To Die Ecologically (2, Expanding the Boundaries)
Death is transformative and inertial. OK. But all I've done so far is to provide a DM with the chance to look at death and see how they can hoist a new system onto the dying character. I'm not really modeling anything that might be called ecological. Not yet, at least.
So, let's go back a bit. I mentioned a mushroom suit. I mentioned it as an object lesson, but—yeah—we need to actually look more closely at the object itself. Who dies? Well, that's important—it's the human being doing the dying. What space do they inhabit with dying like this? A plot in the forest, assumedly. As they transform, what do they influence? They allow mushrooms to grow. Animals may eat the mushrooms. The mushrooms become a part of the ecological cycle, providing that connection between the person doing the dying, the forest, and all the other things in there that are living, dying, or doing something else.
Every time a character dies, there is a system-wide effect. This is why a small mechanical boost doesn't cut it; this is why +1 to all allies within 30 feet just sucks as a rule. There is an effect that only manifests for the allies, making the place and the other party, if there was one, non-existent. Only the PC party matters? For an enemy, it means that they just killed someone (if they actually did the killing). What does this accomplish for them in terms of their goals? "Kurgoth the Ravager licks his blade and laughs at the sight of another death." Cool, buddy, but what's Kurgoth's actual deal here? If death is a benchmark of celebration, then how does this drive Kurgoth further and further?
For the setting, how does a character's death change the location? How does the space take on the transformation from life to death? (Does a sacrifice consecrate the place? Does the spilling of blood desecrate it? Does it reinforce a history of blood and slaughter, or does it set a new tone for that locale?) Let's not forget that there's a body there now, assumedly. The body isn't a set dressing—it was a person that was just up and moving around. Does this chance the location?
This is a good time to reiterate that spirits and ghosts are fun for a reason. Haunting is fun.
OK.
Generic high fantasy doesn't do a great job dealing with grief. Either you're one of Tolkien's elves, and you actually just die from grief, or it's the noble sacrifice of someone else that drives you to greater and greater deeds—the defense of the West among heroes like Aragorn or Faramir derives, in part, from the noble example of noble Boromir, and everything's very noble about it. No one living in these particular stories seems to have an ounce of quiet desperation in their grief. (There's something in Catullus 101 that feels so familiar in life and so lacking in fantasy.)
Now, I get it. D&D isn't about being sad and crying all the time for no apparent reason. It's a game about hitting things for money and/or power. However, we're going to do our best here, because it is still by far the most popular and widely played RPG out there.
So, what's up? A character dies—as in, no resurrection available, is dead-dead—and the players have a quick moment before the player's new character joins the party and the memory of death becomes a memorial moreso than a fractured relationship. The dead become objectified, instrumentalized. It is important, if we're thinking about how to have better, more ecological relationships with this game, to resist this kind of thinking. A dead body isn't a creature that simply can't protect itself from looters. It's the last material vestige of a person; the items on the person are the last mnemonic vestiges. It's more than having a nice funeral ceremony for the dead character—the living must be changed by the transformation of the dead. Do they try to embody something of the dead as a result, less as a means of noble memoralization and more as a means to continue the relationship—to keep talking to the dead, even when the reciprocity of speech has long passed?
Let's talk about a not-great option: Grognak the Barbarian has a new stat, a grief counter. Every time an ally is killed, add +1 to Grognak's grief counter. Roll 1d20 vs. the grief counter each time an ally is knocked unconscious. If you roll under the grief counter, Grognak enters a Rage immediately. If Grognak is already in a Rage, the Rage he is currently in does not count against his daily uses.
This is nice because it does take other players' death into account for the playing of Grognak as a character. This is not so nice because it 1) does nothing to add any kind of connection specifically between Grognak and the person who gets killed, 2) doesn't indicate any kind of condition under which the actual event of dying—that very important pinpoint of time—might influence Grognak's mental state, and 3) instrumentalizes grief to the point where the character of Grognak is inconsequential, only making the tactical output of Grognak important. These are the same issues with measures like an insanity counter or a stress counter. It assumes that all sources are either the same or neatly reducible. Working through something like D&D, there are some sacrifices to abstraction that will be made, but funneling human emotion through number ratings plays an odd, stiff game.
A new character, likely appearing due to the void of their player's previous, doesn't simply fill in a hole in the roster. Instead, a new character enters into a place where the relationships are vibrant and raw. "I'm so glad you joined us," shouldn't be a reflection on their excellent aim or their powerful spellcasting, but a genuine connection to a new face; they aren't a replacement.
I go back to Dungeon World, because there's another system in there I like for dealing with this: bonds. Can bonds be created or fulfilled between the living and the dead? Absolutely. They always are. Can grief fundamentally change a character? It should be able to. What does this say about the static nature of character creation and development? That it isn't sufficient to model death. It doesn't allow us to map our own sharp changes and slow deviations that death so frequently imposes on us. So what does that mean? It means we need to become more flexible with our concepts of character creation and development if we're going to play games full of death.
And what about D&D that is rigid and unmoving (classes!)? How do different characters, within their own classes, reckon with death? We talk about stuff like Oathbreakers frequently enough when we're having conversations about moral alignments, but we don't really talk about Oathbreakers who walk away from a god/dess after feeling like they've failed their team-member and/or their god/dess did nothing to help them. We don't talk about how grief can substantially alter a person's trajectory and burn away assumptions they held on to for a very, very, very long time. If we're going to take death as a constant, then we've got to reckon with how we can bend the other constants around it. How do classes change? How do stats change? And why the hell do we wait until we level up to make those changes?
One more level back: how do factions, alliances, and the larger social web move with death? How do we not shuffle a dead character under the rug as yet another shiftless hero gone from this world? (How do we not misremember the actual lesson of First Blood?) We pay attention. We dismantle and mutate the static. We open up our little imaginary worlds to systems of organic change, to altering paths, to universal transformation at the force of one transferred to the whole of others.
So, let's go back a bit. I mentioned a mushroom suit. I mentioned it as an object lesson, but—yeah—we need to actually look more closely at the object itself. Who dies? Well, that's important—it's the human being doing the dying. What space do they inhabit with dying like this? A plot in the forest, assumedly. As they transform, what do they influence? They allow mushrooms to grow. Animals may eat the mushrooms. The mushrooms become a part of the ecological cycle, providing that connection between the person doing the dying, the forest, and all the other things in there that are living, dying, or doing something else.
Every time a character dies, there is a system-wide effect. This is why a small mechanical boost doesn't cut it; this is why +1 to all allies within 30 feet just sucks as a rule. There is an effect that only manifests for the allies, making the place and the other party, if there was one, non-existent. Only the PC party matters? For an enemy, it means that they just killed someone (if they actually did the killing). What does this accomplish for them in terms of their goals? "Kurgoth the Ravager licks his blade and laughs at the sight of another death." Cool, buddy, but what's Kurgoth's actual deal here? If death is a benchmark of celebration, then how does this drive Kurgoth further and further?
For the setting, how does a character's death change the location? How does the space take on the transformation from life to death? (Does a sacrifice consecrate the place? Does the spilling of blood desecrate it? Does it reinforce a history of blood and slaughter, or does it set a new tone for that locale?) Let's not forget that there's a body there now, assumedly. The body isn't a set dressing—it was a person that was just up and moving around. Does this chance the location?
This is a good time to reiterate that spirits and ghosts are fun for a reason. Haunting is fun.
OK.
Generic high fantasy doesn't do a great job dealing with grief. Either you're one of Tolkien's elves, and you actually just die from grief, or it's the noble sacrifice of someone else that drives you to greater and greater deeds—the defense of the West among heroes like Aragorn or Faramir derives, in part, from the noble example of noble Boromir, and everything's very noble about it. No one living in these particular stories seems to have an ounce of quiet desperation in their grief. (There's something in Catullus 101 that feels so familiar in life and so lacking in fantasy.)
Now, I get it. D&D isn't about being sad and crying all the time for no apparent reason. It's a game about hitting things for money and/or power. However, we're going to do our best here, because it is still by far the most popular and widely played RPG out there.
So, what's up? A character dies—as in, no resurrection available, is dead-dead—and the players have a quick moment before the player's new character joins the party and the memory of death becomes a memorial moreso than a fractured relationship. The dead become objectified, instrumentalized. It is important, if we're thinking about how to have better, more ecological relationships with this game, to resist this kind of thinking. A dead body isn't a creature that simply can't protect itself from looters. It's the last material vestige of a person; the items on the person are the last mnemonic vestiges. It's more than having a nice funeral ceremony for the dead character—the living must be changed by the transformation of the dead. Do they try to embody something of the dead as a result, less as a means of noble memoralization and more as a means to continue the relationship—to keep talking to the dead, even when the reciprocity of speech has long passed?
Let's talk about a not-great option: Grognak the Barbarian has a new stat, a grief counter. Every time an ally is killed, add +1 to Grognak's grief counter. Roll 1d20 vs. the grief counter each time an ally is knocked unconscious. If you roll under the grief counter, Grognak enters a Rage immediately. If Grognak is already in a Rage, the Rage he is currently in does not count against his daily uses.
This is nice because it does take other players' death into account for the playing of Grognak as a character. This is not so nice because it 1) does nothing to add any kind of connection specifically between Grognak and the person who gets killed, 2) doesn't indicate any kind of condition under which the actual event of dying—that very important pinpoint of time—might influence Grognak's mental state, and 3) instrumentalizes grief to the point where the character of Grognak is inconsequential, only making the tactical output of Grognak important. These are the same issues with measures like an insanity counter or a stress counter. It assumes that all sources are either the same or neatly reducible. Working through something like D&D, there are some sacrifices to abstraction that will be made, but funneling human emotion through number ratings plays an odd, stiff game.
A new character, likely appearing due to the void of their player's previous, doesn't simply fill in a hole in the roster. Instead, a new character enters into a place where the relationships are vibrant and raw. "I'm so glad you joined us," shouldn't be a reflection on their excellent aim or their powerful spellcasting, but a genuine connection to a new face; they aren't a replacement.
I go back to Dungeon World, because there's another system in there I like for dealing with this: bonds. Can bonds be created or fulfilled between the living and the dead? Absolutely. They always are. Can grief fundamentally change a character? It should be able to. What does this say about the static nature of character creation and development? That it isn't sufficient to model death. It doesn't allow us to map our own sharp changes and slow deviations that death so frequently imposes on us. So what does that mean? It means we need to become more flexible with our concepts of character creation and development if we're going to play games full of death.
And what about D&D that is rigid and unmoving (classes!)? How do different characters, within their own classes, reckon with death? We talk about stuff like Oathbreakers frequently enough when we're having conversations about moral alignments, but we don't really talk about Oathbreakers who walk away from a god/dess after feeling like they've failed their team-member and/or their god/dess did nothing to help them. We don't talk about how grief can substantially alter a person's trajectory and burn away assumptions they held on to for a very, very, very long time. If we're going to take death as a constant, then we've got to reckon with how we can bend the other constants around it. How do classes change? How do stats change? And why the hell do we wait until we level up to make those changes?
One more level back: how do factions, alliances, and the larger social web move with death? How do we not shuffle a dead character under the rug as yet another shiftless hero gone from this world? (How do we not misremember the actual lesson of First Blood?) We pay attention. We dismantle and mutate the static. We open up our little imaginary worlds to systems of organic change, to altering paths, to universal transformation at the force of one transferred to the whole of others.
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