Goodman Games

Has anyone ever had a crack at a guide to death?

What happens when a character dies? Are they just dead? If they were really devoted to their god would the god give them a secdon life? How many ways can a player become an undead and how many ways can a killed player continue to affect a game?

That's an interesting idea. Does WotC's upcoming Ghostwalk cover any of that? I know it lets you run campaigns with ghost characters. Also, I think the premise of Dungeonworld (from Fast Forward) is that it's an alternate plane that characters go to when they die. A book exploring these in more detail would be neat. The only problem I can see is that you'd have to have the whole party wiped out to keep the game intact -- otherwise you'd have to split the game into two groups, one dead and one not dead, since they'd be adventuring separately.

I think if one was going to write a book on death they would need to include many alternatives for locations for dead characters to exist in. Jetting off to a dead plane is all fine and well, but as you say it dosnt keep the game very togeather.
Im not sure if any forthcoming releases are covering aspects to death that would keep games togeather.
Lets see, how many ways can you think of that a PC could die and still exist in the current game in some shape or form?

Ghost
Spirit - embeded inside some opject, weapon etc. that speaks/communicates with the rest of the party.
Animals - the spirit of a dead PC could enter his/her old animal companion or any other unfortunate beast and continue to exist in that form weird...

Imagine rules for animal rebirth where the characters alignment (and level) upon death determined what kind of creature they came back as

Then we have of cor(p)se, the undead. But perhaps a rather religios PC would become a different breed of undead, one with etiquette

At first glace death seems quite limited...very much the end. But once you explore it can be taken quite a long way

Those are some cool ideas. If I ever kill off all the PCs in my campaign, maybe I'll have them reanimated as something.

Did you ever read the comic Rogue Trooper? It was about these genetically engineered supersoldiers whose personalities and minds could be transferred to computer chips when they died. The main guy had his platoon wiped out, but he still traveled with three of his friends, whose brain chips controlled his rifle, helmet, and backpack.

Having a deceased PC end up in somebody's sword would be cool...

Hm, I remember a somewhat shoddily done sourcebook by the name of DUNGEONWORLD. The premise was that once your character died he awoke in a sort of "dungeon of the dead". There he would meet different power groups on different levels of the dungeon world. It was a crude mishmash of conflicting concepts but the overall idea seemed quite cool.
Maybe this idea could be re-done Goodman-style?

Personally, I'm tired of Death as being treated as 'Evil'. Death gods? They're all evil.

I'm more fond of the Discworld view, where Death isn't evil, he just is. He doesn't kill, he ushers. And has a sort of intellectual disapproval towards deities who claim to be "Gods of Death" because they're often really gods of sadism and carnage.

It also irks me that undeath is classically an automatic aberration.
So if there's ever a collection of the views of death and rules relating to them, I propose this for inclusion, to be used whenever:

1) Death is not the end of life, but the entry of the soul into the afterlife, whatever that may be.
2) Mindless undead are mindless and therefore Neutral. It's what you do with them that counts. Of course, several religions disagree.
3) Sentient undeath isn't inherently against any natural order, because it's just keeping the soul in the world after the body has ceased functioning, and Death knows that eventually, somehow or another, the soul will make the journey, and it's all factored into when Death comes to collect. It's not cheating Death, because he already expects it and has taken it into account (from his point of view. Liches may really think they are winning the deal, though). Religions disagree about it, but that's a matter of bias and personal taste.

I also suggest someone go and read Frank and K's Tome of Necromancy.