Comments on: The Beauty of Character Death, and a Shameful Confession

By: LS

LS — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:52:44 +0000

Oh wow, you made me laugh for a full minute there. Thank you, I needed that today!

I look forward to hearing how your first GMing experience goes. And thanks for commenting!

By: Beginner DM

Beginner DM — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 20:56:15 +0000

“I know that feel, bro”.
I understand you reaction, especially because my very first character, a CM rogue halfling who gutted everyone he crossed for the glory of Vecna (or at least wanted to do so) died at level 2 of a death even more pitiful than a skeleton punch : he drowned in the ditch of a monastery while trying to wash up. The DM was a douche and made me roll a Swim check “for fun”, I rolled a natural 1 and drowned in 3 rounds because the DM didn’t even know the rules about drowning !

I am currently preparing a campaign as a beginner DM and I am going to create three home-made spells : Margo’s Black Disk, Margo’s Flying Tentacle and Margo’s Flinging Roof Tiles. All three of them will be as famous as Magic Missile or Charm Monster, and Margo will be a renown wizard of ancient times !

By: LS

LS — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:10:21 +0000

Edit: That’s what I get for trying to reply to comments when I’m in a hurry, I misread them.

A game with excessive character death would be boring I think, but I doubt I would ever want to play in a game where there was no danger. I think most gamers would agree with that. And after that, it’s just about figuring out where on the “deadliness” scale your type of game falls.

Regarding your last point, I actually discussed the inverse correlation between character investment and the fun of character death way back in “The Fun of Character Death.”

By: johnnybleu

johnnybleu — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:48:26 +0000

I agree that death is indeed fun– or at least, the tension of knowing that the possibility of death is very real. That being said, it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t like to have their characters die because, like you, they had plans for them. They were supposed to be great heroes, or they were gonna take that ability at next level, or anything else. I’ve even had a player stay bitter for weeks because his character died in a one-shot session. A one-shot! We’d never even play those characters again.

Incidentally, that same player also runs games as a GM, and I left his last Pathfinder game because he’s the kind of GM that would never kill PCs, unless it was part of the story. Long story short, it was BORING. Simply knowing that there would be no risk, and that we’d always survive due to some convoluted divine intervention sucked all the fun and feeling of accomplishment out of it.

Finally, I’d have to point out that dying in a system where character creation is a complicated, involving process that can take 3-4 hours would get old pretty quick.

By: Gibbering Mouther

Gibbering Mouther — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:18:34 +0000

Yeah it was sad to see Margo go like that, he saved my fighter last session with his incredible anti-rat tile flinging. His death was especially ignominious given that the retaliating skeleton was turned at the time and his sorcerer boss was gurgling away his life from Higgans’ crossbow bolt. Yet it’s stupid deaths like this that make OD&D feel so intense and encourages crafty sneaky play that makes it fun to me. Regardless I’m sad to see Margo buried, but I think one death so far is incredibly lucky… I expected a TPK twice in the first session…

By: tpmoney

tpmoney — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:03:38 +0000

There is nothing quite like that sense of accomplishment you’ll get when you just barely squeak by on a whisker, knowing that you were always inches away from certain doom or failure. I think it explains a lot about why old video games have such lasting appeal. There’s more than nostalgia, it’s that failure is cheap (in terms of time to get back into the game) and often, but its easy to pick back up and keep trying. But even when failure isn’t cheap and frequent, victory is twice as sweet when snatched from the jaws of defeat. Just ask they olympic athletes, I’m sure they’d all tell you it’s incredible when you win knowing you were .01 seconds from losing.