Immersion into a character

[iElf]

what I'm asking...have you ever become so immersed in your character that his or her death shocked you, or even made you show emotion?

[Ravens_cry]

Yes. My Abbot Protector of Saranrae, Lover of Harpys. He got better, but it was still moving for me when he croaked.

[Starbuck_II]

what I'm asking...have you ever become so immersed in your character that his or her death shocked you, or even made you show emotion?

Yeah, when I was tortured. Well, my character. It was very detailed so it was hard not to. Betrayd by our allies and the party just stood by and watched.
Way to show comradiery dudes.

[Talon Sky]

I had a Bard once who died heroically after almost a year of play. I actually started to cry. Lol

[Ignition]

Considering one of my earliest memories of roleplaying was having my character die thirteen times due to bad dice rolls, the GM turning what would normally be non-lethal situations lethal just out of spite, and my disinterest in the character due to some misunderstandings about the way the game was being run, I can safely say I am desensitized to my characters dying

By "thirteen times", I do of course mean "in one session". There were... significant misunderstandings.

[iElf]

I had a shadowrun campaign where the other characters were all turning against my elf gunslinger , because she had become a banshee ,as her only chance of surviving a otherwise fatal wound from a landmine ...a situation which they forced her into. I was so angry, and disapointed myself...I just reacted the same way my character did

[Zaydos]

I got emotional when my first real character died. Possibly because I was 6. Possibly because I had just got the XP to level up but not leveled up yet (this was Basic so that meant 4000 XP). Possibly because my allies literally shoved me (an elf) into a room full of hobgoblins and told me to talk to them (despite me reminding them that elves speak hobgoblin because hobgoblins have a special hatred for elves). Then told me to offer the hobgoblins food and held the door shut.

[mucat]

what I'm asking...have you ever become so immersed in your character that his or her death shocked you, or even made you show emotion?

Is there another way to play?

EDIT: A fuller answer would be, "If your character's experiences -- not just death, but everything that happens to him or her -- don't invoke any emotions in you, then it's not a very vivid character. That's how stories work: you identify with the protagonists, and feel what they feel."

However, if you take a character's death personally, and feel like it's an attack on you, then you need to take a step back. It's like people who actually feel anger at the writer of a book or the director of a movie because their favorite character died. It's good that the character's death affected you: that's what makes the book, the movie, or the game work. But untimately, the goal is to create a good work of art, and putting a character through bad times or death can be key to that.

[prufock]

I try to get deep into all my characters. Difficult with one-shot games, but I do my best. I try to have a fleshed-out personality for them all, and get into it. I change my voice, accent, mannerisms, dialect, philosophy, etc.

[World Eater]

Yes. It helps with characters not just being stock fodder but actual, y'know, characters.

[Jarrick]

Yes. It helps with characters not just being stock fodder but actual, y'know, characters.

I tell my players all the time to stop making stat blocks and start making characters.

My namesake character, Jarrick, a dread necromancer, was a role that I became so immersed in that to this day my friends sometimes slip up and call me "Jarrick".

I make it a point to answer in his sinister voice when they do.

Another of my characters, and artificer named Jerrin de'Cannith (eberron campaign setting), was a former Cyran whose sorrow during one adventure into the mournland not only moved my party emotionally, but made me a little misty-eyed as well.

I tend to get really into character on characters that I like. As a side note, my real name is Jerrod, and my character names are often derived from that somehow. There's also a half-elf named Jaerin d'Lyrander waiting in the wings for when my group gets back to playing eberron.

[Valameer]

In a long running campaign I DMed we had a few moving character deaths. They were pretty epic and powerful in the way they died, so no one was moved to tears at the time.

However, the next session the remaining members of the party held a funeral service for their fallen dead. I played some sad heroic music while conducting the funerary rights (as the church leader NPC) and all of us just happened to get a little dust in our eyes right at that moment.

I tell ya. Dust.

[OzymandiasVolt]

Only the emotions that come from losing something that represents a large investment of time. It was pretty disappointing.

Didn't help that he was killed during his introduction. By another player's character. And then the DM sided with him because he was her boyfriend. THAT part made me livid.

[Grommen]

I die a little inside every time one of my monsters is defeated by the @#$$@&%@$ players.

I have a recurring curse. My favorite all time D&D character was the first one I began playing. A fighter/mage named Kellin. I retired him at....Well he was very high level.

That was the last fighter/mage or Eldrich Knight, Fighter/magic user to live past mid teens! Most of them have either died young or the campaign they were in expired early. I get #$@#$% every time. I got really grumpy over the last one seeing as he got possessed by the DM and turned on the party when he had 3 hit points left! The one player knew what happened so he assassinated him anyway instead of using non lethal damage. Big meenes!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Only the emotions that come from losing something that represents a large investment of time. It was pretty disappointing.

Didn't help that he was killed during his introduction. By another player's character. And then the DM sided with him because he was her boyfriend. THAT part made me livid.

I'm not saying that what happened was okay, but could your character's introduction have been misconstrued as a random encounter, had it been made by the DM rather than you?

[arrowhen]

All my years of DMing, where I'm constantly making characters whose job it is to die, have left me pretty much immune to character death. The only time it bothers me is when my character dies in a way that's not dramatically satisfying, or at least entertaining.

[mucat]

All my years of DMing, where I'm constantly making characters whose job it is to die, have left me pretty much immune to character death.

Even as a GM, can't remember ever creating a character whose job is to die. Occupational hazard, sure, since their job is to complicate the lives of the PCs, and the PCs are unstable types given to violence. Still, any given NPC stands a decent chance of living to see the campaign end, and telling their grandkids about those damned annoying PCs they used to fight...

So yeah, even though they're NPC antagonists, a lot of times it hurts a little if they don't make it. Hopefully that makes the campaign seem more gripping from the players' side as well.

[Duke of URL]

I don't think so. I keep a (healthy?) personal detachment from any of the characters I play to avoid becoming too invested in their fictional fate. I can definitely "feel" for fictional characters, but it happens rarely.

Of course, it may help that I often play characters that are very dissimilar to my own personality. I think it allows me to explore alternate views of reality without putting "me" at any risk. It's also something I generally don't suggest to anyone without significant roleplaying or acting experience. (Beginner: play a character who is much like yourself. Intermediate: play a character based on an idealized fact of your personality or beliefs. Advanced: play a "stranger".)

[mucat]

I don't think so. I keep a (healthy?) personal detachment from any of the characters I play to avoid becoming too invested in their fictional fate. I can definitely "feel" for fictional characters, but it happens rarely.

But don't you find that works of fiction are more effective/harder hitting when you do feel for the characters, even if that means feeling vicarious fear or sorrow when something bad happens?

Clearly you don't want to become too strongly affected -- you don't want to end up psychologically scarred for life because Bambi's mom died in the Disney cartoon -- but you also don't want to just shrug and say "No loss. She's a fictional cartoon animal," or the scene loses all its impact.

[Snake-Aes]

When Aya and Andras start their antics, it's hard to tell whether it is spontaneous or if we rehearsed it, and the feeling emerges whenever anyone in the group pulls a stunt. Aya recently had to deal with losing her brother and the empathy was visible.
The latest was a coordinated robbery and we crowned it by distracting the mansion's owner by having Aya shift into some sort of freakish countenance (changeling) and chase the guy around with an axe, pulling my best The Shining act in years. The entire group felt the shock from the Here's Johnny moment.

[Duke of URL]

But don't you find that works of fiction are more effective/harder hitting when you do feel for the characters, even if that means feeling vicarious fear or sorrow when something bad happens?

Absolutely. I just find it relatively rare.

That said, I can't believe Rich "got" to me like that with Miko's death -- in the end, she was simply just a little girl who wanted to be with her horse...

[Greenish]

The latest was a coordinated robbery and we crowned it by distracting the mansion's owner by having Aya shift into some sort of freakish countenance (changeling) and chase the guy around with an axe, pulling my best The Shining act in years.

"Freakish countenance" is exactly how I'd describe this:

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[LibraryOgre]

Hecar, my minotaur Paladin. He died because we got too cocky, tried to take on the big bad when we were exhausted, and so he held the chief of the duergar hostage until the party could escape. It was a fitting death, but an emotional one.

A Rifts character, Harakhamis Arimi Acheran. Sold his soul to the devil to save his homeworld, then reneged on the deal. When the devil came to collect, he threw all of his magical energy into creating a portal for the others to escape, and went down in glorious combat against greatly superior odds.

[TurtleKing]

If any of you have read my posts where I talk about my prinny that became a deity at lvl 5. Well that is one were I really got immersed. It lead to us into a bittersweet victory against a BBEG, and us becoming deities.

Update: That same prinny deity is now a demigod who has his own layer of Celestia (raised a layer of the abyss).