RE: [DL] When Do you know...

[Ivan E <ivan_gaming@yahoo.com>]

--- "Spence, Roy" <r.spence@weir.co.uk> wrote:
> and Ivan, how did you feel killing your first
> character?  Why now after all
> those years of playing? have you avoided killing a
> character in a similar
> situation during the fifteen years? if so what
> worked better?

Deputy Seyberth, I’m hoping and assuming this stays on
topic. If not, feel free to poke me in the ribs with a
Winchester, and I’ll mosey over to the Private Email
Corral.

Bill, you may want to skedaddle, though I don’t think
you’ll learn anything you haven’t already assumed.

How did I feel? Pretty damn good, actually. If you'll
excuse a short setup and explanation: I have villains
who are designed to work the party hard, to match them
at their own games on even turf, expecting the PCs to
wait until they are *on* even turf to fight them. I
take away the PC guns, giving the villains an obvious
edge. Then Bill's character, a huckster/gunslinger,
casts a hex to get one of the bandita’s guns. He gets
the gun but fails the sleight of hand roll. One of the
banditas is already religiously psychopathic, and
seeing this hex leads her to assume that the character
is, in fact, a devil. She starts shooting him with
two-fisted double-action revolvers, and as we all know
– that’s about that.

Now, a big part of me wanted to find a way to save the
character. I *liked* this character, and didn’t really
want him dead. But this villain really wouldn’t stop
shooting unless someone outside actually forced her
to. The other PCs were unwilling to charge in
bare-handed and start knocking her down, since they
were being covered by her sister as well, and the main
villain wasn’t about to stop her when he had other
hostages in the form of the rest of the Posse. The
bandita’s sister might have interrupted – but then I
realized that this is, in fact, a horror game.
Charging ambidextrous, heavily armed people
bare-handed is a Very Bad Idea. 

(Shameless plug - for the full story, visit the
website at
http://www.gamesgroove.com/ivan/DustAndBones/tales.html,
and read up on The Robot Rattlers.)

I want to say I “realized it was my job” to not save
this character, frankly. If I’d done so, then the
posse could stop being afraid of death – since there’s
little chance they’d run into any more deadly of a
situation than this. So, I had to kill him. And having
done it, I felt fine about it. This was *helped* by
the fact that William was a) a good sport about it,
and b) stopped spending fate chips to stay alive,
signalling to me that he was willing to lose this
character.

Why now after all those years? Because as a boy, it
was more important to me to be liked by everyone than
to tell a reasonable story. I didn’t want to face
players who were yelling because their character had
died, and I wanted everyone to get what they wanted.
Now, however, I realize that while I value my players
as people and would like to be their friend, anyone
who gets screamy over the death of a roleplaying
character – well, they’ve probably got some serious
issues, and I can ignore the screams and wait for them
to come to their senses. If they don’t stop screaming,
then I probably don’t need to be hanging out with them
anyway, and I’ll ask them to leave the game.

Given this, yes, I have avoided killing characters in
similar situations in the past. I’d have had the
sister stop the shooting, or say the hex didn’t work
and wasn’t spotted, or fudge the bandita’s rolls to
make her miss more often and give William more of a
fighting chance. But that wouldn’t really be fair to
the story, the game, or the players, when you get
right down to it.

Losing a friend and partner led to two very touching
scenes carried out by the remainder of the Posse, and
has also led to what I think will be very interesting
character development in at least the two of them who
have been riding with the deceased for a while. It’s
also, I think, made very clear to the players that
they will die if they try something like that again.
Because of that, it’s going to be a little easier to
scare them – and isn’t that what a horror game is all
about?

Again – I have *fantastic* players, and that helps a
lot. I think Daphne’s suggestion of warning your
players before you start the next game is a very, very
good one; since they may be doing things differently
since they feel they’re immortal (I know that I’ve run
characters into bonfires simply because I *knew* I
could be resurrected, and had been eight times
already. Death stops holding any fear once you’ve got
a Frequent Flyer ticket to the afterlife).

> Sorry for the 20 questions imitation, I'm just
> curious/nosy, y'know.

No problem at all for me! I hope your games go well.

- Ivan
http://www.gamesgroove.com/ivan/DustAndBones/index.html


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