NeoGrognard

“How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life,” as Kirk would say. Philosophical, religious, and sci-fi questions aside, it is within the nature of all living beings to avoid death wherever possible. Sure, there have been plenty of heroic examples of the contrarily in history and literature, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Be it games or fiction, death means the end.

Boys and girls, the end is bad.

In heroic fantasy—now I’m not just talking RPGs here, but the whole gamut: novels, comics, movies, T.V. shows anywhere that involves character-drive drama—death is avoided at all costs. And when the treat of it is used, there is usually an often implausible but somehow still believable way out. It’s been true since Gilgamesh. Hell, even Sherlock Holmes died, only to be resurrected later because of fan outcry and publishers willingness to pay bank to Conan Doyle. Think about your favorite long-running comic book, T.V., or novel characters. At least one of them, rather than just escaping death, probably overcame it at one point of time or another. (I’m looking at you, Spock…the Vulcan with more lives than a black cat!) Few people want to be the writer who’s killed off a beloved character (like R.A. Salvatore did when he killed Chewbacca) and those that do are often confronted with grief and even anger, though hopefully not to Misery proportions. RPGs are often no different than other narrative entertainment forms.

From Spock’s death scene in Wrath of Khan—maybe one of the greatest nerd deaths of all times. At the same time even when we saw this in the theater, we knew Spock had to come back. Geeks are not immune from the very human weakness of not being able to just let go.

Since D&D’s beginning, it’s struggled to deal with death. Sure, it handles the slaughter of countless orcs and the destruction of zombies with a callous glee—bodies pile up, XP is gained, and the game goes on. But these are the little deaths, the destruction of the disposable roadblocks born for dying. The other kind of death—character death— is trickier, and I still don’t think a good balance has yet been struck.

Early in RPG history, even player character life was cheap. Hell, in Traveller you could die in character generation! In OD&D and AD&D there was an unspoken covenant between the DM and the players that lower-level characters would either die fast or be kept alive using whatever rescuing tropes you, the DM, could steal from other heroic genres. Dying quick meant you could rejoin with a minimal XP hit, which was acceptable, but pulling your punches and creating reasons why characters survived seemingly impossible odds was the norm. But that wasn’t always the case.

There were all sorts of gamer superstitions about death. If you drew your character or painted your miniature, it was a sure sign that you character was not long for the DM’s particular fantasy world. The funny thing is that there was truth to these superstitions. DMs, being human, often would stop pulling punches as soon as a player became a little cocky about their character’s survivability. Taking time on an artistic representation of that character was often seen as an affront to the DMs power.

While in high school I played in a game where my wizard found a robe of eyes. Session after session, I used my robe to good effect, but not game-breaking effect. My DM was canny enough to design encounters that allowed me to use my robe while not breaking encounters. If forget how many sessions I waited until I repainted my character’s miniature with a bunch of eyes, but it had to be at least three. I know I waited until I was comfortable in my belief that the robe was something I would be able to keep for a while.

Boy was I wrong.

My high school mini was not nearly as pretty as my favorite depiction of the robe of eyes by Todd Lockwood.

The very same session that I came to my weekly game a newly painted miniature sporting about two-dozen tiny eyes delicately painted on his robe, the DM took me aside. He told me that my robe of eyes was actually a cursed robe, similar to a cloak of poisonousness, though more subtle and slow in its deadliness. If I didn’t discard the robe right now, he explained, I would have to succeed a saving throw vs. poison or die. I did the only thing I could—I discarded the robe. Trying to salvage it, the party’s cleric cast neutralize poison upon it, which we hoped would made the cloak safe. It did, but it also stripped it of its magic…all of its magic. It was just an ordinary robe with no magic eyes.

Though my character didn’t die, I was forced to repaint my figure. My friends and I found this both funny and frustrating because I was obviously being punished for having the gall to paint all those eyes on my dude, but I did learn my lesson. The gods of gaming were fickle and had to be appeased or death could ensue.

Now it at first blush it easy to blow off this game and the DM as immature. I was still in school after all but my DM was older than me, by at least six years. This was my first regular game with adults. I was hoping to escape some of the tomfoolery of my early game experiences. For the most part the game didn’t disappoint on that front, but back then game balance and whim was entirely in the hands of the DM, for good or for ill. And like the gods of the old pagan stories they usually had flaws and pride that manifested at inexplicable times. This realization not only affected my DMing style, but also my design attitudes, especially about character death.

Do you have a story about capricious character death in gaming? We would love to hear it. The more gruesome the death the better!