How not to handle death...

So, continuing from my last two posts, on the theme of death... -actually I should point out I've just come back from the pub so I'll lay in the apologies up front if this post goes awry- here's how not to handle death.

The following excerpt is from a MegaTraveller game played several years ago.

So the party had fought their way to the top of a ultra-high-rise building whose top few floors were above cloud level.  Barricaded in the office of an executive whom we had planned to kidnap, with extensive (and homicidal) security en route, we considered various escape plans.  It all looked pretty bad.  A rift had already begun to form between our party of four with two players pairing off against the other two.

My character had an AG harness (which essentially meant he could fly).  I did some calculations and realised the power output of the harness was sufficient enough that the device would effectively slow the descent of three people, if used only as a parachute.  And then only as a HALO jump, as it would drain its batteries rapidly.  My character also had a wall-charge, a shaped explosive device which would blow out a hole in an armoured wall.

So, with tensions rising in the high altitude penthouse office and the party divide causing as much threat to each other as the imminent threat from the security pounding up the stairs (we had killed the elevators by this time). I decided to blow a hole out of the bulletproof window.  So whilst the party was setting up for a firefight with the rapidly inbound security, I set up a timer on my wall-charge and placed it on the window behind me.  I realised the pressure at this altitude would mean we might be sucked out of the window if we stood next to it.  As the timer counted down, I grabbed hold of the executive we were supposed to kidnap, and my buddy (played by the inimitable Chris Hart).

Just before the security got to the office, the explosive went off, blowing a massive hole in the window, and the pressure differential began to suck us out.  Having hold of the executive, and my buddy - with the trust of the other two PCs drawn heavily into question, and blatant hostility coming from one - I jumped out of the window, expediting what the pressure was aiming to do anyway.  Dragging the other two with me, we plummeted through the clouds.

Having now effectively stranded the remaining two party members, the more hostile of the two took umbrage and fired out of the window at us.  Fortunately at freefall speed, we were soon enveloped in clouds and out of his sight, still we heard the gauss needles zip past us.

When ground rush began to kick in I whacked the AG on emergency full power and the harness kicked in.  It took all my strength to keep hold of the other two.  (Strength check made).

We landed in the parking lot, and as the bulk of the security was now several thousand feet above us, engaged in a firefight in the penthouse office of the exec I had just kidnapped, it was a relatively easy stroll to lead him at gunpoint to our waiting groundcar.  Thus ending that session.

Apologies for being long-winded, but that's all backstory.

The next session resumed with us (myself, my buddy, and the kidnapped exec) driving into the starport, with a view to getting the exec aboard our spaceship and blasting off.  I can't even remember why we were trying to kidnap him now.  We got to our ship only to find that the two PCs we had left behind to duke it out with the security were already  onboard the ship!  To this day I still don't know how they'd got there ahead of us.  We had freefalled out of the building and drove straight to the starport, but still they had managed to get there ahead of us.  This was my first questioning of the GM's coherence.  It just made no sense that the other two PCs could have got to the ship before us, and I thought he had done it, purely to tie up the two disparate parties.  My first warning is this: as a GM you have all the power to do whatever you want, BUT YOU MUST MAKE IT COHERENT!  Have a reason for it.  An explicable reason.  Even if you don't explain it straight away, it needs to be plausible, possible.  Events in games which defy explanation and look to the players that you threw them in just to get yourself out of a sticky situation only serve to piss players off.  PLAN EVERYTHING!  (...this is actually impossible of course) but where possible, PLAN EVERYTHING! ...or at least have escape routes / interventions that you can logically throw in.

So... there was naturally some frostiness between us (me and my buddy - with exec in tow) and the other two PCs.  Regardless, we blast off and get the hell out of orbit and into jumpspace before the security start chasing down their kidnapped exec.

I realised it was just a matter of time before the particularly hostile party member came for us, so with much deliberation I decided to jump the gun.

My character was a computer whizz (computers 6 in MegaTraveller terms). He made most computer whizz's look retarded.  And so I set about re-writing the ship's computer to vac the ship whilst we were in deep space.  What I did was set the computer to open up the bay doors (in the ships hull) and then every internal door except for my stateroom door, my buddy's stateroom door, and that of the brig where the exec was being held.  These doors would remain locked, and the ship would vac for 5 minutes before all doors were sealed again.

I had to make several checks against my computer skill to do this, but made them all.  So now we just waited (it was all on a timer).

Prior to the designated time, my buddy and I retired to our staterooms.  As an added precaution I climbed into my vac-suit too.  So I had my own air-supply, just incase something went wrong.

It was at this point that the GM finally seemed to realise we were poised to dispose of half the party (under the remit, as far as we were concerned, they would come for us sooner or later).  So at the horrifying thought that I was about to kill two other PCs, he threw a rather ill-thought-out spanner in the works.  He said an emergency alarm went off.  Now, my character with computers 6 had already made several rolls to make sure I made the necessary changes to the ship's computer to set up the vac protocol.  But somehow I had missed this final alarm.  So one minute before the vac was scheduled to take place, an alarm sounded announcing it was imminent.  WARNING! DANGER! SHIP VAC IN T-MINUS 60 SECONDS AND COUNTING.

What did the other players do?  Well the hostile one, took offense at this imminent ship-vac and pulled out his gauss rifle and shredded out stateroom doors with it.  My buddy hadn't had the foresight to don his vac-suit so was now in danger of being deprived of oxygen for the five minutes the ship would be exposed to space.  So he fled his stateroom in an effort to secure himself somewhere else.  As he left his stateroom he was shot by the hostile PC and rendered unconcious and bleeding to death.  Without rapid assistance he would die.  So having seen all this on the security monitors I had piped to my stateroom, I crept out of my stateroom and went to his assistance.  I managed to creep up on the hostile PC and shot him at point blank range in the small of the back with my shotgun.  But alas, shotguns have a low penetration, and his body armour absorbed the majority of the damage.  The hostile PC was stunned a little, but nevertheless, turned round and shot me with his gauss rifle at close range - crippling my character, rendering him immobile.  By this time the countdown was at T-minus 30 seconds and two of the party were down.  One unconcious and bleeding to death, the other conscious but immobile.  The two remaining party members knew nothing about computers, or the ship's safety systems or much else for that matter.  So they waited, 30 long and drawn-out seconds for the ship's doors to open, and all and sundry were flushed out into space.

In trying to prevent one half of the party summarily wiping out the other, the GM had shortsightedly ushered us all to our deep-space graves.  I sometimes think about that lone exec, imprisoned in our brig, on an otherwise empty ship, lost in deep space.  I guess he must have starved to death.  And probably 200 years later our ghost ship would be found by pirates, or salvagers and boarded and they'd wonder: what happened here?

But there's a warning in this tale.  As a GM if you have to think very carefully about the repercussions of your actions.  One can very easily let things get out of hand.  Like party-rifts.  And once they're in place.  Chances are PCs will start dying.  PC's after all, are generally the most dangerous things in the game.  And when such hostilities do commence, one needs, as a GM, to think very carefully about the repercussions of not just what the players want to do.  But also what you, as the GM, say are the net result of their actions.

I still believe to this day that the GM in that game put that alarm in to give the other two players a chance.  Because without it they would be without warning flushed into space.  But in doing so, set up a pattern of events which lead that game to end ubruptly, and well-short of the story mark.  None of us saw how the game was supposed to end.  None of us got much more than about half of the story.

Sometimes, as a GM you have to let PC's die.  Always you have to think ahead carefully and map out the likely results of actions.  Its kind of in the job description.

Still, a memorable ending to what was a highly enjoyable game.  It still brings a smile to my face.  In a forgotten universe somewhere, there is a ghost ship with a skeleton in its brig.  And no other crew.  And the last entry into the flight computer is a command which told the ship to vac.

If I were GM, how would I have handled things differently?

Well, sometimes its hard to avoid intra-party feuds. Thinking back, in the case of that game, the hostile party member was the root cause of numerous party feuds and PC deaths across multiple games.  It would be difficult to manage him out of most of those situations (which he seemed to enjoy), short of not inviting him to play.  (Lesson X - choose your players carefully).  That said, intra-party feuds are not always a bad thing and can result in some fantastically tense and atmospheric games.  I recall one game in particular which my brother ran, in which all seven players had hidden agendas and secret societies and all manner of subterfuge which pitted most of us against most of us.  But that's for another post.

It is my belief that the game went wrong when the other half of the party that was left stranded in the office, managed miraculously to arrive at the our spaceship ahead of us.  The feud was already underway, and could not be helped considering who was playing.  But it was the GM's decision to blur reason and have us all wind up on the ship at the same time.

With the feud in place I would be tempted to have the other half of the party pursue us.  Run a dual game with the same story now revolving around two competing half-parties.  That could have been good fun.

As a GM, once you let a feud develop to a point where a dice-roll can and may cause the death of one PC at the hands of another.  You must have something pretty special up your sleeve not to just roll with it.  Because it either smacks of GM intervention, or the PC's die.  And in this case, both.