Dealing With Character Death In RPGs

How do you deal with it when your character is suddenly killed in a gaming session?

Well of course it depends on the session. Death in a one shot, especially a horror game is an expected inconvenience. Hopefully it happens towards the end of the session so you don’t feel your time was wasted. Maybe you will get to play the bad guys for the rest of the session or a transformed version of your lost character as a zombie, ghost, or werewolf.

Death in a long running campaign may be much more profound. It will certainly affect the other characters in the story, possibly even affecting the other players. There may be feelings of grief or guilt… Feelings that something could have been done to avoid the outcome. Certainly blame and finger pointing seems to be common, which can make people defensive and guarded. A discussion needs to take place addressing how to integrate a new character into the story. How are they introduced to the team? How much do they know about the goals and experiences of the group? Why are they accepted by the team? And keep in mind that the new character NEEDS to be accepted. Even if your character doesn’t trust the newcomer it should be represented with in game tension, not by rejecting the player’s new character from the group. We are after all, just people gathered around a table trying to have fun telling a story together.

Character death is much less common in modern game design. Many games have way to spend a Destiny point or toss a Fate chip and declare that a death blow wasn’t lethal. Modern games also may have mechanics that represent character growth from losing a team mate. Maybe you could change a Trait or Aspect to represent the sense of loss, which will have mechanical weight in the game. Talk about these options with the game master and the rest of the group after the session. The sudden loss of a character can be a great plot device for a story. Decisions have to be made on how this will affect the forward momentum of the plot. Maybe the remaining characters will be driven to complete their mission so the loss was not in vain. Maybe they will re-assess thier goals and decide to work towards a different end, possibly seeking revenge on the killer or even on their employer for “getting their friend killed”.

Of course in great hero stories death is often a temporary condition. Fantasy characters can sometimes be raised from the dead by magic (and a hefty donation to the local clergy). Science fiction characters can be healed by super science or rebuilt as cyborgs or clones. Superhero characters come back from the dead in all manner of mind baffling ways including all of the above, but often by the discovery that they didn’t actually die when it appeared they had! Always remember that when you are facing character death, the game master may have some ideas on getting the character back in the story. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. These games only work when we communicate, but don’t make the game slam to a halt to pontificate over the future of you dead hero… After all, everyone else is still trying to have fun too. The death of a character shouldn’t mean the session is over, unless the group seems to agree it’s a good time to start talking about how things are going to play out from here.

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When I started gaming in the 80’s character death happened a few times each session. No kidding. Characters often started adventuring with only enough hit points to survive one or two hits from the enemy. Healing was scarce or non-existent in most games. Danger was scaled by location, not scaled to your group’s capabilities. If you went too far in the wrong direction (especially down) you would often lose a character or two before you could run away fast enough to get back to a safer area. In games like Call of Cthulhu you could almost certainly expect to lose a character if you ended up face to face with the horrors of the mythos.

For example, in Dungeons & Dragons a typical character had an armor class that left goblins and orcs needing a 15 or better on 1d20 to score a hit. They started with about 6 hit points compared to the dozens of enemies they would face, dealing 1d6 damage per hit. If your character was lucky enough to come out of an encounter alive they needed to stay that way until they could find healing. Clerics wouldn’t get spells until 2nd level, then they could heal 1d6+1 hit points with cure light wounds ONCE per day. There was no way to rest and heal outside of town unless you could camp for a few days, but wandering monster tables usually prevented that. And even as you grew in power and hit points, there were always traps and special attacks that called for a saving throw. Typically this meant rolling a 12 or higher on 1d20, with failure resulting in death by poison, petrification, decapitation, falling into spikes hundreds of feet below, being submersed in acid or lava, squashed by a falling 10′ x 10′ x 10′ stone block, having a parasite of some kind burrow into your heart or brain, being dissolved into a hungry blob or jelly monster, going insane… I’m sure by now I’ve made my point.

So how did we deal with it?

Characters typically had hirelings and followers to take a few hits for them for staters. But players typically had multiple characters too. Sometimes you would even be running two or more characters at the same time, but most players had a second character back in town or up on the star ship. Everyone usually had a head full of ideas of what type of character they would like to play next. Sometimes losing a character was a welcome invitation to try out those ideas.

Before any game begins you should ask your game master if it is likely you will have to deal with character death, and if character death is permanent. In my own games it’s always on the table. If a situation ISN’T lethal I make sure my players know it. Typically their characters assess a threat as non-lethal but dangerous or time consuming. In combat an opponent might be obviously pulling punches or even come right out and say “I’m not going to kill you…”. But other than that my groups know, if they take risks then their character’s lives are on the line. I think knowing this helps avoid the real life bleed through of emotions when it’s time to “roll up a new character”. Again communication is key, and it’s worth repeating a third time… We are all just people gathered together to tell stories and have fun. So be good to each other, and keep gaming.

How do you and your group handle character death?

Ravenloft Scions

Ravenloft scions

What if the people who thought they escaped Ravenloft never really did? What if instead, mental projections manifested from their thoughts and ideas reached out from Ravenloft near areas where the dimensional boundaries were weak? These thoughts could be made real by the same reality altering powers which first spawned Barovian from Strahd in the first place. These are the energies which the plane uses to shape and reform itself to accommodate all the new lost souls who get pulled in. The powers which manifest the mists, allowing the sentient pocket dimension to tap other worlds for more souls.

So the mental projection, a perfect facsimile of the character, emerges from the mists feeling they have escaped from Ravenloft! But have they? There would still be the original soul, trapped in Ravenloft. That character would emerge from the mists back in demiplane of dread. Possibly in another location. They may not even realize they were still trapped. When they figured it out, it would just seem something went wrong, and they never really escaped. What they wouldn’t know is that no one ever does.

Instead, whenever a character leaves the mists there is a chance they send out a fragment of themselves, a scion, to another reality. The first scion would presumably be sent to the character’s home plane. It would be an exact duplicate of the character and no mortal magic or science could discern otherwise. However, each new one would be different than the last and be sent to a different reality. But the more times the characters try to escape, the more scions they make. The differences would start becoming more noticeable, different backgrounds, social positions, powers, alignment, items, etc.

The Lords of Ravenloft would rarely escape the mists, if ever. These are exceptionally evil souls which the Demiplane of Dread feeds on to create new realms. If the characters were to ever run into a scion of a lord of Ravenloft it would most defiantly exist in its home reality, and would be a perfect copy of the original entity. Deviation in the scions only occurs after multiple copies.

Others, including heroes of great renown, might try escaping again and again. Eventually giving up and submitting to a life in Ravenloft, waging war with its dark pawns. Each time they tried to escape they would have created another scion of themselves, in yet another reality. All these alternates scattered among the multiverse explains so many remarkably similar characters.

For example, Fistandulus from Krynn, Elminster from Faerun, and Etienne D’Ambreville from Mystara. All three of these characters are ridiculously powerful wizards with direct relations to gods of magic, avatars, chosen ones, etc. Consider the possibility that these characters are all scions of the same archmage trying to escape Ravenloft. We know that Etienne and his entire family came through an amber mist from Averoigne, a gothic horror France. And we know that they then disappeared again with their keep Chateau D’Ambreville through the same mist, only to later reappeared with a new chateau similar but different to the previous one. What if they never really escaped Averoigne? What if Averoigne is a realm of Ravenloft (based on the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith) and each time the residents of Averoigne thought they escaped, they instead they created another duplicate? Arch-mages across the multiverse who are immortal avatars of magic.

Sometimes a character in Ravenloft dies while there are scions out there in other realities. The demi-plane would recall one of its scions, typically the lowest generation, to take the character’s place. The scion would eventually realize, if not immediately, they are back in Ravenloft. Most often with anyone who was nearby at the time. They would probably start looking to escape again, possibly succeeding in creating more scions. This constant loop serves to draw more souls into the mist for the demiplane to feed and grow.

Compare the original Ravenloft adventures for the first edition of the game to the second edition material, and the third edition material, fourth edition, fifth edition. Ravenloft keeps changing and growing, feeding on the fears of its inhabitants and shaping itself to the evils of its Lords. Keep in mind however, the Demiplane of Dread doesn’t always follows the rules and nothing here is beyond its power to overcome. Weird things can happen, and if Ravenloft has need of a situation it could create the conditions whether it follows this format or not.

I think this not only explains a lot of things, like why people who have been to Ravenloft always end up going back, but it also gives to potential to create alternate versions of characters and even run dead characters by switching alternates.

These ideas come from partly from Marvel comics, with Kang and his alternate selves, or all the alternate spider-man incarnations. Partly from Star Trek with its alternate realities and the energy ripple in Star Trek: Generations. And of course ideas developed in countless games of Ravenloft game ran by fantastic DMs, including Dan Walsh, Mike Paulhus, Rob Cast, Ron Studley, Eddy Boswell-Correa, Evan Johnson, and others.

Here is an example; In a game run by Dan Walsh, we had the chance to escape the Mists of Ravenloft. There were two portals out, but only one was real. One portal led to a grassy hill, on a sunny field, with a peaceful hamlet in the background. The other one led to a raging storm-tossed sea; in the distance was a ship which didn’t look to have much of a chance against the storm. The heroes argued about which portal to take and ended up parting ways. The ones who went through the village portal found themselves still in Ravenloft. The scene was darker on the other side, the sky was gray and the buildings were worn. The mists are cruel and deceiving. The others found that they had escaped onto a ship, but that ship would eventually make its way back to the Demiplane of Dread. Ravenloft never really lets go of you.

None of this is meant to challenge any copyrights or intellectual property. I am just a very grateful fan who loves gaming and sci-fi/fantasy. Thank you to all the original creators and to the excellent Game Masters I have had the privilege to play under.