I just had the pleasure of playing in the inaugural game for Eric Lamoureux’s new podcast, The Murder Hobo Show. We played Chickens in the Mist, a one shot adventure for East Texas University in the Savage Worlds system. We played for three hilarious, crude hours and had a great time from start to finish.
Joining me this morning was a great cast of guys:
The Players
- Jamie Pierson (founder of the Nerds-International network) played Tex Bullins, a local yokel with dreams of getting rich from his moonshine still.
- Harrison Hunt (co-host of the Tabletop Twats podcast) played Jimmy “Gibbo” Gibson, a rowdy Brit with more bark than bite.
- Nikk Lambley (co-host of the Tabletop Twats podcast) played Hercules Rockerfella, a rowdy American with more bite than bark.
- Gary “Wansum Beats” McCallum (famous in his own right) played Jasper Carson, a gamer nerd/LARP enthusiast.
- And yours truly, who played Louise Simpson, a meek geek with a fondness for psychology and the occult.
The Session
It was a session of firsts for me: first time playing Savage Worlds in a modern setting, first time playing ETU, and my first TPK on either side of the GM screen. Let’s do a post mortem to see how it went down (don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything).
It’s always nice to play with folks who really get into their characters, and these guys didn’t disappoint. Character voices and motivations were awesome, and the puns were downright fowl (*rimshot*). Gary in particular had a ton of shining moments: his character, Jasper, flirted with the fourth wall as a guy who seemed to think he was living inside an RPG (“shovel of DOOOOOM!”).
Like I said, this is the first time I’ve ever played a “losing” session in an RPG. I’ve heard ETU is a pretty lethal setting, but I figured a team of gaming vets would be able to navigate the encounters without too much trouble. We didn’t stand a chance. Technically we faded to black while three of us were still in the fight (or running away), but the way things were going it was unlikely any of us were going to survive.
Dying in a game can be a real bummer, but Eric handled it well. He gave us some great options should our characters die: jump in with a new character, take a Wound and stay in the fight, or die and take over control of the NPCs. I thought it was a great way to keep people involved without taking away the threats and penalties of character death. In the end, one of us took a Wound to the gut, while I decided to take over control of the enemy NPCs (my inner murder hobo was delighted).
It Comes for Us All
Another balm for the sting of character death is the nature of a one shot. When you’re only playing a character for a few hours, it just doesn’t matter as much if they die. It made me wonder, though: how would I handle character death in the campaigns I run? People (understandably) get much more attached to their characters when they expect to play them for months or years at a time. I think a character’s death can be a cool development in the group’s story, but to the character’s player it can still ruin a session or two. It’s a situation I’ve never had to deal with in a game, so I can’t say I’ve had the chance to try out any ideas.
Savage Rifts has an interesting solution called Blaze of Glory. Instead of rolling on the Incapacitation table, the player chooses to let the character die sometime in the remainder of the session. In exchange, they get a huge one-time bonus in a form of a narrative super attack. It’s the final moment of majesty before they fade away. For less high-powered games, maybe the character gets one action with an automatic raise or two.
Have you ever dealt with character death in your games, either as a player or GM? Did you think it was a worthwhile death? How did you cope with it afterward? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
3 thoughts on “Silence of the Chickens”
ETU does look like a fun setting and horror adventures need that risk of death to really work.
As to character death, I rarely pull punches in game and let the dice (and fates) decide. That being said, I will usually give a player a chance to save their character from death at a cost. In my Legend of the Five Rings game, for example, our Lion samurai went down fighting bandits, and the payer choose to have her survive having lost an eye instead of death. Player characters deserve to have epic deaths that you want to tell people about, not just ‘killed by bandits’, which I why I am willing to work with my players to try and ensure a good death when it is time for a character to die.
Thanks for visiting, Sean! ETU is indeed a cool setting, though it’s got it’s share of criticism. A lot of people come to the setting expecting “Scooby Doo Does College,” though the reality is much more in line with classic horror (as I learned yesterday).
Your method of character death looks good. I think the most important ingredient is “a story worth telling,” like you say. It makes me wonder if it’s possible to provide that kind of good storytelling even when, say, your PC gets killed by a goblin.
If the player is cool with their character getting killed by a goblin, no worries. But most players want something a little more dramatic for the character’s end.
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