Viewpoint Character death

[The Explorer]

Now I'm not a bundle of optimism. I've had moments where I was like, "why try if these rp's die right after I make my character"? So my attachment to characters is lesser than my attachment to plots and ooc chatter. But I've noticed this even in DnD videos: people hate character death.

But why? Some of the best scenes in a narrative story come from sacrifice. Some of the most infuriating moments stem from death. There shouldn't be such an aversion to character death in my opinion. If my character is staring down two fire drakes and his party is running for their lives, that 10 seconds he'd buy are the greatest 10 seconds of my characters life.

But I'd like to ask you all. With the short shelf lives of rps, high turnover rate, and lack of progression in rps. Why do people hate the idea of their character dying so much?

Ah! It's Sensei! Let me say my answer from a very human perspective. Humans hate death, they have a very healthy aversion to death. They want to live, and because we who RP are all human, we don't want our Characters to die either, because our OCs are like our precious children, and we are very overprotective parents. Now let me say this from the perspective of a writer. In real life, everything dies. Even the ultimate and perfect being, if trapped in space, would die emotionally, and lose the will to even think.

That's why conflict drives a story, without conflict there is no story at all.

If you are the world's strongest, and fastest most overpowered being, it stands to reason no one would want to challenge you, but there would still be the internal conflict of the same being losing the will to fight all out.

So to answer your question Sensei, People who seek perfection without conflict, will never have good progression writing skills. And due to the lack of Writers skilled in progression, and the increase of people who seek instant gratification without conflict, those people will not enjoy any negative thing happening to their OCs. Even if they could just pull a Jojo, and have a legacy, where their OCs Child or DIsciple hands down the torch and continue the story.

Also, Sensei. I have a question.

I want to do a RP where there is eventually an Omniverse, of original stories and OCs. It would start small and then slowly build up. It would have legacies and such and such. But when I posted it in 1 on 1 Interest checks, only one person sent a PM and now they haven't replied to my reply. What am I doing wrong?

 

[QuirkyAngel]

Because it takes effort to create a character and, as emotional or dramatic as death is, it means the character can no longer be used in the same storyline again. When I gm I'm more inclined to let my characters die because the death has a purpose. For a plot I've created. However, as a player I generally work with one character and I am more attached to the character I've created than a story created by someone else. This is especially true when I'm not involved in the storybuilding or the gm likes to keep certain mysteries to themselves. Then I don't know the purpose, I'm not very invested in the purpose, and it feels like a waste because no more development can be done (with the dead character). Though, I suppose if the story is good enough for me to be more invested in the story than my character, I wouldn't mind letting my character die for the story. But it'd have to be a good story. Making another character takes effort (I put a lot of investment the first time) and I'm lazy.

That said, whether I like it and whether I'm willing to accept it are two different things. If a gm went up and told me that my character needs to die for the story, then I'd probably let it happen because I respect the gm's authority on such matters. I'm less willing to accept it if another player does so. Also, if it's a game where the rules of death (and the risks involved) are made clear from the start, then I'm more inclined to accept the death. I won't like, but I'd accept it as fair.

Think about it this way, when you play a video game (rpg), do you play to win or to lose? Death is synonymous with losing in most cases. We can accept death if it's fair, but if it's clear the game is rigged so it's impossible to win then we are less willing to accept it. People that hate death see rping as a game rather than a story and they want to win. When I gm, I actually like seeing players try to beat the challenges I throw at them more than reading their dramatic, well-written, emotional failure which leads to their death and departure from the game, which shows me they don't even care about winning the game(though depending on how well written it is, I might enjoy it nonetheless). In fact, I find it kind of funny when players kill their characters off before I do, but I suppose it tells me they are excellent storywriters and understand the impact of a well-placed, well-written death.

Everyone dies in the end.

That said, there are more possibilities in life than in death.

 

[SCSaya06]

So to answer your question Sensei, People who seek perfection without conflict, will never have good progression writing skills. And due to the lack of Writers skilled in progression, and the increase of people who seek instant gratification without conflict, those people will not enjoy any negative thing happening to their OCs. Even if they could just pull a Jojo, and have a legacy, where their OCs Child or DIsciple hands down the torch and continue the story.

Point is, character death =/= conflict. Conflict is simply any problem that drives a story. It is not always about lives at stake here. Death is actually a very, very cheap way to raise the stakes. It's at the point where it's so predictable that it's no longer interesting. For some riveting examples of conflict off the top of my head...

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami. The conflict is with regards to the protagonist's midlife crisis as he deals with the regret of the opportunities he did not take earlier in his life which ties in to the possibility of him losing everything he has worked so hard to build.

Marriage Story (2019) shows how a couple could fall out of love as they pursue different paths and highlights the reality of divorce and relationships in the modern age.

Sputnik Sweetheart, also by Haruki Murakami deals with the struggle of a lesbian girl seeking love and sexual gratification from a woman who is physically unable to provide it.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) deals with a lawyer struggling to defend what could have been a supernatural event in the face of a legal prosecution.

All of those feature great examples of story conflict while killing the bare minimum or none at all. In fact, only Exorcism features one but the girl was already dead at the start of the story, making her death act more as a backdrop rather than a result of the conflict.

I think you're only seeing conflict from the perspective of action stories that features lots of powers and glorifies violence as the only means to an end. Also yes, inflicting character death from the perspective of a writer is easy. All of those characters technically belong to you so any time you kill one off, you have pretty much decided you no longer need that character. With an RP, the other characters do not belong to you. Part of being a good GM is to create an engaging and fun roleplay. I don't think anyone can enjoy such an RP if their character dies right out of the gate. At least wait for the appropriate time to do so, especially if you're not using a chance-based system for conflict resolution.

Another thing...

Also, Sensei. I have a question.

I want to do a RP where there is eventually an Omniverse, of original stories and OCs. It would start small and then slowly build up. It would have legacies and such and such. But when I posted it in 1 on 1 Interest checks, only one person sent a PM and now they haven't replied to my reply. What am I doing wrong?

I think this question would get a better answer if you send a PM to the guy or if you post it as its own thread in the forum.

 

[MechanicalSnake]

Ha ha ha no. It's the way the system is set up. And no, I'm not going to GM and create a home brew system where everyone gets 1/3 their usually allocated hit points. XD

I just feel like as a player there is literally nothing at stake in DnD fights in 5e. I like to feel somewhat challenged at least.

I died in DnD 5 four times, what am I doing wrong?

 

[M.J. Saulnier]

I don't table top, and I've been off the saddle for a long time, but as I understand it in a lot of table top, you can keep progessing your character as you run campaigns. So for some players, they are losing everything. Months, years of accomplishments, items, perks, and even character growth.

In terms of PbP, I think there's an anxiety about not making it. Being the one who is swept clean off the board before curtain. I really can't speak to it because I have killed so many of my characters.

My three favorites all die. Every death is beautiful, and meaningful. Every death leaves a legacy behind it within that mythos.

Death completes a character's journey and story. Allowing the audience and fellow writers to witness and partake in that closing of their final chapter is the most intimate, powerful experience one can have in RP in my personal opinion.

 

[MechanicalSnake]

Why do I generally try to avoid my characters dying?

Simple. I live vicariously through my characters, and I want them to live their lives, have their relationships, go through their struggles, reach their potential, succeed, suffer, rise again, you name it. I want them to die as little as I myself want to die, because there is always more they (therefore I, too) could experience. And everything they experience allows me to feel some kind of emotion. If they die, the emotion is the one of loss, whereupon I mourn them about as much as when your pet dies, and that's not something you want to go through very often.

This is actually ESPECIALLY true for tabletop RPGs, which is my main thing, writing being secondary. It does in no way mean that my characters don't have enough challenges. And, in fact, me wanting them NOT to die doesn't mean they won't - I have had characters die multiple times, that's how I know it really sucks. Now, we're not talking about a funny one shot that you do for the kicks. I suppose I would not mind deaths in a game that wasn't intended to run for an extended period of time. I've played Battle Royale type RPGs, where basically only one out of 6 people could survive a session, and since you knew that from the start, it was fine. But usually, I participate in tabletop campaigns that run for years, and after such a time, it really is quite horrible to be killed off before the game ends. I can also confirm, as someone had already mentioned, it is almost impossible to enjoy the game AND cooperate with your old group when you bring in a fresh character. Because you have information your new character doesn't have and you treat the other characters as if you knew them, because you're way too used to them to be able to draw the line. You keep thinking back to events that your character hadn't experienced.

There is only one exception that I make, and that is death at the END of the game, when the story has been closed and will no longer go on without me. And only if it is meaningful. I've had that happen only once tbh, in a game where a whole country was under a blood curse caused by a certain family, and one of the family members needed to die in a ritual for the curse to be lifted. At that point, one member was selected, but my character was a doctor and that person's Brother, and couldn't let that happen, so he drugged them, prevented them from going to the ritual site and sacrificed himself. That gave me plenty of feelings of accomplishment instead of the frustration and loss you feel when you've been in a campaign for years and suddenly you are killed by a zombie when trying to steal radishes from the field in times of famine. (yep, that happened).

Perhaps I could choose to care less. And it might even be healthier. But I don't really want to, because in that case, the game would not be immersive for me, and then why be in it?

 

[Crayons]

I died in DnD 5 four times, what am I doing wrong?

Lol let me sit in on a game and I'll analyse it for you? XD

Could be: bad combination of class/race/skills
Bad stat rolling
Being overly reckless
Bad teamwork
Ineffective strategy
Baddies are too powerful
DM is a sadist
DM hates you
Inappropriate level of stubbornness when wounded
Terrible luck

 

[MechanicalSnake]

Lol let me sit in on a game and I'll analyse it for you? XD

Could be: bad combination of class/race/skills
Bad stat rolling
Being overly reckless
Bad teamwork
Ineffective strategy
Baddies are too powerful
DM is a sadist
DM hates you
Inappropriate level of stubbornness when wounded
Terrible luck

I am almost sure each has been a different case of the above