Character Death

Ask anyone who has ever sat in on one of my games and you'll find that I've never had any real trouble with player character death. Generally I stand somewhere -mostly- in the camp of let the results of the dice fall where they may and fudge a little bit to keep the storyline as awesome as possible.

Generally speaking though I'm of the mind that a skillful DM / GM will manage to write encounters and stories that don't drop the party into a total party kill situation in the first place. I've always been hesitant to have an entire party wiped out even when I play classic D&D. The only exception to this rule being a horror campaign where picking off the players one by one to turn them into slavering beasts or zombies is part of the genre experience in the first place.

This being my birthday, this topic brings me around (however briefly) to the topic of real death. I used to have a serious problem with this inevitability but I have to say now that while I plan to avoid the end as much as anyone can that the final result won't necessarily be such a bad thing. I'd like to hold off on going into the beyond until I'm, oh...at least sixty if not seventy or so. I think my chances of making it to eighty are pretty low but who knows. Modern medicine seems to keep people alive a lot longer now than back in the day.

As to my funeral. I'd like to have some of the guys put their heads together on how to fashion a viking ship model out of papermache or some such. Something large enough to set one of my game books into it, maybe some dice, sprinkle some of my ashes in there and then launch said viking ship into the sunset on a lake...friends gathered around...the song Ramble On playing on someone's boom box. Then before the darn thing sinks on its own pelt it with volleys of flaming arrows fired from a half dozen toy bows and arrows. I think sticking big marshmellows on the end and lighting them on fire would probably do the trick.

Yep. I think that is probably the send off that would please me and symbolize the goofy side of me which is most of me the very best.