In Episode 94 of The Gauntlet Podcast, Kate Bullock and I welcome Andrew Medeiros to discuss character death and grief in roleplaying games. This was definitely one of the more sad episodes of the show we have ever done, but I think you’re going to like it. The conversation is wide-ranging, but also filled with lots of good, practical advice for making these themes work in your game.
Enjoy?
http://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/the-gauntlet-podcast/episode-94-death-grief-and-gaming
Woot!
Woot!
When Kate talked about how RPGs that we play might be influenced by how the Western culture deals with death, I was sort mind asploded.
When Kate talked about how RPGs that we play might be influenced by how the Western culture deals with death, I was sort mind asploded.
Jason said something about death being most meaningful when there is a slow dum-beat build towards death. Death has been meaningful at the table for me it was sudden, unexpected and out of the blue. It felt like how death effected me in real life and it was filled with lost potential and missed opportunities. There was a tangible void at the table where that character used to be.
The slow build was the character being meaningful and having relationships but it wasn’t a build towards the death itself.
EDIT: And then Jason went on to eloquently describe exactly what I was talking about above.
Jason said something about death being most meaningful when there is a slow dum-beat build towards death. Death has been meaningful at the table for me it was sudden, unexpected and out of the blue. It felt like how death effected me in real life and it was filled with lost potential and missed opportunities. There was a tangible void at the table where that character used to be.
The slow build was the character being meaningful and having relationships but it wasn’t a build towards the death itself.
EDIT: And then Jason went on to eloquently describe exactly what I was talking about above.
This episode was great! When I was playing at a friend of mines table online, playtesting a really cool pbta hack he’d done called…A New Realm..I think?
Anyways he had a character inspired by Saga of the Islanders I was playtesting for him which was called something like a fateseer. As we attempted to get into a city someone rolled a miss and a giant ship set upon us and demanded we surrender. We had a Sorcerer type with us who did essentially a fireball but in the retaliation they fired and because of the size and such, well…basically everyone died. It was a bit of poor GMing because he tied the fate of everyone on board to that one failure, even though nobody was helping and should have been. And ultimately emotions ran high and the session sort of ended. I had seen a vision where we would be entering the city with a plague set upon it, staggering through a giant gate but that was never to be.
Next session though, I made a new character who was a Child of Destiny who heard this story and was heartened. Because one of the options I had chosen was that my destiny was to die, I was happy to hear this story of my old characters death because it seemed that we could all change our fate, for better or worse. It made him a lot more vivacious than I had first planned and some great moments.
We also touched on it in the Dungeon World when my Wizard, Caros, rolled a miss for fireball which led to the death of innocents. Jason was great at reminding me of this fact later on in the story, which I liked a lot and didn’t see coming. That was a great series, so bleak. But fantastic.
Having the same experience with Zelda right now. Though, when I’m trying to light some braziers to get a special flame to a specific place and it starts raining….urg lol
This episode was great! When I was playing at a friend of mines table online, playtesting a really cool pbta hack he’d done called…A New Realm..I think?
Anyways he had a character inspired by Saga of the Islanders I was playtesting for him which was called something like a fateseer. As we attempted to get into a city someone rolled a miss and a giant ship set upon us and demanded we surrender. We had a Sorcerer type with us who did essentially a fireball but in the retaliation they fired and because of the size and such, well…basically everyone died. It was a bit of poor GMing because he tied the fate of everyone on board to that one failure, even though nobody was helping and should have been. And ultimately emotions ran high and the session sort of ended. I had seen a vision where we would be entering the city with a plague set upon it, staggering through a giant gate but that was never to be.
Next session though, I made a new character who was a Child of Destiny who heard this story and was heartened. Because one of the options I had chosen was that my destiny was to die, I was happy to hear this story of my old characters death because it seemed that we could all change our fate, for better or worse. It made him a lot more vivacious than I had first planned and some great moments.
We also touched on it in the Dungeon World when my Wizard, Caros, rolled a miss for fireball which led to the death of innocents. Jason was great at reminding me of this fact later on in the story, which I liked a lot and didn’t see coming. That was a great series, so bleak. But fantastic.
Having the same experience with Zelda right now. Though, when I’m trying to light some braziers to get a special flame to a specific place and it starts raining….urg lol
Something I’ve been thinking about since we recorded this is how the game’s setting or tone affects how we perceive character death in the game. When I run an OSR module or a horror game, character death is simply processed differently than it is for something like the sad, drug addiction Fiasco we ran a couple of months ago. That certainly doesn’t mean I think character death is, by default, less impactful in horror or OSR, but I do think you have to kind of “earn” that payoff, which I think is what I was trying to get at with the “slow drumbeat” stuff, Judd Karlman. In the situation where the game’s setting is extremely deadly it helps if there is mechanical support to make that death more impactful (like in Night Witches). I’m not sure DW or OSR games or many horror games have that mechanical support, and so I think it puts some pressure on the GM (and to some degree, the players) to get to that place.
Something I’ve been thinking about since we recorded this is how the game’s setting or tone affects how we perceive character death in the game. When I run an OSR module or a horror game, character death is simply processed differently than it is for something like the sad, drug addiction Fiasco we ran a couple of months ago. That certainly doesn’t mean I think character death is, by default, less impactful in horror or OSR, but I do think you have to kind of “earn” that payoff, which I think is what I was trying to get at with the “slow drumbeat” stuff, Judd Karlman. In the situation where the game’s setting is extremely deadly it helps if there is mechanical support to make that death more impactful (like in Night Witches). I’m not sure DW or OSR games or many horror games have that mechanical support, and so I think it puts some pressure on the GM (and to some degree, the players) to get to that place.
What a great topic to discuss, Kate Bullock, and I had never considered death and grief in gaming. I realized that I have been exploring death in a lot of my Gauntlet gaming recently. The Doomed from Masks. The Ghost in Monsterhearts. The epilogue from The Woodlands. Whew. Thanks for asking the difficult questions!
What a great topic to discuss, Kate Bullock, and I had never considered death and grief in gaming. I realized that I have been exploring death in a lot of my Gauntlet gaming recently. The Doomed from Masks. The Ghost in Monsterhearts. The epilogue from The Woodlands. Whew. Thanks for asking the difficult questions!
Kate’s real good.
Kate’s real good.
If Sarah’s the Doombringer, Kate’s the Feelsbringer.
If Sarah’s the Doombringer, Kate’s the Feelsbringer.
In the Watch, epilogues really create the space to explore grief and death, as Andrew Medeiros​ said.
In the Watch, epilogues really create the space to explore grief and death, as Andrew Medeiros​ said.