Due to recent circumstances with my character in the Cam, I’ve been putting a lot of thought toward character death.
It’s funny, but I’ve seen four characters die, and the response is always the same: there isn’t one.
Nobody mourns. Nobody allows their characters to be affected at all.
Okay, I know the old chestnut: “Arguments that include the words ‘any,’ ‘all,’ or ‘none’ are specious.” But, in general, it’s true. People pretty much ignore death in the Cam. The attitude is to get over it. Quickly. No bad feelings, and all. “Nothing personal” is what I got told about a hundred times on my way out of the Lake Elsinore game.
Heh. Nothing personal, but my character just comitted murder. Nothing personal.
Wrong. Very, very wrong.
“Besides,” someone might say. “You can always make another character.”
That’s not the point. Characters have friends, lovers, family. Even if someone at work died, someone I barely knew, I’d feel it. If they were murdered? Yeah. That’d revreberate. I know vampire hearts are as still as small ponds, but even if you throw the tiniest of pebbles in there, you’re gonna make waves.
How people choose to play their characters is up to them. Walker knew and admired someone who got killed recently, and when he went to Lake Elsinore, it showed. He didn’t like going there, didn’t feel safe there, didn’t trust anyone. Turns out his intuition was right, but when you’re under orders… well, let’s just say that Rule #1 in Clan Tremere is: “Sometimes, you’ve just got to do what you’re told.”
Anyway, death is important, not trivial. Walker doesn’t get to make a new character. He leaves behind a lot of friends, a lot of enemies, a lot of past. Life goes on… but I try to look at everything that happens in context of my character’s reaction to it.
Eh. I’m rambling now. Time to write a Neo-cowboy story about magic lassos, Petpet rustlers, and a Gelert with a badge…