Amongst the many aspects of role playing games, taking and losing life is a big part of most. Whether you are running or participating in games you can almost always predict that at some point, somebody or something is going to die (and invariably it will be extraordinarily messy).
Lets face it, the manner of expiry is often the most interesting and also amusing aspect of shuffling off the mortal coil even if on a deeper level it is a bit distasteful to have a laugh about it. Regardless, this is why we ended up talking character death with Steve of Fame And Fortune in the pub on Saturday.
Death by Red Herring
Our good friend Paul from Dingles Games reminisced about an especially bloody Call of Cthulhu campaign that Chris ran a year or so past. Now this is the game system where getting attached to characters is ill-advised but we were getting through them faster than we could name replacements.
If this was not bad enough, we allowed ourselves to be side-tracked into a dead end in the Belgrade section of “Horror On The Orient Express”. For inexplicable reasons we ended up filtering into the walking Baba Yaga Hut in a convenient conga line for the foul witch to work her evil but ultimately pointless deeds upon. One of Paul’s characters, the young native servant of the other (an aging British ex-pat) was first. In the chaos, the witch managed to thrust the poor young lad into the open over, slam the door and baked him before we had cocked a shotgun. Ultimately we were compelled to leg it, no nearer our goal and down one tricky, lovable rogue.
I’m sure you all have amusing deaths to recount, self inflicted or possible unavoidably imposed whilst GMing. Feel free to share them with the only caveat being a stupid title as I am sure you can do better than mine.
Finally, if you are interested in this scenario, please have a look at the attached link to a rather good analysis by Peter Devlin and Mike Lay. Strangely, they feel like me about the Hut of Baba Yaga. Whilst the campaign is no longer available, here is a link to the synopsis on RPG Resource.