thread: 2005-03-10 : Character Death
On 2005-03-11, Charles wrote:
But I also wanted to say this—thus far, based on my own personal experience, I think it's easier to deal with the death of a PC in a closed-ended game. For me personally, knowing that there will be an end frees me from worrying that I might "screw things up" by killing my PC.
I so totally agree with this. Character death in a short run game can easily say something as interesting as the character could say by staying alive and being able to do more stuff. Character death in an on-going campaign means the end of something that is likely to have been built up into an incredibly subtle and powerful tool for saying things.
While such things are surely useful in short run games, it seems to me that long run games actually have even more of a need for some method of valorizing choosing the option of character death. Christian mentioned the tendency of most players (if they are given complete control over whether their character has script immunity (is that common parlance?) to never make their characters die, and that that deprives them of the intense experience that can come from having a character die. It seems to me that methods that ensure that the game gives a lot of focus to characters who die might help to convince players that character death is worth experimenting with.
