So my GM and I had decided about three sessions ago that we thought it would be cool to have my character die. Reasons are 90 percent to service the story as the current arc comes to a close, about 10 percent slight mechanical tweaks (not for any munchkin purpose, this is to fit the backstory of his replacement that has been in our games canon [be it way way backstory]). We spend time developing the story of how the new character will come in, and bounce ideas about how I'll die (but I never knew his exact plan, I just knew it would be heroic) and we both get excited. We set some subtle hints in play long before the deed will actually happen. He actually joked that he wanted to kill me when I totally scruffed his bad guy two sessions back by getting him stuck in a door with a triumph before he could get any damage off on us with a gnarly mechanics check. "Joked," right? Haha he was pretty peeved at that.

Enter last session. I'll spoiler this because you don't need to read it for my question, I just want to rant about it a little.

Okay, rant over.

This all spurred what I thought would be an interesting question.

What do y'all do when one of your PC's is actively trying to die heroically (for the story, not just so he can re-roll) but the other PC's won't let them?

Honestly this situation has more to do with a poor setup and roleplaying not only on the part of the GM, but also your character. Since that's not what your concerned about, I'll leave that alone.

If the other PCs are actively trying to save a doomed character, it's clear the that the group's motivation doesn't match the situation. As a GM, I'd let them save the character and find another time and place to let this character sacrifice himself.

I recently had the opposite style of death in a 3e D&D viking game.

Character is doing well really enjoying her. We are clearing out the Base of a trap happy dark sage when we get jumped by some mook skelingtons. I swing my mighty double headed axe and critically fail! OK GM has a custom crit table. I roll and get a "damage yourself X 3" roll, it was a 100 on the chart. Rolled just enough to kill me outright .

After that 2 others crit failed in the same combat, one also damaging himself. So the reason was given that the area must be cursed. This turned an unlucky death into a fun rp death.

Don't give the other PC's a choice in the matter. Think about cinematic heroic deaths. It rarely is a consensus choice, usually the heroic character makes their decision and actively prevents the group from stopping them. Think Spock in the Wrath of Kahn, or hell Bruce Willis in Armageddon.

So in your case:

Running 5 groups meant at some point I would have players leave the game and I prepared myself to accept that. How they went about leaving the groups were super awkward though.

Copying this from elsewhere, this is another character death.

I have a couple other players that dropped out of playing but I decided since they only played once or even just half of 1 session that it wasn't worth potentially side-tracking groups with a murder and just said they left.

Coming up to a session on Sunday that will involve some serious talk about the way a certain group behaves when we play. If they cannot control themselves to talk in a non-shouting voice and if they cannot stop telling players what they can or can't do then they will be removed from the group. I don't believe I'll be killing off their characters because that's often something I'm only okay with doing if they take the death crits or if they decide they want their character to die.

So I understand how frustrating it can be when things don't go as planned... Now that you know your entire group is not going to follow along with things you and your GM have planned secretly, it might be best that the GM simply include them on the plans for your character's death or any major plot points that require their cooperation. Sure, there's less surprise from players but seeing this is a role-playing game, they can still act surprised as their characters would not expect things. This is supposed to be a cooperative storytelling game anyway and cooperation requires proper communication.

Hold up. I don't get it. GM and one player secretly conspire to cause the death of a beloved party member, don't really let the rest of said party in on the details, try to murder this party member, and get upset when the rest of the party want to roleplay saving somebody as they would absolutely do under any other circumstance?

And we're meant to be upset at the party?

This is a classic "scripting" problem. If there's an inflexible end point to an encounter, don't put it in the hands of the party. And if you do put it in the hands of the party, don't be upset if things go off the rails. "Letting someone in the party die" isn't a motivation that's terribly common amongst most roleplayers, and is certainly counterintuitive to most character concepts. There are a dozen ways a GM could bring this about without submitting it to party decision, and even in light of said decision, why not simply allow them to rescue the character, and find another way to remove the character from the action?

I had a player recently "retire" her long-standing character. She felt the character was played out and wanted to give him a good send-off. We discussed the matter a few times, working out a two-session story where she'd have to face down the core problem that led to her Obligation. I told her there were, by my estimate, two possible endings: a good one where the character walks off into the sunset with his new "family," and a bad one where he goes on a suicidal rampage of revenge against a Hutt. She was okay with either one.

It became one of the best stories I've ever run, with a satisfying conclusion that had meaning for everyone involved. (I'll put the details in a spoiler below, for anyone curious.)

The way I see it, the difference between what we did and what you guys ended up doing is two-fold. First, as the GM, I came up with a few different ways to get the character out of the story. She didn't necessarily want her character to die, but I figured there should still be consequences involved if she couldn't pull off the win she needed. The second, which I didn't mention above, is that I asked her to mention it to the group at the end of the previous session. Since this was the first character she had ever "retired" out of a story, I coached her to put it in positive terms -- that this character's time was done, that she wanted to move on to a more interesting character, etc.

So, when the clutch moment came, the group knew to back off and let her have her moment. It's been said before, even in this thread, but it can never be repeated enough: you have to communicate with your group. It's not just that the GM has to communicate with the group (though I like to think I would have handled your situation differently had I been running it), but it's also your responsibility to talk to your fellow players. Do it before a session, after a session, in the e-mail reminder thread, whatever. You have work to do in this situation, too.

I'm not much of a fan of the scripted death path. I like my deaths to be unexpected and even somewhat random (this system is pretty good about keeping them from being too random).

(Sturn's snips of CaptainRaspberry's post)............... I told her there were, by my estimate, two possible endings: a good one where the character walks off into the sunset with his new "family," and a bad one where he goes on a suicidal rampage of revenge against a Hutt. She was okay with either one...........

..........The way I see it, the difference between what we did and what you guys ended up doing is two-fold. First, as the GM, I came up with a few different ways to get the character out of the story..............The second, which I didn't mention above, is that I asked her to mention it to the group at the end of the previous session.

CaptainRaspberry (do you wear a beret?) I think just gave us a great template for GM's handling this in the future. I probably would have handled it horribly without these suggestions.

The urge for me would have been to keep it a complete secret to the rest of the group, but we can see the problem that it led to for Humanod. So, let the player inform the group beforehand that his/her PC is retiring. I wouldn't give out the details though so it is still fun for them as they discover the ending of their fellow PC,

Second, I love the idea of not letting the player know exactly how the ending will come. This could be done completely by the GM with no input from the player (if the GM knows the player well enough to craft a good ending) or as CR suggested - several options on the table with input from the player. Either way keeps it suspenseful for the player.

I don't think I have ever had an intentional heroic death to end a character in any games I have run or played in. Most characters retire, are accidental deaths, or end up the victim of PvP due to either in or out of game problems. I have had a number of characters fall to the dark side, come back from the dead (through a variety of tropes), retire and return, or even retire as a PC, and come back as a villain. (My favorite was a pilot who ejected when his ship was shot down, the party never searched for him, left him for dead, and flew away. His character spent a year building a merc company for the sole purpose of hunting down the party for revenge.)

Closest I got was running a game where we decided we had too many players, I asked everyone if anyone wanted to volunteer to leave the game. Everyone wanted to stay, so I told them I would take off the gloves, kill 1/2 the party, and whichever half lived got to stay in the game, unless anyone volunteered. They all agreed, I offed half the party, and was incredibly pissed when the half that lived decided they did not want to play anymore.

Hold up. I don't get it. GM and one player secretly conspire to cause the death of a beloved party member, don't really let the rest of said party in on the details, try to murder this party member, and get upset when the rest of the party want to roleplay saving somebody as they would absolutely do under any other circumstance?

And we're meant to be upset at the party?

This is a classic "scripting" problem. If there's an inflexible end point to an encounter, don't put it in the hands of the party. And if you do put it in the hands of the party, don't be upset if things go off the rails. "Letting someone in the party die" isn't a motivation that's terribly common amongst most roleplayers, and is certainly counterintuitive to most character concepts. There are a dozen ways a GM could bring this about without submitting it to party decision, and even in light of said decision, why not simply allow them to rescue the character, and find another way to remove the character from the action?

Oh yeah, in hindsight we totally should have let them in on the plan before we started the session. Pretty sure this is GM's first game mastering and mine playing, in our poopy defense haha. I'm not actually super upset about it, but you know how things go differently than you expect and then you're just sort of left looking at your stupid crushed by a ceiling body wondering where it all went wrong and you just have to let that little bit of frustration out. The intent of this thread was not to have you all get upset at the party, that bit explaining my situation was for cathartic reasons and as sort of a primer to why I asked the question.

Good solutions though, glad I asked. Wish I had asked a week ago though haha.

So, I’ve been on the other side of this kind of thing.

In our group, two players decided they wanted to end their current characters and move on to new ones. The GM was okay with this, and they had apparently worked things out between them. Maybe most of the other players also knew, but I certainly didn’t.

Alex and I ended up in a desperate battle to try to keep the party together and alive, and we kept fighting the other party members who had been turned evil by a Sith holocron that they had touched with their bare hands. Somehow, the holocron got destroyed, or at least the kyber crystal inside got removed. One of the two retiring PCs swallowed the crystal, so that none of the rest of us could have it. Then they dived into a portal that had been opened by Sith magic, and which we weren’t able to follow them through.

That scene tore up our group really good. Nearly ended the whole campaign right then and there. I was super pissed off about how the whole thing went down, and how the party had been destroyed from within by these two.

Looking back, I know now that I reacted badly. But that doesn’t change the events that happened or all the hurt feelings that were generated at the time.

Good communication is key. If a player does want to retire their character, they really need to work that out with everyone involved, and not just the GM. Otherwise, you risk running yourself into the same kind of trap that we hit.

Looking back, I know now that I reacted badly. But that doesn’t change the events that happened or all the hurt feelings that were generated at the time.

Good communication is key. If a player does want to retire their character, they really need to work that out with everyone involved, and not just the GM. Otherwise, you risk running yourself into the same kind of trap that we hit.

Generally, my golden rule regarding surprise developments at my table is thus: "Surprising everyone is good. Surprising me isn't." That said, for the reasons you stated, when someone wants to retire their character I generally ask them to make the whole group aware of it. If they really want it to be a surprise, I'll allow it, but I do everything in my power to telegraph it ahead of time. Also, if their chosen exit vector is death, after verbally confirming in front of everyone by saying something like, "Are you ready to do this?" I kill them in cutscene-mode.

I'm not much of a fan of the scripted death path. I like my deaths to be unexpected and even somewhat random (this system is pretty good about keeping them from being too random).

I tend to like death in my games happening that way, too. My first RPG was D&D 3E, and compared to this system it was positively lethal. I consider it a rite of passage to endure your first unscripted, unplanned permanent character death, and I told my players right-out that their enemies would be trying to kill them most of the time, rather than capture them.

That said, I'm a sucker for a good dramatic turn, and if a player comes to me and asks if we can kill off his character and I can think of a cool way to do it, I'm totally on board. By necessity, though, it has to be at least a little scripted.

CaptainRaspberry (do you wear a beret?) I think just gave us a great template for GM's handling this in the future. I probably would have handled it horribly without these suggestions.

I don't, but maybe I should. It's a pretty bold fashion statement, and I could probably hide snacks under there.

And thanks for the compliment! In my mind, it's my job to give the players choices for pretty much everything, so I try to live up to that. It's not always easy, and I've definitely screwed up several times with groups before. But I agree that it's important to maintain suspense and tension, even if most or all of the group knows what's going to happen in broad strokes.

(And for anyone interested, I added the spoiler section to my previous post.)

Great discussion, and very timely for me.

While at the house for a non-RPG-related game night, one of my players made it known that he's considering dropping out of the game (it's just not for him). So, I'm faced with potentially writing him out at our next session. I've asked him if he'd like to be quietly written out with his fate unknown (which facilitates a potential return if he changes his mind later), to go out in a blaze of heroic glory, or killed under mysterious circumstances, allowing for subplots galore, also if he'd like to be there for it or not. Still waiting to hear back from him.

While there's certainly some fun to be had with surprising the group with whatever fate he decides, after reading this thread, seems like it might be a good idea to let the rest of the group know ahead of time that the player is leaving. That way, they'll know to expect *something* to write the character out, but the details can still be a surprise.

Not my PC but another PC died a heroic death. A bounty hunter who had been harassing our party over multiple sessions threw a thermal detonator into the middle of the party.

So our Selonian marauder jumps on it. My PC has the motivation "comrades" and treats the crew as his family so it's in his nature to protect everyone. I tried to shove her off the bomb and the GM said, "Dude she's changing characters." I shrugged and let it happen and BOOM we were scraping fuzzy chunks off the walls.

So that one bit of communication worked fine. We RP'd it as the character saving us and it gave us all a revenge motivation and stuff but as players we got what was happening. No need to play coy and wink-wink between the player and GM while leaving everyone else in the dark as to what was really happening. It didn't make it any less of an in-game sacrifice to know that it was all contrived.

The only thing that kind of sucks is that the Selonian was replaced by a human so we lost our token alien. Our crew is probably going to get in trouble with the Galactic Civil Liberties Union someday.

The other heroic sacrifice was when a player left the game, so his character died when he held off a squad of TIE fighters from his recently-stolen Y-Wing while the rest of us escaped in our freighter. What was great about this death was that the party couldn't intervene if they wanted to.

There could be another option for a PC leaving the group. Instead of death, conversion to an NPC. I've used this a few times with the player's permission. I think I used it more for when the player was leaving the group entirely (moved away) then for when they were bored and wanted a new PC.

Support NPC: The PC could become a loveable support NPC. For example, the Engineer in the Star Wars party could decide to retire and set up shop as an expert mechanic. The party now has a skilled and friendly NPC to bring their ship to for upgrades and repairs. A PC with leadership and naval skills might be asked by the Rebel Alliance to command a newly stolen frigate. The PC accepts and becomes a Commander of a ship the NPC's might end up taking a ride upon from time to time on new missions.

Nemesis NPC: The final act for the PC turns him/her against the players. The PC betrays the players. Perhaps throw in that it appears the PC actually died. Later, the PC returns as an NPC Nemesis with lots of raw emotion coming from the players against this guy. The most obvious Star Wars example would be the PC force-user turning to the dark side and perhaps becoming an Emperor's Hand. Automatically adds a new level of emotion against the Nemesis.

Mix of Above: In an old D&D campaign I ran, a player moved on (military PCS) leaving me with his character sheet for a beloved and badass Fighter. I turned him into an NPC as he decided to leave the party and become a mercenary for hire. During a future adventure he was at odds against the PC party as part of an NPC party racing towards the same goal. This created some resentment towards him. Even further down the road the PCs were leading an army in the Dalelands when they faced off against a much larger opposing Zhentarim force at a river crossing bridge. They were shocked to find the old PC warrior leading a contingent of cavalry for the Zhentarim. The cavalry charged, but in epic Bravehart fashion, they slowed and turned to face the Zhentarim under his command.

CaptainRaspberry (do you wear a beret?)....

I don't, but maybe I should. It's a pretty bold fashion statement, and I could probably hide snacks under there.

If you need one I hear they are easy to find in a second hand store.