Death and Taxes

In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes. Even if we're paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, the quote still seems to hold true. While I’d like to be speaking about the indie game Death and Taxes in this post, I didn’t even know about it before I started writing it. (Something else to add to the backlog.) Taxes may be something we haven’t covered yet, but we’ve talked about character deaths on this blog before. What we haven't covered, though is how you get to that character death. That point in the game where the damage a character's taken seems like it could be fatal, but they’re only mostly dead and likely in a lot of pain. How do you turn that corner from mostly dead to mostly alive and where do the taxes fit in?

Death

Death stalks you at every turn. At least it can seem that way in some tabletop games, although others might avoid the concept entirely. Certainly, in combat-heavy sessions of D&D something (or someone) “dying” is inevitable. If your group can’t handle the concept, you don't want it happening so frequently that it becomes trivial, or you just want to avoid it in general, the “knocked out” condition could be useful. It certainly happens in cartoons and video games often enough, and there's no reason we can’t use it in our tabletop adventures, as well. Characters in our collaborative stories can also be sent to other realms (either spiritually or physically), placed in prison, or just retired if we want to end their stories (at least temporarily) without a "final sacrifice." Even if a character is killed off, and you want to revisit their story, you don’t need to pull a full "off of the cross" resurrection. You can bring otherwise-retired characters back as ghosts, through dreams or even as participants in flashback sessions. All sorts of literary tools are available to you, in any case. What if you do want to resurrect a character more immediately, though?

The Resurrection

If you are going to have the ultimate character consequence in your game, especially if you’re playing D&D, you’ll probably need to consider resurrection - going from mostly dead to (fully) alive. Rebounding from the afterlife. Coming back from that certainty Ben Franklin mentioned. While D&D used to be significantly more brutal when it comes to PC's ends, more recent editions have provided a number of ways to come back from beyond the veil of death. Before a character fully enters that veil, they'll need to fail a few saving throws. Even then, one can be brought back with some simple healing, or at least stabilized through various spells. If they do pass on, that still isn’t the end. There's the speedy option of Revivify (although there is a cost of 300gp of diamonds) and Resurrection (at a cost of 1,000 gp). Both have their own restrictions and/or temporary penalties. Even after a full resurrection, all the rules as written seem to indicate is you need to sleep it off for a few days before you’re back to normal. While this is fine for some players, it can leave others feeling like death isn’t much of an issue. After all, your typical adventuring party tends to come into vast amounts of wealth regularly. Not to worry, though, there are a number of ways you can use house rules to make cheating the Reaper a little more difficult. You might require additional special checks, make the service cost something slightly rarer and more difficult to get than basic money, or leave the final curtain call to chance. You could even make some big ritual ordeal about it over a few sessions, and possibly even base a religious holiday on it. Some would argue, though, that no matter what, the experience should be taxing to some degree. 

And Taxes

Taxes aren’t included in too many tabletop games. Oh sure, one might pay taxes on the purchase of products, services and various accouterments, but you don’t see the concept too much in the stories of tabletop sessions themselves. On the rare occasion you do see the concept, there's a good chance a merry band of adventurers will be stopping the collection of taxes from the poor. Like death, this is another "certainty" we try to avoid in games as much as possible. Could we make in-game taxes as interesting and ‘fun’ as death and its surrounding spells/rituals? That might be a topic for another post. One thing we should probably do is make resurrection, coming back from that (no longer quite)-ultimate consequence of death, be something that taxing. A game without these sorts of consequences will lose its teeth and eventually become boring and tedious, or some sort of joke. Which, unless you’re playing a game about paying (or collecting) taxes, or an actual humorous game not based around mortal tension, is probably a bad thing. So add that tax to the death. Give coming back from being mostly dead a permanent consequence. That consequence could be something pretty simple, such as a change in appearance or as debilitating as a permanent stat decrease. (This was something White Wolf games excelled at.) As with anything else, make sure the players are aware of the possibilities and confirm their buy-in before taxing them too much.

Before we beat this topic to death (and since we don't have 300gp of diamonds handy), let's bring this post to a close. Death may not be a permanent thing in our games, but you should consider including some consequences. If you don’t want to take it quite that far, look to other forms of media for ways to set characters aside for longer periods. Remember, even if they're "permanently gone" you can still bring characters back in various ways. Also don’t forget to contemplate your own mortality and finish your real-life taxes before they come for you. Until next post folks, enjoy your tables (once you put all the tax paperwork away), get out there, and break some dice.

 Send comments and questions to neversaydice20@gmail.com or Tweet them @neversaydice2 'til the Tax Man or the Reaper claims it.