Death Consequences
Gameplay consequences, typically negative, of avatars or characters dying.
Games often provide dangerous environments for the avatars, characters, and units that players control. This may cause them to be eliminate from gameplay and thereby make players suffer losses in possible actions and even in losing the entire games. However, games can also provide other explicit Death Consequences, e.g. losing points. These Death Consequences can also replace the elimination as main effect of dying, e.g. making avatars respawn at a different location and with any equipment either lost or remaining at the point of death.
Contents
Examples
Death of characters in Tabletop Roleplaying Games generally require players to create new characters. However, several games have ways of countering this, e.g. Dungeons & Dragons have resurrection spells, but these require expensive materials and reduce attributes or levels.
Early Computer Games had no real Death Consequences but instead had a limited number of lives available (NetHack and Rogue are exceptions). This has however generally been replaced with either in various ways allowing players unlimited amount of tries to complete games or having specific Death Consequences. For example, the Team Fortress, Quake, and Unreal Tournament series let killed avatars respawn soon after being killed but without previously gained weapons and armor. The Battlefield series does the same but also reduces the number of tickets from the team that suffered a death. Minecraft respawns players' avatar at the same location every time but gives them a chance to recover lost equipment if they can get back to the location of the death within certain time limits. Players whose characters die in Massively Multiplayer Online Games can usually also recover their loss gear but in Eve Online and Ultima Online other players can steal it; it cannot be stolen in World of Warcraft but instead a penalty to the durability of all gear is applied.
The indie game Deaths saves the location of the ten latest death of all play sessions in the world. Corpses are placed at these locations and are needed to get passed some of the problems in the game, showing a positive Death Consequence.
Using the pattern
Death Consequences are typically instantiated typically done through Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, enforced Downtime, or reduced Scores. Ability Losses and Decreased Abilities can be given easy diegetic explanations in games using Equipment such as Armor, Tools, and Weapons by making players lose these when their Avatars or Characters die. A specific design issue exists when Death Consequences are linked to Avatars. This is that Spawning of the Avatars needs to be done to reintroduce them into the Game Worlds, but how this is done can affect both Player and Team Balance as well as affect the severity of Equipment lost but placed in the Game Worlds.
Permadeath are Deaths that directly lead to Player Elimination and Game Over. For this reason this subtype of Death Consequences is not compatible with Lives even if the main pattern is.
Deaths can be used as a method of keeping Score in both games with Team Play, as in games with Team Elimination, and without Team Play.
Can Be Modulated By
Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, Equipment, Scores, Spawn Points, Spawning
Narrative Aspects
Death Consequences do not inherently need to conflict with Thematic Consistency, it only does so if the dead come back to life, e.g. through Spawning, without a appropriate diegetic explanation such as a resurrection spell.
Consequences
Death Consequences are typically ways of packaging Penalties related to Player Killing or the loss of Lives of Avatars or Characters. While they may cause Ability Losses or Decreased Abilities generally, they can as a special case create Temporary Abilities when Equipment providing New Abilities are lost when deaths occur.
Relations
Can Instantiate
with Equipment
Can Modulate
Avatars, Characters, Lives, Player Killing
Can Be Instantiated By
Can Be Modulated By
Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, Downtime, Equipment, Scores, Spawn Points, Spawning
Possible Closure Effects
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Potentially Conflicting With
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
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Acknowledgements
Karl Bergström
