Player leaves, character dies?

[thegamemistress]

I've had players leave my game (for various reasons) and a number of times, they've assumed that their character would be killed off after they left

Comments

[idemandjustice]

I've been playing for about twenty years now, and we've always done it the same way you have. This leaves the option for them to return and pick up the character again, should circumstances change. I do recall once requesting a GM kill off my character in a dramatic way, but in that case I wasn't leaving the game. I was switching to a different character, and the GM gave my older character a really fun death scene that shook up the game

[trysha]

Our games tend to flow from the same fiction narratives that TV, Books, and Movies have.

How do you get rid of a character on a TV show - you kill them off.

It's what people are used to. I personally agree, players who move or get new jobs, etc... tend to just have characters that move away from the group in some way so that they can come back. No need to kill 'em.

[xuenay]

Storytelling is about drama, and a beloved character getting killed makes for more drama than them simply moving away.

I actually haven't had players leave my games partway, but I always figured that if any would, that would be a perfect opportunity to introduce some new plot twist. Here's an established character with a built-up history with the other characters, and his player has left, meaning that I can use him for whatever creates the most interesting complications for the remaining players. Now of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the character with get killed... but the odds are that he's up for some relatively gruesome fate. Kidnapped, replaced by a doppelganger, turned to the dark side, whatever.

[trysha]

this happened in a mage game that I am in.

player left, and we showed up to her house to find no trace that she was ever there.
turns out her family was erased from time, the house was there but it was as if the place had been untouched for ages. the store she worked in was empty and abandoned - we were the only ones who remembered her.

that was a dramatic turn of events and sent us off investigating.

[xuenay]

That sounds awesome.

[sianmink]

Well played.

[castlemew]

I've seen this happen on MUSHes when the player of a villain PC leaves the game, and it usually frustrated everyone involved because it would happen without any discussion with that player or attempt to contact them to see where they've gone. It made me paranoid when I decided to leave the game for about a year, so I pre-emptively wrote all of my PCs (including the villain I was playing at the time) out of the game before anyone could do weird shit with them behind my back. It was a Marauders-era Potter game where Voldemort was at the height of his power so I guess the roleplay staff's perspective was that dramatic things happen and people die all the time, but it left bad tastes in everyone's mouths.

[brother_dour]

I think it comes from the stereotypical 'killer DM' who is more concerned with exerting his power over the players than actually doing his damn job. Sadly, this particular stereotype is based on a grain of truth IMO- I've known one or two people I would never play with because they were royal jackasses as DM