Player character death never gets old. 

Each time it is different. Sometimes you can see it coming. Other times it happens so fast you had no idea it was that close. 

Just this last week I had a player of mine start out with the toughest character in the group, but before the evening ended – the character was dead. 

In the aftermath, it was decided that he had fallen from his own hubris (I later learned from the other players of how this player had bragged about how tough he was). 

As the DM, it is always difficult to see that look when a player realizes that his character is dead. 

It makes it difficult to DM sometimes since you personally want the players to have fun, and how much fun is being dead? 

I’ll tell you how much fun it is – “it isn’t any fun being dead.” 

Yet, at times, it is your duty as the DM to role-play some really fucked-up evil bastards. 

And sometimes, those evil bastards kill people. 

I would roll the die with every ounce of my being wanting to kill those stupid little trouble-making player characters. I wanted big damage results and I wanted their blood as an offering for their insolence at disturbing my undead rest. I wanted those fuckers dead. 

And just as the players would cheer at the final death blow on all those BBEDs (Big Bad Evil Dudes, for those not on the up and up of your California gamer speak), it was me, alone as the DM, cheering over the body of a dead player character. 

But, it wasn’t fair that the player wasn’t able to see everything that I was seeing. 

Why not share these moments with them? 

I started to roll in the open at this point. 

This was one pivotal moment in my DM’ing career. I had abandoned that which was sacred to any old-timer DM: the DM Screen. 

The DM Screen can be likened as the screenplay of a film. What happens behind the screen determines what you see in a darkened theater on opening day – but you don’t really see the happenings behind the screen (few read the screenplay before the opening day, and the average viewer certainly has no exact idea of what will happen). The DM Screen serves a similar purpose.

Each die roll that happens behind the DM Screen was once hidden from view and now it isn’t. 

Oh sure, the rolls for finding traps, diplomacy and others remain hidden – but the attack rolls, damage rolls, initiatives and many other combat rolls are done very much in the open (I specifically purchased the largest functional d20s I could find just soeveryone that bothered looking from 15 feet or less could easily see what I rolled). 

First, rolling in the open removes any temptation to save a character’s life (or make your BBED seem tougher than what he turned out to be) by changing the roll of the die. 

Second, it allows the players to see how much shit their characters truly are in. 

After all, when you roll a 2 and come away asking the player if a 35 hits – well it is simple enough math to know that whatever they’re facing has a +33 to hit. I like to think of it as the moment in the movie when they realize it might be time to run. 

I now have started making sure many things are done in plain view of the players for their edification – tracking poison countdowns was actually used in last week’s game, and when you’re poisoned five times over you may find your eyes wandering over to that ticker counting down to when you know the poison is gonna hit your system full-force. 

Yes, many things in the game stay the same, but it is never dull when a player character dies. 

It has been nearly a week, and the D&D forum threads continue across the web as each of my players tries to deny me of my righteous kill (they think that a coup de grace cannot be performed by a natural weapon – i.e., fangs, claws, etc.). But one aspect they can never deny is that each and every single hit was witnessed and thrown in the open for all of them to see. So, even though they may bitch and moan, they know that, unless some sort of actual rules failure has occurred (and trust me, it didn’t this time), that their fallen comrade was slain by fair rolls. 

Addendum 
The 19th of April 2007 was a day marked by the passing of two hallmark D&D magazines. Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of the Hasbro Corporation) announced that they would be not renewing the license for Paizo Publishing to continue printing Dragon or Dungeon magazines. 

The final issues will be September this year (issue 359 and issue 150, respectively). 

Since the announcement, most of the dedicated D&D boards – including the WotC boards – have been on fire with disbelief, anger, sadness, rumors and typical reactionary threats. 

Instead of joining in the crowd and expressing my own disbelief or anger – I would like to take this moment to recall a few memories that Dragon magazine has given to me. 

The first time I saw Dragon Magazine was when my brother brought an issue home with him one summer (he was in the Marines at the time and knew that I was “into D&D” for the last few years). I remember it had the oddest painting for a cover, something that I will never forget – two Russian soldiers standing in the twilight snow, one of them lighting a cigarette and the other looking worriedly up a hill where we see a small child pointing out the soldiers to a group of evil-looking, machinegun-armed snow men. 

That was issue #35, and I remember I was hooked. 

I later went back and bought all the back issues I could find from the local gaming store (I never got further back than issue #19). Each month after that, I would eagerly await the next issue to arrive at the newsstand. Every new cover and issue brought visions of worlds unimaginable and mental fodder for adventures to have my players suffer through. 

At times in my life, I had to remove myself from gaming – mostly while serving in the military – and it was during these times that I would find myself still connected to D&D through my monthly dose of Dragon (although I enjoyed Dungeon to a certain extent, I never really grabbed into it since most of my games were custom made). It never got old to me. Sometimes sitting there in a muddy foxhole reading the articles, stories and letters from gamers just like myself. The magazine actually gave me a comfort that few other things ever did during my time served away from home. 

Eventually, I returned to civilian life and the gaming table – work, college and gaming were always there. 

Years later, I married a wife that supported my hobby and even made sure to renew my subscription each year for Christmas. Even now, I look to the mailbox during that week each month, hoping to come home from a hard work day and find my awaited friendly Dragon. 

I know when this September comes along that I will be sad to see that final printed Dragon. 

It seems that we are now moving into an age where PDFs and other online content (like this very article) are starting to force our printed formats to adapt and overcome. I hope that the reduced costs of maintaining such a format can translate into a product equal or better than what was previously available. 

I don’t know if it will. 

But, I certainly hope it does. 

So, Dragon, my friend – I raise a toast to you and all of our years together on the shitter, at the back of the bus, and falling asleep on the couch – I may not have always kept your cover from getting torn, but I always made sure you made it to every game I went to. 

Now, who is gonna buy me a laptop so I can get my Dragon PDF into my backpack?

Stay tuned for further installments.