Death is a huge part of storytelling. So many times it starts a story, creates plot development, or is at the climax. However, player character (PC) death’s place in TTRPGs is more complicated. Some people are—understandably—nervous of including it freely in their games. I’m going to make an argument for the opposite; I think character death presents huge opportunities for brilliant gaming moments. Handled well, everything can begin in death.
Character Death in Game of Thrones (Heavy Spoilers!)
Ned Stark is a player character. He’s the TV show’s season 1 front cover; he gets huge amounts of focus—both on the show and in the book. However, by the end of each, he is in a lot of trouble; he awaits execution. The player has made some poor choices, and made some really bad dice rolls. Now, the young king wants to make an example of Stark. Ned didn’t listen to his own advice: a lone wolf cannot live; only the pack survives.
Death is rarely fun, but it can be top quality drama. It takes only a second for Stark’s head to fall into a basket. Yet, in that time, Arya decides on revenge; it will motivate her until the series’ ending. Sansa sees how blind she has been; it’s the first stage of her horrific awakening. Cercei realises she is powerless again, her greatest fear; that helplessness will haunt her until her death. And the audience’s hate for King Joffrey is complete; great satisfaction will come when it’s the actor’s time to sing The Rains of Castamere.
Character Death As A Turning Point
Stark’s death is the foundation for other major characters to grow. It is painful, but it makes later highs feel that much higher. Any death in a tabletop game has this potential. This is extra true for a PC’s death. Perhaps especially a PC’s death.
The session may need a pause, or an early end. That’s no reason to avoid it, though. Death can be a beginning as much as it can be an end. The narrative gets stronger; the emotional payoff later increases. In Game of Thrones, when Arya finally makes House Frey pay, it feels so good. “Leave one wolf alive, and the sheep are never safe,” is a brilliant line. However, it only works because the narrative has had really early lows. Ned Stark never had the chance to see his family restored, but his children do. I think both the books and the TV series commit some bad errors with plot, pacing, and death. However, Stark’s end is amazingly well done. It would have been a lesser story without it.
Countering Character Death: Plot Armour
I will focus on Game of Thrones the TV show for an opposite example. It’s season 8 now. The audience has just watched an undead dragon destroy a defensive wall thousands of years old. The Wall was built from huge rocks and hardened ice. It was thick and fantastically high. Giants and mammoths never cracked it. The dragon, in a few minutes, cuts through the whole thing like a blowtorch through butter.
A few episodes later, the PC Jon Snow is facing the same dragon. The players have split the party, so Jon’s character is attacking the dragon alone. Jon has no ideas, so he takes cover behind a rock. Just a rock, barely large enough to hide his body. The dragon prepares its breath attack—the same one that sliced through the Wall. This should be quick. Jon’s death is now.
“No,” says the gamemaster (GM). This is not the ending they want. Sure, Jon abandoned his best friend Sam to the zombies (not a big problem; Sam doesn’t mind and names his child after Jon later). And yes, Jon’s player had no idea how to attack the dragon besides scream at it (the roll to intimidate did not succeed). But, the GM has plans. Never let natural development or consequences stop a pre-planned plot.
Plot Armour is the Tension-Killer
Now, perhaps the GM got over-excited with the dragon attack on the Wall. They may have exaggerated its killing power. Maybe, they never expected a PC to encounter the dragon alone. Perhaps the player had missed the foreshadowing or didn’t care about the warning signs. The player might simply have wanted Jon to do something silly, and die. Again.
For whatever reason, a couple of bad stealth rolls mean Jon is facing a healthy dragon solo. And it’s the dragon’s turn. The GM makes a decision. They might roll some dice and pretend to check the results. I’ve already written I’m against fudging; I think there are much more fulfilling ways to play. But here, the GM says the attack misses. The dragon that easily destroyed the Wall gets blocked by a rock. In fact, the rock does this without getting a scratch. It does a better job of protecting Jon than Sir Jorah, elite knight of the kingdom, does protecting Daenerys. There’s no armour like plot armour.
Inconsistency Kills The Cat
Immersion needs consistency. If the dragon can destroy the wall in minutes, Jon cannot survive. The players now know their characters are in no real danger. Because the GM saved Jon, they’ll have to do it again for the others. As if to prove this point, Arya’s player uses her turn to jump over some elite zombies; she’s screaming at the top of her voice, her stealth assassin training working well, and one-hit kills the big bad guy; she doesn’t even get a mark on her neck from his unholy touch. Forget all the multi-season setup for a Night King versus Jon fight. This is what the fans really wanted.
Highlighting the stupidity in Game of Thrones’ final seasons is easy. However, my point is encounters lose a critical element of tension if they don’t have risk. Emma Coats, storyboard artist and director for Pixar way back in 2012, posted 22 rules for storytellers. Much of the list is good advice for GMs—it’s here for anyone curious. But number 19 is especially important for this article: “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great. Coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”
Film, books, or games, it doesn’t matter. Luck creates problems for characters; it doesn’t save them. Tabletop games are no exception. If the group ignores the dice, games are at risk of becoming a pre-scripted story. And not a great one, either. It’s railroading in the worst kind of way, caused mostly by fear.
Embracing Death (LoTR: Fellowship of the Ring Spoilers!)
Eleanor Roosevelt once said a woman is like a teabag; you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water. It’s a brilliant analogy, but I think actually it applies to everyone, including RPG characters. There is no epic where heroes avoid emotional hardship or trauma. For Aragorn to commit to his future, Boromir must die. True epics have epic stakes. Death motivates future heroes; great deaths keep old heroes fresh in memory. The last recorded words of the Black Axe, Champion of the Mouse Guard by David Petersen, are:
“Death is as powerful a weapon as it is an easy escape. Heroes can pass into legends, legends into myths, myths fuel new heroes.”
I really can’t add much more to that.
If Character Death Is So Great, Why The Avoidance?
I’m not ignoring the big problem with character death. This is meant to be a game, where people have fun, and is probably a shared experience with friends, too. Making people feel bad—and it can feel very bad—is not what games should be about. However, I think reframing death and sticking to some rules help unlock its potential and keep the hurt to a minimum.
First, the rules: there are only two. Number one is no death should be meaningless. Years ago, Matt Colville said one of his worst gaming experiences was killing a friend’s character with a pit trap. The PC died, and it didn’t mean anything. The party didn’t learn anything and the other characters couldn’t really use it for their story. If PCs are going to die, it needs to be because they are protecting something, saving someone; they are dying for a cause or a reason. Additionally, it should become a moment of change for the characters and the world. The PCs and NPCs connected to the character are going to feel the effects of loss. How they choose to deal with that loss, what they learn from it, lose and gain from it, are up to them; but, things have to change.
Be Honest; Be Fair
The second rule is death should be fair. For me, that partly means rolling all my dice in front of everyone. However, far more important is good communication at the table. Big dangers should have lots of foreshadowing. Matt Colville’s friend had no idea about pit traps; the next moment, their character sheet is in the bin. Even I, a huge fan of unbalanced combat, make sure players know when things are getting dangerous; and, they always have options to run away or change the situation in their favour. Death should never be a gotcha. It should never be a cheap surprise—that’s no fun at all and a total disservice to its potential.
Reframing Character Death
The perspective on PC death is also important. GMs get a lot of pressure to avoid pre-writing adventures. They need to know the setup, not the results, before a campaign starts. However, this equally applies to players. I’ve had players give me 8 pages of backstory, and expected me to memorise it, working it all into the campaign. There were adventure seeds and key NPCs they expected to encounter. They had the character’s story mapped out in their heads before the first session. In a large group that doesn’t coordinate backstories, this can become decades of play. Most campaigns never last more than two years.
Sometimes systems accidentally make this worse. Dungeons & Dragons lays out character progression to level 20. Players see all the mechanics they will gain. It’s only natural they start planning what their character will become. When this fantasy—mechanical or narrative—gets crushed by an unexpected death, it’s going to hurt.
Instead, see the characters as part of a grander narrative. The PC’s story is important because it connects and grows with the other PCs. However, it’s never the focus of the group. Things get awkward when individual stories dominate play. It naturally excludes other characters; additionally, the main PC needs plot armour to get the story finished—killing immersion—or encounters lose any real risk—killing tension.
By focusing on the group’s larger story, it helps keep any character loss in perspective. Actually, it often encourages other players to attach more meaning to the death; players are more likely to feel involved with this communal story than one from another PC’s background; they’re not just a side character waiting for the spotlight to cycle round. Incidentally, this perspective is basically essential for games like Shadowdark and Pirate Borg!
Consider Stepping Away
There will be times when character death just isn’t acceptable. Sometimes, people just don’t want to play an emotionally heavy game. This is especially true after a rough week at work, or tough personal circumstances; it can be difficult putting energy into a narrative that may not give any pay-off soon. For serious campaigns in mid-flow, I’d advise switching to a one-shot, short side-adventure, or a different game altogether. To keep the main campaign consistent and honest, a short break might be best.
Paranoia: Life Is Cheap, Death Is Hilarious
The flipside to this are games where death comes fast. I’ve mentioned Shadowdark and Pirate Borg, and Warhammer Fantasy RPG and its sci-fi sibling Dark Heresy are here, too. Characters are weak, so it’s best players do not get too attached to them. However, the spectrum goes a lot more extreme. Paranoia, now owned by Mongoose Publishing, and Hollowpoint, by Brad Murray and C.W. Marshall, don’t expect death, they actively encourage it.
In Paranoia, every character has a number of clones—lives, basically. Right from character creation, players are undermining each other in wickedly sneaky ways. Dark humour is heavy here, so it won’t be for everyone, but—perhaps as a Brit—it’s in my blood. The party have an objective that needs fulfilling; however, sabotaging the other PCs as much as possible feeds a lot of the action—and humour. Above them all is the GM playing the satirical Friend Computer; they are an insane A.I. more like Portal’s GLaDOS than 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000. When, not if, players lose clones, Friend Computer immediately sends a replacement. The fresh clone has all negative memories about their last death removed. This means players are encouraged to keep the atmosphere light and the action moving. Besides, there will always be opportunities for comedic revenge later.
Hollowpoint: Death Is Cheap, Life Needs More Explosions
While it’s very possible to play a campaign with Paranoia, Hollowpoint feels much more one-shot territory to me. PCs are essentially Jason Statham or another member of The Expendibles. They are bad guys fighting worse guys, potentially for a greater good. Action is fast, intense, and brutal. It’s a dice pool system that uses sets to decide how many actions a character can take, and their defence level. The game makes sure every character can survive long enough to have at least one important character-defining moment.
However, after that, it’s by luck of the dice if they see the end of the adventure. The game advises GMs to target characters who roll a low defence to keep the tension high. Players taken out of action can choose not to die; instead, they go into the next scene heavily wounded. There’s actually no requirement for them to die, but it’s often better to have a fully healthy character. The replacement immediately drops into the scene—often literally crashing through a window; they then start trying to make up for the group’s previous “mistakes” that led to the original PC dying.
Experiment To Find What Works
I mention my experience with these games to highlight there are many ways to handle death. The world of TTRPGs is wonderfully wide; there’s a lot more out there than people who have only watched Critical Role may realise. As always, ultimately groups will find what works best for them. However, I really recommend not being scared of character death; instead, treat it with the respect it deserves, and unlock its massive narrative potential. That, or treat it with the disrespect it deserves, and go fast, loose, and without a care. Please give it some thought.
