Killing PCs

So, on to my question. In regard to PC mortality, Sorcerer is not quite as freewheeling as Prince Valiant, but nowhere near as harsh as even Cyberpunk. What do you guys think of that? How many characters have you "lost," and in what games? How many PCs have you killed as a GM, and how and why? Let's discuss this in some detail.

(Interestingly, I killed my first PC -- well, ever, I think -- in a Call of Cthulhu story last February. A couple others don't count, like the Hong Kong Action Theater character who dies a bloody death but the Persona reappears for another movie, and ghost characters who go to their final death in a recent FUDGE story. That ain't much, and I've been GMing for nigh on 14 years now. What a weenie, huh?)

RAN:
GOOD topic.

I'd have to say in my "formative years" of roleplaying (read: D&D), I killed off any number of characters under the "whoops, you're out of points, seeya" routine.

In my Champions years, I don't remember any deaths of PC's, although as a player, I recall one or two characters "throwing themselves into the Doomsday Device" so to speak, but with the comic book genre, you can always resurrect/reincarnate a character, so if even if he DID die (according to the rules and the points), at some later point the GM can allow a modified version of the character to show up.

Since then, I don't think I've killed a single PC, for any reason. I seem to recall a couple of close calls in fairly mundane situations -- I'm sure you all know the deal: your players are engaging in activity that while necessary, is far from the climax or importance of a story... breaking into an office building, say. OK, so the security guard takes a potshot, to keep the PCs on their toes, and wham! triple-spinning-reverse-Lutz critical, maximum damage. From a storyteller's perspective, this sucks... one of the main characters gets kakked for no reason? I have always fudged this kind of result, into a "you're ALMOST dead" situation, so the PCs have a chance to get to a hospital or a healer or a medbot or whatever.

Of course, this brings up the point of perceptive players thinking "Gee, we CAN'T die... let's go raise hell..." The key, I believe, is to substitute another kind of loss for the loss of life... as a simplistic example, I might say something like "Well, you didn't die from the fall, but you did break your legs in two places, and now the record company is calling off your band's tour, etc."

From a storytelling perspective, there is some support for the credo of "You can only save your life by losing something else that's important," a central theme of many a novel, scifi/fantasy or no. From a gaming perspective, it's a sneaky way of keeping PCs from becoming too comfortable or dependent on some aspect of the game... a job situation, a helpful NPC, a trinket or piece of technology. It's been my usual experience that a PC in a comfortable, secure situation is a BORING PC, and makes for a boring game. Now, this doesn't mean they can't pursue such a goal (fairly common among fictional heroes, and villains too for that matter), and the trade-off of life for security is a reasonable way of keeping a PC growing as a character, in more ways than one.

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I lost Raven's reply ... apologies
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RON EDWARDS:
Raven wrote,

>The only time I have killed a character in my current game, which is going >on its second or third year now, is when a player requested it. He wanted >a heroic death because he thought up an idea for a new character. >So, shortly, his mage took a lightning-bolt to the chest saving his lady >love. It ended up being a very touching session. >

>I consider character death to be something that should be looming in the >background, but not something that should actually appear unless it looks >as though it will contribute and the player would be agreeable to it. >However, I am running one game right now on an idea from the Sorcerer >rules...the game is running in the past of the current campaign. Thus, all >the current characters will die at some point, it is a given (whether they >die in-game or off-stage is another matter). So I'm pulling no punches >with the majority of the characters (only two are assured of surviving the >game and one has to die) as we are fleshing out past events which will have >a great impact on the future, the campaign which we will return to once the >jaunt into the past is done with.

Hey, this is cool as hell for two reasons. (1) Excellent example of narrativism - see how the player is acting like a mini-GM? I love that stuff. (2) That playing-the-past business is something I would really like to try. I almost did it earlier this year, but time constraints prevented it. As most of you know, I discuss it at the end of the Sorc rules, and I think Sorcerer is very, very well suited to such narrative experiments.

Anyone else try this stories-in-reverse-sequence trick? I'd sure like to hear more about it.