Character Death

October Knight

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Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
Genres
Fantasy, Horror and Sci-fi. I'll try basically anything though. I also love strange and unusual RP genre concepts. Different is good!
Character Death

Have you ever killed your own character off in an RP? Either for plot advancement of just because you actually HATED the character? It would be hard for me to do because I get overly attached to my characters.


What about you!?
 
Happens regularly for me. Either for the sake of the narrative, bringing about a dramatic conclusion to a particular story-arc or, in the case of a P&P RP, bad luck and poor dice-rolls, I seem to kill off a fair few of my characters. Happened a couple days ago at the end of Chapter 4 of Dark Reign, actually.

I tend not to be as emotionally invested in my characters as others can be (not saying there's anything wrong with that, mind). Maybe that's why I'm okay with them dying.
 
I tend to kill a ton of NPC's I make up. But as far as main characters go I always toy with the idea of them being killed. I always have a back up character in that case.
 
YES I HAVE.

It was a big deal for me, since I hate killing my characters. XD After I play them I start getting really attached to them, so if they died I'd grieve for them like they were a real person. (It's silly t___t )

BUT there are some cases where dying just made the plot SO AWESOME and have SO MUCH IMPACT.

The first character I had die was the Archangel Michael. He was the leader of Heaven's Army during "The Fall". He battled against the fallen angels who followed Lucifer because they wanted Free Will like the humans. Michael and Lucifer were kinda friends before the Fall, and he ended up having to kill Lucifer. He carried so much guilt about that and questioned his own position with the angelic host, that after the war he vanished. Basically "ran away".

Hit Victorian Times, the seal on hell where all the Fallen and Lucifer's son Azazel was imprisoned gets broken. Michael had to struggle with his guilt to take up arms again. D: By the end of that roleplay, Michael sacrificed himself to give time for some humans to be the heroes. And he died in his love's arms. t______t
 
In pen and paper RPGs, I die on occasion. When that happens, its time to bring out the dead guy's strangely identical twin brother or cousin.
 
I've had characters killed in DnD because I stopped liking them or their stats became lame due to bad dice rolls. So, I told the DM to kill me while I make a new charrie. XD

As for my writing, it's happened a couple of times. I love tragic romances (well, tragedy in general), so I've had my character be killed in some sort of sad way. Often times, it happens without me saying it. ;] I love to surprise my partner [or group] with those goodies. It is sad, though. I have an attachment to all my characters because they're a piece of me, therefore a little of myself dies with them.
 
I can only really count once that I actually killed a character. It was on a Riders of Pern (or Perth)-ish roleplay forum and I did a story post of him and his animal companion fighting a Faust like character and eventually dieing. It was kind of sad but, Se la vi.

Now if It was like grumpy said, I regularly kill off my clones. -guns down 40000000 for the Iwaku banquet.- See?

And my first character can not be killed off. Mostly because he is immortal. Partly because he can reform himself.
 
I've threatened to kill of characters before but either the game dies first, or my RP partners tell me not to. I really need to not tell them when I'm planning to kill a character! Only time I've killed a character was the main villain in an otherworld RP. She had to die, but I made sure a lot of other people and civilizations went down with her. More to the point, two pocket worlds merged to the detriment of both peoples and the promise of a possible sequal.
 
Kill off a character for a good reason, or because I didn't like them? Hell yeah. I've done both, and for many reasons. Every now and then you'll get a character design that seemed great from it's creation, but as you continue to right them, you discover that perhaps their appeal was simply momentary. Amazing only because it was so radically new to you. I've had many characters like that, and all of them have served a higher purpose by dieing. It ranged from simply comedic relief to a tie-in to a larger plot. Every poor bastard you create can become a beacon to plot if you stab him or her in the right place, at the right time.

As for characters that I like, I'll kill them off just as well, but I give them a grander death than their lesser comrades. Often times, they seem to have accomplished more in their lives than they should have. This gives them the opportunity to continue their journey in another time, and place after their death, as most of my writings have strange variations of the afterlife where departed souls can keep on living.


Ultimately you need to listen to what the character isn't saying. Perhaps they want to kick the bucket.