IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

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The GrumpyCat
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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by The GrumpyCat » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:53 pm

Eyeliner wrote:
Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:50 am
The GrumpyCat wrote:
Tue Aug 09, 2022 6:04 pm
Mostly it reall comes down to not yelling about how Bob bobson can kill you 30 times, you don't care, you'll just come back ect.
To be fair, sometimes Bob Bobson needs to move on from killing the same person 30 times too. The only times I've felt like screaming that is when someone I'll never be able to beat feels the need to keep picking unnecessary fights.
This is also very fair and why we look at it on a case by case basis.
This too shall pass.

(I now have a DM Discord (I hope) It's DM GrumpyCat#7185 but please keep in mind I'm very busy IRL so I can't promise how quick I'll get back to you.)

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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by HeyLadyOfDecay » Wed Aug 10, 2022 4:05 pm

I used to have a character who was completely bonkers and said on topics like this "Arelith is the gods playground, We are mere pions in their games, Existing only to be brought back in eternal struggle till they had enough"

Perhaps he was not fully bonkers :P
Lyann Reyer. Back by demand.
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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by Borin Drakkmurl » Thu Aug 25, 2022 3:04 pm

The way you give meaning to death, defeat, "injury" or most other potential negative experiences your character can experience or observe in others, is by giving meaning to lesser, more ordinary things they experience in everyday life. Do that together with a healthy degree of separation between who your character is, and who you are as a person (it can honestly be difficult to do), and you're on your way to have an overall deeper roleplaying experience as a whole.

If your making your way to Cordor with your level 30 WM/RDD/BARD/PM/TOOTOOT build, geared up to the teeth in l33t equipment, and you cross paths with someone who's clearly a new player/character/lowbie, put it upon yourself to regard them as if they were twice as powerful as you are. Even if oocly you know the odds are almost less than 0, it will still shift your state of mind from an arrogant win/lose standpoint to more of a: "how can I make this fun for them?"

If you're going through a dungeon with other people, and you've been there before, and you take five seconds from time to time to comment on what your character is seeing/doing/experiencing, you turn what would be a boring, mmorpgesque xp farming experience, into an actual adventure, as small and void of consequence as it may end up being. Even if, oocly, you've seen that dungeon before, killed those monsters ten times over, and slew the boss, solo, with just a few clicks before, you still make the effort to try and make it engaging and just a little bit deeper an experience for others, I garantee you the whole of it will be more rewarding than solo grinding an epic dungeon.

Comment on the freaking weather if you're just idling about waiting for someone else.

In short, if the trully mundane can be made to feel special, bigger events will be so ten times over.
Plus, don't treat arelith like a poor cousin of wow or diablo, because doing so is a sure fire way of making it as boring as it can possibly be, and nothing at all matters in that context.

(Also, it is a real sadistic fun to perma-delete a character and see your buddies panic oocly. Even if you yourself will grive your own character for months, sometimes years, it is still one of the most powerful ways you can impact the game world.)
Past characters: Daedin Angthalion; Lurg Norgar; Urebriwyn; Ubaldo Ferraz; Erodash Uzdshak; Borin; Belchior Heliodoro; Orestes Fontebela

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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by Preserver » Mon Aug 29, 2022 8:28 am

The way I usually go about it is as follows.
1) ICly recognise that Arelith is in many ways weird, that people -do- come back and that such an event is probably due to the island's unusual magical nature, or something similar to that.
2) Even with what mentioned in the previous point, death is a physically, mentally, and spiritually traumatic experience that can leave the PC having nightmares, phantom wounds (the sensation they still have the wounds that caused their death), and paranoid thoughts for several days after. Unhealable scars are also fun to RP, and if some Cleric/Druid arrives casting some powerful healing spell, just RP as if that odd mystical scar never goes away.
3) If it becomes hyper-relevant for the time between death and raising (AKA the Fugue) to be part of the RP, just remember "a maze of fog at some turn of which I walked back into life", and if you have some sort of companion that raised you, it can be pretty cool to tell them that it was their voice who guided you back to life.

Generally speaking, try to make death part of the roleplay. It must impact your PC in some way, and it is the perfect chance to allow your PC some avenues of RP that are usually untreadable. Think the loud and boasting barbarian that never flees a fight, suddently forced to confront the fact that they experienced something dreadful/traumatic/terrible; or the fear-immune Paladin whose sense of self is put into question when they ask themselves "wait, is what I felt fear? Can't be!" ...

As long as you roleplay, even moderately, that death is an impactful event (doesn't need to be permanent, just thrilling and impactful), I think you'll be fine.

~ Lladria Sethassiel ~ (Dead!) - ~ Siobhan Gray (Departed!)
~ Elspeth Lynndain (Dead!) - Noasheel Xephrates (Dead!)
~ Yachta - ~ Providence (Dead!)


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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by Cowbot » Wed Aug 31, 2022 8:28 pm

This whole conversation has been great.

I just want to point out that certain PC races are, in fact, functionally immortal, and can die again and again. It is not at all weird for them to return to life. Please be forgiving if you see them reference this fact.

This doesn't mean that being killed should be meaningless to them. It should have lots of meaning. However, that meaning is going to take a different flavor than those of the mortal races.

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Dr. B
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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by Dr. B » Fri Sep 02, 2022 2:07 pm

Perhaps the realm people go to when they die could be expanded into its own world, and getting back to the world of the living will be a big ol' adventure that will take a long time. You go to the City of the Dead and from there, there are multiple methods of getting back to life that might incur different consequences.

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Re: IC Talking about how "Death is Meaningless"

Post by Peachoo » Sat Sep 03, 2022 3:32 pm

riffraff wrote:
Sat Aug 06, 2022 8:30 am
I was poking my head into the Leylines Metagaming thread in the Feedback forum and saw a quote related to the topic here that I wanted to ask about without derailing the other thread.
Hazard wrote:
Sat Aug 06, 2022 12:28 am
Just like players still say 'Death is meaningless here. It works different. No one stays dead.' despite not being allowed to
Is this not allowed? My character had a couple of conversations like this in the past few days - some in-person clarification for her that no, she wasn't imagining things when people were reportedly dead only to be referenced in the present tense at a later date. And with far greater frequency than general resurrection magic would usually account for.
So if you go to Cordor. Cultural District. And talk to the elven kelemvorite priest in one of the random locked houses...

He talks about how death is still final, but many people on the island of arelith find various ways to come back. Which is why it doesn't stick as much. But that doesn't mean anything. He also icly mentions that when a pc dies, they still go to Kelemvor's wall here.

There's ic ways to find this sort of information. From npcs. I'm not sure if that npc comes out of his house much, and you need to lock pick his door to get into his home when he's in there.

This is largely an ic thing. Your character should ALWAYS be afraid of death. It's still a very 'real' possibility ic for it to be 'permanent'. Even if you as a player, know it will not be because you choose for it not to be.


I have the biggest respect for players who decide to permanently kill their pc after a big death. Konstatine was the most recent example of this.

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