Character Death

[somasatori]

@Roz said in Character Death:

I’ll die on the hill that MUs are not TTRPGs, even when they’re using the bones and theme of a TTRPG system, and that trying to insist on a connection between them has been to the hobby’s detriment. Unless you’re playing on a private game with a small group of people, the fundamental structure of MUs is just too different from a TTRPG table.

No, they’re not TTRPGs, but many of them use the same genre emulation techniques that TTRPGs do, which I feel has had some effect on the way that various MUSHes have played out. I could say you wouldn’t go into a Star Wars game expecting it to have the same tone and theme of a WoD game, which is obvious, but you could say the same thing of other urban fantasy games like Under the Stars. If you play Werewolf the Apocalypse on a MUSH the pastiches and themes of Werewolf are going to be there, because you’re using the mechanics and themes of Werewolf the Apocalypse, as unto the same for Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars FFG, etc. It isn’t a TTRPG exactly, but games that are based on TTRPGs will still usually have some relationship to how the game functions on a player-to-player level. Going back to Werewolf, packs ostensibly work the way they do because it’s an easy way to to bind PCs at the table together. If you encourage packs in your Werewolf MUSH then you’re suggesting that a TTRPG dynamic is part of your game.

That said I kind of feel like this isn’t part of the discussion of player death broadly and could be its own topic altogether haha

Edit to add: although I’ve been on a lot of WoD games and it’s kind of been my main setting for most of my MUSH career, I really do like when people make their own settings and themes and feel like that pulls in a direction that makes it more focused on the MUSH’s theme/story and less around the gamification of the MUSH via whatever RPG book predated it. There’s so much that can be problematic about the grognardian insistence that a MUSH play out like a TTRPG, which I’ll also agree has absolutely been to the detriment of the hobby.

[Muse]

On Liberation I played Lola Darling (at least that’s what she said her name was ) and I frequently had the writing advice ‘kill your Darlings’ in my head. Which I suppose is my weird way of saying, I am team character death.

I also tend to sit a little further back from my characters, and focus on the story they’re a conduit for telling, and not just how they experience the world. And the reality is, good stories involve strife, and I am always hoping my characters root deep enough in others, that if they die, an impact will be felt, and that will also become part of the story.

[MisterBoring]

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

[Roz]

@somasatori That’s just games sharing a setting/theme with its source material, which isn’t the same as emulating the experience of playing that specific TTRPG. Playing a Star Wars MU* is not the same thing as watching the movie. Playing a Mass Effect MU* is definitely not emulating the experience of playing the video game. But I feel like people always trip over this when it comes to TTRPGs in a way that can be actively detrimental to a MU*'s development, because if people are thinking about emulating tabletop on a MU, they’re not thinking about the process from a MU-first perspective.

Playing CoD in tabletop and playing a CoD MU are wildly different experiences. Playing tabletop and playing MUs in general are wildly different, and the challenges they face are also entirely different. The core structure is different: one is a private experience with a small handful of players getting constant DM attention. The other is a persistent lobby of numerous players, many of whom don’t know each other. The systems require a different approach in order to support a persistent environment that players can exist in without constant DM attention.

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

And yet that experience would still be different! Sharing some mechanics doesn’t make the needs and experience the same.

ETA: Baldur’s Gate 3 shares rules with D&D 5e, and yet no one would say that the experience of playing these two things is the same!

[Pavel]

Netball started off as a misinterpretation of the rules of basketball (at least based on an alleged anecdote, it works for metaphorical purposes). They evolved to be different sports with different practices and experiences even if they came from the same root. But they’re more similar to each other than they are to, say, snooker. And those three are all more similar to each other than to Formula 1 Racing, even though they all fall under the category of sport.

So while MUing isn’t precisely TTRPG, it’s a close relation that comparisons can be made so long as the inherent differences are acknowledged.

ETA: To, hopefully, simplify: MUing and TTRPGs are cousins. There’s lots of “genetic” overlap, but there’s also lots of difference. So one isn’t necessarily wrong to say they’re in the same ballpark depending on where you’re measuring from.

[MisterBoring]

@Roz said in Character Death:

Sharing some mechanics doesn’t make the needs and experience the same.

I think that depends on the person in question. I go into any RP situation be it LARP, tabletop, MU, or forum / pbem game looking to participating in the telling of a rewarding collaborative story.

[Faraday]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

You can play TT with literally any rules or no rules (diceless/freeform) though. Many TT systems are adapted to LARPs too. So yes, they are mostly offshoots of the same family tree, but they are all very different experiences IMHO.

[Third Eye]

@Ashkuri said in Character Death:

Killing off your beloved character and making yourself and all your friends cry is some of the best fun you can have out here.

[Jumpscare]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

your PC sacrifice ties off an 18 month plot and removes one of the biggest antagonists in the game permanently

Someone did that in Silent Heaven. The character was absolutely outmatched, but their sacrifice gave the other PCs just enough time to recover and defeat the big bad.

After the event, I created the “Blaze of Glory” role in Discord just for them. It’s a special tag that has no effect, but it carries a lot of meaning.

[MisterBoring]

@Jumpscare I don’t know why people don’t jump at those chances more. If I was running a game and someone had an amazing send off death idea for their character, I’d do everything I can to make it have the impact of the comet in Deep Impact.

[Pavel]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I don’t know why people don’t jump at those chances more.

I do. They very rarely appear, and when they do, there’s no guarantee it’ll matter. People want their decisions, and their deaths, to matter. So going out in a blaze of glory is a risk.

ETA: This is not the reason, but it is a reason. There are likely many.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in Character Death:

I do. They very rarely appear, and when they do, there’s no guarantee it’ll matter.

Good point. Also, it fundamentally prevents me from doing anything else with that character, which as I said above - is pretty much the whole reason I’m there.

I liken it to how ensemble TV shows rarely kill off their main leads. Occasionally they’ll do it as a shocking twist or something, but mostly they only do it when people leave the show. I realize there are those who prefer the Game of Thrones model where nobody’s safe. They like feeling like the characters are in real peril. It makes the show feel more gritty since the main chars aren’t protected by plot armor.

And to be clear - there’s nothing wrong with liking that. I’m not trying to wrongfun anyone. All I want is a little non-judgemental understanding that there are those of us who get attached to characters - both in TV and in MUs - and who don’t like having to get invested all over again when they get bumped off randomly.

[Pavel]

@Faraday There’s also the fact that in order for these blazes of glory to be as impactful as they obviously have been, they have to be rare. If it was the Done Thing, then they’d just be another MU story trope that we roll our eyes at.

I’m not against character’s dying, but I’d rather be Boromir than Ned Stark. But ideally, I’d be Richard Sharpe.

[somasatori]

@Faraday said in Character Death:

And to be clear - there’s nothing wrong with liking that. I’m not trying to wrongfun anyone. All I want is a little non-judgemental understanding that there are those of us who get attached to characters - both in TV and in MUs - and who don’t like having to get invested all over again when they get bumped off randomly.

I did also want to note that my being pro-character death (or Game of Thrones model) is also not intended to wrongfun anyone else. I think it’s great to get attached to your character. Passion for your hobby is awesome! It sucks to be invested in something and have it taken away and it’s definitely not wrong. IMO, the only “right way” to MUSH is to be an enthusiastic participant and contributor in however you and your friends want to tell a story and in whichever way works best to achieve that goal, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else OOC!

[Ashkuri]

What currently-active MUSHes have a risk of non-consensual character permadeth?

Retromux/Numetal I guess? I don’t know of any other ones, and I don’t play that one so I don’t even know if it’s the case there.

[Pavel]

@somasatori Agreed. So long as expectations are communicated ahead of time so nobody’s blindsided by being “Suddenly Stark’d”? By all means.

[MisterBoring]

I think after reading a lot of stuff in this thread, I realize that I don’t necessarily want characters to die, I want characters to have their story end. And I don’t want it to be arbitrary or random. I want staff to be brave enough to say to their players “We want you to tell a complete story.” not “Please write the same character until your fingers rot off.” More games should have a character generation with, “Please include an idea of how you see your character’s story ending in your application.” It doesn’t have to be death, it could be the character realizing they’ve resolved that part of their lives in the region of the world the game takes place in, and getting on a horse and heading to new horizons. I love stories the most when they are complete and then I can move on to creating another new story. When I read, I don’t tend to go for book series that run on and on for 10+ books. I really hate that Brian Herbert is trying to keep Dune going on and on and on. I stopped reading Dresden Files when I realized that Jim Butcher wasn’t planning on ending the series likely anytime ever.

In my history of playing these games, if a game that’s been around for a long time seems to have a giant population of dinosaur characters, I’m very likely to avoid even making a character.

[Yam]

@Ashkuri I really can’t think of any. Is non-consensual permadeath actually a thing anymore?

Curious if anyone has actually seen a PC death play out where the player certainly didn’t intend to die AND didn’t consent to being in a situation that warned the risk.

[Faraday]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think after reading a lot of stuff in this thread, I realize that I don’t necessarily want characters to die, I want characters to have their story end.

Dang, I have the opposite problem in MUs. I have a hard enough time getting my characters’ story arcs to a meaningful conclusion, let alone to bring the entire character to a nice ending.

There are exceptions of course. BSP ended in a way that gave everyone a chance to wrap things up and write epilogues. That was nice. TGG’s campaigns had fixed endings, so we could bring things to a natural conclusion.

[somasatori]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think after reading a lot of stuff in this thread, I realize that I don’t necessarily want characters to die, I want characters to have their story end. And I don’t want it to be arbitrary or random. I want staff to be brave enough to say to their players “We want you to tell a complete story.” not “Please write the same character until your fingers rot off.”

Actually, you mentioning this struck me immediately, and I think that’s where I’m going with it too. Every good beginning and middle deserves a good end, which is often not provided to MUSH characters. I do think that the player should be able to decide when that end will be, or that staff might indicate “hey, this plot could include character death/retirement as a possibility as it’s very dangerous” and allow the players to say yea or nay as to whether they participate, but endings are important pieces regardless. This is also super hard to do, as @Faraday illustrated, since it’s hard to know exactly when an ending might be appropriate.

In my history of playing these games, if a game that’s been around for a long time seems to have a giant population of dinosaur characters, I’m very likely to avoid even making a character.

One of the more frustrating things in the hobby for me is when a game just kind of drags on and on. There might be new stories popping up, but if the majority of the population have been playing their characters for 10+ years, or being honest even 5+ years, I’m going to assume that everything my new PC does will be inconsequential by comparison. The games I’ve had a had in creating, I’ve tried to push an absolute time limit of 3 years. Time-limited MUSHes are probably their own thread, tbh.

I’m well aware that this is also due in part to the kinds of games I tend to play. On games that don’t include experience points and stat-based character development, or where stats are not incentivized, the dynamic will be different.