We all spend some significant time as our characters, and most of us can grow rather attached. However, there is a point where someone has to die. I'm sure most of us have felt it before: and RP is dragging, maybe some combat is going on, but nothing is happening the reason should be obvious: the end result for a real fight is for somebody to die. We can't kill other people's characters, but we should be willing to let ours die. The question is: how do we let go of our characters?
My ideas are rudimentary: plan for them to die to begin with, use them in multiple RPs, have them come back, etc. However, I would like to hear some input, maybe see an article or two. Anyone have any ideas?
I don't really consider my characters as people so I don't feel as guilty when they kill them. Well, maybe two...bummer. But anyway, you know a character has to die when the plot tells you they do. If their mere existence is dragging the plot down you have to plan their demise. Or maybe something about their death would open the door for a bunch of new plots.
It's not just hard for some people to lose their characters, sometimes others just refuse to allow someone else to die. They can't help but feel like they've failed if something bad happens in their game.
In several games, playing as the villain no less, I've left obvious openings for just such an event and found people unwilling or uncertain to make that final lunge. Maybe there's a guilt factor that sets in because the person about to make the kill wouldn't want to lose their own character and thus is reluctant to "take" one from another. (Of course, then there's the other players who try and murder you on each and every post but that's another problem altogether)
Although most people have no problem with killing off their characters for further development, many people believe that they will be out of the RP once their character -the entity that ties them to the RP- has fallen. Other, such as myself, are too kind/scared to actually initiate the final blow against another character, because they feel that they might push out that RPer from the RP, because of my first reason.
Another idea may be that they grow attached to the characters, and think of them as friends (albeit imaginary friends) and refuse to witness a death of their "friends." Yet another may be that they are extremely selfish, and do not wish their character to die because it feels like losing. It feels like one has lost the game. I, personally, wouldn't mind killing off my characters, but I don't want to do all the work. To make it realistic, I make them fight for life against an antagonist, but accidentally make a large mistake. Whether or not the antagonist takes it is the main problem.
However, I strongly believe in my first reason: People believe that they will be out of the RP once their character, who ties them to the RP, dies. This is easily avoided with multiple characters, but not every RP allows multiple characters...
I find killing off characters kind of hard, probably because I pour a little of myself into most of them. It feels more like I'm dieing then Jake Pemar is sometimes.
I don't know what to put here right now.
I feel that in looking at things from a writing perspective, not just a RP point of view can help. I wouldn't just kill off my character just like that. I'd look at everything he has given, everything he could give and look at the current situation in which they are in. I try to kind of balance everything up. Of course, if it all weighs up and it's not worth killing off my own character for that drama and spice that is needed in the storyline, then it's difficult to decide what you think about it. After all, I could feel perhaps that someone else's character should die, but I think unless I felt incredibly strongly about it, I couldn't just tell them to go die...
Death... A fantastic plot device indeed.
"Knowing, knowing -- sometimes there has to be trusting too...
I can see you aren't ready and I know there is a time and a place, a place and a time. I might be lowly, but even I know what to say and when not to say it. Yet the time might come for knowing things, and when the need of knowing is nigh, you'll come to know then what I do now..."
Some of my best role playing experiences have actually come from dying. In a tabletop scenario, where dice dictate success or failure, that possibility is always lingering adding an essential spice and dramatic tension to any storyline. That excitement is part of the enjoyment but when you're role playing you can feel so much more, elation when you succeed at something you weren't supposed to be able to and shock and despair when things go wrong.
In our game of Rifts, during the second last adventure of the series, one player proposed to another who also happened to be my love interest and was the main reason I had become one of the good guys. In keeping in character as the dark sorceress went completely psychotically insane.
I betrayed the group at the wedding and after a vicious drawn out battle was slain and had my soul consigned to oblivion via a Runeblade. I was dead, kaput and even if it were possible, for obvious reasons, nobody was interested in bringing me back.
Still, there was still one final adventure left, the big finale, the climactic conclusion to an entire summer's worth of role playing for eight hours a day. The problem was that I was dead and you just can't insert a new character in at the final chapter of a book. Why are they there suddenly? Why weren't they fighting the good fight earlier? Why are they willing to stand with a whole bunch of strangers against impossible odds?
It just felt wrong so I chose not to create a new character. I spent the last week of the campaign just being dead, just trying not to interrupt the action since realistically dead people don't really get involved much. It also hurt the group. Without my character's magic they group was hard pressed for victory plus it changed the dynamic. Without my cocky banter the final adventure felt more serious.
The final session was the most amazing. Everyone got to take a moment and epilogue their characters, what they did in the following years, if they got married, and how they lived happily ever after and then they got to me lying face down on the carpet. They had to skip over my epilogue because I simply didn't have one. That story had already been told. It really felt like someone had died and the story became that much more real. They survived, I didn't. It could have happened to any of them and there was a sigh of relief.
So yes, definitely, a character's death can really affect a story.
QFTOriginally Posted by cloudfall
Why is it none of my RPs ever have anything like this kind of epicness?
I don't know what to put here right now.
*blushes* I'm somewhat hardcore. I don't know any other roleplayer who's laid face down in a sprawl and roleplayed a corpse for forty hours while the dice rolling went on around them.
In addition, in today's culture it's hard to find people who want to role play that much when there are video games and movies to enjoy. The one thing I miss being a teenager was the free time. At my age it's hard to find even a single group who can get together once a week and I've never heard of one devote an entire summer to a game.
-and oddly I've never gotten into LARPing.
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