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Fellow Paizonians, I seek your help !
As part of my PhD studies I am taking part in a course on various aspects of death. I hope to write a paper dealing with the issue of death in role playing games. There are a lot of ideas bouncing in my head, for example:
- death and dying in game systems - the mechanism of dying
- playing undead characters
- impact of raise dead etc. on campaign settings
- perception of PC mortality
- the great beyond - afterlife in RPGs
That being said, I am looking for input from you guys and gals ! What I am after are sources - examples of RPGs with unusual rules regarding death and it's impact on game world, as well as your experiences/views regarding death in games. The D&D is a great place to start with it's abundance of "resurrect" spells and unique idea on what happens to the soul in afterlife.
Share your thoughts here, every little bit brings me closer to getting the work done (and I thought that RPGs are never going to have any impact on my academic career, tee hee.)
4E has several epic destinies with Powers that stipulate "once per day, when you die" - so the expectation is that death is something that will be encountered with enough certainty to predicate such a power, and that you can return to life with equal certainty.
"Kill zem, kill zem all."
Aside from the obvious White Wolf WoD settings, don't neglect Monte Cook's (via WotC) Ghostwalk. I believe it deals primarily with dead or risen PC's.
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This is an interesting concept for a dissertation topic. I'm curious to know what your field of study is.
I have two initial thoughts in response:
1. You might want to consider the misconception that some non-gamers may still have about a player's attachment to their PCs and the affect of PC death on the player. Contrary to the anti-D&D propaganda that was spewed out in the 1980s, it seems that gamers tend to have an expectation that their characters will die during the course of a campaign. Players only tend to protest player death when they deem the judgement that led to such death to be unfair or just not "good storytelling." There's a germ of an idea in there somewhere...something about conceptions of Heroic Death versus "plain ol' death."
2. I also think that you could get a wealth of ideas concerning the conceptions of what happens to the soul upon death. The way fantasy games handle the variety of cultural conceptions of the afterlife could be a dissertation in and of itself.
I hope there's something there that can help you. If I think of anything else, I'll stop by and share it.
Good luck!
I believe the psychological impact of death is completely lost in most role playing games. I could be wrong as I only speak from my own experience.
Sure, a player may get upset if their character dies, but what of the death that often surrounds the PCs? PCs often kill with impunity. Yes, this is a game and it is not real, but for the PCs it should be very real.
In my 20+ years of gaming, I have never seen someone play an undead character except vampires. I would be very interested in seeing someone play a sentient skeleton.
Resurrection makes the farce of death even more ridiculous. I was once in a campaign where all the players (self included) bragged about how many times we died. Granted not every campaign with resurrection takes it quite this far.
Resurrection definitely influences the perception of PC mortality. Even in its absence, death is just a nuisance since players will roll up a new character and be immediately inserted into the campaign. Sometimes a penalty will be applied to increase this nuisance effect.
Oh, I completely forgot…
You might want to consider the debate that the threat of PC death is absolutely necessary for the game to be meaningful.
1. You might want to consider the misconception that some non-gamers may still have about a player's attachment to their PCs and the affect of PC death on the player. Contrary to the anti-D&D propaganda that was spewed out in the 1980s, it seems that gamers tend to have an expectation that their characters will die during the course of a campaign.
It might be interesting to contrast that propaganda to the bard in the movie "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising".
Raise Dead/Resurrect are indeed highly problematic spells and I usually play in a way that the spells don't exist. Resurrection is possible but that's direct intervention of gods then.
Especially since most game worlds seem to consider it as a option available only for PCs because it has no such effect it should in the worlds...
That's a good point to bring up that gamers are not necessarily that attached to their characters as some might think, and a good death scene might actually be welcome (in a similar way it is for actors to have their characters die).
Violence quota indeed does affect the perception of death, I have also played also some other games where the violence and action was much more limited and killing and dying were thus much bigger things, on both sides.
As for other game systems, WoD indeed is worth a look. Beside Vampire with characaters as undead, Changeling has pretty interesting idea of rebirth, the fey nature goes from host body to host body, sometimes lying dormant and sometimes awakening, and when the host body dies it just progresses to another rebirth. And I have no experience of Wraith but that game was centered on ghosts and afterlife (and according to many, was much better as a concept than as an actual game...)
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Keep it coming folks, fascinating stuff.
My PhD is ... erm ... well, that's kinda weird but ... law :) I am writing PhD thesis about derogation of human rights in emergency situations.
However, in an attempt to breathe some humanism into our legally damned lawyer souls, the university sends us on weird courses ran by even weirder people - among them, a course on Death. (Swear to Gods, sometimes I feel like in Sigil at that lecture - weird, fantastic creatures with flowers in their hair sitting right next to suit'n'tie corporate law sharks).
Actually it's a funny story in itself. The curriculum for the course included a lecture on legal aspects of death and there was I thinking "cool, a short paper about that and I'm done". Then one day we got the news that this particular lecture is canceled, forcing me to find a new topic to write about.
I was about to panic (medical aspects of death ? sure, like I know anything about that...) when I realized that RPG death is something I could write about. Luckily, the lead professor had some dim idea what RPGs are about and approved my topic. Yay.
A cool book to check out, is Shadowrun: Cybertechnology. Technically, it's a source book for new cyberware. However, the way that it reads is completely different. The book is from the perspective of a veteran shadowrunner named Hatchetman. He talks about the various pieces of equipment and his experience with them over the years. Through this, you start to piece together his life story and discover a controversial new procedure that is pretty much cyber-necromancy. I won't go any farther into it, but I really recommend checking it out.
My PhD is ... erm ... well, that's kinda weird but ... law :) I am writing PhD thesis about derogation of human rights in emergency situations.
Wow, the aforementioned book is even more perfect for you than I thought.
In my 20+ years of gaming, I have never seen someone play an undead character except vampires. I would be very interested in seeing someone play a sentient skeleton.
Did it. Died the first session. :)
My Nerull worshiping cleric is fervently working towards becoming a lich.
Might not be appropriate to your paper but take a look at the original traveller...you could die during chargen. Fun.
More appropriately perhaps is the computer RPG Planescape: Torment, where the protagonist *was* dead. The 2E Planescape books have a lot of other materials dealing with the dead/unliving and the afterlife across the multiverse. Check out, also, Baker's undying Eberron elves (or whatever they're called). Someone already mentioned Ghostwalk.
Vampire, of course, deals mostly with dead PCs. Some folks play out their transformation to undead creatures in incredible detail - some gladly embracing their new, more powerful forms and good riddance to the mortal coil, while some lament and agonize over their lost mortality a la Louis in Interview.
I have no deep thoughts on the subject to share.
M
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Keep it coming folks, fascinating stuff.
My PhD is ... erm ... well, that's kinda weird but ... law :) I am writing PhD thesis about derogation of human rights in emergency situations. ...
Thanks for the backstory, Gorbacz. Interesting stuff. Kind of reminds me of the "Introduction to Meteorology" course I took in college, where the prof allowed me to use the principles we'd been learning all semester to write my final project on the climate of a fictional world. (At the time I was developing yet another fantasy setting and wanted to know what the various climate regions were going to be, anyway, so it was a win-win.) It was the only time I was able to combine my love of roleplaying with my ocean engineering degree. (I later abandoned my undergrad degree for a masters in Regional Security Studies, but oh, well.)
Anyway, given your PhD thesis, you might want to look at this from another angle. Instead of PC death, what about the killing that PCs do?
I'm sure you'll find a huge number of threads that discuss various actions a person can take based on their chosen alignment. Among those, the question often arises about whether killing someone or something is an "evil act". I would think that such discussion goes right to the heart of the derogation of human (or non-human) rights in an emergency...if the PCs are literally trying to save the game world, does it lower the bar for when it's acceptable to kill someone? Adventures are practically case studies in the kind of decision-making process you're talking about.
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This is an interesting concept for a dissertation topic. I'm curious to know what your field of study is.
I have two initial thoughts in response:
1. You might want to consider the misconception that some non-gamers may still have about a player's attachment to their PCs and the affect of PC death on the player. Contrary to the anti-D&D propaganda that was spewed out in the 1980s, it seems that gamers tend to have an expectation that their characters will die during the course of a campaign. Players only tend to protest player death when they deem the judgement that led to such death to be unfair or just not "good storytelling." There's a germ of an idea in there somewhere...something about conceptions of Heroic Death versus "plain ol' death."
2. I also think that you could get a wealth of ideas concerning the conceptions of what happens to the soul upon death. The way fantasy games handle the variety of cultural conceptions of the afterlife could be a dissertation in and of itself.
I hope there's something there that can help you. If I think of anything else, I'll stop by and share it.
Good luck!
Good points!
Character dies, dammit! Pull out the dice and roll a new one. Its an opportunity to explore a new concept and a new character.
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You know...re-reading my original comments in the quotes above, I realized that I made a typo. What I meant to say was, "Players only tend to protest character death...."
What I said was, "Players only tend to protest player death...." In 20+ years of gaming, I can honestly say I've never had a player actually protest player death...um...yeah...
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As a DM, I've found it fascinating to see my players' reaction to death, particularly when it catches them completely by surprise or happens in the course of the story to an NPC they have become attached to. While Raise Dead and Resurrection (though I make them very costly) are always an option, I find the players still become very solemn whenever one of them dies, especially if it catches them completely by surprise. Recently, a wizard halfing bit the dust unexpectedly and the player went from laughing and joking to suddenly sitting very quietly and staring at the floor. In other words, even with a Raise Dead spell just around the corner, death had an impact. My group loves a good story and tends to immerse itself in the story as though it were a good movie or book which adds tension to the moment. As a DM, I try never to go for a cheap death. If a character is going to die, I try to give the moment it's due. I work with young people and I recently had an 11 year old boy write a moving paragraph describing the death of a video game character. As he described the character lying on the ground with a spear in his chest, he talked about what the character saw and commented on that he lived to see the sun going down and "it was the most beautiful sunset that he had ever seen." Even with the easy reach of Raise Dead and Resurrect spells, I've had my players decide to let go of a character, particularly if the death had meaning. I hear a lot of people complain that death has no meaning in role-playing games. I don't agree.
One thing that I often found interesting is that the treatment of souls that go to the lower planes upon death always presumed the "punishment" found in modern theological thought. I often found myself wondering why an incredibly intelligent/wise character like a high level wizard or cleric would ally themselves with a lower planer god. So I started having the worshipers of evil gods rewarded for their service on the material plane if they exemplified themselves in some way. It may be as little as transfomation into a demon or devil, to something as grand as higher status and rulership potential. Just a thought about how death and its consequences are still tied to modern theological thought even in something as nonstandard as role playing games.
Keep it coming folks, fascinating stuff.
My PhD is ... erm ... well, that's kinda weird but ... law :) I am writing PhD thesis about derogation of human rights in emergency situations.
*shrug*
I wrote my capstone paper in law school on the possible use of truth commissions to heal the ongoing ill will following the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Whatever it takes to get you through.
My english degree capstone was a fully detailed english course based entirely around a fusion of playing D&D and a daily writing journal. Whenever possible, make your schoolwork work for you!
Does "brains, brains" follow that?
"Kill zem, kill zem all."
Depends on who kills them or the victims themselves... ^_^
I can see the sample situation developing further, but it would probably be a mite off-topic. :)
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Death in DnD has been reacted to differently with each group I've played with. Some of my friends see it as a solemn moment, and won't bring back that character... ever. He's tainted somehow, and the game will never be the same. One even goes that distance with animal companions.
In another couple of games, we had made the penalties for death the norm, even going so far as lowering the level you come back as (either as a new character or as a resurrected character). This lead to some players falling out of alignment, while others had heroic sacrifices that lead to them playing lower level characters (and not enjoying the game as much). This sort of odd feeling bothered me. The more evil characters who were less heroic and who survived were more likely to gain levels, money, etc. The more heroic, albeit brash characters (including most fighters) were penalized.
In my current games, I've negated the penalties for death, but explained that they will come back if people to treat their characters with respect. One has to remember that these games don't really have a proper way for someone to make up for poor choices in their development, so some players see death as a way to erase poorly made characters.
That's my 2 coppers. Hope I didn't ramble too much.