[Kirito99]

That problem can be avoided if GM don't allow to specific qualities which force players te behave in specific manner like mentor spirits, code of honor, specific bias or so on.  Many pre-made runs has very specific conditions and sometimes they collide with this bevahiors.

[All4BigGuns]

I always tell my players that if they want to write novels, they should do so.  I write novels and get paid very well for it.  But if they plan on playing an RPG, do not put work into their characters.  This is because, in RPGs, especially in games like Shadowrun where there is no Raise Dead capability (at least that I know of), shit happens, and characters die.  Even under the best of conditions. 

Then don't expect your players to ever giving a flying fornication about any character they play in your games, and don't complain if you ever see the characters treated like "a bunch of numbers on paper" by your players.

[Darzil]

I find one of the largest contributors to players taking death well is them having an idea for their next character. When character death means something new to look forward to, rather than the chore of coming up with a new idea, it is a very different experience.

[MijRai]

Yeah, in the games I run and play in, death is always an option;
One of them is a death-crawl of doom, for instance.  As a group, we all know to bring backup characters to every session, and there have been multiple TPKs. 
Another is a year old, multi-year campaign, where three PCs have died over the course of it (all of them died to the same group, who SHOULD have been working with us, but they're idiots).
My Dark Heresy campaign (a very lethal system) has surprisingly only had one death over 8 months, mostly due to the PCs having very good survival instincts. 
My D&D campaign had a party wipe at one point as well. 

The big thing to me (and most players I play with) is that there is risk to it.  Why bother if you know you'll always succeed and never die?  The threat of losing the character you've worked on motivates you to keep them alive.  I don't suggest letting them die as the result of a stupid roll; there's plenty of other ways to go down, though. 

[Shadowjack]

@MijRai: There should never be a gaurantee of success, I agree on that. I embrace failure and even relish in it. But what I am unsure about is death itself. If a group plays through my campaign and dies in the last session, that is fine. If they lose but survive, that is fine too. My major concern lies in the  value of the story. Imagine watching the first Star Wars movie and Luke Skywalker dies 45 minutes in after he's been build up substantially. At that point there would be a big disconnect from the audience and there would be no way to salvage the movie. Of course, rpgs and movies are not the same, but they are very similar. Part of what I like about watching movies is that I know I will get some sort of conclusion, whether it be what I wanted or not. I find that more interesting than a session 4 party wipe. If that happens the game is in a very odd state in my opinion. And yes, I am well aware that there is no shortage of ways to move forward, but I do believe the finality will be less spectacular.

Regarding realism and fear of death, they are fine elements of a story indeed. Ideally, a true roleplayer can always fear death even though he knows it won't be possible for some time. But when it comes down to it, what is more important: The realization that death could be around every corner or being able to finish a campaign and see the collaborative effort of the entire group reach a fantastic conclusion? You can't always have both, but you can always have one.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that my group does not generally play 50+ session campaigns. By that point it could be difficult to keep a really good storyline going, in essence it would be like multiple campaigns merged into one. If no death occurred by that point it could definitely start to feel strange. These days I'm more interested in shorter campaigns, so character death can be a real hindrance.

[MijRai]

Isn't failing and/or dying a conclusion?  I'm really not a fan of 'it has to have some kind of vaguely satisfying conclusion.'  Sometimes the good guys don't win.  Bad stuff can happen.  Despite their best efforts, evil has triumphed and the world is going down.  One of the best campaigns I ever took part in was where the original heroes all failed miserably and died.  Horrible things were happening across the world.  And the new group the players made had to deal with the fallout of what their previous characters' failures had wrought.  Every time I write up a scenario, I also put in a 'what if they fail' paragraph to go off of if things go sideways. 

While you can't always have both, you can work towards having both instead of giving up on one.  I've been doing that well in my Dark Heresy game; fantastic blows have caused people to nearly die, allies of theirs have been mercilessly killed or maimed due to decisions the NPC made or the PC made, etc. 

While I am fine with shorter campaigns, it is the long ones that entrance me.  I'm a fan of epic fantasy, of long stories that can take years to be resolved.  And yes, a part of the way you make it work is you break it into multiple 'campaigns' or chapters.  My favorite campaign to date (currently on hiatus) has taken us about 15 months to get from the beginning to abut one-third of the way through by the GM estimates (about three or four years in game).  That involved three major storylines (the introduction and the recovering of two artifacts so far), a half-dozen minor ones, a couple character development scenarios, etc. 

[ProfessorCirno]

That problem can be avoided if GM don't allow to specific qualities which force players te behave in specific manner like mentor spirits, code of honor, specific bias or so on.  Many pre-made runs has very specific conditions and sometimes they collide with this bevahiors.

I find the problem is very literally never with those qualities.  Inflexible GMs exist as much as inflexible players - perhaps even more so - and absolutely can effect a game.  I adore having mentor spirits and code of honor and bias and whatnot.  It gives me another level to pull to get and keep player interest.

The main reason players find burning Edge so abhorant is because it represents a loss of permanent capabilities, and one that is increasingly expensive.  Nuyen is for the most part somewhat inconsistent between runs, but karma is usually kept the same across players - a 15 karma loss is quite a hard thing to swallow, as that could be several sessions worth of karma.  Then you add in that 15 is the LOWEST it can cost - it costs characters with very high Edge even MORE.  On top of that it can turn into a downward spiral; you lose that karma, so you spend more to try to balance it back up, but now you're at a net loss of karma, so your character is weaker, so it dies easier...  That isn't to say burning karma is BAD; it's more a note on how Shadowrun's engine is built.  Specializing is important in the game, but it's also more expensive, and losing points in your specialization is going to hurt bad.

I think in the end some o fShadowrun's rules are built for a more old school D&D style of game; the whole "don't name the character until your level 5" kinda deal.  The problem with using that in Shadowrun is that, unlike OD&D, where rolling a new character is very literally rolling three dice six times, making a new Shadowrun character is way, WAY more...let's go with "ornate."  On top of that, one of the side effects of having long and detailed chargen is that players get more easily attached to their characters even before letting them lose into the game world.  A game with super common death and mayhem can work, but you need a system built around that assumption, and Shadowrun chargen is very much not.  You don't want to spend an hour or two making a character, then dying on day one.

The Star Wars comparison is actually a pretty good one, because the entirety of Empire Strikes Back is based on non-stop failure.  The Rebels are hurt bad fleeing Hoth.  Luke more or less fails his training with Yoda.  Han is betrayed by his good friend Lando and is carbonite'd.  Luke fights Vader and gets his hand severed.  These are all great points of time where the heroes unequivocally fail - but the failure isn't an instant death, reroll state.  In fact, look at Han getting frozen in carbonite and remember what I said about getting back into trouble to save the guy you left behind potentially being even more fun then getting into that original trouble the first time around.  The whole Jabba's palace thing may as well be one big in-game run.  You've got the infiltrator sneaking in disguised as the pre-game, the gear is surreptitiously hidden where it can be easily accessed, the face goes in and tries to sneak out the goods and gets captured, the mage rolls in to try and smooth things over, then the entire plan goes horribly wrong and it's off to Plan B: Set Guns To Full Auto And Blast Our Way Out.

[Shadowjack]

That problem can be avoided if GM don't allow to specific qualities which force players te behave in specific manner like mentor spirits, code of honor, specific bias or so on.  Many pre-made runs has very specific conditions and sometimes they collide with this bevahiors.

I find the problem is very literally never with those qualities.  Inflexible GMs exist as much as inflexible players - perhaps even more so - and absolutely can effect a game.  I adore having mentor spirits and code of honor and bias and whatnot.  It gives me another level to pull to get and keep player interest.

The main reason players find burning Edge so abhorant is because it represents a loss of permanent capabilities, and one that is increasingly expensive.  Nuyen is for the most part somewhat inconsistent between runs, but karma is usually kept the same across players - a 15 karma loss is quite a hard thing to swallow, as that could be several sessions worth of karma.  Then you add in that 15 is the LOWEST it can cost - it costs characters with very high Edge even MORE.  On top of that it can turn into a downward spiral; you lose that karma, so you spend more to try to balance it back up, but now you're at a net loss of karma, so your character is weaker, so it dies easier...  That isn't to say burning karma is BAD; it's more a note on how Shadowrun's engine is built.  Specializing is important in the game, but it's also more expensive, and losing points in your specialization is going to hurt bad.

I think in the end some o fShadowrun's rules are built for a more old school D&D style of game; the whole "don't name the character until your level 5" kinda deal.  The problem with using that in Shadowrun is that, unlike OD&D, where rolling a new character is very literally rolling three dice six times, making a new Shadowrun character is way, WAY more...let's go with "ornate."  On top of that, one of the side effects of having long and detailed chargen is that players get more easily attached to their characters even before letting them lose into the game world.  A game with super common death and mayhem can work, but you need a system built around that assumption, and Shadowrun chargen is very much not.  You don't want to spend an hour or two making a character, then dying on day one.

The Star Wars comparison is actually a pretty good one, because the entirety of Empire Strikes Back is based on non-stop failure.  The Rebels are hurt bad fleeing Hoth.  Luke more or less fails his training with Yoda.  Han is betrayed by his good friend Lando and is carbonite'd.  Luke fights Vader and gets his hand severed.  These are all great points of time where the heroes unequivocally fail - but the failure isn't an instant death, reroll state.  In fact, look at Han getting frozen in carbonite and remember what I said about getting back into trouble to save the guy you left behind potentially being even more fun then getting into that original trouble the first time around.  The whole Jabba's palace thing may as well be one big in-game run.  You've got the infiltrator sneaking in disguised as the pre-game, the gear is surreptitiously hidden where it can be easily accessed, the face goes in and tries to sneak out the goods and gets captured, the mage rolls in to try and smooth things over, then the entire plan goes horribly wrong and it's off to Plan B: Set Guns To Full Auto And Blast Our Way Out.

Brilliantly articulated post, bravo! That sums up my feelings quite nicely. Another issue for me is that I'm quite interested to get my hands on a Fairlight Excalibur (or Paladin) at some point. I've been playing Shadowrun off and on for decades and I still haven't gotten one. Part of that is due to my love of creating characters, which results in campaigns being relatively short. Acquiring such an exoribantly priced item is difficult but possible if you can survive long enough. I really doubt that dying with 600,000 nuyen is going to be fun. You didn't get the item you've been saving up for, for a long time, and meanwhile the rest of the part has rocking Betaware augmentations and riding around in Mitsubishi Nightsky's, or toting Force 12 Foci. After a  death like that I highly doubt a player would make another decker and start saving again. And that's part of what is difficult in Shadowrun, if you ever want to get these items without stealing them or having the GM hand them to you, you're going to need to do a lot of saving, we're talking about months of saving fictional currency, if not years.

I'm very torn on this issue, most of my group has decided that it would be cool if player characters didn't die, except in very specific circumstances, but one of our guys really likes the idea of being able to die. The idea in itself is solid, especially in a game like Dungeons and Dragons, which you can get a new chararcter up and running in a short amount of time. But in Shadowrun, iike you have mentioned, the process of character creation is quite detailed and attachment to your character is quite likely. I'm not sure I like the idea of having to burn multiple points of Edge during a long campaign, and really not liking the idea of my character being killed. I like to think of the game more as a movie in which my character is one of the main characters. I could fail repeatedly, I could be shamed, raped, or beaten (or worse) but I get to experience the full story of my character.

[Reaver]

On of the things our group uses is know as the "50% on death" rule.

If your character dies, you get 50% of that character's assets for your new one.

And while it means you start at serious disadvantage compared to the others, it doesn't leave you totally boned.

And it gives much more weight to burning an edge to survive rather then dying and making a new character.

Mind you, we are talking a level of karma 99% of players will never see just cause games generally don't last as long as ours....

[Glyph]

I am in favor of the possibility of character death being real.  I'm not saying the game necessarily has to be super-lethal.  The shadowrunners can always retreat, being captured doesn't have to be a death sentence, and some runs can be completed without a shot being fired.  But I still like to know that the character can die, and not always at a dramatic moment.  I feel the same way about NPCs - if the group shoots the big bad two "scenes" early, then don't contrive for him to miraculously survive because the story demands it.

I like games that are more character-driven than event-driven, and I prefer plots where the runners can affect the outcome to rigid story-lines where various set pieces must happen before a dramatic final scene.

[falar]

On of the things our group uses is know as the "50% on death" rule.

If your character dies, you get 50% of that character's assets for your new one.

I do something similar. We keep a running tally of all rewards and your new character starts at square one, but gets double rewards until he has caught up to the tally. Once we get further along (100 karma or so), I'll probably allow 20 karma and 40,000 nuyen to be added to the starting character right away.

[All4BigGuns]

Losing a character is bad enough, but being at half the post-generation karma and cash totals as the rest of the team is just insult to injury. The same person is even more likely to die again putting them at 25% and again putting them at 12.5% so forth and so on.

Edit- In the vast majority of cases ALL new characters should get the exact same amount of karma and cash as the party has accrued up to that point to keep them from being behind the curve.

Now, however, I can see a case being made for the new character(s) starting with an amount less of cash equal to what the average lifestyle cost among the characters is if the game has been running long enough that those costs have been paid out since that cost doesn't directly correlate to character capability improvement.

[Shadowjack]

I am in favor of the possibility of character death being real.  I'm not saying the game necessarily has to be super-lethal.  The shadowrunners can always retreat, being captured doesn't have to be a death sentence, and some runs can be completed without a shot being fired.  But I still like to know that the character can die, and not always at a dramatic moment.  I feel the same way about NPCs - if the group shoots the big bad two "scenes" early, then don't contrive for him to miraculously survive because the story demands it.

I like games that are more character-driven than event-driven, and I prefer plots where the runners can affect the outcome to rigid story-lines where various set pieces must happen before a dramatic final scene.

So in Shadowrun do you feel like your character can die? Being able to repeatedly burn Edge makes it very unlikely that it would actually happen. Regarding lethality, characters can get dropped pretty easily, even by a pistol user with only moderate skill. The bigger the gun, the easier it is for unexpected lethal situations to arise, even if the situation was not intended to be particularly lethal. So when you talk about the potential to die, do you mean after you have expended all of your Edge? Or does your group use some alternative rule?

[Glyph]

I'm in just one online game, which has stalled.  My character got pretty banged up in a fight, and actually came close to losing.  Not sure if I would have burned Edge to save him - or how that would work in conjunction with his Unlucky flaw.  Hypothetically speaking, the ability to burn Edge does not save you from complications (being captured by the bad guys, or being badly wounded and far from where you can get medical help), and unless you keep buying it back up, it will eventually run out.  Like I said, the game doesn't have to be lethal, but I prefer games where I feel like there is a real risk to my character, and no one is holding my hand.

[Shadowjack]

I see. That makes sense and yes I am aware that burning Edge doesn't mean you got off easy ^_^  What my group is considering at the moment is to have no death for chunks of campaigns, but then in more important sessions it could occur.