On Death and Dying
"Death! That was the equation!"
- Ruk the android in the Star Trek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of"
I've been a game master for many years. One consequence of this is that my hands drip with the blood of countless characters. They have been sliced, squashed, vivisected, torn, and impaled. They have been burned, frozen, electrocuted, drowned, poisoned, smothered, and disintegrated. They have died at the hands of monsters, died at the hands of insane or cursed comrades, been killed by friendly fire, been slain by traps, or just plain died by accident. Their deaths have been heroic, futile, strange, or just plain stupid. Despite all of the death and carnage, however, I have to make a confession; I really don't like killing characters.
There is a traditional antagonism between the players and the game master. On one side of the screen the players struggle to outwit the game master, slay his monsters, and pillage his creations. On the other side the GM tries to thwart, defeat and kill the characters. To some extent, this dynamic holds true in Elcea. Underneath it all, however, I have a much stronger motive. I want the players to succeed. I enjoy seeing their characters thrive and grow, and achieve success. Even more than that, though, I love it when the story really involves the players. When everybody is focused and success or failure hangs on every throw of the dice, when groans and cheers echo around the table at each turn of events, those are the moments when players and game master together create something special.
This kind of tension and resolution isn't possible, however, unless the players know there is something at stake. They have to know that if they mess up, their character's lives are forfeit. A game master can't create that kind of tension unless the players know in their guts that he or she is willing to kill. So, when I say that when I kill characters it is for the players' own good, I'm not entirely kidding.
This hasn't always been as true as it is now. As my GMing style has become more minimalist, the body count has dropped considerably. When somebody has played a character for several years, and carefully nursed him or her to 7th level, losing that character is a real body blow. In the early days of the campaign, back at MSU, characters advanced quickly and death was sold wholesale. Some players went through several characters in several months. In a setting like that, it is a lot easier for a player to shrug off the loss of a character and reach for another character sheet to start over. Back then I'd wipe out characters by the handful, though even then I tried to be careful not to make things so lethal that it diminished the players' enjoyment.
No player likes losing a character, of course. I've seen the reaction many times as a small part of someone's psyche is annihilated. Usually there is a period of minor depression, followed by acceptance and then growing enthusiasm again as a new character is created and new possibilities are explored. The only times I've ever seen real anger when a character is killed is when the player feels the death is unfair; that perhaps I made a bad rule call which resulted in the fatality, or maybe I even "gunned" for the character to settle some vendetta, or that the fatality was unfair in some other way. The other times I've seen this reaction is when the character's death was caused by some genuinely boneheaded move by another player.
A player's personality has a lot to do with it too, of course. Some players tend to be more intense, and take a character's death hard. Some players are more laid back and can shrug off the most hideous fates. I might mention Barbara in this context. Her characters have died more often, and in some of the worst ways, than those of any other player. It seldom seems to bother her. I would say that she's used to it by now, but she has been like that since the beginning. And she invests as much into her characters as anybody; it's just that not much really fazes her.
As the campaign moved to California the death rate dropped a bit, but so did the rate of character advancement. Still, it wasn't uncommon for a character or two a playing session to bite the dust. When we moved to the Bloodhawks campaign the death rate took another big downturn. Many of the Bloodhawks have never died in 5 1/2 years of adventuring, though there have been a few fatalities, and they recently had their first real taste of mortality when they and their allies suffered 5 casualties during the fight against the red dragon Pyromaulius Rendus. The new group, Swords & Scrolls, has only been playing for three months, and no one has been killed yet. Whether this trend will persist, only time will tell, but based on the way things have trended over the years they probably won't drop like flies.
Part of the ever-decreasing death rate, of course, is due to the fact the players have become steadily more experienced, more cunning, and more cautious. In the MSU days the characters would burst through doors, swords waving, with no advance scouting or preparation. With those tactics, I sometimes couldn't keep characters alive even if I wanted to. That has evolved to the point where now players proceed very carefully at the slightest hint of danger. With tactics like that it is hard to kill them even if I want to. Which I don't. Really.
The fact is, I'm far more likely to go out of my way to spare a character than to do one in. There are a few circumstances which are exceptions, however. The first is if the character has done something really stupid, and frankly deserves it. I'm more inclined in those cases to let the dice fall where they may. This used to happen fairly often, but has become much more rare.
The second circumstance is when a group is deliberately reaching for some great prize. I've always firmly believed that something that is gained too cheaply is held in contempt. If a group has paid for something in blood, however, they know its worth in full measure. In such circumstances, again, I'll let the dice fall where they may.
I have often said that I am a "mere chronicler of events". And sometimes my careful calculations about what a party can or can't handle go completely out the window. On occasion the player's dice will go cold, and what was supposed to be a routine encounter ends up being something lethal. When that happens I feel worse than usual about a character death. Even worse, on a few occasions whole groups have been annihilated by sheer accident.
The first time this happened was during the MSU campaign. The group needed to get from one place to another in a hurry. They had a portable hole, and the wizard Dorian could teleport, so the party calculated that there was easily enough air in the hole for the entire party to stay in there for about ten minutes while Dorian teleported them. The characters piled in, Dorian picked up the hole and put it in his pocket - and then rolled an 01 and teleported low. He was dead, and the other characters were doomed. I was stunned. The entire group had killed themselves, without my doing a thing. Under those conditions I didn't feel bad about using a bit of a deus ex machina to free the trapped group.
On another famous occasion the Heroes of Telemarch, by then a large, tough and high-level group, were wiped out by a groaning spirit and a trapper. The trapper had wrapped up about half the group, and then the banshee struck. The saving throws began to come in - 2, 5, 3, 1, etc.. - and the half of the group that was on the outside of the trapper simply dropped dead. The half of the group inside the trapper soon followed. The only survivor of the whole debacle was the thief Bodo, who ran away. Fortunately, Bodo was one of the most resourceful PCs ever, and found a way to reverse the situation. If Bodo had been killed along with the others we would have had to start a new party several years earlier than we actually did.
A player can invest a lot of time and emotional involvement in a character. As a game master, I dislike wiping out that investment without good cause. But the Gods of Game Balance must be appeased, and a campaign without any chance of death loses balance. And a campaign without balance, whether it is too lethal or too generous, quickly loses the players' interest. So every now and then, if the dice go cold or the monsters are just too tough, I have no choice but to allow a character to die.
And maybe, just maybe, when a really fiendish trap has just reduced a 10th-level fighter to something that would fit in a soup can - maybe then I'll allow myself a few small chuckles of satisfaction.
Do you have any comments, questions, or responses to this article? Send them in (to KUDM@elceacampaing.com, or to PLpike@aol.com). I'd like to hear them, and if there are enough interesting ones I'll add them to this page.
Ideas and contributions to future editions of "Mere Chronicles" are also being accepted.