As a Game Master of TTRPG’s, I base my game’s success or failure on how deeply a player invests in their character. There have been times at our table when friends are struck with grief at the loss of a character in our game. This complex journey begins at the character’s development. We have known the feeling of excitement when you have a backstory that has layers and you just can’t wait for the GM to fit you into the lore of the game. The hidden secrets you look forward to revealing during fireside chats in downtime. The friends we will make along the way. And not as directly evident, the subtle ways this character will become somewhat real to you. Real in the sense that it will live in your imagination, you will foster it and think about its decisions. Attachments will form.
Character death when we are invested in these games can be a very powerful thing. In real life, we don’t know how or when we are going to die most of the time. It is a moment we will all come to and it creates the vigor and urgency by which we try to live. Daggerheart and Dungeons and Dragons have two very different ways of handling this… control vs. no control.
This might be the reason why I have always found death in video games to be pretty meaningless. If for some reason, I am emotionally connected to my character (and I am having trouble thinking of a single instance of that), I know that my control over that character is limited to what the game can produce. This is especially evident in dialogue situations. There is only so much you can say. Death furthers this disconnect in that if I die, I can resurrect without too much recourse. Table top role playing games allow us genuinely live the character. Decisions are infinite and this then, makes our character a much more invested extension of who we are.
In table top role playing games where death can come suddenly, your character lives in a kind of tension. You could play this character cautiously and safely, but the grit of combat and risk of death may not ever really be something you experience. In a game like 10 Candles, you start the game knowing you’re going to die and you play the game with the time you have left. In Dungeons and Dragons, you might die and when you take enough damage, the dice will decide your fate. In Daggerheart, you might die and you have control over your death. You can even avoid it if you want to.
If you are new to Daggerheart, hit points or health is marked by filling in a bar of points rather than subtracting from a number. You have boxes to fill each time you take a certain amount of damage and when you mark your last box, you must make a death move. There are 3 choices to make at this point: 1. Blaze of Glory, 2. Avoid Death, 3. Risk it all. I will break these down in a minute, but it is important to point out that these are more than flavors for the various types of players to use. You could merely view these options as follows:
Blaze of Glory: The Hero
Avoid Death: The Coward
Risk it all: The Gambler
But on a second glance, these options go far deeper, and they offer the player a chance to let their hero die in their own way. If players are the gods who gave life to their characters, then perhaps they should be the gods that choose how their fate is decided.
Let’s take a look at these game mechanics and talk about some options to make them really interesting.
Blaze of Glory: (enter Jon Bon Jovi breaking into the chorus…SHOT, DOWN)
The core rule book states the following,
“Your character embraces death and goes out in a blaze of glory. Take one action (at the GM’s discretion), which critically succeeds, then cross through the veil of death.”
Ok, obviously this is the hero move and if you are deeply invested in your character, taking this move will give great pause. But Daggerheart continually reminds us that the game is about the fiction. If you fantasize about a heroic ending for your favorite character, perhaps allowing all of their friends to have a chance to escape as they take on the insurmountable foe caps their story in a fitting way. Perhaps your partner dangles from your grasp by one gloved hand from a cliff and as you go to pull them up, their glove slips off and they look into your eyes as they plummet to the depths below. Blaze of glory hands you a ticket to impact in your game.
Avoid Death: (this is the one that seems to irritate some players)
The core rule book states the following,
“Your character avoids death and faces the consequences. They temporarily drop unconscious, and then you work with the GM to describe how the situation worsens. Your character can’t move or act while unconscious, they can’t be targeted by an attack, and they return to consciousness when an ally clears 1 or more of their marked Hit Points or when the party finishes a long rest. After your character falls unconscious, roll your Hope Die. If its value is equal to or under your character’s level, they gain a scar (see the following “Scars” section).”
Having the option to avoid death seems to take away some of the risk of the game. It seems to eliminate the real consequences and strip the game of the urgency or potential for real loss in the game. As one commenter on one of our videos put it, “As long as nope is an option, this isn’t a game”. Clearly, people have a problem with this mechanic. But I offer up a different take.
Consider for a moment that death is not the result of dealing with the foe, but the foe itself. When we avoid death, we never actually confront one of our biggest enemies. Consider also, that this foe marks you somehow, leaving a reminder that they’ll be back. What I appreciate about Avoid Death is this move is a gift for the GM on many levels. It is the one where we the game masters can introduce Death the character to the story and instill real fear. The scar component to this mechanic makes that tangible too. As you increase your level, the odds of getting a scar increase with you and scars can be anything. As a GM, this really excites me. This is the moment for you to never let this character forget they had a run in with death. In a way, they are now bound to death. Death has seen them and will revisit… perhaps often.
Risk it All: (there is a Frank Sinatra line in this somewhere… I know it)
The core rule book states the following:
”Roll your Duality Dice. If the Hope Die is higher, your character stays on their feet and clears an amount of Hit Points or Stress equal to the value of the Hope Die (divide the Hope Die value between Hit Points and Stress however you’d prefer). If the Fear Die is higher, your character crosses through the veil of death. If you critically succeed, your character stays up and clears all Hit Points and Stress.”
I would think that in any potentially lethal situation, you believe there is a chance you won’t die. There is an interesting relationship in how we might feel in a battle and how the duality hope/fear dice system works. As a fight unfolds, our opponent might strike or maneuver in such a way that we lose hope and fear for our survival. I will go deeper into the narrative aspects of the hope and fear die system in another article. In terms of risking it all, the dice decide and there are implications for different combinations of rolls. This can play out in a number of different narrative ways once you get good at navigating these things.
I think this one is well balanced given the bell curve of probability that goes with rolling two 12 sided dice but favor slightly leans towards the player. In a way, a better percentage of the options around dying lean towards the player making it through. But in the end, maybe that’s the story we are used to. The one where the hero thwarts death but transforms in the process. That transformation is what is at the heart of the story.
Don’t forget to check out the video we made on Death Moves in Daggerheart.