Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2013 10:46:20 GMT -5
As the first line of this thread, ALL COMMENTS ABOUT PEOPLE TAKING THEIR OWN CHARACTER DEATH SERIOUSLY OR NOT ARE OFF TOPIC.[/B] This includes justifications or explanations of why one may not do things that make it easier for them to do so. If you want to discuss those things, please start your own thread. This is about taking the death of other people's characters[/b] seriously.
The subject comes up often about people taking their own character death seriously. I think it's an important subject. However, this is also something which benefits from support from others, on all sides, and I've been wanting to draw attention to this for a long time on more servers than just this one. Some ways that people can respect the life or death of others' characters are:
- Stopping to role play along with someone whose character is raised in the middle of a dungeon. If the rest of the party walks off during their RP, they'll be conditioned into not RP-ing it.
- Creating conflicts that don't require character death to fulfill. If you can't play in a conflict that carries risk of dying, and people want to play, they won't act afraid.
- Creating or allowing non-lethal resolutions to conflicts that develop. If someone tries for a non-lethal resolution, and you don' t allow it, you're conditioning them to always fight. If they want to play the game, they won't act afraid at having to fight a superior foe.
- Meaningful consequences for dying that are still playable, but the player can't get out of. Voluntary choice to take on consequences doesn't make one afraid, because you can opt not to take them on.
- Something to contest over other than, "You are a Ilmateri/Cyricist/Tyrran/goblin/centaur/dragon/deva/giant/Malarite/orc, so you have to die, and it's up to me to kill you." If dying in the conflict hampers your real goal, so much the better. Again, if this is the game, and people want to play, they won't act afraid of dying when it is at stake.
- Reserving truly deadly attacks for the end of a conflict, and not relying on raise dead for the story to continue with your PC adversary.
- Finding ways to give frightened characters something to still role play about, connected to the conflict. More than one level of risk to take. If acting afraid means you can't role play in the scene or plot, and you want to play in the scene or plot, you won't act afraid.
So, do you personally cause these "kill or die" situations yourself often? Probably not. Do a lot of people do a great job at supporting others in taking character death seriously? Yes. Do these situations still happen a lot? Yes. So, I just thought I'd toss this out there to discuss.
The subject comes up often about people taking their own character death seriously. I think it's an important subject. However, this is also something which benefits from support from others, on all sides, and I've been wanting to draw attention to this for a long time on more servers than just this one. Some ways that people can respect the life or death of others' characters are:
- Stopping to role play along with someone whose character is raised in the middle of a dungeon. If the rest of the party walks off during their RP, they'll be conditioned into not RP-ing it.
- Creating conflicts that don't require character death to fulfill. If you can't play in a conflict that carries risk of dying, and people want to play, they won't act afraid.
- Creating or allowing non-lethal resolutions to conflicts that develop. If someone tries for a non-lethal resolution, and you don' t allow it, you're conditioning them to always fight. If they want to play the game, they won't act afraid at having to fight a superior foe.
- Meaningful consequences for dying that are still playable, but the player can't get out of. Voluntary choice to take on consequences doesn't make one afraid, because you can opt not to take them on.
- Something to contest over other than, "You are a Ilmateri/Cyricist/Tyrran/goblin/centaur/dragon/deva/giant/Malarite/orc, so you have to die, and it's up to me to kill you." If dying in the conflict hampers your real goal, so much the better. Again, if this is the game, and people want to play, they won't act afraid of dying when it is at stake.
- Reserving truly deadly attacks for the end of a conflict, and not relying on raise dead for the story to continue with your PC adversary.
- Finding ways to give frightened characters something to still role play about, connected to the conflict. More than one level of risk to take. If acting afraid means you can't role play in the scene or plot, and you want to play in the scene or plot, you won't act afraid.
So, do you personally cause these "kill or die" situations yourself often? Probably not. Do a lot of people do a great job at supporting others in taking character death seriously? Yes. Do these situations still happen a lot? Yes. So, I just thought I'd toss this out there to discuss.
