Volume 2, Issue 2: So Long Old Friend: Retirement and Death

Found on pages 64-65

So long old friend: Retirement & Death

Jerreck the mighty, despoiler of the Black Temple of Sog, raider of the lost Dragons Graveyard and Baron of Millia stood there, blood seeping from a dozen wounds, arrows piercing his chest and back, his armour all but rent apart after a savage blow from the Black Ogre Chieftain.

So, I took six doubles to the torso, a quin to the torso, three singles to the legs.. that makes a total of twenty damage, minus for armour from the locations... twelve damage over all..

Jerreck slid to the ground, struggling for breath but finding none there, his lungs to pierced through and his ribcage shattered.. the Black Ogre Chieftain was perhaps one foe to many for him to take on.

I only had eight left, and because of that Shattering Blow I couldn't soak all of the chiefs hit.. i'm dead, thats put me in to minus numbers. Can't say it wasn't an epic fight though.. god i'm sore all over from that one..

The warrior slumped forward, dead and unmoving.

Jerry don't be a jerk, let me raise you...

Asra the druid, who was his companion and wife, knelt beside the body, watching as her magic failed over and over to bind the spirit back to the body..

Sorry guys, I think it's time started something new, I really like some of the other options in the new books.. and beside i've been this guy solid for four years now...

Asra wailed long in to the night over the passing of her husband and friend. But deep down she knew that some where in the world a new hero was starting their first steps and perhaps their paths would cross one day..

~~

We all larp for pretty much the same reasons.

Fun, excitement and challenge.

Anything else after that is just a nice bonus, a personal goal though perhaps one that many others share.

But what about when it starts to not be quite so fun? After all, theres really only so many times that you can go slay the evil demon, save the princess and save the world.

No, seriously there is..

So, what next? Say good bye to it all, hang up the sword, fold away the robes and put the books, character cards and daggers for good?

Well, for some that might be the answer, but for others who want to keep playing in the game there is always the option of Retiring the character, if you're lucky they may make it in to the lore and background of the game. If you've got a great Ref who thinks it'd be a great idea that your character settles some where, and their lands become a hub for new adventurers and tales of daring, then fantastic!
Not every Ref is able to do that though, they may not be the people who own the system they just see to the rules on a game by game basis, there may be a team of Refs working together, keeping the world going through lots of small campaigns or linked adventures and through group discussion they decide that perhaps the best thing over all is that you just remain dead and the game moves on.

It can often be hard for players who've played for any amount of time as the same character when it comes to them shuffling off the mortal coil, but as a player its your duty to remember just why your character became an adventurer after all, they were risk takers and they were ultimately caught up in one risk to many.

But a games no fun if there's no real chance of defeat when you think about it, that’s worse than perhaps a high mortality game.

In a game where there's no real risk it often becomes stagnant and fast.

Your character might have all of the best weapons, the best enchantments, the best allies, the best armour and the strongest fortress.

Day in and day out you go kill a few thousand goblins.

Yay.

Fun.

It's a Ref's (Games Master or Story Teller if you prefer) duty to challenge you, keep you on your toes enough to know that you might not survive, to throw in a good selection of challenges, social, mental and physical and make sure that something slithers in the darkness just round the corner from where you are.

Death: The Final Frontier

One thing i'll always remember was reading a Chick Tract and in it was the immortal line of “Go home marcy you're dead..”.

Most roleplayers become deeply invested in their characters lives, they're heroes (or villains) in their other lives, that thing they do at the weekends that they dont always like to share with every day folks.

After all, how can you really explain to people “oh I dress up as an elf and go killing snake men from the city of Kah on weekends..”.

That other life is a little bit secret, and it's personal. We invest time & money in to it, we do it to challenge our selves.

And sometimes we lose that challenge and pay the ultimate price.

We snuff it.

Kapute.

Done for.

Dead.

The question is, did we have fun? Did we get to kill the mighty Black Ogre Chieftain and save the land with our sacrifice?

An ignoble death is something most players are worried about, we go in to battle side by side with our brothers and sisters in arms, only to be the first man savagely cut down by a dozen sneaky archers.. a senseless death, no rhyme or reason to it, just death for the same of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Here's the thing, Death doesnt care. One way or another we'll have to face them in the end.

What matters is how we deal with it.

Some players will sink in to a bit of a depression for a little while, that other side of their life has just come to a rather brutal end and they need time to let it sink in.

Those other lives of ours are just as every bit cherished as our Real Lives, so it's only natural that we'll feel saddened by the loss.

Other players will shrug their shoulders, and the next day will have a new and different character all ready to play and be in that mind set, not trying to be a Son of Sam style character, because there's nothing worse than a group losing say a powerful warrior or sneaky rogue only to find that the next day some one just as powerful or sneaky was hidden in a cell and they just happened to discover them.. look all that equipment the old guy doesn't need will be perfect for the new guy... how convenient... And very lazy.

There will be those players who plan ahead, they know that sooner or later they'll snuff it, so they have a contingency character all ready created and ready to go at the drop of a hat.

Indeed just like regular roleplaying games a player might look at a newly released book and say “Hey I didn't know I could play that, I might give that a go next” and start getting ideas for a new character.

Cheating Death

A great many systems these days allow for characters to return from death.

In fantasy systems this might be a Resurrection spell cast by a cleric, or perhaps a not to evil necromancer will summon the spirit back and bind it in to a new body, that body might have unusual memories or skills all of its own..

In Sci-Fi systems some piece of alien technology might be able to genetically reconfigure the corpse and instil in it some semblance of life through sheer dint of technological supremacy and power beyond human understanding.

In many Modern or Post Apocalyptic settings however Death is final. Once you're dead, that's it, there's no coming back.

Unless of course you happen to be playing in a modern setting where there is a high amount of magic or strange ritualism, then it could be possible to come back from the dead as well.

However, you go about doing it, if you do cheat death you should play that fact up.

You might, for a while, be filled with a sense of indestructibility after all its not every day you get to give the Grim Reaper the finger.

Maybe when you come back you're haunted by nightmares, after all you've seen whats on the other side.. have fun with that when roleplaying!

The question is, is it right for you to come back. Just because your system lets you, should you?

There are some systems where you have essentially unlimited lives, you just come back again and again. But after a while you might be forced in to a new body after the system says you've taken one on the chin to many times.

Other systems let you have one, maybe two chances (and its not always guaranteed either) at coming back, but your companions will have to be quick, they might have only minutes to stabilise your body, to capture the spirit and then prepare a ritual to bind it back, and if anything goes wrong in even the smallest of ways then you're gone for ever...

Some groups may have a whole story arc comprised of travelling to some other plane of existence to retrieve the spirit of their friend they thought dead, putting themselves in great peril at the same time, after if they all die who'll rescue them?

Retirement

However, you may after a while just become bored of the character. Some of your OOC mates might have dropped out from the group and the synergy and spark has just died out, or perhaps there's a few people in the same group who're all the same sort of class or function and you just feel like a spare peg.

Perhaps you've levelled up so high that you're god like in power and there's no real challenge any more except once a year, and even then you know that you probably wont die because if you do then loads of the games plot will be dead as well (Yes there are players and systems like that!).

What ever the reason, sometimes its better to bow out gracefully than be remembered for some half-arsed death scene which was little more than committing suicide by monster..

If your character is important to the over all plot make sure you speak to the Ref before hand, let them know you're thinking of changing character for what ever reason. The ref might actually agree with you that it's the better thing to do and give you a great send of game so that every one talks about you for years to come and and become some part of system myth..

That game doesn't have to end in death, the result could be you being taken by the gods for some special purpose, or maybe you become a monarch or made part of the nobility so that adventuring is something that you can't really do any more because you're to valuable alive..

Even if you don't get made in to some myth or legend in your own life time the Ref will appreciate you going to them with your concerns, it's part of what they're there for after all, and they'll do what they can to either allay your fears or maybe offer some kind of solution, maybe they'll even give you a hand with making a new character.

But if you don't give the Ref any notice you won't be doing them or yourself any favours, you may seriously damage a game by not telling the Ref about your intentions.

And no one wants to be known as “That Guy” trust me.

When to start up a new character

There really is no real Golden Time to start a new character.

There are some good times, such as when the group have entered a new city or area of the game world and you fancy playing something local based.

Try and think what your new character will bring to the game, will they be some one who's from the city the party have just entered, who knows the back alleyways and all the secret places where deals can be made, or perhaps they're a traveller from even further afield and find themselves surrounded by the curious and wondrous but their eyes are caught by the group of strangers who also stand out in the crowd.

Perhaps your last character died at the hands of Psionicist and you think that playing one of them might be fun given how you died in an unexpected way, or maybe you saw some one in a different group playing a race and class combination that you'd never seen before and you can think of other things to do with a similar odd mixture.

There are those players who start up a new character every time a new supplement is released, they have a dozen characters all going at the same time in the same system and they're all different, but they don't spend a lot of time playing any one of them so they just hop from one thing to another..

But what ever you do, just remember the golden rule.

Have fun!

Article written by Nick Sands, who's the Ref of Camarilla Invictus, formerly known as Kent by Night for the last 20 years and is desperately searching for a decent slice of Battenburg and mug of tea...