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RPG death
I'm feeling like crap today.
This would have been a really good post about how I went to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emmzii on Saturday and how we did good things with the Odyssey media stream and then went to see Carmen live in HD streamed from the New York Metropolitan Opera which was fab, but things went downhill Sunday evening.
We had a long RPG session starting early afternoon and I just got back in time for the start. We were in a scenario that we'd pretty much been manipulated into. (by a GM who claims he doesn't manipulate)
My character had been wanting to retire for the last two months and the GM was fully aware of this. We'd talked about the replacement character and gone part way towards drawing him up. This was not because I didn't like my current character, quite the contrary. I liked him a lot and wanted him to retire rather than die (the average scenario in this game pushes characters to the very brink of survival - he'd come with a hair's breadth of dying on two previous occasions and there was no way he was going to live to a ripe old age if he carried on adventuring). He was a centaur, and in this part of the game world centaurs are an endangered species, rarely more than one in any decent sized town and hence failing to to maintain their numbers, let alone increase them. His simple objective, from the start of the campaign, was to find a compatible member of the opposite sex and settle down and raise kids.
I made one fatal mistake. I made him a healer. I made him a very good healer - in fact it turns out I made him the best healer this particular game system had ever seen. He became indispensible and the GM didn't want me to retire him, as it would have seriously weakened the party.
After much effort and persistence, Sagittarius finally found a female centaur who wasn't already married. At which point, the scenarios suddenly stopped being 'You can earn money or find something interesting, if you do this', or being things that the players dreamt up for themselves, they became 'People will die if you don't do this'.
Sagittarius was an ethical character, he was a healer. He couldn't refuse without changing who he was.
So he got killed. We were in an 'unspeakable evil will be released upon the world if you don't prevent it' scenario. We'd already done the sensible thing and sent a character off to inform the people most likely to be able to send an army to help. But we were also getting an NPC telling us that the army probably wouldn't get there in time, so we went up against a bunch of NPCs that we already knew were more powerful than we were. (several of the characters who escaped had only a single hit point left, and the big bad guys hadn't even got into the fight.)
I feel cheated. Sagittarius should never have been there. He should have been many miles to the south, in a nice quiet woodland glade learning about healing plants from a lady centaur and working out if they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
I'm a role player and a writer. If I play a character, he won't exist in a vacuum. I'll know his family background, the things that motivate him, the personality quirks, etc. I feel like I'd written a novel and someone went and ripped up the last chapter. I've not just lost the character, I've lost his future, the plans he had to re-integrate centaur society. I've lost the future of a species.
The daftest bit is that the thing that preys most on my mind is whether anyone will think to tell his mother what happened. As a character, he wrote home regularly to his parents. I suspect only one of the players will think to do this. To most of them, a character is gone the instant he dies. It was always Sagittarius who thought to check on their religion and try to bury the body and find a meaningful funeral rite. His mother is a figment of my imagination, but I'm a writer. I know how she would feel - I know how I would feel if I lost a son.
As I said, I'm a role-player rather than a roll-player.
Character deaths are par for the course in RPGs (we'd already lost four or more in the last six months or so - this was one of the few original characters left), but I still feel bitter. If the GM hadn't stopped me retiring Sagittarius, he'd still be alive. I was screwed, and I feel miserable,
This would have been a really good post about how I went to see
emmzii on Saturday and how we did good things with the Odyssey media stream and then went to see Carmen live in HD streamed from the New York Metropolitan Opera which was fab, but things went downhill Sunday evening.We had a long RPG session starting early afternoon and I just got back in time for the start. We were in a scenario that we'd pretty much been manipulated into. (by a GM who claims he doesn't manipulate)
My character had been wanting to retire for the last two months and the GM was fully aware of this. We'd talked about the replacement character and gone part way towards drawing him up. This was not because I didn't like my current character, quite the contrary. I liked him a lot and wanted him to retire rather than die (the average scenario in this game pushes characters to the very brink of survival - he'd come with a hair's breadth of dying on two previous occasions and there was no way he was going to live to a ripe old age if he carried on adventuring). He was a centaur, and in this part of the game world centaurs are an endangered species, rarely more than one in any decent sized town and hence failing to to maintain their numbers, let alone increase them. His simple objective, from the start of the campaign, was to find a compatible member of the opposite sex and settle down and raise kids.
I made one fatal mistake. I made him a healer. I made him a very good healer - in fact it turns out I made him the best healer this particular game system had ever seen. He became indispensible and the GM didn't want me to retire him, as it would have seriously weakened the party.
After much effort and persistence, Sagittarius finally found a female centaur who wasn't already married. At which point, the scenarios suddenly stopped being 'You can earn money or find something interesting, if you do this', or being things that the players dreamt up for themselves, they became 'People will die if you don't do this'.
Sagittarius was an ethical character, he was a healer. He couldn't refuse without changing who he was.
So he got killed. We were in an 'unspeakable evil will be released upon the world if you don't prevent it' scenario. We'd already done the sensible thing and sent a character off to inform the people most likely to be able to send an army to help. But we were also getting an NPC telling us that the army probably wouldn't get there in time, so we went up against a bunch of NPCs that we already knew were more powerful than we were. (several of the characters who escaped had only a single hit point left, and the big bad guys hadn't even got into the fight.)
I feel cheated. Sagittarius should never have been there. He should have been many miles to the south, in a nice quiet woodland glade learning about healing plants from a lady centaur and working out if they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
I'm a role player and a writer. If I play a character, he won't exist in a vacuum. I'll know his family background, the things that motivate him, the personality quirks, etc. I feel like I'd written a novel and someone went and ripped up the last chapter. I've not just lost the character, I've lost his future, the plans he had to re-integrate centaur society. I've lost the future of a species.
The daftest bit is that the thing that preys most on my mind is whether anyone will think to tell his mother what happened. As a character, he wrote home regularly to his parents. I suspect only one of the players will think to do this. To most of them, a character is gone the instant he dies. It was always Sagittarius who thought to check on their religion and try to bury the body and find a meaningful funeral rite. His mother is a figment of my imagination, but I'm a writer. I know how she would feel - I know how I would feel if I lost a son.
As I said, I'm a role-player rather than a roll-player.
Character deaths are par for the course in RPGs (we'd already lost four or more in the last six months or so - this was one of the few original characters left), but I still feel bitter. If the GM hadn't stopped me retiring Sagittarius, he'd still be alive. I was screwed, and I feel miserable,
no subject
I have let them know that they have the option to run away and hide. Or at least try to. Nearest border of the kingdom is several hundred miles away.