When to die?

[James McMurray]

Ok, so when have you killed PCs? If you're a player, when have your PCs died? With life and death being literally within the GM's hands at all times, what kinds of situations are dire enough that death happens?

And were those situations tied to an impending campaign end, or did they happen in midstride, requiring a new PC be created.

[JongWK]

One of my characters, Lucien, killed himself after using the mother of all blood curses on Fiona and Bleys. Their betrayal made him lose a bitter struggle for the throne, and suicide deprived them from any form of revenge.

[RPGPundit]

There's almost always a better choice than killing a PC, in Amber.

By "better" I mean, more punishing, and with better opportunities for player enjoyment too.

My rule of thumb is that usually, PCs only die when either they desperately WANT to die, or another player chooses to kill them.  That's not an absolute rule of course, they could also do something so monumentally stupid that death becomes a true inevitability for the character.

RPGpundit

[James McMurray]

Thank you, I know that. There's usually a better choice in almost every RPG. But the question wasn't about what you (or anyone) think is best, it was about specific examples. Do you have any of those?

[RPGPundit]

Well, I once had a guy who started using the Pattern like it was public transit; and who decided to walk it because he really needed to get somewhere badly and didn't trust Trump, when he was injured and exhausted.  That character died.

There were also various times when the PCs fucked with an elder's plans enough that this elder decided that you had to die.  These things tend to vary a lot with who the elder is.  Someone like Bleys will usually prefer to humiliate you terribly unless you've done something very grave to him; and Fiona is willing to keep you trapped somewhere for ages.  Benedict prefers to maim rather than kill, and Caine never kills anyone if he can avoid it, because you never know when someone might end up being useful later for something.  But someone like Julian, Eric, or Corwin: piss them off enough in the wrong way, and they'll kill you. As will Gerard if he thinks you're a menace to Amber.

In one case, one PC died when he decided to go prancing through Julian's forest after Julian had publically sworn to kill him, after said PC had constantly insulted Julian.  That player underestimated Julian in Arden.

I've also had some PCs killed off by chaos lords, usually in campaigns where Chaos is on the march.

But like I said, on the whole the most common cause of PC-death is murder at the hands of other PCs.

RPGPundit

[charis]

I've had a couple character deaths in the realms of Amber.

One was a character who technically died -twice-, through a large use of machinations etc they were able to come back to life (largely through the help of another PC and a massive point dump). She was an endurance character.

The first death was when she (Kuru) ambushed another player in Amber itself (Cedro) (the two had a long history of squabbling, and the other player had bloodcursed mine a few sessions back). Kuru had got another PC to join her (Mikayla), and an NPC (Brownwyn) They also both had reasons to hate or at least strongly dislike the other PC. So there was an Ambush and a large fight broke out, the guards began fighting with each other (they were confused as to who to side with, both characters being in favor with Random at the time, more or less). Kuru Trumped mikayla in and Brownwyn brought the Pattern Lens into play, while Cedro used his amazing Warfare to battle. In the end Cedro exploded his sword Sigil in order to kill Mikayla and himself. Kuru had been knocked away before the explosion by another PC who came upon the scene (Galiat). Kuru attempted to escape by switching to her primal form, but Galiat managed through a lot of sorcery to keep her from escaping, managing to pin her to a wall and then slice her to pieces. Her spirit however was pulled into an artifact she possessed, which was then taken by yet another PC who was observing (Jaela).

So that was her first death.

Kuru's second death was her surrounded a few hundred feet up in the air by six dragons with six riders, one of them being Deirdre, who was Cedro's mother. The two of them went down in a tumult of massive black flame, falling from the sky as they battled towards the ground, impact nearly killing them both, before Kuru died from wounds inflicted by Deirdre and the impact, and then Deirdre was killed by another PC (Cadwgan). I was hoping someone would help me out when Deirdre came for me, but nobody did. ^_^ Can't rely on friends in Amber! Her journal is here for all 40 sessions if anyone is interested: http://kuruofamber.livejournal.com

Another character I had die was a demon named Lagolakoin. Her and Darin were fighting against Brand who had returned from the Abyss with strange powers and had retaken Werewindle. Lagolakoin died by taking on Brand in order for Darin to make his escape and live through the encounter.

I'm always a bit sad when my characters die, and Kuru was in the 40th session of that campaign (each session lasting about 6 to 7 hours) so I had a love of time invested in her. Aww.. ^_^