[DGD] Life and death

[bart at wotf.org]

That sounds like a pretty cool idea, and takes the idea of 'death' being a
playable part of the game quite far. 

Bart.

On Sun, 4 Feb 2018 07:45:01 -0800, Dread Quixadhal wrote
> 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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