hello
i´m new at the board, so i´ve got some questions to you other narrators or players outside there. our group now plays st:rpg since february of this year. we have no narrator who always narrates our adventures, the job of the narrator always changes in our group.
i´ve narrated 4 adventures till now. i think....umm....we´ve played up to 12 adventures yet, the characters encountered the borg, and LOTS of romulans. but although there have been many critical scenes till now, none of our(five at all)characters died. it is not in my opinion to say that i want to see the characters dying but i believe that a player gets angry if "mad" narrator lets his char die. so, as a narrator in our group(where no one has died before)you have the problem that you don´t know waht to do if one of the chars get into a fight with mighty ememys. how is this in your groups? do you have any experiences with the players reactions about dying characters?
cu
Ishan
Ps: Excuse my english, i know, it is not the best.
As a counterpoint, I almost never kill a character. --- They do it to themselves. Bwahahahaha.
Seriously, character deaths in any of my games is pretty rare.
The threat of death, and perhaps more importantly, the threat of failure (which most of the players I've dealt with feel is worse than death) is pretty constant, but I'm not likely to pull the trigger on a character. Occasionally, things happen that way, or someone has to make "the ultimate sacrifice", but it's pretty darn rare.
So a dead character normaly is not a big deal. And they don't die that often and then mostly the later. In the last five years we had:
One Ninja(Rifts) died of stupidity (Did play stupid "superninja" stunts, was arrested by local police with help of the group, tried an escape, police borg used laser, Ninja forgot ForceField)
One rifleman (T2K/Merc) died of greed. (Tried to rob money for himself instead of standing guard. Tried opening a safe without skill/tools. Enemy sneaked up. Headshot from a .44Mag)
One space marine (Traveller) lost (forgotten by group since player caused massiv friction)
Two Infantrie grunts (Rifts) attacking a Triax Ultimax (Powered Armor). Allowed themselfs to be cornered.
A japanese street sam (Shadowrun) that insisted on playing "Shogun". Forgot to inform him that we (Merc, Decker, Mage) were withdrawing in "Queen Euporia". Bugfood (smae player as space marine)
In addition we had a number of near-dead experiences like:
A fighter (Gurps: Conan) first dropping in a pit trap, then doing a swordplay. Barely safed
A runaway girl (Star Trek) nearly got herself a job on the Rebels medical frigate. Shortly before Endor (same player as Ninja)
German ground force officer (2300AD) ordering the ship in orbit to "unload all you have at my position +100). Expected a troop carrier (4guns) got a battleship (40+ guns) and didn't listen
Only one PC has died in almost one year of my game. I will NOT kill my players based on a die roll...the only death we had was a sacrifice of great worth and also the choice of the player who wanted to try a new character.
For me this is Star Trek and not D&D, dice do not decide the final fate of my players
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Captain Zymmer
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Visit Star Trek:Lexington at; http://www.usslexington.net
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I can’t say with any certainty—the life or death of a PC is dependent upon the situation.
While I can say I won’t arbitrarily kill a PC, like, say, calling for a Coordination check to make it to an escape pod before the ship explodes, I would call for some checks should the character try to single-handedly (and heroically) try to save the ship by overriding the malfunctioning computer to eject the warp core while engineering falls down around them.
Likewise, if a player picks a fight with a Klingon or Nauscian and gets their butt kicked (or killed) then I have little sympathy; they know better. So in that type of instance you could say that I would let a player be killed by the dice.
In Star Trek I’ve only killed two PCs and both were in a manner that pleased the player, the other players, and remained faithful to the concept of the character.
I’ve come close in the current group and am sure that the maturity of my players would not present a problem.
As others have said, the threat of death and failure must be a very real consequence in any game or else it becomes a hollow experience—my players know that either (or both) results are possible in my games, but as the heroes they’ll have every opportunity to turn the tide.
Well I've had several characters die during the many campaigns I've run, I've also had several of my characters die. Most take it well.
Some have too, like those who have Styro as their narrator.
I remember one character one of my players played, he jumped unto a grenade to save a crowd of civilians and died of his injuries. He was a commanding officer of the away team, and the player said his characters last words were:"Save these people, we are Starfleet Officers before all else". I can tell you that most of us had tears in our eyes, it was really touching, the character had been through roughly 40 episodes. I posthomously awarded the character the Christopher Pike Medal of Honor. Touching moments really.
However, as much as some die gloriously and with honour, other die in abject stupidity.
Three of my players once foiled a plan by the Ferengi to steal their ship in dock. Now the autodestruct had been activated on a one minute countdown to force the ferengi to giveup, they did at 20 seconds. Now the autodestruct had been damaged by a phaser shot on the bridge. All three players panicked, literally got up and walked about the room as I calmly counted down to zero.
Not one of them, thought of using a site to site transport to engineering to shut it down. Stupid on their part, they laughed about it after, under their tombstones they agreed would be written:"Died of complete incompetence".
Most players will take it well, life and death in StarTrek are real threats. Don't worry though, a character death just means that the player can start a new character and have a new experience.
One of my players is adept at getting himself killed. It's not just in Trek but in any campaign I run, he's just a little gung ho Its not my fault he tried to resist a Borg invasion in Engineering with a Hydrospanner Although he did sacrifice himself in WOLF 359 to destroy the Borg.
Where as the other main character only lost a arm to Phaser fire and became the youngest officer to make Cpt (blew Kirk, Picard and Tryla Scott outta the water)
Michael: Good to see the same things happen in Shadowrun
So all up about 5 deaths, 4 from one PC
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Thats Cpt SIR SIG to you!
More then meets the eye,
His a MapMaker in disguise.
[This message has been edited by SIR SIG (edited 09-13-2001).]
I don't know if my group is just that good or that when we each run games we are very lenient. Probably a bit of both. The last character that I killed was about 1.5-2 years ago...A dragon Bushi in my L5R campaign. I think over the last 10 years we could count the characters that died on one hand. The largest amount of PC and NPC dead in our group was when we finsihed a BTECH campaign some years ago. Most of the unit was KIA or MIA, we were fighting our way (against the clans) off our planet. I think something like half of our regiment made it to our ships.
Then there was what turned out to be a one shot D&D game. Half the party killed outright, the other half captured by Orcs, I think.
I rarely kill the characters off for bad die rolls...they either go in a heroic way that fits the story, or they get kakked 'cause the player was being REALLY stupid.
The group I play with is pretty jaded. I try not to let bad die rolls kill them, but they're all veteran role-players and they've all lost scores of characters (to the point that some of us roll up spare characters for when - not if - we die) so they take it in stride. Really, the only thing that might bother them is the amount of time it might take to create a new character if there's no online generator.
Character deaths in my campaigns are pretty rare. Nobody has yet died in my Star Trek campaign - mainly because it's only just started!
I think the main reason is that I usually have so few players. 4 people + me is a big group for me. Often there is only me refereeing and 1 or 2 players, so it sorta kills the campaign if the PCs die.
That said, I have killed off the occasional character - but it's an extremely rare event, and they all had the opportunity to die as heroes. The situations were...
<ul>[*]Malvolio - Rebel pilot in the Battle of Yavin. His X-Wing was shot to shit, he knew Red Five was making a last-ditch run on the exhaust port. He also knew the superlaser was powering up. He aimed at the focusing crystal of the superlaser, put his engines on full and rammed it. It cost the Death Star a few seconds to switch to back up systems (and explains the second "Stand by!" in the dialogue )- and it bought a few more seconds for Luke to blow the DS.</li>[*]A slicer (can't remember his name) - did the old "throw himself on the grenade" trick when the Alliance was getting a group of civvies out of Imperial detention.</li>[*]Bobarin Do'oun - a Jedi Knight who died at the hands of an Emperor's Hand, sacrificing himself to let the other good guys escape.</li>
I'm a big fan of cinematic action, so heroes don't die randomly in my games.
The most "famous" near-death experience was a Merc:2000 character, Max Baaden (Merc:2000 was a mercenary, brush-fire-war, anti-terrorism splinter of Twilight:2000, for those who aren't familiar with it). During the campaign, he had befriended (by saving the life of) a Japanese-Australian multi-billionaire.
When Max came down with leukaemia after being exposed to plutonium (when he participated in a raid to destroy the Iraqi nuclear weapons research installation a couple of years before), the billionaire financed Max's cryogenic suspension.
It wasn't until a couple of centuries later he was brought out of the freezer and cured - just in time to slip into my 2300AD campaign.
Hey, what can I say - Paul's character Max Baaden was one of my favourites to referee, and it was a perfect opportunity to bring Paul into 2300AD - and it worked a treat: the 2300AD campaign has run a lot longer and a lot more successfully than the Merc:2000 one!
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"Every atom in our bodies was forged in the furnace of ancient stars - it is our destiny to return home..."
How often do your player´s characters die?
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Its not my fault he tried to resist a Borg invasion in Engineering with a Hydrospanner 
