Kill the PCs?

[zornwil]

In another thread:

Here's a thought, dark though it may be:

Can I suggest you occasionally kill a PC?

First off there is often a feeling of invulnerability: you might get KO'd or captured, but never killed, surely...well, in a world where people fling about the equivalent of small nuclear explosions (in some cases) in hand to hand combat, death should never really be too much of a surprise.

Secondly, it will really make players think about their limitations if the death is caused when Power Armour Guy is attacked by The Mad Slasher whilst out of armour, because it's down for trepairs, or stolen, or....

OK, it's a bit extreme but it certainly puts the balance in: you may only lose the armour one game in 10 or 20, but if that could prove fatal....

If you don't actually want to kill someone how about beating them up so badly it takes weeks or months to recover - they can play someone else in the interim.

Part of the problem with the criticism of the FOCUS limitation is that the worlds we are playing in are just not dangerous enough...

I thought this was a great post. I'm just curious on thoughts in general. I'm divided - death should be a real possibility on some level, but then again in superhero genre and many, many others, it just "isn't done" and is counter-genre except when willfully retiring a character. But Sean raises a great point - there simply is a cockiness that sets in without the disincentive of death.

[RDU Neil]

Death is definitely a possibility in my games. PCs have died. Some have come back... others have not. I don't kill wantonly or casually, but it is a threat. Death should also be dramatic... that convention I do follow. In heroic level games like Cyber Hero or gritty Fantasy... death is cheap... but while I do kill in my supers level games... it is never cheap or easy. In many cases it is transformative to the campaign and all players (GM included.)

What I'm not going to do is kill a character as punishment for player behavior. In game action for out of game behavior is totally unproductive. If the player is that bad, I'll just boot him from the game.

What I want is for players to take death seriously... and that can be achieved without every really killing them... or even allowing a super-convention to bring them back... at least IMO.

If the players take risks with their characters, knowing that maybe they could bite it permanently... then they are truly taking risks and it is all good. You don't have whack too many characters to get this point across. F*ck 'em up really, really badly! Heck yeah! That works too, and you can do it more often!

Characters can die (even if rarely) and PCs WILL lose sometimes. Success is not guaranteed. Those are core Game Rules for my world... but they don't have to come up that often to be taken seriously.

[Dust Raven]

I've never noticed one in my games. Well, except when such cockiness is in character.

Since I started running Champions some 10 years ago, I have only ever killed 2 player characters. The first was way back when I was just getting started and one of the players didn't like her character... so I killed her. That was stupid, but so were my players so nobody seemed to care. The second time was much more recently. In this case, the martial artist picked a fight with the wrong villain (one of those battles where the master villain just stands and watches... unless some idiot actually attacks him). Turns out this villain isn't the type to leave survivors, and after knocking down the hero and having him a -3 STUN, he goes for the kill shot. I stop the game for a moment.

I take the player aside to talk to him about what is about to happen. I don't kill characters with overwhelming force. I run a heroic game where heroic things can happen. But there isn't much chance of something heroic happening here. To be saved, someone else has to intervine and save the character or he dies, and everyone else is busy saving a normal what could easily die in place of the character should anyone be distracted. I am the GM, however, and I can do anything. Some strange random action could block the final blow and save him, at least for that instant. The player wanted to think about it so I gave him some time. After awhile he said it looks like I'm taking a hit for the team, besides, I have an idea. It didn't surprise me much, it was his character's DNPC they were saving.

His idea was somewhat interesting. He was playing a ex-ninja, and has saved up quite a bit of experience points. He wanted to know if he could by the "only a ninja can kill a ninja" ability with the points he's saved up. I told him we could do better than that. He'd saved up enough for a Radiation Accident, and what better stimulus for altering one's powers is there than returning from the dead?

[Supreme Serpent]

PC's die in my superhero games as a result of:

*other PC action/inaction (PC in mortal danger, other PC could save, does not try)

*being told by GM course of action *bad* idea, given option to try something else, persist in *bad* idea.

*heroic sacrifice

[austenandrews]

I don't see the need for death in most Champions games that's not either deliberate or premeditated. In other words, without the player's cooperation.

Premeditated means the player has decided on a character arc in which the PC is going to die, generally colluding with the GM.

Deliberate can be a snap decision, but one with foreknowledge of the risk of death. A superhero can leap in the way of a death ray and sacrifice himself. That's the player's decision. (I would also classify wantonly stupid behavior here.)

Outside of these two conditions, I don't have any need or desire for PC death. If you want to show that Master Masticator is deadly, have him kill a significant NPC. Don't screw over your player just to promote a bad guy.

[Fox1]

In almost all my games, PCs have the threat of death hanging over them.

Typically the risk is from poor play, sometimes from exceedly poor luck.

The one exception is my Superhero games. There death is about on the same level as the comics, it may happen- but it would a) take a lot and b) may not be all that final.

[OddHat]

Taking out the PC requires no effort at all. If anything, you have to work to avoid doing it accidentally.

Killing the actual players, on the other hand, can be tricky.

[austenandrews]

But much more rewarding.

[prestidigitator]

Taking out the PC requires no effort at all. If anything, you have to work to avoid doing it accidentally.

Killing the actual players, on the other hand, can be tricky.

You have to get them when they're full of snacks. Oh, and either dropping for lack of sleep or so whacked out of their gourd on caffeine that they have no idea which way is up.

[Ehreval]

In my current Hero game (superheroic, pc's started with 350 points plus disads and are now somewhere around 500 each) the players and characters take the issue of pc death very seriously, even the one with nine lives. Never you mind that I rarely kill characters in any of my games.

I make sure each player knows, before character generation, exactly what the prospect of pc death is. For this genre, pc death really isn't appropriate at all times, so I let the players know that they'd generally only die if they did something very stupid or literally asked for it. I also made the caveat that some foes and situations would be more dangerous to others, so sometimes "stupid" would be quite relative.

(On the other hand, in my Vampire: Dark Ages game, I made sure people knew that Final Death would happen often, sometimes without warning and sometimes even when nobody did anything stupid. In the past, I've sometimes warned players that death would sometimes happen if the party failed to be *brilliant*. In my futuristic gladiators game, cloning and brain-taping had been perfected, so it was unlikely for death to be more than an inconvenience, ever, but one of my pc's managed the final death anyway.)

I follow this up with a little talk during/after character generation with any player who makes a pc that's likely to be killed, especially if it's likely he'll be slain by fellow party members, like the "Worm From Beyond," a sentient slug from a Mythos universe who, while he was the closest thing to "good" his universe had, really wasn't all that pleasant in his habits, like eating the brain of a sentient and piloting around the being's corpus while he did so.

So when the superheroes dash across the street to stop minor villains from running a bank, my players know that I'm not going to have someone get run over by a Mack truck. Similarly, they know that if they're going to assault the Fuhrerbunker in a universe where WWII never ended, they're going to have to be very smart to avoid casualties.

While we haven't had many pc deaths in the time this game has been running there have been many, many npc deaths. Sometimes, innocents are killed and the pc's are powerless to stop it. Even when that's the case, though, I make sure they know that their actions directly effect the mortality rate of the normals around them. A strong, quick response to a disaster -- like the recurring plagues of demons they just put a stop to -- can keep down the npc carnage, while a poorly-planned, slow response heightens it.

I also opened a session with the near-death of the party npc in a way that would have slain practically anyone else outright.

So even before I hit the characters in the forehead with a fallen comrade whose passing they mourned (see below) they were still very much aware that death exists and is a real possibility. Yes, they're a bit cocky in some ways because it hasn't happened to a character who hasn't been set up for it yet, but they're also very careful in many other ways, and they keep it in mind as a possibility for the vulnerable mortals around them, always.

We also got a little roleplaying mileage out of the Worm's death that did occur. The pc who whacked the Worm was mind-controlled by a baddie at the time, but he still dealt with a good deal of angst regarding his actions. If that angst had been played out externally rather than taking place almost entirely in the pc's head, it would have been even better, but the particular pc in question isn't the type to act out much. This same pc also seems to angst over civilian deaths that aren't prevented, and that's good, too, maybe even better.

I also killed off a former pc whose player had abandoned the game. That one was well-respected and valued by the rest of the group, and the characters' reactions to his death -- shock, dismay, disbelief, wrath -- were much more fun to watch play out.

The bottom line with death, I think, is the same as it is for any other element of story-telling. It should have an effect, and the truly interesting part isn't the death scene, it's the aftermath. Our group got shortchanged a bit, because people were really stretching themselves -- letting their characters not notice things or think of the ramifications of things -- in order to *not* kill the Worm earlier, so there wasn't so much agony over its death, and since the Worm wasn't publicly acknowledged, ever -- and the Worm's two known shells weren't really high in the local public eye -- the public, themselves, didn't have much reaction to his passing.

What's really interesting, usually, is how the characters and world change as a result of the pc death. When the Worm's first shell was destroyed, her family showed up en masse for the funeral and to dispose of her property. This was mildly amusing, and could have gone far afield if the pc's had let them know about the Worm.

So while pc death may be a dramatic and effective storytelling device, I'd say that the important thing isn't the frequency, or shoving it at your players sideways. The important thing is how it plays out, how it affects the story, setting and characters involved.

(A major npc hero in a nearby city is slated to die in this game, off-screen. A nation will mourn, and players will have a chance to react to the death of a powerful hero.)

Now, if you absolutely *must* have pc death for the story you want to tell -- and sometimes it happens -- then you have a great opportunity to plan for it ahead of time.

Approach your best roleplayers or ask for volunteers at the end of a session. Be prepared to offer rewards for anyone who's willing to sacrifice a character for the sake of a story. I'd *start* with letting them build with the current points total of their pc or the average of all pc's, whichever is higher, then offer them a flat points bonus and often give a second bonus for how well-played a death is. (I tend to do this whenever a character dies a natural death in the first place, with the exception that I'll generally start them out at the level of the lowest-pointed pc.)

With prior planning, you can get the flavor of the scene down-pat, and if you haven't openly canvassed for volunteers to bite the big one, the player shock value should be large. You can also make sure that the sacrificing player has his new character ready to go or, perhaps, already worked into the campaign.

Just my thoughts,
Ehreval

[ParitySoul]

I find that 'breaking' the PCs is a much more satifying act. Killing family, friends, hopes, dreams and then in the process having their will and determination rebuild them over time is a great thing to witness.

I do the Campbell, desent into the underworld a lot. Things go bad, they get stronger, they get better!

Killing them is just so final and goes counter to good storytelling. I try to avoid it when I can.

[Mentor]

The closest our PCs ever come to death is when we deliberately put ourselves into such a position in order to save the world.

My Mentalist, Prodigy, had to prevent a nasty human sacrifice by an angry Mayan godling from making him an angry Mayan god. Since his VPP was in mostly defensive and movement powers, he didn't have the phase to spare to change powers and attack the enemy. IOnstead he was forced to throw his body over that of the screaming virgin (I guess) as the knife was descending. The GM, Blackjack, correctly decided that an already deadly weapon should ignore my PC's Combat Luck as Prodigy was trying to intercept the knife. He ended up with 1 BODY left based on the roll of the dice, but the sacrifice was prevented from taking place at the precise moment of optimum celestial alignment. If Prodigy had died, I could hardly have complained since I put him in that position willingy.

Most of our PC Superhero players are well aware that there is always a risk of death in what we do and that is what makes the characters heroes.

[ghost-angel]

In the cyberpunk games that I run (pretty much the only time I actually run a game) the lethality level is high. extremely high. Combat is dangerous, and I warn players beforehand that if they get into it too often someone will die. I've had to only kill a couple people ... and the whole party once when winding up a campaign - but that was sort of agreed upon by everyone.

In every other type of game, PCs tend to only die when they request it... most GMs I know are hesitant to actually kill a character off.

[Mike W]

I don't remember ever permanently killing a PC(Resurrection is SO easy in D&D), but I don't pull punches, so people do get hurt, sometimes badly. I've hospitalized more than one Champs PC, but none have died quite yet. But then, it's fairly easy to stop the bleeding before the PC dies and the villains either aren't bloodthirsty enough to finish up or, more often, concentrate on the heroes who are still hitting them back.

I did kill an NPC villain a couple sessions ago. And I almost killed Spiderman last month.

[Shubbie]

Knocking a character into a hospital for an adventure or two.. very much in genre..
Falling off a cliff to certain death only to return later.. very in genre..

Actual deaths of superhero's is so rare and genre breaking that it shouldnt be done unless you are playing a lethal style dark champions, not a real 4 color campaign.

I mean you can count on two hands the amount of real superhero deaths there have been. Im not counting independants or mature titles like rising stars, since they have high body counts at times which is fine if you are playing that style