Character Death

[somasatori]

@Ashkuri said in Character Death:

I’ll die on this hill (which is also good character death)

Good being the operative term. There are many times when character death has been cheap or not earned, or seems sort of pointless such as in a plotline that doesn’t work or if you feel like you’re being targeted OOCly. This also returns us somewhat to the topic of factional conflict, since that can be such a contentious part of it. But, yeah! If you have a good character death that feels meaningful, it can absolutely propel the story into the stratosphere.

[MisterBoring]

I sort of want to run a tragic post-apocalypse game where the player characters are vat-grown worker humanoids with incredibly short lifespans who are dedicated to cleaning up and rebuilding the world after a disaster while the actual inhabitants of the world are safely sleeping in a bunker somewhere. The tragic story comes out of these characters trying to make the most of their short lives before they inevitably reach time out and melt into goo, or otherwise die violently dealing with one of the many dangers of the wasteland.

When you enter character creation each time you will receive a notice that the chances of your character’s story coming to an end by violence or tragically by simply running out of time are very high. I think it would also be cool to do this on Ares because I have a feeling I could rig up a system on the characters page where each little character portrait has a timer under it and a green border, and when the time runs out, or the character dies sacrificing themselves to let their short term best friends kill the Gnarlbeast of the Voided Lake, it automatically shifts it to red and puts a red skull and crossbones on their character picture.

[Faraday]

@somasatori said in Character Death:

suppose, to me anyway, if you are playing in a game that’s attempting to emulate a TTRPG, regardless of which one, there should be some expectation of character death. Playing D&D, it’s expected that you might die (though admittedly there are many ways to offset that through resurrection and raise dead spells) pretty early on considering low HP.

I don’t come to MUs to emulate a TTRPG experience, but even if I did, I don’t see the association between TTRPGs and PC death that you do. As @Pavel also pointed out, different games have different expectations. I’ve been in plenty of TTRPG campaigns through the decades, from games with my family, to various clubs, to games amongst strangers at Gencon. In all that time, there were exactly two campaigns where PC death was expected. Naturally some of that is selection bias in terms of what RPGs I play and who I play with, but it wasn’t exactly hard to find like-minded people who just want to chill and tell a story.

[MisterBoring]

@somasatori said in Character Death:

If you have a good character death that feels meaningful, it can absolutely propel the story into the stratosphere.

As someone who also enjoys a good character death, I find it sad that there are some people who would refuse even the most epic of story ending character deaths. I understand not wanting your PC to die, especially in an arbitrary or uncool fashion, but if your PC sacrifice ties off an 18 month plot and removes one of the biggest antagonists in the game permanently, choosing not to do that and allow the antagonist to continue attacking the PCs effectively spits on everybody else that worked toward an ending to that plot. (Yes, I realize that’s a very very specific example, and yes I still hold it over the person that did that to this day even though they regularly attend my home tabletop game.)

[Pavel]

Of course, none of what @Faraday or I say should be taken as an indictment on people who enjoy playing a MU like it’s a CoD lobby. We simply wouldn’t play on those games, nor would we expect the other folks to play on games we like. Both types of games should be allowed to exist, so long as expectations are expressed and managed appropriately.

[Roz]

I’ll die on the hill that MUs are not TTRPGs, even when they’re using the bones and theme of a TTRPG system, and that trying to insist on a connection between them has been to the hobby’s detriment. Unless you’re playing on a private game with a small group of people, the fundamental structure of MUs is just too different from a TTRPG table.

[somasatori]

@Roz said in Character Death:

I’ll die on the hill that MUs are not TTRPGs, even when they’re using the bones and theme of a TTRPG system, and that trying to insist on a connection between them has been to the hobby’s detriment. Unless you’re playing on a private game with a small group of people, the fundamental structure of MUs is just too different from a TTRPG table.

No, they’re not TTRPGs, but many of them use the same genre emulation techniques that TTRPGs do, which I feel has had some effect on the way that various MUSHes have played out. I could say you wouldn’t go into a Star Wars game expecting it to have the same tone and theme of a WoD game, which is obvious, but you could say the same thing of other urban fantasy games like Under the Stars. If you play Werewolf the Apocalypse on a MUSH the pastiches and themes of Werewolf are going to be there, because you’re using the mechanics and themes of Werewolf the Apocalypse, as unto the same for Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars FFG, etc. It isn’t a TTRPG exactly, but games that are based on TTRPGs will still usually have some relationship to how the game functions on a player-to-player level. Going back to Werewolf, packs ostensibly work the way they do because it’s an easy way to to bind PCs at the table together. If you encourage packs in your Werewolf MUSH then you’re suggesting that a TTRPG dynamic is part of your game.

That said I kind of feel like this isn’t part of the discussion of player death broadly and could be its own topic altogether haha

Edit to add: although I’ve been on a lot of WoD games and it’s kind of been my main setting for most of my MUSH career, I really do like when people make their own settings and themes and feel like that pulls in a direction that makes it more focused on the MUSH’s theme/story and less around the gamification of the MUSH via whatever RPG book predated it. There’s so much that can be problematic about the grognardian insistence that a MUSH play out like a TTRPG, which I’ll also agree has absolutely been to the detriment of the hobby.

[Muse]

On Liberation I played Lola Darling (at least that’s what she said her name was ) and I frequently had the writing advice ‘kill your Darlings’ in my head. Which I suppose is my weird way of saying, I am team character death.

I also tend to sit a little further back from my characters, and focus on the story they’re a conduit for telling, and not just how they experience the world. And the reality is, good stories involve strife, and I am always hoping my characters root deep enough in others, that if they die, an impact will be felt, and that will also become part of the story.

[MisterBoring]

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

[Roz]

@somasatori That’s just games sharing a setting/theme with its source material, which isn’t the same as emulating the experience of playing that specific TTRPG. Playing a Star Wars MU* is not the same thing as watching the movie. Playing a Mass Effect MU* is definitely not emulating the experience of playing the video game. But I feel like people always trip over this when it comes to TTRPGs in a way that can be actively detrimental to a MU*'s development, because if people are thinking about emulating tabletop on a MU, they’re not thinking about the process from a MU-first perspective.

Playing CoD in tabletop and playing a CoD MU are wildly different experiences. Playing tabletop and playing MUs in general are wildly different, and the challenges they face are also entirely different. The core structure is different: one is a private experience with a small handful of players getting constant DM attention. The other is a persistent lobby of numerous players, many of whom don’t know each other. The systems require a different approach in order to support a persistent environment that players can exist in without constant DM attention.

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

And yet that experience would still be different! Sharing some mechanics doesn’t make the needs and experience the same.

ETA: Baldur’s Gate 3 shares rules with D&D 5e, and yet no one would say that the experience of playing these two things is the same!

[Pavel]

Netball started off as a misinterpretation of the rules of basketball (at least based on an alleged anecdote, it works for metaphorical purposes). They evolved to be different sports with different practices and experiences even if they came from the same root. But they’re more similar to each other than they are to, say, snooker. And those three are all more similar to each other than to Formula 1 Racing, even though they all fall under the category of sport.

So while MUing isn’t precisely TTRPG, it’s a close relation that comparisons can be made so long as the inherent differences are acknowledged.

ETA: To, hopefully, simplify: MUing and TTRPGs are cousins. There’s lots of “genetic” overlap, but there’s also lots of difference. So one isn’t necessarily wrong to say they’re in the same ballpark depending on where you’re measuring from.

[MisterBoring]

@Roz said in Character Death:

Sharing some mechanics doesn’t make the needs and experience the same.

I think that depends on the person in question. I go into any RP situation be it LARP, tabletop, MU, or forum / pbem game looking to participating in the telling of a rewarding collaborative story.

[Faraday]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I think it’s odd when people say MUs aren’t TTRPGs, but I could take the rules of almost any MU, print them out and run a tabletop group with them.

You can play TT with literally any rules or no rules (diceless/freeform) though. Many TT systems are adapted to LARPs too. So yes, they are mostly offshoots of the same family tree, but they are all very different experiences IMHO.

[Third Eye]

@Ashkuri said in Character Death:

Killing off your beloved character and making yourself and all your friends cry is some of the best fun you can have out here.

[Jumpscare]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

your PC sacrifice ties off an 18 month plot and removes one of the biggest antagonists in the game permanently

Someone did that in Silent Heaven. The character was absolutely outmatched, but their sacrifice gave the other PCs just enough time to recover and defeat the big bad.

After the event, I created the “Blaze of Glory” role in Discord just for them. It’s a special tag that has no effect, but it carries a lot of meaning.

[MisterBoring]

@Jumpscare I don’t know why people don’t jump at those chances more. If I was running a game and someone had an amazing send off death idea for their character, I’d do everything I can to make it have the impact of the comet in Deep Impact.

[Pavel]

@MisterBoring said in Character Death:

I don’t know why people don’t jump at those chances more.

I do. They very rarely appear, and when they do, there’s no guarantee it’ll matter. People want their decisions, and their deaths, to matter. So going out in a blaze of glory is a risk.

ETA: This is not the reason, but it is a reason. There are likely many.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in Character Death:

I do. They very rarely appear, and when they do, there’s no guarantee it’ll matter.

Good point. Also, it fundamentally prevents me from doing anything else with that character, which as I said above - is pretty much the whole reason I’m there.

I liken it to how ensemble TV shows rarely kill off their main leads. Occasionally they’ll do it as a shocking twist or something, but mostly they only do it when people leave the show. I realize there are those who prefer the Game of Thrones model where nobody’s safe. They like feeling like the characters are in real peril. It makes the show feel more gritty since the main chars aren’t protected by plot armor.

And to be clear - there’s nothing wrong with liking that. I’m not trying to wrongfun anyone. All I want is a little non-judgemental understanding that there are those of us who get attached to characters - both in TV and in MUs - and who don’t like having to get invested all over again when they get bumped off randomly.

[Pavel]

@Faraday There’s also the fact that in order for these blazes of glory to be as impactful as they obviously have been, they have to be rare. If it was the Done Thing, then they’d just be another MU story trope that we roll our eyes at.

I’m not against character’s dying, but I’d rather be Boromir than Ned Stark. But ideally, I’d be Richard Sharpe.

[somasatori]

@Faraday said in Character Death:

And to be clear - there’s nothing wrong with liking that. I’m not trying to wrongfun anyone. All I want is a little non-judgemental understanding that there are those of us who get attached to characters - both in TV and in MUs - and who don’t like having to get invested all over again when they get bumped off randomly.

I did also want to note that my being pro-character death (or Game of Thrones model) is also not intended to wrongfun anyone else. I think it’s great to get attached to your character. Passion for your hobby is awesome! It sucks to be invested in something and have it taken away and it’s definitely not wrong. IMO, the only “right way” to MUSH is to be an enthusiastic participant and contributor in however you and your friends want to tell a story and in whichever way works best to achieve that goal, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else OOC!