6 Responses

1. Lurkinggherkin  •  January 16, 2009 @8:03 am

   I agree with the overall sentiment of the post, but it seems to me that the sort of character death that is “unfun for everyone” is a pretty hard one to avoid, really. I mean, what other kind of character death is there? I’ve never seen players get out party hats and balloons at my game table on those rare occasions when someone’s character buys the farm. It’s usually a pretty sombre affair.

   I think to keep your game edgy there have to be occasional patches of unfun. Also, I have found that it’s sometimes the unfun bits, the bits that the players hate you for at the time, that are the ones that get remembered as ‘epic’ years down the line.

2. wickedmurph  •  January 16, 2009 @12:47 pm

   I don’t think it’s reasonable for the DM to be able to anticipate a party “wipe” as the result of a character death. If the party goes down because a character died, well - shit happens.

   Just make sure that the character died for the right reason - and that reason is pretty much always dumb player decisions. As the GM, you need to be fair, set a reasonable difficulty level, then “alae iacta est” - time to roll the dice, as Caesar said so eloquently on the banks of the Rubicon.

   You should never kill a character as a result of good role-playing, even if good role-playing made the pc do something dumb. You should never make a pc death unavoidable, unless the player specifically asked for it (I’m tired of this character, or the took the flaw “Dark Fate” or something similar). And you better not kill a pc for personal reasons. That way lies death for the gaming group.

3. Swordgleam  •  January 16, 2009 @2:09 pm

   “because they pissed off the DM’s girlfriend’s dog”

   That’s what they got for leaving their cheetoh-dust covered sheet where the dog could reach it, and not having backup copies.

   I told my players their characters might die, but it would probably only be the result of dramatic heroism or extreme dumbassery. In a story-heavy game, having a character die because of a series of botched die rolls is silly. This does require a bit of fudging now and then, but it’s worth it to maintain the story’s continuity. In a hack’n’slash game, rerolling new characters is half the fun.

4. Interlude: Character Death « Bard of Valiant  •  January 20, 2009 @9:32 am

   [...] Character death should be a normal part of a well balanced but challenging adventure with natural consequences for poor choices. - DND Corner [...]

5. Viriatha  •  January 20, 2009 @1:55 pm

   Tried trackbacking to you but it failed so here’s my response to this subject.

   http://bardofvaliant.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/character-death-failure/

6. Unwinder  •  October 14, 2009 @10:28 pm

   The worst is when a funny, well-loved character dies.

   I hate to play favorites, but when the most interesting character in the party is up against overwhelming odds, I feel like it’s my duty to step in and save him. I don’t want my party, or myself for that matter, to get bored without him.

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