The Death of a Character

[valmarus]

Honestly if you feel nothing over the character dying (even if it's a simply "Wow that was fun/epic!" or "Hahahaha well that was stupid.") then the character either had no personality (I mean think about games, people often say such and such a character is anoying. They can't be anoying without a personality.), you weren't playing a very good game (this is more in relation to the "wow that was fun/dumb", granted that is more about the circumstance than the character but you may come to miss them after if they were well developed and no I don't mean high level) or you're just devoid of any emotion.

This is why people think roleplayers are pathetic, because we talk about things that happened for years to come, what they don't get is that it was either so fun or invoked some other emotion which is why it's so memorable.

So in short. No it's not abnormal to get attached to characters and be sad when they die.

[Vulgarth1]

If the character died a meaningless death, I pop a stiffy.

Naw, just kidding, but seriously? It satisfies a tiny itch in my noggin to know there is no way for me to draw their death out into some overdramaticized and overblown ceremonial...thing! I don't trust myself not to ham it up, really.

[xenon]

Character death scenes are the reason I put so much effort into making a reader/player invested in my character. Unless I'm planning on having them make it to the end, I'm usually planning a character's death scene several hundred posts before it happens, haha.

It also adds a lot to the story as a whole because if a main character dies, then the reader will buy deeper into the next danger/action sequence, because no one is safe. Anything could happen. And that alone, is a reason to kill off your favourite characters.

But beyond that, I go back to my first point... it's the pay off to a great character. Nothing evokes more emotion for the reader, more development for surviving characters, more poetry for the writer...

Gotta love a good death scene. Or hate it. So long as there's a big reaction, it's usually worth it.

P.S. Easiest way to sell a good villian is to have him kill a main character.

[Flamelord]

I never dramaticize my death scenes. Let somebody else have to write the emotional funeral/remembrance thing

[Foster]

I never dramaticize my death scenes. Let somebody else have to write the emotional funeral/remembrance thing

Oh, right, whenever a player drops from an RP I'm in, I consider their characters either dead, or missing and presumed dead. Same goes for inconvienent-plothole NPCs that need to be 'disappear' from the rest of the RP.

One time I inner-monolouged a flashback recounting the massacre of an entire village the players were inside just a few hours ago.

Well, actually we were evacuating them out by helicopter... and I decided that one of them was infected... the rest is pretty obvious... except the uninfected didn't all die right away when they got dumped into the sea with the infected and dying....

Plus a player-character died, and a bunch of other NPCs each player helped-out individually... One of my players gave away their SMG to an elderly couple... by the end of the day it was found with a quarter-mag of ammo left and a bent-as-fuck folding-stock... No sign of the elderly-couple...

Of course, when searching for remains, you'll sometimes come across a part that you DO recognize. Just enough to ID who it came from. Like a wedding-ring on a mauled hand, or a pair of dog-tags in a puddle of blood and tripe, or a very uniquily pair of boots/gloves... or customized helmet (name, personal photoes, etc; on inside headband)...

[Hellis]

My favorite character death was not my own. But my buddies. I was playing the badguy for the scene and we collabed the death of his and another character. And it wa the most glorius blaze of glory moment i have ever seen written in a rp. Ultimately snubbing the bad guy and foring him deeper into insanity and creating a massive surge of character development for everyone else.

And If i like the character, i most likely planned ahead that in case he dies.. he has to go out on a way that meshes with the overall themes and feeling of a game. And usually that ends up being grizzly and far from heroic deaths as my characters are usually very human, and rather sad.

[Empyre]

Don't get me wrong, if I put a lot of development into a character it's quite heart-breaking when I have to kill them off. However the more involved they become with the story, the more enthusiastic I am to kill them off should the story call for it. I like the great impact it achieves and how it motivates everyone around them, if anything I become a little orgasmic. I'm not a serial character murder though don't get me wrong, I won't kill anyone without a purpose, but I can kill any of my characters without question.

[SilverwindBlade]

I've never had one of my own characters die, because I have good GM's who don't kill PC's off without agreeing with the player to do so first. I've made it look like a character has died before, and have them come back later, which has worked out pretty spectacularly so far in the game I've done it in.

As for killing off other players' characters - I've recently done that with FOUR players who dropped out of a game I'm running, simply because they just left without a word, in the middle of a battle. So fuck 'em: they are dead.
Otherwise, I approach it the same as I'd like to be approached: a players' character is the only thing they are in total control of in the GM's world, and taking that control away from them is unfair.
If they want their character to die, then they need to agree it with me first, and I'll arrange a suitable way for it to happen.
Unless of course they're just fucking around and not really playing in the game with the right spirit, trolling, or not getting into the story-verse properly, in which case, the player gets booted, and the character suffers a sudden case of concrete-elephant-on-head.

[Hagazussa]

It depends allot why the character dies. If the character die fulfilling their life goal or in a heroic way to save the rest of the group, the damsel in distress, or whatever then their death can be a great dramatic moment in the story which can really feel fulfilling and can be a great end to a story. I had a character in Mage the Ascension once named Marion Alice a Celestial Chorus Nephandi hunter. Now she begun hating everything she considered evil including vampires but though the story and I played her for a good while she met a vampire she fell in love with and eventually it was discovered that unless an ancient talisman was going to destroy the world she and this vampire had to sacrifice themselves to keep the artifact docile. Marion died in her lovers arms saving the entire world which is exactly what she would have wanted, now that was very satisfying and was a great end to her story. I however played Vampire the Masquerade once where I played a Tremere Kindred who also ironically was named Marion, I swear I have only used the name for my character like two or three times out of the hundred of characters I have had, anyway I got to play her for 20 minutes, she walked from the airport, got attacked by werewolves and had no chance to defend herself before she was dead, just like that completely random and meaningless and after I had spent hours on end creating her, then I got so fed up that I left that gaming group. I think character deaths can be great dramatic moments but there have to be reason behind them or they can be quite annoying.

[BloodVendetta]

It all depends (as everyone else has aid lol), but it's always a little sad. If it helps move along the plot, though, it can definitely be worth it.