Role Playing Games: Killing Player Characters
A couple weeks ago, I noticed Topher writing about his sole experience of playing role playing games. It was in the comments of someone else's post about Top Secret. Basically what happened is that he died only minutes into the game and ended up entertaining himself for the next 2 hours while the other people played on.
It reminded me of one of my formative moments in playing games. In high school, a local computer store turned into a bit of a hangout for the people who regularly called a local BBS (run by the owner of the store). Eventually we ended up playing RPG's at the store on Saturday afternoons.
During one of these sessions, I made a character only to have him destroyed minutes into the game. I spent the next three hours on the BBS, fuming slightly and waiting for the game to end.
Unlike Topher, it was not my first time playing so I didn't end up leaving with the impression that this was what happened every time. Like Topher, I left with the impression that I had not had a good time. This impression wasn't at all mollified by the GM explaining the reason for letting it happen. Basically, it fit with the mood he was trying to create and letting my character just get hurt or allowing me to come in with a new character wouldn't have fit with the mood he was trying to create.
In fairness, he was right about it not fitting the mood, but, I decided immediately that whatever my artistic intentions with regard to role playing games, I would have to do it without killing characters. People come to these games to game and not to sit for 3 hours doing nothing.
Since then I've come to realize that this rule doesn't fit all situations. In fact, I'd argue that as a result I've made some mistakes as a GM.
An Example: Top Secret
It's the end of a summer long Top Secret campaign. The players have made it to the secret underwater lair of an organization that has been trying to start nuclear war. The leader has a device in his hand that will (if he but presses a button) rain nuclear destruction on certain carefully chosen cities and will probably end civilization since the US and USSR will inevitably retaliate against each other. Trouble is, blowing him away will likely result in everyone's death since gunfire will cause a leak.
The obvious solution is to wrestle with him for control of the device. The problem is that he can press the button long before they cross the room to him.
At this point, there is a problem and it partially results from my GM'ing style. I tend to set up situations that seem interesting to me and give no thought at all to the solutions. When you think it through they've got a choice: save the world and probably die themselves or die and save the world.
At any rate, that's the most obvious choice. Some players were all for dying. Some were against. Play came to a stop as people debated what would happen next and play ground to a complete halt with at least one player appealling to me to provide a solution.
In an effort to get play moving again without automatically killing everyone, I had one of the non-player characters with them (who had an outrageous accuracy with a particular pistol) shoot the device. Figuring that hitting the device slowed the bullet down enough to not instantly destroy the integrity of the base's walls, we went on from there.
Even now, I'm not particularly happy with that one.
Another Example: Magus
It's the second to the last episode of a Magus campaign. This one is set at a university in northern Michigan where contemporary mages are trained (for the curious, the campaign idea predates Harry Potter).
It's summer break and as with each summer break in the campaign, I've had the characters do a longer story arc off campus. In the tradition of Dante and C. S. Lewis (but minus the quality of either), this story arc ended up in Hell.
Gabriel attacked an enemy of his family in a way that could have resulted in his death. In fact, Joe, Gabriel's player, explained to me that he was totally okay with that and it would be an appropriate end to the character. I wasn't sure what to do. Here's why:
1. Having him die would leave Joe without a character for the last game of the campaign, something that just seemed wrong.
2. Major metaphysical issues that I hadn't thought through. If you're alive, can you die in Hell? I hadn't thought out that particular rule of the universe and it seemed too big an issue for me to decide just then.
Here's what happened: Gabriel survived the destruction going on around him. That was okay, but dramatically it would have been a lot better to have him die and I regret that. Probably what I should have done is cut off the episode just at the moment of Gabriel's action, thereby stalling for time, allowing me to hopefully come to a better conclusion. It would have been a great cliffhanger for one and, generally speaking, time allows me to come to the better choice than the spur of the moment.
I'm pretty sure that Joe wrote about this incident on a blog at one point, but I wasn't able to find it anywhere (Joe, if you're reading, feel free to point me to a link).
Conclusions
I don't have any particularly novel conclusions about this issue. My bias continues to be that characters shouldn't be killed thoughtlessly. In general, it should only happen if the player's okay with it, but doing it well is determined by the details of the situation.
All I know for sure is that it's something that I'll need to work on in the future.