Have you been emotionally affected by death in a game?

WrittenWorldHQ

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Date: Apr 25, 2012

Have you been emotionally affected by death in a game?

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Hello all.

One of the other things I am doing right now is recording a podcast with some friends. We're talking about death in our next episode.

In that vein I would love to hear some stories from the you all about affecting game deaths. This is a mechanic which is thoroughly entrenched in our medium - our characters deal death and they often die themselves. Once they died so we would spend some more money, now they die as part of the complex and interleaved mechanical structures which provide incentive for our continued efforts. Do we ever feel for their deaths? When has the death of a character in a game affected you emotionally?

**Naturally if we talk about your story you will be notified and credited.

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meamgenius

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Date: Apr 25, 2012

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The first death in a game that ever made an impact on me was the death of a simple NPC that the GM never even bothered rolling up stats for. A gruesome looking little goblin with his finger two knuckles deep in one nostril searching for buried treasure. He was there to lead us from point A to point B but somewhere in the middle we just grew attached. We kept talking to him and instead of a transition to: "You arrive at the cave and Gobbi bids you safe journey" we asked about his life and why he was out in the woods all alone.

At first it was out of suspicion we were being led into a trap. The GM was forced to think on the fly and Gobbi's personality filled out. This dialogue was far better role playing than any of us had accomplished up to that point. This plucky little outcast from his own village became our mascot in short order. Otherwise overly cautious players threw themselves in the way of danger to protect this NPC while in a previous adventure we had been indifferent to the maiden faire and the main goal of our quest. When he was struck down by a spear trap we railed against the GM. The healer tried to bargain with the heavens to save the small creature. We stopped the game early that night because there just wasn't any emotion left in us after Gobbi.

I can not say anything nice about this goblin. He was smelly, filthy, rude, lecherous and a thief. He was scared of spiders and fanatic about eel soup. He whistled in his sleep and because of all this he was more real than any of the characters we had made up for ourselves.

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WrittenWorldHQ

The Team

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Posts: 24

Date: Apr 25, 2012

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I love this story. Agreed that flaws are what makes a character shine.

I have been discussing this over in the RPS forums at wrote the following in response to the conversation there:

"Plot related deaths can have emotional impact when we make a meaningful choice around that death. Killing someone in a shooting game is not meaningful generally speaking because we kill like psychopaths in these games. It's something which makes writers' lives difficult in gaming - you get to spend so little time in 'control' of the character you write for. You might craft this charming, layered, sympathetic character but there is a good chance s/he will arrive at the next cut scene with the blood of dozens on his/her hands. Tellingly, most of the meaningful deaths mentioned here have been deaths out of player control (creating a sense of helplessness), or deaths affected by player actions but not directly (creating a sense of responsibility). These deaths will have plot consequence as well.

Alternatively, mechanically affecting deaths might occur in a game where to not kill is a viable choice, or even where (Creatures springs to mind) creating\nurturing is the main goal. These deaths arise from our play, not from a pre-baked plot, and they affect us because we are in a context which does not trivialise death."

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Topic: Have you been emotionally affected by death in a game?

Have you been emotionally affected by death in a game?