[TML] Death

[Tom B]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:

> How often do you kill your PCs? Why?
>

I set the scene. The players or the random dice karma gods kill them. Now, I
usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but if they are a) very unlucky
AND b) not too bright, they can get killed. If they are just unlucky or not
so bright (but lucky), they tend to not die. If they are bright and lucky,
they pretty much aren't going to die.

PvP homicide is another matter. I've seen two examples of it. One was a
shooting in a phone booth by one player on another. The other was a direct
action intervention where one player killed another. Both were
'in-character'.

In the second case, the two characters were working for the local noble
(another PC), trying to stem the tide of an oncoming Solomani invasion (post
1116). Somewhere along the line in the second month of a 14 month weekly
game, one of the players decided his sympathies lay with the Solomani more
than the seemingly schizoid Imperials. So he proceeded to betray and
sell-out the local noble and his followers (while rising higher in his
service) through the entire next year of realtime. The large number of times
he could have been caught were either mucked up by other player
interventions, incompetence, or saved by his own rapid and clear-thinking
responses.

At the time he TK'd his buddy, he had realized the other player (as NavInt)
was a threat that had to be dealt with since the Solomani forces were
nearing the planet. So, they went out to lunch somewhere, and assassins
(ordered by the treacherous player) went after both of them. In a quick
gunfight, the target player got away. The other player actually fled with
him, pursued by minions on air rafts as they raced through city streets. The
NavInt player actually had slapped on his combat armour prior to the trip
and slapped down his visor after the ambush. The other player, not in combat
armour, stayed with him.

The NavInt player had actually taken a wound from a shotgun blast to the
face (graze) during the fight. When the two stopped for a moment to rest,
the treacherous player not only had a homing device to let the assassins
home in, but was armed. When nearing outside, the treacherous player brought
out a med-kit and offered to treat the bleeding facial wound. The poor
gormless NavInt guy took off his helmet. Then the assassins were heard
outside the door, so he turned away. While his back was turned, the other
player applied gauss pistol to the back of his noggin. End of NavInt PC.

It produced shock. But when everyone finally realized who it was that had
been savaging every plan the locals made (they blamed an unfair DM for many
months), they were... speechless. The local noble player was snapping
pencils he was so apoplectic.

But when all was said and done, everyone was still friends. And the game was
one of the most memorable any of us ever played.

You can't do this stuff too often without killing friendships. You need the
right group of people. You need to give betrayers a good chance of failing.
And then, however things work out, you've got a great story to look back on.


But generally, Traveller character creation with the career system has been
a fun meta-game in itself. In D&D now, with a character taking 3-4 hours to
get right (with spells, feats, skills, class choices, etc) and not a lot of
meta-game fun in that generation, I'm much more leery of killing characters
- players just don't enjoy investing that much time (for a low level PC!)
and then having to do it again. High level PCs can take 8-12 hours from
first die rolls to final tweaked form all documented nicely. Who wants to do
that often?

So I don't kill people as often as I once might have. And my players are
mostly all mature guys now, so the odds of a stupid death are far lower than
they once were. Characters now sometimes do stupid things to be in character
(for a young PC who wouldn't know better), but they understand the risk and
I don't usually outright punish people for good RPing. They might suffer a
bit, but it was an intentional act made to follow the character's
conception. That leads to good gaming so killing them isn't helpful.

A lot of how many times you kill somebody and if you allow PCs to off each
other depends on the scenario and the group. With mature players, a lot more
options exist without risk of group-fragmenting results.

(And I don't agree with never killing players - the risk must be there or
they start acting like it wasn't.... and no one hates pre-scripted events
forced on a PC than I do, so I avoid that route like the plague... I lay
choices out and my player's choose their path.... because pre-ordained
scripts really make everyone I know froth because they feel channeled and
helpless...)