#RPGADAY: Most Memorable Character Death

Given that so I rarely get to actually play in a game—our recently completed Dungeon World campaign a refreshing exception—it took me a good while to remember a time during which I both played and played long enough for my character to get him- or herself in a potentially deadly situation.

I mentioned in my Rifts RPG-A-Day post that something that happened with a fair degree of regularity "back in my day" was that we were often subjected to spur of the moment, horrible, thankfully short-lived gaming sessions.

They didn't all end up this way, but most did. This is why when I was at a friend's house and he said that someone was coming over to run us some Dungeons & Dragons, in lieu of creativity I just copied one of the main characters from Battlechasers, because I was reading it at the time you see.

Fortunately 2nd Edition was one of "those" editions where the fighter was for no reason relegated to the role of "training wheels class", which when coupled with the most unnecessarily boring race (at the time) made character generation a snap and, more importantly prevented any appreciable emotional attachment from forming.

I don't know what happened: maybe it was legitimately good, or maybe it was because my expectations were set to a level that I would later identify as Michael Baylian, but the campaign was the best I'd ever played in during my time in the 2nd Edition era. But wait, this isn't "The Most Unexpectantly Awesome Campaign", this is "Most Memorable Character Death"! Where's that sweet, blissful release?

Whelp, a couple levels into the campaign we're fighting goblins for some reason, somewhere. I forget the exact circumstances that lead up to me getting separated from everyone else, but—only recently being educated about a rule in which a fighter can make attacks against many smaller foes on the same turn—there I was, all by my lonesome, trying to hew my way through a horde of goblins.

I end getting a fatal ratio of flesh-to-arrow body composition, stripped of all my gear, and dumped down a shaft into a pile of goblin shit, which by itself is neither memorable nor dignified. No, what made it memorable was that the Dungeon Master decided to make some kind of divine intervention roll on my behalf. I forget why, but I know at the time I didn't care because I was actually enjoying this game and looking forward to coming back as something marginally more interesting than a fucking fighter.

Apparently he ended up rolling whatever it is he needed to roll (we didn't get to see the die result, and I suspect that he just wanted me to keep playing the same character), because my soul was returned and I woke up in the goblin shit.

So I run through the dungeon, still covered in shit, until I manage to somehow find the rest of the gang, still fighting goblins, one of which is trying his best to wear my armor. I figure that I must be immortal, or maybe it was magical shit ("old school" D&D was a helluva drug), so I pick up the one with my armor and use him as a makeshift flail. Once I'd finished bashing in the rest of the goblins I got the rest of my stuff back, and that's how the rest of that session went: me, wearing armor covered in goblin shit and bits.

I remember dying several other times for various reasons, always coming back due to the divine intervention roll, up until we made it to the point where the cleric could just raise dead, which was ironically the point where I stopped randomly dying.