons and I had fun with that too.
let it be a challenge to you
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@sao said in Character Death:
I also did a spider funeral at one point but that was for specific IC reasons and I had fun with that too.
A Gangrel in a Vampire LARP I played in would make his entire Clan attend funerals for animals that died in service to his needs.
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When I RP’d a preacher on good ol’ Fort Bloodshed I had a tally of how many weddings I did vs how many funerals. Weddings were ahead but just barely. The funerals were far and away the better RP of the two.
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@Ashkuri said in Character Death:
The funerals were far and away the better RP of the two.
Every wedding I’ve ever been a guest at on a MU has always just felt like social-rp and never felt like it impacted anything. Every funeral on the other hand rearranged the social structures of the gam.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@sao said in Character Death:
I love rping eulogizing a dead character. Non-sarcastic. I got a lot of practice at this and discovered I really enjoy it. Real characters are best, I also did a spider funeral at one point but that was for specific IC reasons and I had fun with that too.
I want a eulogy from Aureth now.
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@dvoraen I mean, I’m sure he kept them up for many years after we stopped playing. He may be Dominus but he’s still Death’s special boy.
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@MisterBoring said in Character Death:
@Ashkuri said in Character Death:
The funerals were far and away the better RP of the two.
Every wedding I’ve ever been a guest at on a MU has always just felt like social-rp and never felt like it impacted anything. Every funeral on the other hand rearranged the social structures of the gam.
This is because, similar to real life, at a MUSH wedding you’re just celebrating that two people can now bang it out according to God, but at a funeral you’re realizing they can never bang it out again
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@somasatori said in Character Death:
but at a funeral you’re realizing they can never bang it out again
Are you trying to slyly suggest that MU character funerals include a reading of the “best of” bits of their TS poses?
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@MisterBoring said in Character Death:
Are you trying to slyly suggest that MU character funerals include a reading of the “best of” bits of their TS poses?
I would never suggest such a thing! But now that you mention it–
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Taking a moment to think about it and remember that the L5R 20 questions includes ‘how should your character die’ because the idea of death is always in the back of their minds… Im wondering if that is a factor in the L5R MUs I’ve seen not doing terribly great for too long, or if addressing this and everyone going into it knowing there is supposed to be an almost romanticized view on a good/noble death… if that will somehow help it out? I dunno.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst The whole looming presence of the cycle of beginning to end is so much part of the theme of L5R that I would honestly be upset if a MU in that setting didn’t have a warning at character generation that all PCs were expected to find a story ending in a reasonable amount of time. Honestly, I’d almost say you’d want to go with the Game of Thrones approach to death where it’s just always there.
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@MisterBoring said in Character Death:
you’d want to go with the Game of Thrones approach to death
So a wedding AND a funeral!
