High Stakes: Character Death and Injury in Roleplay

[Luft]

This is a question I've posed myself multiple times throughout the course of my RP career. Within tabletop, the concept of a character being injured or even outright dying isn't so much an issue. Sometimes you just get terrible luck with a bad roll and your character gets hurt. But with freeform RP, be that the style of roleplay we mainly write here on the guild, the idea of a character being killed off or injured is left to the player rather than fate/the luck of the dice. And when it comes to roleplays such as zombie apocalypses, low fantasy medieval, etc. (just to give a few examples), this can be a problem, where the danger and the possibility of injury/death is very real yet the character cast generally tends to remain unscathed albeit perhaps shaken at most.

So, my question is: how exactly should character injury and death be handled in a roleplay where it is a possibility? Is your only option, without resulting to dice that is, is to hope your players aren't shy of their characters potentially getting hurt?

[alexfangtalon]

I wouldn't know the best way to handle this. But I do know that in those scenarios, if the rp lasts long enough, there will be a good chance I will eventually have some sort of injury/issue applied to my character. I do it cause it's fun and forces me to think differently. It makes me have to write differently at times. I just find it fun to have obstacles for my characters to deal with.

[Yam I Am]

A lot of tabletop games handle this via rolling on Injury tables whenever a player character's HP reaches zero. In many cases like these, losing an eye or a limb will prove a hard lesson to learn and will still noticeably set your character back for the mishap, but it's less a punishment than having them kick the bucket for good. After all, it's hard to roleplay the repercussions when you're dead.

Adding randomness to it doesn't tend to be something that irritates many players if it's clearly established in the rules first; It's only if you add in randomness where there previously was none that people tend to feel that the cause was unfair.

Depending on the tone of the campaign, there are times when this is more appropriate and when it's less appropriate. Sometimes, a crippling injury will put even a storied MMA fighter out of a career, and there's not much else they can do aside from turn over a new leaf. Other times, you can go right to the doctor and get yourself patched up just fine, leaving you with just some scars and bruises that make good party talk. Lessons learned the hard way tend not to be forgotten any time soon - but what lessons did you learn from getting your ass beat? Well, that's where the fun of it is, isn't it?

[Bork Lazer]

If a limb gets chopped off in my fantasy RP, I'll just have it resurrected into a merchant that flops around the lands and communicates in sign language.

[Obscene Symphony]

For me, forum RP scratches a very different itch than tabletop. Players enter tabletop games content with the idea that random chance will play a big role in their journey; in forum rp, the journey is up to the players and GM to plan out and design themselves.

To that end, character death and injury is usually planned out well in advance and serves a specific purpose in the story, rather than being unexpected like it would be in tabletop. To use someone else's example, your MMA fighter wouldn't get injured and leave you figuring out where to take his story next, but rather you would probably have suggested the injury yourself because you want to take your MMA fighter through that lifestyle change and explore how it affects him.

If I were GMing, that's how I'd handle it, though I think you'll find this issue breaks pretty cleanly on tabletop vs non-tabletop people lines, lol.

[BrokenPromise]

So, my question is: how exactly should character injury and death be handled in a roleplay where it is a possibility? Is your only option, without resulting to dice that is, is to hope your players aren't shy of their characters potentially getting hurt?

@Luft

Really depends on how the GM wants to roll with it. I'll explain how I typically do it.

First we need to decide if the RP could use such things. A feel good fantasy setting probably doesn't want to concern itself with things like permanent disfigurement or death. The stakes in those sorts of stories are usually pretty low or superficial, where the plot is more a vehicle to make the players feel powerful. In my own opinion, this is kind of boring and also why I don't participate in those types of RPs. But they do exist, and those that enjoy them would not want their world tarnished with heavy stuff like that.

For the bulk of RPs that are prime for things like bodily harm and death, it's a case by case basis. It should be known that not everything carries the same kind of weight across stories. In realistic settings, death is permanent and non-reversible. Though you have other settings where death is little more than a power nap that a spell can wake them up from. In these more fantastical settings, proper rules for magic need to be put in place to ensure that these powers feel wonderous, but aren't a get out of jail card for everything. This can be done by making more severe wounds heal slower, or resurrection is only possible if you have all parts of someone's corpse.

If I choose to play with character death/harm, I'm up front with the players about it. I also let them know the likelyhood of their characters getting mirked if it's relevant. Most people who join the RP do so because they want to see their characters challenged and even die to something they can't overcome. I typically don't have to watch them too closely, but power gamers arise from time to time.

I should also note that play-by-post and tabletop may both be roleplaying games, but they are entirely different animals. Tabletop is a bit more game, and as such is enforced with many rules and even uses dice for number generation. Play by post is better suited for story telling and gives the players and GM greater freedom over what's happening. When my character has to go fight a dragon, the challenge isn't thinking up a strategy that will increase the outcomes of winning, it's creating a story worth reading. That never happens in stories when the characters are never adequately challenged.

[nasty]

Before I get into it, just a quick heads up that I'll be abbreviating "character death and/or permanent injury" as "CD/PI".

Forgive my bluntness, but character death is completely unecessary. I'll elaborate.

There's this idea in many roleplaying circles - whether that be PBP, TTRPG, or LARP - that have this idea floating around that CD/PI is an inherently "mature", "gritty", or "dark" topic. So much so that certain spaces I have been in simply refuse to question the idea. There's an assumption that it's default, almost necessary to make a game mature. And, of course, maturity is seen as a default goal to strive towards. So CD/PI is just on by default.

And honestly, that assumption is flat out horseshit. CD/PI is a tool, nothing more. Now, I have been in spaces that deal with it tastefully. I don't wanna say that it's always wrong. It's not. It can be wonderful when done well. Buuuut, on the other hand, more often than not I see it used by GMs as a tool to stomp on players.

But I digress.

Basically what ends up happening is that people will attempt to include CD/PI without questioning whether it's beneficial or necessary, or even better off without. They will include a disclaimer in the OOC or a spiel before session 0, and assume they're fine to just kill characters off as they choose. Worse yet is when there's no disclaimer, but that's obvious.

The problem with the disclaimer is that there's often no room for discussion. The attitude of "the GM is god" takes the front seat as they get to dunk in random situations where characters could die on a whim, usually without any discussion. Characters are subjected to CD/PI in entirely meaningless ways, and players are left with fucked plans, a character who they don't want to play, or just a dead character. They had no input, and the GM will often excuse themself by just saying "yeah but it's part of the RP", as if that makes the player feel better.

To make it worse, other players often repeat things such as "it's an opportunity to grow", or "it was an interesting story moment". These are both definite benefits of CD/PI when done well, but not when it's forced upon a player by a god GM. Effectively, the players end up pressuring each other into just accepting shitty GM calls.

What I'm trying to get at here is that CD/PI is often used as an excuse for abuse. A god GM fucks over a player, the player feels upset, then the community dismisses those very real feelings because "muh immersion". This is most prominent in LARPs, but definitely extends into the PBP and TTRPG communities as well. GMs insisting on CD/PI has been the root of many RP horror stories, and ultimately always will be. It's this weird paradox wherein the believing "CD/PI is mature" makes people play immaturely so they can say "wow look at how mature this game is, we have CD/PI!"

---

Anyway, sorry for the essay. CD/PI can be awesome when done right, so to actually answer your question.

I think that regardless of the medium, CD/PI should be a discussion between any and all relevant parties. If a character could die, talk about it. Engage with each other. Talk about whether they're comfortable with it, be mindful of triggers they might have, and make it clear that it's not the only outcome. Ask about plans they might have and whether they're more interested in exploring those, or the potential consequences of CD/PI.

Some great tools to use before starting any RP is the "same page tool" and the "RPG consent checklist". Both can be found via google pretty easily. Talk to your players as a group to see if they're genuinely interested in exploring it as an option, and respect it if they're not.

Ultimately it just comes down to respecting players, and making sure that you're not godmodding as a GM. Roleplay is a community storytelling experience, so the players really ought to be just as important in storytelling as the GM.

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TL;DR immersion is less important than other people's feelings, so just talk about CD/PI. Don't force people into it because people have trauma. You don't need CD/PI to be a good writer or GM.

[Kassarock]

So I'm just gonna talk from some personal experience here as someone who has had multiple characters killed off in play-by-post RPs.

I like injury and character death in a lot my RPing. I think it adds stakes and an element of risk to the whole thing, provides opportunities for characters to grow etc. etc. Most of the time, I am more than happy to put the fate of my own characters in the hands of the GM and let them decide how badly injured I am at the end of an encounter. The unpredictability of the whole thing adds a bit of spice to the roleplaying for me.

However, every time that one of my characters have been killed, it has been at my instigation. I have never had a GM turn around to me and say: "I want to kill your character." It's always been the other way around, me going to my GM and saying: "Hey, I really think we should kill my character."

Why do I do this? Normally its because I think the story calls for it, sometimes that means the story the GM is trying to tell, sometimes that means the story I am trying to tell with the character. At other times I just get tired to a character and want to send them off with something of a memorable bang for the other players. Dramatic deaths are in my experience a helluva lot more fun than slowly losing interest and ghosting people.

So in answer to your question, I do think the best thing you can hope for is finding a GM and a group of players that want to embrace character death and aren't afraid of treating their characters roughly. Because enforced or coerced character deaths are no where near as amazing as the glorious fuck-yous and tragic swansongs that can be crafted between player and GM when both them are fully there for killing off a character.

[PrinceAlexus]

It all depends on if players have consented to plan, plot or real risk of charceter deaths etc.

If its on the label , you know whats in the can.

Randomly throwing it in or using as an added extra without agreement, nope.

Entirely situational.