I DM for a group of very busy people, for whom the commitment of several hours a week is a real sacrifice: that’s a sizeable chunk of their free time for the week that I’m asking for.
Now, I want, and they want, the game to be reasonably challenging. Death is a realistic risk for their characters, and should be for the game. And while the setting is reasonably lax about death, and resurrection magic can be had for those who have the coin or power, they’re not high enough level to really access it easily or quickly (and do not wish to have to handle higher-level, read: more complicated, characters). I fear that having it be easily available would also cheapen the risk of death in the first place.
But a dead character means a player who is not playing. That means someone who has committed a substantial amount of his or her free time to play a game with me can no longer participate. That is something that I cannot accept; it just seems disrespectful to them.
So, is there any way I can achieve both goals here? Make death meaningful, scary, and a real threat, without its occurrence wasting anyone’s time?
Best Answer
You can always play in a lower lethality game, but in the question you note that you and your group want this kind of gameplay. So here's some options to keep a player involved assuming character death is present.
Have them work on their new character. This keeps them involved with the game and allows you to slot them in potentially later in the same session, depending on time remaining. It has to be done anyway, and they get to still see the gameplay - in a 6 person party you're not doing anything at least 5/6 of the time anyway, so it's not really that big a deal.
Give them a NPC in the party, or even a foe, to play. Again, maintains involvement. Depending on how far into the session you are, it might not be for that long. Most of our campaigns have a variety of cohorts, NPC hangers-on, etc. (Sometimes to a fault, our Jade Regent game has a lot by design and our pirate game has two pirate ships full of crew plus more NPCs of PC level than there are PCs...)
Of course if you know you're running a lethal game, have players thinking about a next character in the back of their mind, and you should make sure and have opportunities in the narrative to slot in a new character frequently. I know I don't like to have new PCs just 'teleport in' so having realistic points where a new character might join requires some pre-work to not break immersion.
You could try to "time" major combats towards the end of sessions - but a) people generally time it that way anyway and b) it has little to do as to when someone snuffs it. I remember in our Rise of the Runelords campaign, we assaulted Hook Mountain and the putative Lord of our new Keep got murdered in the first round by a crit from an ogre hook. Unless you're fudging anyway, you can't count on timing.
As a player, I invest strongly in my characters so when they die I definitely want a cool-down period. Playing an NPC or foe or just watching the rest of the group finish up the session at hand while I turn over new character ideas is a good opportunity to do that; maybe I even want to leave early to go have some alone time to get my mind right.