Building Bhakashal - Death

The topics of PC death comes up quite a bit on Twitter. In particular, people go back and forth about whether or not to include it in their game. Unfortunately, there is a lot of noise about this topic as people get stuck in “what ifs”. I thought I would bring some perspective based on running after school D&D games for 10-14 year old kids for the last four years. I’ve amassed over 1000 hours of table time running AD&D, and I’ve noticed some things. Over four years and 16 different groups, we have had around 15 PC deaths. Before we start the campaign the players are told directly that PC death is inevitable, and that I won’t save them from bad dice rolls. 

Everyone was on board and aware before we started. Having said that, I noticed different reactions to PC death. 

1. Indifference - Some players don’t really care about their PC per se, they care about being able to do cool stuff. So when their PC dies, they just roll up a new one and keep going. Sometimes it is similar (another fighter!), sometimes not, but a significant number of players don’t care about PC death at all.

2. Curiosity - I have had several players that decided that they were interested in playing a new PC (e.g., they played spell casters now want to try a martial character), so they start playing recklessly and taking chances with the intent of having their PC die so they can roll up a new PC. It has produced some interesting consequences, sometimes playing recklessly pays off and the player gets a renewed interest in their PC, but more often than not the player is just eager to try something new. 

3. Spectacular - I have players who are interested in dying in interesting ways! At least two of my current regulars (in different games) are like this, they LOVE the idea of a spectacular character death, and they brag about how their PCs have died. They don’t try for it every session, but when a “cool” monster or situation comes up, they will push their luck hoping for a cool character death

4. Sacrificial - On a few occasions players have had their PCs take on risks that led to death as they wanted to save a fellow PC or help the party achieve a goal. This is less common, but it has happened more than once. Losing your PCs life in a heroic way to help achieve a goal or save a fellow PC is a pretty cool way to die

However, there are occasions when a player is not good with their PC dying. They are aware of the rules, and how we play the game, they are aware that there was risk of death, and that they all signed on with knowledge of the consequences.

But D&D is a game where you can get attached to your PC, role playing can be powerful that way, and for whatever reason, they aren’t willing to go gently into that good night. In four years and over 50 players, I have only had one occasion when PC death was not embraced.

In our second year of play, my Wednesday group had a player who loved his druid PC. Over year one (80 hours) of play he leveled the PC to 5th. We had an encounter with owlbears, 4 of them, and the player in question decided to take them on in melee along with the party tanks. I’m not sure what inspired him to do this, he wasn’t that impressive in melee, there was no immediate need for him to engage that way, but for whatever reason, he decided to wade in.

The dice were not kind, and neither were the owlbears, and his PC went down, dead.

The player was not OK with this, I could tell before he said a word, his body language and tone of voice gave it away. I asked him if he was OK, or not, and he responded that he wasn’t. He didn’t want his druid to die.

Well, fortunately AD&D has rules for this.

I reviewed the options for the players, there is Raise Dead, Reincarnation, Resurrection, Limited Wish and Wish available as options.

“None of us have those spells”

“No, you don’t, but high level priests do, so perhaps you can pay to have it done.”

They reviewed their current state of loot and decided that wasn’t going to work. Life-giving magic is POWERFUL, and it takes out the caster for extended periods of time, the Temple is not going to use powerful, debilitating magic on non-believers without charging a ridiculous amount of wealth to do so. Even at the temple of the slain PCs god.

“We don’t have the loot to pay for this”

“Well, is there any other way you could get this done?”

There was some conversation, and one of the players suggested they could “work off” their debt to the temple in some way. So with that in mind, they went to the temple and made their pitch. The party of 7 would complete whatever task the Temple deemed worthy of bringing the druid back to life. I rolled an encounter reaction roll to determine their response, and it was positive.

So the Temple of Horus offered to bring the PC back to life, in exchange for the party performing a task, retrieving a lost artefact of theirs, the Mask of Horus, which was half a world away in the Lost City, hidden in the Sea of Dust. They had sent out three groups over the last four years to retrieve this item, and had a vision of outsiders finding it first. They decided that the party was that group of outsiders, and they would travel across the world to retrieve the Mask. 

I made it crystal clear to the party that this was a quest that would take up most of the game year (we had just started the term at that point), and it would become the campaign for a while. It was interested to see the dynamics at play, all of the players could tell this was important to the player who had lost his PC, so they all signed on to the idea to help him out.

That was kind of awesome, they wanted to make their friend happy, and they were willing to take a SIGNIFICANT detour to do so. After some deliberation, they pooled their loot to hire a ship and crew, packed their bags and had their companion brought back from the dead.

The priests, however, were not naive, they also cast a Quest spell on the party, so if they decided to lark off and ignore their responsibilities, they would be drawn back to the fray. 

They set off on what would be an 8-month real time journey. It was quite the shift in focus for me, what was a city-based campaign became a ship-based campaign overnight. I had NOT developed the entirety of the game world, just Bhakashal, so I had to improvise like mad every session. I leaned on supplements like the spectacular Cities of Harn to stand in for population centers as they traveled. They got involved in all sorts of shenanigans as they traveled, and met people and monsters they had never seen before.

There was only one time when they got off task. It happened early on, after the second or third session on the water one of the players suggested they abandon the quest, “what was the worst that could happen?” I think they were testing my resolve, I had told them they would have to do this epic quest to repay the temple, but they thought I might change my mind as I wanted them to go back to the city setting I had so lovingly made, or that I was “just bluffing.”

LOL, indeed.

The Quest spell kicked in and over a few sessions they experienced a lot of bad luck. It became obvious they were taking penalties for betraying their quest. 

Bluff called!

So they went back to it. After 8 months of real time the party finally arrived at the Lost City. We spent the next month exploring the city, and they found the Mask of Horus. 

The point of all of this is that players vary in their experience of the game and the experience of role-playing. Some become quite invested, some less so. Some fear character death, some embrace it. 

There are different ways to accommodate these variances in player preference, Bhakashal solves this particular issue by:

1. Rolling in the open, so PC death is fair

2. The referee informs the players that death is on the table so there is awareness

3. Making new PCs is easy and fast, and there are clear rules about how to introduce new PCs into an existing party

4. Magic to bring back PCs exists and the players understand the rules surrounding them

5. High level life-restoring magic is performed by powerful beings and always has a cost

In essence, bringing the dead PC back to life BECAME the campaign for almost a year after this happened. The players embraced the process. They pushed back initially just to see if I was serious about it. But once they realized this was a REAL quest, and that powerful life-giving magic had a REAL cost, they were totally into it. 

For my money, having death on the table, with the option to reverse it for rare cases, is the best possible mix. The players are aware of the situation from day one, they know that death is, in most cases, irreversible, and that creating a new PC is not a hardship. But for those rare cases where the player is so invested that PC death is too upsetting, there are options to get them back. In our case it has only happened once, which is, IMO, exactly right. The fact that it only happened once suggests that most players are fine with PC death, for those rare exceptions, there are options. 

I like this solution best as it keeps the electric threat of death on the table, but it allows for exceptions in special circumstances. And running the game this way has produced some of the most exciting gaming we ever had.