thread: 2005-03-10 : Character Death
On 2005-03-10, Vincent wrote:
Tim, you know it.
I've been watching Band of Brothers again. I talked about this with Luke a little bit already. There's a feeling you get, watching Band of Brothers, about the main characters. They're the main characters because they survive, you feel, not they survive because they're the main characters. It's not like they have script immunity. Maybe it's just because you don't know - any of the main characters might be one who doesn't live through it after all.
Band of Brothers also plays another trick. When it's a character's episode, you can be sure that either he's going to live or his death will mean something. But next episode, the episode after, the episode after - he's just another guy. He can die for nothing, part of the carnage surrounding the current main characters. That's a pretty emotionally compelling trick; I don't think that I can adapt it to Red Sky A.M. though.
In Red Sky A.M. right now, named but non-PC marines can just die, while PC marines are subject to life-threatening injury at either the player's or the GM's hands, and then you roll to see. If your PC marine dies, you take a non-PC named marine to be your new PC.
The game starts with a squad of twelve named marines, including the starting PCs. They die or go home wounded and are replaced over time, of course - and the game ends when the last of the original twelve is gone.
