Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
#1: The death of Truly’s character William has nothing to do with the argument that happened on Discord at roughly 11pm on April 15, AEST.
Firstly, I don’t believe your motivation in killing the character was out of spite. I’m happy to concede this.
Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
#2: This wasn’t a decision made lightly.
The reason that GCEA has been so dead today is because I have been conversing with multiple people on whether or not having a player character killed under these circumstances would be okay.
Ultimately, it came down to two things. Firstly, whilst the assailant’s motives weren’t completely specified in previous posts, it was not hidden that he intended to kill the group. It was quite obvious. In addition to this, the assailants power was not hidden from players. It was made very clear just how dangerous and powerful he was. The risk in antagonizing such an antagonist was not hidden and was very clear.
The antagonist was presented as so overwhelmingly powerful that there was no way to stop or obstruct him (and multiple characters tried in different ways) from his goal of killing the players. There was no further risk in a character (eg. William) antagonizing the character of Megaman than there was in a character (eg. Amy) rolling on the ground incapacitated.
Here is a list of some things that did or could happen, when Megaman attacks the characters:
1. William “antagonizes” him
i. William and all the other player characters are killed.*
2. Palila attacks him with her pokemon.
a. They are swatted away by Charizard
i. Palila and all the other player characters are killed.
3. Kinnie attacks him bodily
a. Megaman effortlessly swats her away
i. Kinnie and all the other player characters are killed.
4. The player characters try to knock out his Pokemon
a. An NPC prevents them from finishing the job
i. All of the player characters are killed in turn.
5. Nobody does anything
i. All of the player characters are killed in turn.
6. Anybody does anything
i. All of the player characters are killed in turn.
*(If you’d like to bring metagame info into the equation, you can change “the player characters are killed in turn” to “deus ex machina arrives and the player characters are saved”.)
When all the outcomes are the same, it is by definition, not a choice.
Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
This is not to say that insulting every NPC will result in a player character death. This is where the second thing comes in. The assailants motives are that he has seen worlds in the multiverse fall and countless innocent people die as the result of people not being in the world they were born in, and to prevent more, hunts down people who are outside of their own world and won’t return (whether they want to or not).
…
However, by threatening to unleash a disease which could cripple the ecosystem, William made himself more of a threat by the assailant’s standards, which needed to be dealt with first. For the assailant to not kill William then and there would have been massively out of character and out of line with his ideals and goals.
You, as the GM, are capable of making and changing goals at whim. You had not established his goals or ideals, so any “out of character” behavior would have gone completely unnoticed.
Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
The only way to prevent his death would be to have one of the few beings in GCEA lore who are powerful enough to intervene do that. The problem with that is that most of those beings already have a place in this story, big or small, and to introduce them early would throw a lot of future events off. Additionally it would be very deus ex machina, and would create a sense of plot armour. That player characters will not be killed, and are immune to direct consequences of their actions. This is not the case. Whilst this is the first time this has happened in GCEA, it is not uncommon in other role play games.
This,
Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
The original plan was for the assailant to be about to kill William when the Team Galactic squadron who captured Matthias and Renny arrive and demand he hand them over. At that moment the assailant determines the Team Galactic squadron are more of a threat, and deals with them first, whilst the team escape in the firefight.
Is also deus ex machina.
Originally Posted by
Desolate Divine
Given the circumstances there was no other way that would not have potentially game-breaking consequences.
The “original plan” would have worked equally well under these circumstances. You control when Team Galactic arrives in the scene, and could have chosen that they arrive just in time to save William, as you had originally planned. It would have been no more contrived than having them arrive just after he is killed.
As I said above, I don’t believe you killed this character out of spite. But please, don’t act as if your hand was forced or you had no choice in the matter. You are the only person who did have a choice. This was a scripted sequence wherein nobody but you had any choices to make, and you chose to deviate from it in order to kill a player character.
Thing is, I don’t even think you made the wrong decision. You are correct to say it made sense and was justified in character.
But I’m unhappy with how things turned out: not that (or the method by which) my character died, but that he was thrust into an unskippable cutscene that came before being allowed to do any roleplaying. I feel like I wasted my time trying to write a character that would be fun to play and to play with. And I feel like I’ve been cheated, never getting a chance to play that character. It makes me angry, because this is not something I chose. The choice was never mine.
Bookmarks