Have you ever had a character die in game?

I had my first character die essentially randomly in a bad dice roll during an admin event. Even admin were surprised, and myself (and my friend who was in the same boat) received a reward for not making a big deal about it, but I think we were both in so much shock it never crossed our minds to

 

Never just on a lark; I tend to see people killing off their muses for drama’s sake as bad writing, particularly if your setting has resurrection mechanics.

But man, there are few feelings more satisfying than building up a good villain and then, when the time comes, mercilessly killing them off. A good extravagantly violent and disturbing villain death is so much fun.

 

I've had three characters in COTF die. One was fully intentional in that I put a low-level character in a mid-level quest. The second was another quest where my character just got completely unlucky in their rolls. I was devastated by his death as he was one of my main characters. My third character's death was somewhere in the middle. She was the character I had had the longest and was slightly losing motivation for her but I didn't want her to die. When she died due to poor luck in a quest, I was certainly upset but not as devastated as my previous loss.

 

I have killed off characters on purpose, including one character on COTF, when maybe they and I just don't get on as well as what I had originally envisioned. It's better that way for me because then I don't feel pressured to keep writing them when I just really don't have any desire to do so, and it can be a fun plot point as well.

 

I do it pretty rarely overall, but when I'm playing a villain, I almost always kill them off in the end. The only times I haven't are when the story peters out, but unless I can find something new for them, the villain is quietly shelved. I like it when it works out, though - it feels good to have people playing their protagonists winning and losing and figuring things out, and finally overcoming the villain's plan in the end.

Occasionally I do it to side characters when dramatically appropriate, lol. If everyone likes a side character of mine quite a bit and everyone's getting involved in a big plot, there's a risk of me offing them to raise the dramatic stakes or deliver a more nuanced resolution to the story. Layer grief and loss and regret into victory.