Death and the Afterlife

I recently read an article about character death in D&D (I would post a link but, alas, I've lost the site). Anyway, today the topic is character death. If you play any RPG you've had to deal with it. But in D&D, and perhaps in other RPGs, there is a shining ray of hope on the other end of that long, dark hallway. Resurrection! Now this is assuming that your fellow party members want to fork over the 2,000 gold pieces (gp) per ten levels to revive you. In many cases, *cough* my group *cough*, the other party members may divide the dead person's stuff and leave the corpse to rot. This also raises the question: Are there ways for the characters to die from which they should not be able to return? For example, if a fighter is blasted by the fiery breath of a 700-year-old dragon, then thrown from a 400-foot-cliff and lands on a bed of sharp and jagged rock, assuming the party can find his body, should they be allowed to restore him to the world of the living? To answer this question we have to ask another question: Why does D&D allow resurrection in the first place? Well I believe that perhaps D&D allows resurrection for two reasons. One, characters become more than a piece of paper upon which are written numbers and strange words. They become a source of imagination - perhaps you've spent time perfecting a back story, or drawing pictures, or even just imagining how kick-butt your character is in combat. The point is, once you've invested all that time you don't want it to end. Number two also has to do with time. Once you reach higher levels starting over just doesn't seem to be a viable option. It's like playing a video game half-way through and then it crashes and you have to start over. Not fun.

As with most things there is another side to this proverbial coin; character death isn't always a bad thing. Perhaps your character went down a different path than you expected, or maybe the character sacrificed himself for "the good of all goodly folk", thus reaching his personal "Valhalla". The character doesn't even have to die - sometimes they just retire. Becoming king, marrying and settling down, or even avenging the last of his/her people are all good reasons to end you character's adventures in the world. Sometimes the character just loses its fun, and fun is the main reason to play. 

To answer my own question with an incredibly vague statement: Yes and No. There are times when a character is dead... no questions, he has shuffled off this mortal coil. But there are times, too, when a character's story may just be beginning again.