An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter
An empty Death is a terrible thing
When Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) died in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was an outcry amongst fans. Not because the character had been killed off so much as because she died what was later described even within the series as “an empty death” – a death without meaning, carried out purely to demonstrate how evil and powerful the enemy that week – a pool of black goo – was.
We expect our heroes to survive, or to die a heroic death. Either is usually an acceptable option.
Wandering through the Wilderness
That means that wandering monsters and random encounters should never put a PC at risk. This imposes a tricky burden on the GM, because without the potential threat, such encounters are empty and meaningless – and boring.
The solution to this conundrum is to make sure that such random encounters are always plot-significant in some way. That in turn means that any danger they pose is entirely warranted, and the GM can institute such threats with a clear conscience.
Snippets of information
This changes the problem from a difficult one to something that is easily manageable with a bit of pre-planning. The question now becomes how to impart significance to random encounters.
Well, there are two types of encounter – those that will be trivial because they pose no threat to the PCs, and those that will not be trivial. There’s no need to impart significance to the first, which leaves only the second; and those are almost always encounters with sentient creatures. Which offers a solution – by using them to solve a second problem.
GMs always have a lot of information to impart to the players. Information overload is something that is all too easy to incur. By using these random encounters as a conduit for nuggets and snippets of such information, the encounter becomes one of significance.
Relative Value
That is not the end of the story, of course. It makes no sense for high-value information to come from a low-value encounter; for the information to be valued by the PCs it must carry a risk proportionate to its value.
The solution is to break the information to be imparted to the PCs down into individual chunks. Keep a list, sorted or rated by importance. When an encounter takes place, select the appropriate piece of information from the list. Give minimal or even misleading context. Treat them like rumors – because that’s exactly what they are.
A Side-benefit
There’s a side-benefit to this approach. High-level players who over-rely on Teleport for hit-and-run dungeon crawls will suddenly find that they are leaping into a situation blind, and having to work twice as hard, simply because they are bypassing all the informative nuggets that the GM has prepared. The GM can give his bad guys any enhancement they need with a clear conscience – complete immunity to whatever they are normally vulnerable to, for example, or the fact that they have allies. In fact, whatever is necessary to make them suitably difficult for the PCs to overcome – simply because they have chosen to ignore the hints and clues and advance warning that the GM has provided for them.
The surrogacy alternative
Another approach is to ensure that fatalities in meaningless encounters are experienced by NPCs – surrogates. Redshirts, if you will. While most GMs dislike the practice to some extent, because it drastically increases the workload during play, most PCs like to surround themselves with NPCs. If they are going to do that anyway, why not take advantage of the fact?
An Empty Life is a terrible thing
Originally, this is where this article was going to end. But then I received an email from one of my former players, someone that I had contacted regarding the death of my friend and player, Stephen, about whom I wrote on Monday. In the process of catching up with each other, he related the following story (slightly edited):
I’ve only been involved with one gaming group here in the US, ran by my ex-wife’s brother – it was not bad, fairly interesting, but he had a REAL problem with ‘player death’ in that it never happened… even if you WANTED it to happen – which really conflicted with the style he was trying to run for his world. He was shooting for something that felt like epic myth, but failed to take into account that in all the great epics, the hero’s death is a major point. Without typing up 10 pages of backstory, I’ll try to summarize what happened, and actually annoyed me to the point of leaving the group a short time later.
As with most big epic stories, our main enemy was a Loki type demigod – you know, bastard half-son trickster, red-headed stepchild type that was just a malevolent PITA for us constantly… especially moi, who would take every opportunity to snub, insult, and generally just mess with him.
We came to a big story point in this game where we were holding back a horde of beasties from the gates of the major city – undermanned and outnumbered, you get the deal – so the big bad guy decides to personally turn up. At this point I was saying to myself ‘enough is enough’. We broke for dinner at this point as a cliffhanger and I quietly plotted something that would probably end the entire conflict, possibly foul up this demigod really nasty, but will 100% kill my character. I figured ‘epic hero setting, this will be awesome, I get to die the huge epic hero death!’
In a previous ‘solo hero quest’, my character (an exceptional archer) had been given a bow with a bunch of fairly nice arrows and some nifty properties. One was an arrow that does no damage when it hits a target but which permits the next arrow I fire from anywhere to hit that target. I had already abused this on one occasion to blackmail a King – shot him in the neck and left it at that (the DM was “Hmmm I didn’t think of THAT!”).
Another was an arrow that just sent someone ‘home’ – their home and hearth. Pretty useless, you might think. And finally, the bow: if I cut my palm on the bowstring prior to firing, whatever I shot lost hit points if they tried to advance on me past the point where they were when it hit them – but I would also lose 1/4 of the HP inflicted on the target.
If you’re thinking ahead you can see where this is leading. This demigod turns up at the gates and summons more beasties to reinforce the attacking hoards. I shout out to him, so he can see me good and proper as I aim, hit him with the ‘mark’ arrow right on his left shoulder. He laughs and gives his ‘puny mortal’ speech. Off goes a second arrow, which hits him in the forehead; it bounces off and I just say ‘home!’, sending him back to the underworld he crawled out from. The DM is scratching his head at this point, right up until the next round when I say ‘Okay, I’m cutting my palm on the bowstring’.
The whole table went silent. It was priceless. The DM asked me roll – and I get a critical success! …and I just casually ask ‘So, how far away IS the underworld… in meters?’
The point being that I had set up the villain. He would HAVE to travel back to make an example of one who had DARED not only to touch him, but had shot him three times. That sort of affront you can’t leave rest! He’d travel back, sustaining damage the whole way. He would be so damaged that at he’d probably be banished to underworld to lick his wounds, and either way an entire city of defenders would see him all jacked up by a mortal. Of course I’d already be dead when he arrived; I’d be in the negative millions of hit points, there was no coming back from this, and I knew exactly what I was doing…. Epic Hero, Epic Death.
It didn’t happen that way. In ‘the nick of time’ all the battle clerics joined hands and did some heal critical riff in unison, and throw in some unasked for and improbable Divine Intervention and wow, I lived. How did the Battle Clerics even know what I was doing? I was the only person in game that would be privy to exactly what I’d planned and executed!
So I survived, but the character wasn’t fun to play anymore. No moment in future gaming with that character could possibly rival that moment, that was the pinnacle, and thus should have been the end point for that character.
The point that Peter is making with this story is that the GM should not have messed with the Players intentions. By bending everything all out of shape to keep the character alive, against the deliberate intent of the player he cheapened the entire expression of genre within the campaign.
In a nutshell, he railroaded the campaign. Really, REALLY badly. There were two possible motives for this: One, it messed with the big finish that he had planned; and/or two, he wanted to be sure that all the PCs had a share in the glory.
And it wasn’t necessary. A little flexibility, a little creativity, and a willingness to discard the big finish that he had planned, would have enabled the GM to up the ante enormously. Writing off the cuff, I replied with the following:
I would have let your action succeed, and let your character die. That of course would not have stopped the events that the bad guy had set in motion – someone from his army would have appointed themselves his heir and successor. The rest of the PCs barely escape with their lives, and the bad guys’ forces run rampant.
Meanwhile, you and your enemy get to confront each other in an afterlife that should not exist and did not exist until you killed this demigod – your enmity is so strong that it transcends death. Not that either of you can actually hurt each other any more, your stats have all equalized from the release of the energies that had made the bad guy semi-divine.
The new #1 bad guy then figures out that his previous master is not completely dead and can be used as a power source, permitting him to up the ante even further. What he doesn’t realize is that he is expending a limited store of energy. The rest of the PCs figure out where he is getting his seemingly-inexhaustible supply of energy (without realizing what the source is) and set out to cut off the supply. They appear by your side in the afterlife.
At this point you all have a clear advantage over the former demigod enemy, but you have realized in the meantime that simply killing him will release his power in its entirety to the former #2 – with no-one left to stop the new Bad Guy.
The only solution: for the rest of the PCs to give up their escape route to free you from the afterlife, taking your place, because you are now the only being around with enough power to take down the #2 after the rest of the PCs do the old #1 in, once and for all. In other words, “If, in an epic climax, a PC comes up with a masterstroke, let it work – then up the ante again”.
An empty death is no worse than an empty life. Unfairly preserving the life of a PC, in Peter’s example, undermined the value of that PC’s entire life.
The Lessons Of Life And Death
The next time you are planning an encounter in a game, make sure that any PC death resulting from it will be a meaningful death, and not a random act of violence designed to make the villain look mean. Any time a PC dies, it should be important to the plot. And if a Hero decides to save the world with a Heroic Sacrifice, don’t cheapen it by undermining the Death. Make sure the player knows the consequences of his choice, and then say ‘yes’. Then up the ante in an even bigger finish if you have to do something to involve the other PCs.
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June 7th, 2012 at 10:47 am
Wholeheartedly agree. And I’ve been lucky enough to have players who understood that a meaningful death meant a meaningful life and have given it up for the story.
Of course, I’ve been in blog discussions with people who feel completely the opposite about player death at the hands of random encounters and such, what I’ve now come to call the “as Written” crowd. And so the great simulationist/narrationist, game/story battle continues…
Siskoid recently posted..Magic Items Are All Artifacts
June 7th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Well, I differ slightly on this. It is ok to kill a new character, one the players are not yet fully vested in to show that the world is dangerous.
After they have learned this very important lesson, then I invoke the rules as stated above… The players never need to know the above is in affect, they know they are mortal now, and things won’t always work out. But somehow, they always do …
… and I’ve had the epic death fail once. I was playing a paladin, the party was over-matched by undead, and needed to flee to safety, but the dead were faster. My paladin leaped at the opportunity to sacrifice himself fighting the horde at a choke point to let the others escape. Needs of the many, etc. Ticked me off to no end when the GM fudged it so everyone survived. I was ready for a noble sacrifice, dammit!
Chris
June 7th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
@Chris: I don’t think you differ by very much at all, Chris. In “Snippets Of Information” I make the point that low-level characters aren’t subject to the emnpty death syndrome.
There’s one exception to the “they always do”, of course: when you’ve prepared a way out for them. I did that once when I wanted to make a point about elves and reincarnation and the afterlife. That was because the campaign had bridged generations of game system, going from “Elves cannot be reincarnated” to “elves are just like anyone else”.
Your epic death fail story sounds very much like Peter’s story. I suspect that this sort of problem is more common than a lot of GMs believe – which is why it is important for the point to be made that there are times when the character not only should not survive, but when the player does not want the character to survive.
There’s an exception to that rule as well, I should add. When the player has overlooked something that means that their epic death will not achieve the desired result, it’s worth saving them on a technicality, at least temporarily. But when that happens, you should take them aside and explain exactly why you are getting in the way of their heroic sacrifice.
@Both Chris and Siskoid: Thanks for commenting!
Mike recently posted..An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter
June 7th, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Great article, Mike! I agree, it should be basically impossible to die an un-heroic death, and possible to die a heroic death.
One observation is that it’s possible to create tension even when death is NOT on the line. Like, half-way through an action movie, when the hero is fighting off faceless enemies, you KNOW he’s not going to die. But you don’t know what it’s going to COST him.
I’ve toyed with an informal house rule of “encounter stakes.” In a low-stakes encounter, you could lose an NPC ally (redshirt), or your favorite magic item, or fail your mission, or even suffer a permanent injury of some sort, but you can’t die. In a high-stakes encounter, you can die. The trick is, I would apply this to important enemy NPCs as well. So if you encounter the villain early, in an unimportant encounter, you can’t kill him. He either gets away, or you capture him so he can escape later.
June 7th, 2012 at 10:27 pm
In some respects it’s easier to deal with the premature loss of the villain, because you can always reveal that he was just the front for an even nastier enemy if necessary. This both preserves the overall plotline and gives the PCs an appropriate reward for their achievement. You can also have the defeated villain being a body double or doppelganger for the express purpose of shielding the real bad guy, if his personality is important to the outcome. How many times did James Bond think he had eliminated Blofeld?
June 8th, 2012 at 9:20 am
@Mike, I agree. Those are the sort of tricks I’d use to help the villain “get away” in the low-stakes encounter. My point is more like, in the high-stakes encounter, if the PCs are clever enough to kill the villain, he goes down and stays dead. They earned that victory fair and square by putting their own lives on the line.
June 8th, 2012 at 11:15 am
I strong agree that a character’s death should matter, however, I find it hard to implement that idea during play. As a GM, I deal with the players throwing themselves in the fire or extremely bad dice rolls on their part.
When that happens, I still go ahead and kill the character. I believe that having that happening enhances the game overall.
Having to come up with something grandiose every time a character is about to die in some random way, would be next to impossible for me.
June 8th, 2012 at 11:27 am
@Cole: I think you may be putting the horse before the cart there. It’s not that the insignificant death should be made significant somehow, it’s that it should be avoided. The former is a lot more work than the latter.
So when characters are about to die for no reason, flip the result. Two ways to go about it, off the top of my head, and they aren’t mutually exclusive:
1) They are saved by luck. It should feel like they caught a lucky break and that perhaps Fate was on their side just this once.
2) You make them lose something valuable to make them “pay” for their survival. While knocked out, some of their stuff was stolen. The killing blow goes awry and kills a friendly NPC instead. They survive but with a lasting wound that hampers them for a long time or forever. Etc.
The first is mostly appropriate for unlucky dice rolls. The second, for bad decisions in play. A combination of the two (good news, bad news) can work in any situation. I like there to be consequences, but don’t want to slow the game’s momentum by stopping for character creation, risk player apathy and disconnect, etc.
In fact, I think that gives meaning to the near-death experience by teaching the character/player a lesson (in a sense, “impart information” in the way described by the main article).
Siskoid recently posted..Earth-2: Looking Forward to More Characters
June 8th, 2012 at 11:44 am
I tend to punish bad decisions more harshly. Bad die rolls are another matter. It must be said that it becomes much easier if you and your players avoid “save or die” spells, which is one reason why I dislike them.
Ultimately, it’s not so much about how you react when the dice indicate death, it’s about planning your encounters so that death is never a likely outcome unless the encounter is one of importance. At least, that was my position when I started working on the article. About half-way through, the “wandering monsters” angle came to me, and broadened the subject greatly.
Treating these situations as though any solution is a one-size-fits-all is a mistake, I think. The situation is more complex than that, and your GMing strategy should be more flexible in order to give you a range of options.
Mike recently posted..An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter
June 8th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
@Siskoid
Thank you the reply. I personally don’t like to deal with player death. I agree that it slows down game play and may generate some hard feeling from the player in question. Those two reasons alone would be enough for me to avoid the subject entirely.
My stories, however, are full of conflict. I try to make that conflict as real as possible within the confines of the system and setting. Actions have, again, real consequences in my games. Some of those consequences reaching far wide. I also allow the players full control of their characters, and for the most part, I try to remain a neutral party.
The solutions you presented would not work very well for my style, because it would eliminated a significant part of the consequences and move me from neutral to a pro-player stance.
June 8th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
@Mike
Thanks for the reply. I greatly enjoyed the article.
I used to plan for encounters back when I was GMing 3.5. Once I moved to a different system, I no longer focused on the numbers, but rather on the story and making sure I kept with the verisimilitude of the world.
Now that I write this, I wonder if you meant, on the article, that the death should be meaningful in relation to the game world. If that is the case, I do follow that idea very closely. If, however, you meant that it should be given an extra dose of greatness, that is where I would find it difficult to implement.
June 8th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
@Cole: I understand where you’re coming from and it’s not the first time I’ve met resistance to my more story-telling approach by someone with a more gamist approach (not to say those are mutually exclusive). My games have migrated towards the “collaborative story telling” end of the spectrum, so I tend to see the game in terms of story structure. The PCs are protagonists and thus ARE protected by a measure of cosmic grace or, of you will, literary convention. And I have the players for it.
In a more gamist world, the application of game rules is more important than the application of literary rules, but both are sets of rules and conventions, and create a different mood. For my particular batch of players, I find my particular apporoach makes them care more about their characters and the campaign. For others, it might be the opposite.
One thing I have found (unscientifically, but from 25+ years of observation) is that people who play or run D&D (or perhaps, any Sword & Sorcery game) are generally more gamist than those who play of have played games in other genres. The way a superhero game works, for example, is very much at odds with the way D&D is usually played (you’re not simulating the same thing at all), and different lessons are gleaned that then apply to your gaming from then on. That’s what did it for me, if I’m being introspective.
Siskoid recently posted..Earth-2: Looking Forward to More Characters
June 8th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
@Cole: Thanks for the kind words about the article. As for the reply, I greatly enjoy discussing the points that I’ve raised (or neglected) and appreciate people taking the time to write a comment. So the reply was my pleasure, and thank you for caring enough to contribute to the discussion.
The final paragraph of your comment raises a point that should probably have been made sooner. The article, and all comments concerning it, need to be put into the context of genre and subgenre. Peter’s story definitely states that the GM was striving for Epic Heroic Fantasy. I tend to strive for High Fantasy in my fantasy campaigns and Heroic (sometimes Epic) in my Superhero campaigns – with a light sprinkling of Space Opera and a dusting of Science Fiction. What your comment makes clear is that you are aiming for a somewhat grittier mid-to-low fantasy game, am I right?
Context changes the meaning of Death within the game as a function of style and narrative, and that makes all the difference to how you as a GM should approach it.
In Epic Heroic Fantasy, character death is a big deal and an expected part of the plot. In High Fantasy, it is rarer, less climactic, but still significant. Superheroes (and Villains) rarely die (and even more rarely die forever) – so any death tends to be a Very Big Deal – but at the same time, is rarely campaign-ending.
Have I called the tune?
Mike recently posted..An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter
June 8th, 2012 at 1:17 pm
@Siskoid
Heh, you nailed it. I think my style fits better a gamist rather than a storyteller approach. One of the campaign settings that have influenced my games the most has been Ivid: The Undying which is part of the World of Greyhawk.
@Mike
You know, I should state, to the group, my play style in those terms. I do think your description is very close to what I usually run. Now I fully understand your article, and I have to say: I couldn’t agree with you more. :)
June 8th, 2012 at 1:29 pm
@Cole: You’re right, a conversation about the role of death in your campaign with your players is a good idea. It prevents disagreements when players are on the same page you are. (Not just death, but the role of rules, etc.) False expectations are the main cause of disappointment. It also shows the GM is thinking about these issues and helps them understand how and why bad things happen to good PCs.
Because I so often find myself defending the lack of character death in my games on public forums, I kind of feel I should mention that I’ve also played a lot of death-heavy games, because there is certainly a thrill in that. But I’ve done it with games that have a built-in “dying isn’t the end” element, notably Dream Park (your character’s character dies, but your character only loses points), Paranoia (5 more clones to go, and no one’s expected to survive!), and Hong Kong Action Theater (like DP, the Role may die, but the Actor lives on to make another film). In other words, games built like a series of one-shots are where we indulge our desire for bloodletting and hardcore “gamist” consequences.
Siskoid recently posted..Earth-2: Looking Forward to More Characters
June 8th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
A sode-note from Paranoia: A player in a game of that system once managed to kill off the original and all clones before the party could get to the briefing. I was GMing a different game in the next room at the time, so I can’t state exactly how – but the entire room (GM and Players alike) were ROTFL…
June 8th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
[…] An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter … about making the death of a character matter to the player. If a player dies because of some random die roll, then it really doesn’t matter much. It steals the breath out of the character (and the player) and really doesn’t do much for the game […]
December 5th, 2015 at 5:30 am
[…] you want to ponder a bit darker topic, check out Mike Bourke’s article about character death @ Campaign Mastery. Empty deaths should be avoided (though the Tasha Yar from ST:TNG reference doesn’t work for […]
March 28th, 2017 at 3:31 am
[…] An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter […]