My group lost it's first member today, so technically it's my first kill. Of course, I've lost a lot of chars in return, so it's only fair...but I still feel a sense of regret.

My question to all is - how did you feel as a GM when you killed your first PC? I know this may be reaching way back into antiquity, and may not be an original thread, but I'm still curious.

Doc Mortand

It hurt. I felt sad.

I giggled.

I was annoyed. I was trying to keep these idiots alive and they kept insisting on doing things the by the book were suicide (The cyberzombie has a LMG? Cool! I want it! I'll knife him and loot the corpse...)

I like announcing who's not surviving the next storyline. I mostly kill NPCs or my former PCs who I'm running as NPCs, though...

Can't remember ever actually killing a PC, though. I need to fix that now. Had a rigger who deserved at least three deaths one game. Didn't get any of them cause I knew he'd whine for the next week or two.

I looked for more PCs

Handed the bloke a slice of pizza, fresh glass of coke and said:

"Did you really think it was a good idea to fire an panther assault cannon into an LPG storage faciliity?"

Mainly all I could think was 'Oh Gawd, I've killed Spanners. He's really dead. Really really. I can't beleive I pulled off a TN#15 test for that go-ganger with the SMG on four dice. I can't beleive Spanners botched his save with eight body dice. I can't beleive he wasn't wearing his vest. Oh Gawd, I hope he doesn't get up and beat the snot out of me...'

He didn't. He just said 'damn, that's a shame. I suppose the truck we're in had better make a crash test, huh?' Then he looked round at the other players and grinned evilly: 'Shame I was doing a hundred in this crate, isn't it?'

Fortunately the rest of them survived with minor and serious injuries...

now I haven't actually killed off any members of the team, yet, but they've done it for me so I haven't felt I had to.

Team's Street Sam goes running at the building they were trying to sneak towards, accross about 30 meters of open terrain, I might add, team's magician goes, "no one else is around him right?" GM "no, why?" Magician "because I'm going to hit him with a stunball, base damage deadly." He dropped, had a little dificulty countering all the Mage's extra successes. After the rest of the team picked up his unconcius body, shot it twice just to teach him a lesson, and dumped it out in the barrens both I and the Player decided it was time to make a new character, and we chalked the character up as dead.

The first character I had die in a SR campaign was an ork decker. He was prone to doing stupid things, and then refusing to seek medical attention. He got shot in the leg, and didn't get medical care until the leg needed to be amputated. Then he died of some disease from a paracritter because he didn't go to a hospital. And those are just the highlights! All in all, I feel no remorse: I think the player did all in his power to get himself killed, and then made sure it stuck.

The players next character (a human decker) was a bit smarter.

I still remember my first PC kill. The idiot was standing there, insulting Lofwyr, and I hit hit with a force 6 Manabolt with Deadly damage. He promptly failed to get a success. Strangely, Lofwyr decided to let us go without incident after that...

Wait, I'm not a GM.

I laughed for days. Killing off PCs is what makes it all worth it in the end. Just remember the one rule of GMing: You can kill off all the PCs you want, you just have to make sure they think its their fault.

Anyone remember that most gamemaster-friendly of all RPGs: Paranoia? Where your PCs have six clones each (or was it five?) of their character and gamemastering consist mainly of coming up with the most outrageous, incongruous and whacky ways of killing them off inside 15 minutes. If you feel nice, like.
I once managed 24 clones in three minutes... ah, those were the days...

Sadly, I admit to trying to keep the buggers alive in my SR group. So much in fact, that I let them do descriptive firefights instead of throwing dice. At least with us it seems to work better the way that a gamer tells me he's getting tired of the char or doesn't feel he's playing the char 'right'. Next session the character gets a suitably dramatic end of which only the concerned gamer and me know. The others stand (or rather sit) in shock.
But haven't had them mourn their comrade's loss as yet. Probably since they know it's 'Hollywood'...

The last time I killed off a PC....

Well, the most recent incident involved a bunch of PCs taking D wounds and their players simply switching to other characters subsequently. Does that count?

One guy got sniped, and two others got directly hit by a mortar.

It was a tactical mission where the PCs and 30 soldiers in a fortress had to fight off 100 ninjas with AKs, sniper support, and mortars.

They really really botched it in terms of having terrible strategy.

I just got paranoia XP!!!!!

I distinctly remember my first PC death ... he was shot in the back by another player. Pumped him with gel rounds on FA until he died, then smashed in his head with his rifle butt, just to make sure. Nasty night.

I gave up sheltering my players after that incident. During our next session, 3 characters died. Ironically, they were all played by the same player.

When his main character bit the dust by running a Lone Star roadblock at top speed, then getting out and trying to reach for a gun while staring down about 40 barrels ...

I told him he could go into the other room and make a new character with one of the other char's fixers as a contact, and he made a dwarven rigger. He didn't understand why flying around stuffed inside a rotocraft drone with a LMG mounted underneath would attract attention, and wound up in a Lone Star interrogation room. Then he tried to buy himself freedom ratting out his runner friends ... the whole room went silent, as he was about to try destroying EVERYONE's hard - built first characters. I told him he could try negotiating -- he didn't have the skill. The TN was 8 after situational mods, so he could default. He chose to default to his munched CHA of 1, and rolled ... a 1. His karma pool was spent from trying to not get killed while being taken into custody, so his attempts at negotiation had a catastrophic result -- he accidentally confessed on tape to several crimes. Went down for 7 charges and a combined sentence of 102 years.

He started with the oppositional defiant behavior, and made a munched speed demon elf sammy, who, upon creation, walked outside his front door and started mowing down pedestrians. I avoided dignifying his actions with roleplaying and just told him the HRT managed to respond within 5 minutes and offed him with one well placed sniper shot.

At that point, I told him to try again next session. His immature behavior had managed to take attention away from the rest of the group for 3/4 of the day, and everyone else wanted to play for a little while ...

My first PC death...let me see...
It was back in 1990 when we started playing SR. We started with "Mercurial" because it was the only published adventure. They all died in the Taetzel Building except the team shaman who barely escaped alive. Needless to say the run was botched...
Since then, several characters have gone beyond the pale: a decker eviscerated by a True Form Soldier in the Universal Brotherhood hive in "Missing Blood", a Rigger shot down with a SAM while trying to pass the Salish-Seattle border with a stolen Salish helicopter at the end of the "Harlequin" campaign, the surviving shaman from the first adventure in a firefight during the gang war in "Elven Fire", another group turned to ash by a dragon in a second shot at "Mercurial", a whole group decimated by the dragon Naheka in Hawaii because they prefered blasting to negotiating (I know, I know "never deal with a dragon" and all that drek...), a Racoon shaman, an adept and two chromed-to-the-max samurai in the Project Hope debacle in "Double Exposure". Recently, three magicians got busted by the cops in LA during a run in Studio City and ended up getting between 15 to 30 years in jail...

And yet, I take no pleasure in killing PCs. If I can avoid doing it, I do unless the player does something really stupid. In my opinion, PC are like heroes in a movie. Things should be scary, bloody but they should "win" (as far as winning is possible in a cyberpunk game) at the end...
I hate GMs who seem to consider their worth as a GM to depend on their bodycount...Gming should not be an ego trip...
The death of a PC should always be a sad moment....

In three years of near-constant GMing, I've only ever killed one PC, and that was with the player's consent and foreknowledge (the game had originally been a backup to run while getting the main plotline organised- due to another player dropping out I made it the primary game and the player wanted to keep her other character). The character in question- a blind rigger- had his garage bombed by the CIA. A 150kg R6 FAE at point blank converted him into both history and geography.
That's not to say the characters get an easy time- they've been close to dying on several occasions (including getting their legs blown apart at the knee by explosive sniper-fire, shot in the gut by buckshot from a sawn-off Remington and mauled by Gabriel Hounds). I wouldn't kill a character without a good reason, but this doesn't mean I'm not going to make them think I would.

-JH.

...but how do most of you deal with the death when the PC is not being stupid?

Say the team leader cashes in on a bad roll while trying to save some people from a blast after exhausting his Karma Pool?

Personally I think this is a good opportunity to use some dying words, but often times GM's save the guy.

Does luck or lack thereof influence your decision?

I personally allow the hand of god rule... but apart from that they die

As the Kremlin states, that's what the Hand of God is for.

~J

Exactly. Fudging results just to let a character survive (or even worse, just to kill someone off) takes away the entire point of using any dice rolls whatsoever. Afterall, you are playing a game as much as you're roleplaying. If all you want to do is roleplay, adopt rules similar to those founds in Amber or Theatrix.

On a similiar vein if a player A is trying to save player B from player B's own stupidity and only dies becuase of bad die rolls. I let them invoke the Hand of God using player B's karma pool. At the same time it's merciful and harsh. Harsh on player B and merciful on player A. In order to do this however it must match 2 of these three criteria.

1: This heroic plan must be in character for Player A and must be sound (if a little dangerous)
2: Player A's death should only be becuase of spectacular bad luck on his part.
3: Player B must be in a situation that is escapable. Even if the odds are slim.

Rather sad, at what the players did.

I had made the portion of the run easy enough that they should have been able to do it without dying. But the wizard decided that he had to walk right up behind the guy with the Enfield to cast manaball on him. Turned out he was too manly to cast the spell from a safe distance.

Players shouldn't really die all that often with the technology in 2064. If they get deadly damage their teammates need to pull their arses out and get a DocWagon there pronto! Meanwhile teammates try to stabilise. If this fails Hand of God might trigger depending on GM.

If someone is dumb/unlucky enough to die die... as in no hope, but death you use the Hand of God. Personally I don't kill off PCs.. I tend to send them to hospital for a few months (ie. You need another character until he gets out) minus a bunch of Nuyen and a limb or two.

Feonyx

Players die or come close amazingly easily, in my experience. I guess this demonstrates that your mileage may vary quite significantly.

~J

The characters in the groups I'm in tend to be too interesting to just kill off. The GM tends to let the character keep going just to see WHERE they go. Even if the character was being too blatantly stupid to live, the GM has as much fun coming up with a whacky way to let them live as some GM's appear to have coming up with whacky ways to kill PCs. Of course, terminal stupidity rarely happens in our games, because the other members of the group tend to discourage it. Also, GM's need to remember that just because they thought of something doesn't mean it's obvious, or even plausible, in the mind of the players, and so a certain amount of leeway has to be given in terms of what seems stupid enough to warrant PC death.

Not to say I haven't killed PCs. One time, I was running a short campaign based on counter-terrorist agents. The end of the first session was sort of climactic, because thus far there had been no "action," just a bunch of negotiation with other agencies and some detective work. While the team had a woman under surveillance, they found evidence that there was a bomb in her boyfriend's car, and while they really wanted him dead, they needed him alive to show them where all his friends might be. So they sent in their demolitions guy, who was someone I'd never roleplayed with before. I had decided earlier that this moment would come down to whether he cut the green wire or the red wire, and that this decision would be easy to make for anyone with a demolitions skill, and extremely dramatic for anyone without one (I didn't consider this an unfair situation to put the group in, seeing as I knew they would have a demo expert to call upon). Unfortunately, the demolitions expert makes the roll, and then declares "but the roll probably doesn't matter, because I have the color blind flaw." I figure that a demolitions expert could probably figure it out based on where the wires went instead of the color, so I was going to let him slide. But then the other players said, practically in unison, "Dude, why the #@&% did you make a demolitions expert color blind?" To which his response was "well, I figured it was the flaw that was least likely to come up in the game" BOOM.

That was a year or two ago, and was the last PC death I witnessed, thankfully. The group I play in just has a different culture than a lot of roleplaying groups, and PC death is one of those things that is as common as acne in some groups and as rare as a social life in others.

What was their tactical or strategic error?

~J

Basically, the opposing force was occupying a rocky hill to the southeast of the walled battlement style fortification the PCs and their 30 mooks were occupying. They knew that the opposing force consisted of 100 physad ninjas with a mortar, 4 snipers, and lots of AKs.

D wound number one was one of the PCs deciding to run up on the battlements and wave his silver plated pistols repeatedly in the direction of the mountain. He got sniped out.

Then, for reasons that are far, far beyond me, two of the PCs decided to split their already small amount of soldiers. They sent one group on foot to charge directly at the mountain, and the others went out on foot in a lengthy "flanking" manuver. However, the distances were great enough that this made absolutely no sense at all. The group running directly at the mountain got shredded by assault rifle fire as they ran across the snowy plains with no cover, and the "flanking" group got annhilated after a few mortars were fired and one of them turned up a direct hit. (That was the other 2 PCs.) They ran out on foot in spite of the fact that there were many large transport snowcrawlers in the fort, which had been brought up many times, and in fact the PCs had rode in on a snowcrawler convoy. Before anyone suggests I didn't make the distance clear, I did. I supplied a map with the distances clearly marked on the map itself. Also, let me add that there was not even a real reason for them to sortie in the first place. I hadn't even said the word. I wondered why they wanted to leave the protection of the fort.

The group was salvaged because one guy who was drunk the first session was sober the second, and the first thing he immediately did at the beginning of the second session was call for backup. Then he and the other remaining PCs (all 30 of the soldiers were annilated) took a snowcrawler and drove it out the big open main gates away from the occupied hill.

They were able to escape and scoop up the bodies of the dead/D wound/pre HOG PCs and the ninjas occupied the fort. And that was that.


EDIT - and I decided to never, never run 100 ninjas again. Because I had to roll 100 physad attacks with lots of dice!

Edit - Late jokes are never funny...

[Stimpy]Joy![/Stimpy]

hmm.. I lost count of the nr of dead D&D pcs over the years , but in sr surprisingly enough I havent had many, off the top of my head.. one sam fighting 3 paracritters who thought they were illusions and decided to stand still & disbelieve <dotn remember the type but they did 9s..not even rerolls saved him>, one rigger whose van got destroyed/stepped on by a dragon with him inside, <though in the campaign it was left unspecified if he "survived">, one sniper rifle kill & one adept who ran to attack a group of well armed red sammies & found out just how far 20 m are. other than that none in SR2/3 it is easy to go down but unless the team goes down the D wound will go away after some juju & some hospital bills... actually the reason so few people die is because I run a high threat game. what kills you in sr is when you get a moderate, a serious and then another serious. if people have a high tendency to be either unharmed or right on D there are paradoxically enough few actual deaths within the pc`s.

DS

Why did the guy make his character charge a large group of gun toting Red Samurai over 20 meters, especially if he could look down at his character sheet and mathematically calculate that his character couldn't run that far?

Well I'm never out to kill characters, so if one dies its usually because they did something insanely stupid. Like the last run where one of my players decided to imitate the movie Point Break and jump out of a plane after a "badguy" with out a chute in hopes he would be able to catch up over power the guy and glide safely to the ground with his chute. Lets just say I'm a firm believe in let the dice fall where they may, and boy did he fall. Then after he hit the pavement at terminal velocity he wanted to know why he didn't get to make a body check. I let him use hand of god only because of the BAD-ASS-ATUDE factor of his idea.

But to answer your question I have never felt bad about a player dying, not ever.


The New D

Always give them a Body check. When they fail to resist 9753D Physical, there will be no argument.

~J

To answer the original question, slightly surprised. To see a ganger cut down a Troll sam with an SMG was really weird. 15 body dice and not a single 4. The player just said "Well, I guess I'm not supposed to be playing this guy." Considering I have had 30-40 dead SR characters (while Gming) and if you throw in Deadlands and Warhammer probably 60-80 you might guess that I have little problems watching characters die. The vast majority of the time its because blatant character stupidity and occasioanlly bad dice roles. To not kill them is an insult to the smart players. Besides, I firmly believe that death is a teaching tool. People who give up and leave a game are often people you don't get along with (because their idea of a game is very different) but those who wise up after a few deaths play better in the long run. Besides, with no possibility of death, the whole experience isn't as exciting.

Ignore this post. Added only to make the date of the last post be in 2004.

If the structure is large enough, it can at least cause some difficulty in targeting.

~J

Plus mortar rounds will probably detonate when they hit the roof, and if overhead cover is used properly the fragments won't hurt the people below too bad. If there was absolutely no cover outside of the fort, just snowy plains, then running outside was an incredibly stupid idea. (Or maybe that's exactly what Diesel meant with the pokerface-smiley.)

Assuming the fort would have to be defended no matter what, no back up present, and the enemy has only one mortar, they could've driven the snowcrawlers outside and used them and anything else present to create some cover from the most likely direction of attack. Further fortify the main structure(s), maintain two lines of defense (one outside, one inside) until it's clear the enemy will get too close, pull everyone inside and fight room to room.

I can't help wondering just what the fuck the PCs were thinking charging a 3x greater group of more skilled and better armed enemies who are in a good defensive position when they could just wait for them to come out into the open.

As for the actual topic, can't remember, it must have been around 7-9 years ago when we were playing AD&D 2E. I probably didn't feel a thing. Nowadays, if the death of the PC is just bad luck I might feel a bit bad for a moment. If the death is the logical consequence of stupid shit the PC has done, it feels good.

I still laugh at this when I remember it.


As a GM the first time I lost a player I actually could not stop laughing at the way he died and the whole situation.
However the I felt bad for allowing him to die in such a way because the group was kinda starting to work together as a hmm...i would not call them a team but say group of disorganized individuals trying to get their $hit together.

The death occured as unexpected action was triggered by my player.
A troll magician with cybergogles and pistols walking in a forest with his 3 buddies, hardcore army specialist with a Ghalil rifle with 10RC, a woman street sam with katana and a colt (played by a male player), and a dude with a mask which we called "The Masked Magician" (but he was mundane) with 3RC on a auto shotgun..

So they are on their way to find this shaman dude deep in the forest which will lead them to further clues for their mission.

So all walking in a forest. I describe the environment to them. Birds chirping, leaves rustling under neath them, looks like overcast , might rain later.

Then the Troll Player writes something on a piece of paper and tells me i want to play this 'card' when you think the session is getting borring. I read the paper and it says "i sneak arround a tree and jump saying "BOO"" like a little kid...

when i read that i figured ok I will entertain his stupidity since all the other dudes had inteligence of 6 so hitting perception would not be a problem.

well in order to make it all look like a surprise i made them all roll stealth as if something was about to happen maybe they get ambushged and such. I Also threw in random noises in the near distance.
Anyway the troll hits a stealth of like 7 or 8 im not sure the rest...it didint matter..
So I say roll perception and the female and the army dude hit several 8+ BUT the combat-wombat (aka auto-shotgun) dude failed to get any successes and i mean he rolled 3 ones and 2 and 2 and 3. (nothing above 3)

I then describe to him "You see a big ceature overhadowing you and growling at you, you cannot clearly make out the sound but its coming at you"..

before i describe to the others what tey actually see i demand a reaction roll
which the troll failed but other 3 succeeded.

Then i demand initiative roll which i was hoping the street samand the military dude will get highest and act againt the combat-wombat (move his gun or something)... but he beats all others in initiative...Now im scared becasue as I start describing to the other 2 players what their several successe on perception meant the combat-wombat dude says "im pulling the trigger"..
The other 2 playes use their free actions to say "stop" or some such but he didint listen and the troll failed his demage resistance because the combat-wombat dude threw in all allowed combat pool and when you have 14 dice against target number 4 for short range and -2 for smartlink...nothing survives...

after that we paused the session cause the rest of us were getting pissed laughing our asses off...

:::edit:::
ps. the troll had already 0/0 karma because he used it to burn for successes on previous acts of stupidity

Well, this isn't Paranoia, so I don't go around killing characters just for fun. Usually.