I just killed one of my Characters...

...and it feels weird. Kinda sad, but relieved. I can move on with my RP now, but I really did enjoy playing the Baron Technis with all his time traveling shenanigans.


I'm wondering though, how many of you would kill a character to enhance a story? How many have actually done the dead? What was it like?

Yes indeed, lots of times, across a lot of games.

In VirtueVerse, the highest level character I killed off for RP reasons was just level 27 though, so major sacrifice on my side, but when they died I deleted them.

Doctor North was "killed" at level 43, but I didn't delete him, I just brought him back after about a 3 month absence.

I'm pretty attached to most of my creations, but I could see myself doing it for the sake of a particularly epic story, or if I really felt I'd exhausted a character's potential. It's not something I'd undertake lightly and, despite the genre, I wouldn't want to leave myself a "comic book death" window if I did. It would have to be permanent unless it was a faked death angle from the start.

I don't think I've ever killed off a character (except once with a lowbie alt, who blew her brains out rather than be subjected to more of my friend's rhyming assassin demon thing, when I realized I was never going to enjoy an SoA anyway). I'm more likely to just subject my characters to horrible life-altering trauma to put over the storyline that leads to it, then later use the opportunity to explore new dimensions of the character through the change of circumstance.

I've killed off characters in other games for the sake of the story. I had a Mage: the Ascension character in particular who could have managed to circumvent his death, but the Storyteller and I both agreed that doing so would have cheapened what was ultimately some really great gaming. He did pull the whole ghostly mentor Obi Wan thing for his son in the second generation of that campaign, though.

In an MMO? Honestly, it's been a long time since I've managed to get drawn into online RP enough to care about a storyline like that. Without a storyteller/GM/DM/referee to hold things together, many online games tend to feel a lot less solid and meaningful to me, and I have a hard time caring about the story enough to want to make "major" contributions. If I was experiencing a very strong connection to another specific player or group of players, that'd be different... but if I was, it'd likely be through a specific character, making me that much more reluctant to sacrifice them for the story. So... eh. I could see myself doing it, but here in CoH, with its often tongue-in-cheek attitude towards comic book tropes, I'd have a really hard time making it permanent (even if the "resurrection" was a clone, an extradimensional doppleganger, a robot dublicate that thought it was the original, a corpse-theiving demon just wearing their body as a suit, etc.)

Yes indeed, lots of times, across a lot of games.

In VirtueVerse, the highest level character I killed off for RP reasons was just level 27 though, so not a major sacrifice on my side, but when they died I deleted them.

Doctor North was "killed" at level 43, but I didn't delete him, I just brought him back after about a 3 month absence.

I also have killed off characters for the sake of roleplay. Even top level characters, no one is safe from the mighty hand of death! Some of them, it was appropriate to the story. Some of them I had done all I wanted to do with them in terms of their story, and it was just time for them to go. Sometimes I will delete the character, and sometimes I'll either just let them sit and only use them rarely or in an OOC manner. Or I'll reinvent them if the game allows me to.

Two instances stand out to me, both in WoW. My priest had a long time relationship with a friend of mine's warrior. When he decided to leave the game during the first expansion, she went off with him and retired. They were married and set up a little farm together. Not dead, but not adventuring either. With the second expansion my friend came back and brought his character back as an evil death knight, so I dusted my priest off again. Eventually though he stopped playing and we wrote up a story how he had to sacrifice himself to stop a great evil he was going to unleash before his friends brought him back to his senses. My priest went along with him.

Another friend had a warlock who was a very, very old man. He was very popular as a character on the server though. One of the things in his story was every so often he'd announce that he was going to walk from one area of the world to another and people would show up to walk along. No mounts, no running. Just an old man taking a stroll with a bunch of friends.

When it was finally time for him to pass on, he announced one final walk. He went from Onyxia's Lair to Orgrimmar. A few days before he and some friends has killed Onyxia solely so he could take her head to the Warchief as a final service.

Over the couple hours that it took to walk we has accumulated dozens of people, upwards of maybe a hundred. Both Horde and Alliance who walked him home. He turned in the head and was proclaimed a hero, then walked out to his wife's grave. In the presence of his friends, guild members, enemies and complete strangers he let himself go and passed on. It was one of the most sad and touching scenes I've ever been involved with.

I think an ending is important, and that's something that is often missing in MMOs. A good story has a set up, conflict, resolution and wrap up. MMOs trap people in the whole conflict-resolution loop, since that's where the money is made for them. But the ending to a story is as important as any other part.

I'm planning on deleting a L50 blaster to remake her as a corruptor or dominator when GR comes out, as part of her falling from grace and redemption.

But delete them as part of a story? Nope never done that but it seems pretty powerful if it was a character that other players liked.

I might move the toon to another server, but I couldn't bring myself to delete them if I liked them.

I had an on-going RP relationship on my main(at the time), Lil Miss Goth Girl, since she was lvl 2, that ended in the death of her RP partner. She was in this awkward friendship/relationship with someone (not naming names) and he was practically devoted to her, worshipped the ground she walked on. One day, they were sitting on top of a building in Steel Canyon where he professed his love for her, but she turned him away. She was there to tell him she had fallen in love with someone else, and that they could never be an item. Dejected and hurt, he then jumped off the building, commiting suicide. He sent me a tell saying this was a great ending to his character because he had run out of interest for him. We both agreed on his ending. A few weeks later, he rolled up a new character, same powers, costume, everything. Name was "Ghost of XXXXXX" ... His ghost had come back to haunt Lil Miss Goth Girl. That turned out to be a neat little story line.

I also have "killed off" various lowbies with no great RP affairs, but I had a few upper 20's toons and even some as high as 41 get the axe. None with great fanfare, tho.

I've killed off a character once, and deleted him Immediately. I had made a "sidekick/fill in DJ" character for a while. When I felt the whole thing had run its course, I killed him off, and was actually surprised at some of the backlash I got. For wha tI had thought was a joke/annoying type character had won a bunch of peoples hearts it had seemed, but I stuck to my guns on it.

It depends on age, Gila, Agilo and Austain are ten shades of immortal because i love them enough to get them to 50 and develop them, and because i know i'd regret it later when i wanna play em. My alts however i feel could fall off a cliff and i'd remake their concept, but under a different character.

I think Killed Off For Real is one of those tropes that you have to be very, very careful with. Done well, it can be touching and cathartic, but done badly, it can come across as cheap drama.

I haven't done one of those stories yet. A situation where it would be a good idea hasn't come up, and I'm not inclined to go looking for one.

Not here (yet, you never know where the stories might go) but I have in the past over IRC games and PnP RPGs, if its really makes for awesome story, its worth doing, even if its hard to let go sometimes

I've only killed off one of my characters thus far. And, typically enough, it was for a very poor reason. I was going to retire from the game for a little while to concentrate on my studies, and so began thinking of ways to 'write out' characters for a while.

One of them, a baseline natural human, I could think of no better way for her to go out than to finally die while doing hero-work, as I (and she) always knew she would.
It was done with very little fanfare, just a fiction post of her last moments to the SG she was in and the board of an SG where she had lots of friends. I don't plan on bringing her back, but I haven't been able to delete her yet.

Typically enough, I returned to the game only weeks after making that post. Stupid addiction.

I feel like I really did badly by the character, in that I didn't really have her death give any greater impact to the RP world she was a part of.
On the other hand, the piece of fiction I wrote was generally well-received (even including the inevitable "!!!" factor) and well-written, and it seems to stand fairly solidly on its own.
And as a statement on the character itself... well, there were no great heroics, no overwhelming odds. Just a squalid little brawl where she ended up the loser, and that kind of works for how the character was written. I don't know, it kind of pulls me in both directions. Its fitting, but it was for the wrong reasons.

I was going to kill off MJ sometime this year (per Three Views of Atlas Park, not that anyone is likely to remember that anymore). The idea was that the Hero's Journey is a hard and lonely one and often leads to dying before your time. In her case, it was going to be a combination of Heroic Sacrifice and plain bad luck: blowing away most of an alternate Nemesis Army force with a really big Nova, then being shot by a sniper while she was powerless. I wasn't really looking forward to it, and I let someone talk me out of it.

Hydrophidian: I have the story you posted about that, saved to my HD. Definitely a tear-jerker.

I've killed characters, just not my own. >.> <.<

I was quite honored that the player allowed it to happen.

I killed a character in RP once, long ago. It was the culmination of an epic plot of disillusionment and betrayal. It was pretty neat.

My Table Top experience mostly consists of being the Game Master, but I don't really count those characters that died, because that's what NPCs are for.

Characters to have died?

Well....hrmm. Not a whole lot have bit the dust to be honest. Wait, a few did. Actually, I can list them and sources here.

Flea M'rak C'kar - Flea-Rikti cybernetic hybrid. Died pushing friends from a collapsing building. Tragic way to bite the dust. Died because the character was no longer fun to play due to being damn frustrating at lower levels. (City of)

Yuri - Chinese bio-mech assassin type in a friend's Cyberpunk game. Entirely melee based died an Indiana Jones style death taking a bullet to the forehead at point blank range. Was damn amusing at the time as she had ripped apart the rest of the gang before that point in hand to hand. I think her body's still in the trunk of the group's car. Yeah, they were pack rats....she was replaced by my completely random rolled Jamaican bus-driving drug runner, Jeremiah Jones. Who had 9 siblings. And someone else in the group ended up rolling his brother. Drug bus is go! (Cyberpunk)


Wow. Not a lot of other casualties. Most of them end up retiring or walking off into the sunset. Except Shard.

Is it bad in a D & D campaign when your party's banner listed the number of party members your Soulknife/Rogue Psiforged had killed himself? (Total after 11 sessions was 3. The party soon learned you do not **** with the Lawful Neutral Psiforged. Or threaten the artificer (who fixes him) or Psion (who uses him as a portable psi-crystal!) )

One of my CHV characters will be getting killed off for reelz soon, RP style, not just getting deleted (which I do all the time).

My tabletop RPG acharacters have a significantly shorter lifespan, however. Funny thing is that I've been -trying- to get my character in our current campaign killed, but the D&D 4.0 rules are making it difficult for him to convincingly fall in battle.

good luck D.B.B.

I've thought about killing off one of my characters but just can't find the right way or reason to.

During one of my SG's RP stories we did have one of our members assassinated and it was a great addition to the story, the character is gone forever and it added a great element to the story

As I recall, you didn't kill Technis, I did...so you don't have to feel so bad