It’s no secret I work on this little thing called Narosia. In addition to that work, I run a regular game of it for my core group of playtesters and have been since we came up with the concept of Narosia. Death has always been an interesting challenge for any RPG campaign, and a recent death in my Narosia game got me thinking more seriously about it.
See, I like old school games. I really do. The concept of a TPK is quite awesome, especially if it is well earned by the players (as my players in Ghost Tower of Inverness at Origins found out). However, in a campaign game, especially one with a long story arc, death can be a real challenge to continuity. When I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen we were well into the story and we had a TPK. We shrugged and said, nope let’s just make new characters and keep going (they were only 3rd level at the time). Later, at around 8th level, the same thing happened. At that point we almost quit altogether, but we decided retcon the whole session as a “vision of what could be” and played on.
It all felt very artificial and disrupted the story significantly. The 8th level event was even more disruptive because the alternative was to introduce high level characters to a story that was already well underway.
Adventuring Must Be Dangerous
Now, without death as a consequence many dangers in a traditional fantasy game cease to be threats. When I GM I enjoy creating fair challenges and then playing them as hard as I can against the players, all while supporting their agency and control. This is a balance, I know, and I built that control into Narosia to ensure that when death arrived, it really was because it was:
- Appropriate
- Earned
- Welcome
It may seem odd for these three things to be associated with character deaths in a game, but I think it is absolutely essential. No player wants to feel as if they just got cheated out of playing their favorite character anymore. Many campaigns last for years and for a character to simply “fall off a cliff” is so unfulfilling, uninteresting, and frustrating that all of the years of fun and tales about that character get destroyed in an instant of whimsey.
Players Should Decide How Their Character Dies
This is definitely a challenge for most trad RPGs (e.g., D&D). The death mechanics in D&D5E are actually quite fun, and create drama around saving your fellow adventurers, which I like. However, they do not allow the player to decide how the character dies. For that you need some other meta-mechanic that operates outside of your character’s sphere of influence.
Narosia and the Divine Narrative
Many games have some form of meta points that allow you to influence the narrative in some way, usually very mechanically (e.g., Inspiration in D&D, Bennies in Savage Worlds). In Narosia, these meta points are realized as Divine Intervention Cards that represent the amount of influence a single deity in Narosia can provide in any given situation. The general rules around card play are described on our site, but the simple explanation is that these are “Fate Points” associated with a specific aspect of a single deity. When played, the player roleplays the god and describes why and how they are influencing the situation.
Death in Narosia
In my many years of running Narosia, playtest campaigns and conventions, I think I have had 4 character deaths over a span of 13 years of regular play. Only two of them “stuck,” meaning the players allowed the result to stand, which means they decided to not use their cards to have the gods intervene.
So, what about the other two? What happened there?
The first one, a character named Lael, played an Endroren card (he is the big bad in the Narosia world) to act as his agent in the moment of death before being sucked into the Qliphothic Void (wherein Chaos lies) and thought to be gone forever.
The second of these that “stuck”, was the character introduced after Lael disappeared. During his death (caused when a demon exploded) his player used a card to bring Lael back from the Void (although secretly acting as an agent of Chaos — shhhhh).
The group continued to press their attack on this cult of Chaos and to the point of being directly confronted by the cult’s leader and warned that any further action on their part would be responded to appropriately.
Of course, they didn’t listen, and an assassin was sent. I didn’t want to just wave my hand and say that the assassin was successful, so I dramatically gave them a warning which they did not acknowledge. Essentially it was an opportunity to issue a call to arms and face the assassin as a team. When that failed, the assassin moved on its target and succeeded, much to the horror of the players.
They then rush the character, Mug, to the temple to try and save him but this is not possible because of he manner of his death. However, Mug’s player has a Celestial Favor card (the most powerful, and a wild card) and plays it while Mug is on the temple alter, having his body disappear.
At the start of the next session, Mug reappears but is drastically changed. He has undergone a very “Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White” moment. The card play was actually to get the eldest gods involved and essentially make Mug into a new god, although one of lesser power at this point1, and to change his objectives within the campaign in a way that is challenging for the group but very satisfying for the story.
Additionally, the group discovers that the assassin was actually the true form of Lael, the character that returned from the Void, and as a result of their recent actions is no longer under the control of the cult of Chaos and is free to act as he wishes. So, Mug’s assassin is now part of the group and everyone seems cool with that… so far.
Death Should Be A Fun Part Of The Story
It doesn’t have to be the end. I don’t suggest using Inspiration in D&D to simply state, “Nope, I’m not dead,” as that is entirely flat. When we play Narosia in D&D we use the card system in place of Inspiration. It works really well because the meta-point mechanic is tied to the broader narrative of the world.
In running your own campaign, consider how you might incorporate the same opportunities in your world. This approach has allowed us to keep combat and magic as deadly as ever without compromising story. Even at the level of my current campaign (275 pts or roughly 13th-15th level in D&D), Narosia still supports the “realism” of a crazy knife-wielding thug being able to kill one of the characters during a surprise attack, but the likelihood of that happening without the players having the gods intervene narratively is slim. The threat exists, but it is manageable.
TL;DR — Or, I Know That Was a Lot of “Let me tell you ’bout my character”
Narosia is built using the HERO System and is in every way a traditional fantasy RPG. While it is difficult to kill a character outright in the system, it is entirely possible at any level of play and almost from any threat. This makes every combat potentially deadly. Random death isn’t fun for anyone, but if you let the players have a say in how their character dies it can greatly enhance the story of the campaign, and possibly even result in some very interesting outcomes. To codify this, Narosia uses a meta-point mechanic associated with the gods that allows the players to influence the narrative to the point of possibly cheating death in a way that works for the story and that is satisfying to everyone at the table.
1HERO enables this flexibility so well. We were able to redefine Mug along the lines of what capabilities a lesser god should have and keep his point total in line with the other characters. It also allowed us to introduce some interesting powers, complications, and character aspects that I’m not sure how I would have handled in D&D (although Fate would definitely have done this play justice).