Death, the discovered country (LoF, part 6)

In role-playing games, how to deal with the ultimate failure, death?  There are plenty of ways to punish players for lesser failures, and as the Knight at the Opera points out, defeats other than death are a space with a lot of potential.  

I love the deadly nature of N/OSR play: allowing players to lose the game makes ‘winning’ all the sweeter.  But I also love the deep character investment of players in trad games like 5e, the hilarious backstories, and the poignancy of loss when they die.  

This post is about how I put those two things together, and designed a different way to die in RPGs.  The design goal: Let players fail, with major consequences, and yet keep playing their characters in a way they enjoy.  

I *think* this death mechanic is more or less new to TTRPGs (likely I am wrong though).  This post is not a full description (future blog post!) because I am tired of super-long posts.  This is also not a discussion of all the ways that different RPGs handle death (another future blog post!).  This death mechanic likely is not be for everyone. But I can report that it has played well–it works for my weekly OSR-flavored 5e game, and for Mausritter with my kids.  The players don’t want to die, but when they do, it doesn’t end the game or mar their characters.  

This is the last of the tricks I use to create a landscape of fear around my players.  They are more likely to take risks if they know they will survive them, after a loss.  Oddly, it does not dampen their fear–they know the GM will strike them down in a heartbeat, and that dying sucks.  It’s just not the end...if you can keep paying.

“But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscovered country, from whose bourn /  No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have, / Than fly to others that we know not of?”

–Jean Luc Picard

Trick #4: The Nine Lives of Revenants

In a nutshell: the PCs make a deal with a strong magical entity to bring them back, but the required costs escalate with every resurrection.  Death is not free.

In this version of death, kicking the bucket has consequences, but it is not the end.  At least…at first.  There are a lot of possible options to consider (future post!), but they all share a similar outcome: many resurrections, with a cost.  

When a PC dies, I pause the game and we step out for a GM-player side chat.  There they visit the magical entity they made a deal with (their Patron), and choose whether or not to pay the cost to come back. The PC doesn’t remember meeting the Patron to sign the deal, and they cannot speak about their Patron to others.  This makes their first resurrection something of a surprise, and keeps them from spoiling the surprise for the rest of the PCs (or sharing their Patron’s demands).  In my games, I tell level 1 PCs that they vaguely remember making a deal with someone about death, but they don’t remember the details about coming back.  

The key feature of these costs is they are future focused: the loss of future experience points, treasure PCs can’t spend on future gear, or bonds and memories that no longer will benefit them in a tight spot.  They don’t alter the player’s vision of the character right now, but they do dim their future prospects. The consequences of death matter, but since they are in the future, there is wiggle room to fight them.

And most importantly, the costs of death focus the PCs on the elements of the game world that the GM feels matter most.  Death creates motivations for further adventure, and ties a PC to the world. 

If the GM wants to draw the players into treasure hunting and mercenary deals, ever-increasing amounts of gold and treasure are required to bring them back each time.  If the GM wants PCs to sign on working for different factions in the game world, simply give those factions the ability to sponsor resurrections and have death alter how experience is earned.  Once a PC can only earn full experience points by completing secret missions for their faction, they have motivation!  Similarly, if a PC comes back from death with lost memories and a paucity of bonds (all of them eaten by the Patron), they will be incentivized to create new ones with a vengeance.  

In this style of play, death becomes a (painful) learning process.  The N/OSR movement has long been an advocate of throwing out game balance, and the death mechanic presented here is intended to support that style of play while also allowing players to keep their (suitably chastened) heroes breathing.  At least, for now.

_______________

The Landscape of Fear series so far:

Part 1: Fear of monsters is central to society. If NPCs fear, the players will too. 

Part 2: Fear is an easy shortcut to player engagement.

Part 3 The first step to fear: making PCs care about failing.  OSR and traditional RPGs often fail at this task.

Part 4: Next, foreshadow overwhelming danger: immediate and future.

Part 5: Place attractive rewards/traps in their path.  Keep the surprises coming, slowly spiral events out of their control.

Part 6 (this post): The center can hold?  How to encourage both failure and recovery from failure.