Character deaths

I got into a rather interesting discussion recently which helped me around some bloggers block. One of the things brought up was the idea of a game where it was hard for PCs to die, or as he put it 'Care Bearing'. I thought about it, now in my games character death can vary wildly depending on systems but I will admit that I tend to be a bit more merciful than some, maybe due to player complaints or because of how I feel about games. Some of it is that I have fairly clever players, and some of it is that I try to avoid doing games that are going to eat the players alive consistently. Another person that was somewhat intermittently involved mentioned that he enjoys the look on players faces when their characters die, usually the shock that it happened, and complained that modern games coddle players too much. The person I was talking more directly to also complained about ideas like game balance and the like.

I disagree on a few fronts, but some of it also has to do with how I view the games. For example, in most editions of gamma world I've played you can whip up a new character quite fast and frequent deaths are part and parcel of the experience. The same can be said for games like All Flesh Must be Eaten or even certain games using the Cthulhu mythos. Some old school fantasy games are similar, in these cases death might be annoying but the relative speed in which you can make a new character means that the death won't mean that either the player is sitting out for most of the night or that everyone else has to put things on hold while a new character is made. In such games character deaths aren't a big deal and can even be a source of amusement.

Take games that have more involved character generation however, say for example something from the folks at Palladium, and a character death could set you back hours in terms of time spent generating a new character. There is also the argument about how a character dies, is it different if they die from a single failed saving throw than if they died in a mass battle? If there are resurrection options in the game that might change things too, but how accessible do you make it for players? (IE at low levels do they have to suck it up and just wait until the cleric gets high enough to resurrect before they can die and keep their character?) Then again there is the question of if character deaths mean anything to the players or game itself. If you have a big story planned is it better to just keep the basic group alive so they don't have to keep reading the new guy or gal into the groups mission and enemy list or is it necessary to make sure that you prune their numbers so they don't get too sure of themselves?

Well, any readers out there are welcome to comment, hope to hear from you.

Badass normal or Arcane asskicker?

One of the big things that intrigued me with Deadlands was the character creation setup where you had the option of grabbing some fairly sweet powers. One of the options was taking an 'Arcane Background' these let you tap into a bit of supernatural mojo you could wield against the creatures of darkness. In Weird west there were a few different options available, the main book gave us the Mad Scientist, the Huckster, the Blessed, and the Shaman.

The Mad Scientist is a brilliant inventor, able to build things that bend or outright break the laws of science and reason, in part because their muses are in fact carrion breathed horrors that sometimes twist the poor scientists mind too much when offering inspiration and cause delusions, paranoia, etc. (to say nothing of crazy hair). The Huckster was a spellcaster that might have had the slogan 'with great power comes great randomness.' The concept was that you had learned to tap the spirit world for power, requiring you to play a hand of poker against a powerful denizen there, if you won you got their power to cast a spell, if you lost you didn't. However if you rolled badly or pulled a black joker you risked the hex going wild, power tearing you apart or your gray matter being kicked around. The Blessed kick ass for the lord, and for other high powers, Christians were the most common but there were also rules for Jews, Taoists, and Muslims. The Blessed were probably the strongest of the arcane backgrounds, if only because they had a collection of 'always on' abilities to choose from as well as invokable miracles, they had some other advantages as well but I'll get to those later. The last core option was the Shaman, in theory it was a fairly potent arcane background available only to those with native american characters. In practice... given enough time to prepare and enough relics and totems to amp your appeasement points and all that and you could have a group of guys in loincloths with clubs destroy a platoon of soldiers in body armor with gattling guns and steam powered tanks while not losing anyone. However they are probably the weakest of the arcane backgrounds, due to both the heavy amount of character resources consumed as well as the far clunkier and problematic system for using effects.

Supplements added some rather unique and interesting new ideas, the voodoo priest, the martial artist, the shootist, and the metal mage (a fusion of mad science and hucksterism). These were a fair amount different but I also have relatively little experience with them save the metal mage and that one is a fusion result, requiring both arcane backgrounds be taken as well as a few unique features. The shootist was essentially a variant of the Huckster, except in this case you channeled arcane energy through your guns. The interesting thing was that arcane backgrounds didn't quite define the character so much as the way they were used did. One person could easily play a Huckster loaded to the gills with various hexes and take edges built around being a better caster while someone else might only have a few hexes that they use to make themselves a more effective detective or gunslinger. A blessed could be a wandering preacher dispensing miracles to various lost souls, a monster hunter that kicks ass for the lord, or someone of faith that a higher power smiles on every now and again. The Mad Scientist is a bit more inevitably required to have a focus with their skills, as they have no real powers to speak of other than their inventing prowess. The Shamans are in a bit of a bind, while they can be many different types of shaman they are unfortunately strongly tied to their background moreso than others, but that might fit the theme.

This is not to assume, however, that everyone is or even should have an arcane background. In fact it is quite easy to make a very potent character that has no knowledge or use for such powers. You could easily build a gunslinger that can draw quicker than lightning, stare down a grizzly, and see a horde of death and terror and do little more than give a sigh of vexation that you might not have enough ammo. This is one of the advantages in Deadlands came from, there is actually an argument that could be made that the mundane characters were stronger than the magically powered ones, or at the very least were their rough equals.

One reason for this is simply a matter of the nature of the world. By and large the 'normals' had no bloody clue about the supernatural other than a few vague rumors here and there. Using supernatural powers in a public place is a major no-no, the lone exceptions to this would probably be the Blessed and the Shamans, though the Shamans only really count within tribal lands. The Blessed powers frequently either didn't get noticed or are the equivalent to modern faith healers (except in this case they would actually work!) Huckster powers are usually quite flashy and fairly destructive, a huckster that used his powers to drive off some bandits would probably end up lynched by a terrified town that they tried to save or they'd end up being threatened, press ganged, imprisoned or killed by either the Agency or the Texas Rangers depending on which side of the border they happened to be on. There is also the fact that the Huckster powers show flashing cards in the hand of the huckster using the hex, and remember this is in addition to the normal risks of their hexes backlashing and tearing their bodies or minds apart. A gunslinger on the other hand can just raise a pair of pistols and stare down the enemy with nothing more than a bit of cussed willpower and a good shooting arm and get a much better result from the town.

There is also a more basic principal in play, advancing with arcane backgrounds eats up character points. Raising casting skills cost bounty points, buying new powers costs bounty points, buying new edges to augment your arcane background eats bounty points. Remember that odds are they also need to augment existing skills or pick up new ones too, unless they either have an 'acceptable' background or they plan to avoid towns and heavily populated areas like the plague. Conversely the normal just needs to buy up a new regular edge or kick up skills, giving them a better chance to hit and in some cases making it harder for them to be affected. There is also a secondary edge here, though it's a bit debatable. Players get bounty points by turning in fate chips at the end of a session, fate chips can be used to restore wind, negate wounds, power abilities, etc. A player with an arcane background is likely to burn chips on powers, as well as needing more points to keep building up their armada so they have to either accept being wounded more often or advance more slowly. 5 bounty points might buy one power for someone with an arcane background but for a normal that can be more skills or a new edge. They can get more with fewer points, this also means that they can be a bit freer during battles and when they do use points they'll tend to stretch further.

I want to get more into Arcane Backgrounds in the future, both in classic and wasted west.