Blog-It Llama!

By Nick - November 19, 2009

2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons was an entirely different beast. You just picked a class, a race (maybe not even that), and a name. After that, you just sat and played. And died. And died. And died and died and DIED! It was great. Character creation was mindless. It was more about finishing the mission than keeping your character in one piece. Death became so common place it was amusing. Critical hits usually meant decapitation. Fumbles meant lost limbs of you and your allies. The air of death was inevitable, so when you had a character that managed to survive for awhile, it became something miraculous. In the campaign I played with my father (which was purely 2nd Edition) I had a character who, in retrospect, had a really stupid name: Luke Cage Skywalker. I used this character as an NPC in personal campaigns, re-branded as Lucan Cloudcatcher. I couldn’t resist including him in future campaigns. Making him an NPC was like giving him a medal of honor for everything that he had done. What gave me such an immense attachment to this Cleric is the fact that he was the only one to have survived the entire campaign. During the first adventure there were six or seven characters. Other than an NPC accompanying us, Luke was the only one to walk away alive. I was proud of him because he defied the impossible. He defied the Hell that was 2nd Edition.

3rd Edition resembles closer to what we know today. Characters had depth and creating them took time. Their uniqueness is what made us feel their death so profoundly. Dying wasn’t trivial, it was tragic. In gaining this immense attachment with every character created, it made the DM’s job of killing the party a less fun endeavor. It was more a balance of keeping the fear of death close as an ever constant threat. Dying still entailed ridiculous results, including anything from dismemberment to disintegration to being ripped apart by a reality maelstrom created by a level 18 Wizard. Its occurrence was just a bit more rare.

4th Edition made it even harder to die. Not only can you remain at negative hit points for longer than previous editions, epic level characters gain death defying abilities as a standard. Though the healing surge system is a more satisfying measure of the DM’s viciousness over an entire adventure, it is pretty hard to believe that death is a common thing to have just happen out of nowhere.

But is this a bad thing?

Wacky deaths are entertaining but there’s a kind of twisted maliciousness that comes from the DM taking pleasure in such a thing. They act as this omnipresence whose job it is to choose whether or not his friend’s imaginary avatar gets melted by a hidden chamber of acid. The implications can be weirdly cruel at times unless there’s a system in place to keep new characters coming in like a factory of retail adventurers that you always made sure to keep the receipt for.

What keeps a player coming back is their attachment, nay, their love for their creation. They should savor each choice, each achievement, and how it carries through their evolution over time. They have to learn how their character acts towards a noble, a wench, or a surprisingly diplomatic goblin. If an actor’s character dies three episodes into the premiere of a new show, they won’t have a deep understanding or care for the role. As compared to the stars of the show that have been playing their part for five years, they would cry if their character was killed.

So death has to play a different role. The players must fear the death of others, NPCs they’ve grown attached to, and the world they’re surrounded by in their minds. As long as there is tension and the players care deeply about what is going to happen, the death of their characters isn’t a needed factor.

That’s not to say that death can’t still play a role as something far more twisted. You just have to be creative by giving the players new, more dangerous options to defy death with…

Be ready for DM’s Curtain: Dealing Out Death part 2 coming soon!

Categories: Blog-It
Tags: 2nd edition, 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, D & D, DM, DM's curtain, Dungeons and Dragons