[DGD] Life and death

[Dread Quixadhal]

An idea I had, years ago, was to build a parallel world that would run alongside the normal one the players interacted with.  Not ALL areas would be mirrored, only places where there were high concentrations of the living, or where many deaths happened.  The mirror world would be the land of the dead, and the imagery used would reflect what the normal world looked like, but darker, and described as indistinct, as if shrouded in fog.

When a player died, instead of springing back to life, they would shift into this ghost world.  As a spirit, they would gain new abilities and generally be more powerful than they were in life, but they would have only very limited ways to interact with the normal world.  They could see the living as shadows in the places where the two worlds overlapped, and a spirit could spend some energy to affect them (perhaps giving them better luck, or worse luck), or try to communicate with them (usually only effective if the living is a cleric or other spiritualist).

In my design, the goal of the living world would be to constantly find new ways to extend the life of your character, as every character would be given a death date as part of the character creation process.  As you die, or are seriously injured, that day would be pulled closer to the present.  Various things you could do or find in the game world would let you push that date further away… but with diminishing returns, so you had to constantly find new ways to solve the problem of your mortality.

In the ghost world, the goal is different.  You’re already dead, and you now seek to become more powerful so you can exert influence over the mortal world, and dominate the ghost world.  Part of doing this would be to absorb the dying essence of NPC’s as they were killed.  The challenge is to find them very soon after they die, as they become more powerful and harder to absorb if left alone to attune to the ghost realm.

Of course, you can also choose to find a way to return to the land of the living, by returning to your corpse’s location and allowing a cleric to pull you back to your body.  This becomes more difficult as time passes, and there’s one final piece to the puzzle of risk vs. reward.  A mortal can die many times, but a ghost is already dead and can only be destroyed.  If you die in the ghost world, it’s perma-death and you will be rolling a new character.

So for the players, the risk vs. reward would be interesting.  Staying in the ghost world can get you more experience, faster than being in the mortal world.  There might even be abilities you can learn that could be taken back to the land of the living, but can only be learned there.  But, the longer you spend there, the harder it is to leave… and being killed is the end of your story.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: bart at wotf.org
Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2018 5:49
To: All about DGD and Hydra
Subject: Re: [DGD] Life and death

How one would balance death heavily depends on the design and goals of the
game. 'Role playing game' really doesn't tell enough about that to say
anything useful about this beyond that death should not be meaningless, but
should not carry such a big penalty that it removes the incentive to play.
However, what that means is really not something one can say anything about
without involving lots of detail on how the game in question works.

Btw, I've always liked the idea of death being a playable part of the game,
one that opens up game content you normally won't get to see, but, that is
merely a tool to both ensure its not meaningless and to kindof restrict the
penalty. What is the right balance? well, to point at one detail you need to
add at the very least: what can be gained by risking death? Another detail:
how big is the impact on the specific character in question? Those are just 2
details one really must know to say something useful about balance of death,
there are many more. Hence, beyond some very general ideas, I really think
death balance is something you should be discussing with a person who is
intimately aware of, and involved with the specific game for which you want to
discuss death. No, 'role playing game' really does not convey enough
information, there are simply way too many variations on that theme, all of
which will come with their own meaning of life/death and hence will require
different implementations and balance of death.

Bart.

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 08:40:47 -0800, Raymond Jennings wrote
> So, due to some issues that came up in a roleplay I was recently
> attending, I was wondering about life and death as a game design and
> balance standpoint.
> 
> What do you all think?
> 
> For my part, the RP in question had a grim reaper character who
> doubled as the afterlife's sheriff.  People who resurrected too often
> were put on a "list", and the next time they died and left their 
> souls in the clutches of the reaper they were simply erased from existence
> as punishment for scythe dodging.
> 
> On ironclaw online, on a strict storyline basis, not many even
> resurrected, but the PCs were basically a special class that fate 
> just happened to privilege, and until then you just hung out in the 
> afterlife.  First, a race against the clock to have your body found 
> before NPC priests collected it, and then a race against the clock 
> between NPC priests and PC priests to revive you first.  All of that,
>  of course, presuming that you haven't been excommunicated.
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