We see in movies all the time situations where a hero gives their life so their comrades can survive. It makes a great narrative.

But does it ever happen in RPGs? Has anyone ever deliberately sacrificed their PC to allow the party to escape? How did it happen? What happened afterwards? How did other players react?

::chuckles:: on a Yahoo site i joined  playing in a TFT campaign .. the peopel in it were there  for a long time. I had just joined, but new as much, if not more   about the game then  they did, I have  even submitted stuff to  Metagaming ( steve Jckson)  but nothing ever got except as the folded  a few years later.

  anyway.. the group was sorta  'brown nosey', and My charcters are never that way..my guy( elf  thief/ranger) did alot of good things, but he  got very  little respect from the   other players, thus...their characters

 a woman, who was hardly active, but  apparently was   very active in the early years of the Game had a special bow (my guy didn't..he was 'new"),, an NPC told  her to hide her  bow  as  bad guys  were looking for us..she  wouldn't  hide it and 'come abck later".. we got caught, and had a runign  fight through allies  and streets,  My guy   stopped  at a chock point  and told her to keep goign with  the items that we had to get back to the group,

The NPC killed  one bad guy, my guy drooped  a few  while we were on the  run, but  killed   three more with arrows and two with his sword before he  was  cut down..

 the  Officer  then shot him in the head  with a hand crossbow..( needless to say  it was a 'buddy game"  and the outsider  gets killed)

 they let me bring another  character in.. I had a dwarf fighter.., he got the group to tell him the story of the  guy he replaced, " So? ya dinna even go back ta 'elp 'im?  what kinda  folks  are ye?"

 I sued that distrust  to get even  a few times, letting the 'Buddies' fend for themselevs  while he carried on..the  game folded  a bit  later..and now all yahoo is gone.

In my early days in DnD (talking the '70s) I had a character that was an axe wielding barbarian. The party was being chased by a horde of savages with poison arrows and starting to get overtaken when we came to a rope bridge over a deep ravine. My guy stopped to hold off the horde while the others got across the bridge.

After he killed a couple of the pursuers, they pulled back and started shooting. He caught a couple of arrows and, figuring he was a goner, hacked down the bridge so the others could get away. Then he sat down and sang his war chant while he died. Great ending.

The others went on and did whatever we were supposed to be doing and, over time, forgot about Bili Red Axe.

Lots of people is keen on having an heroic death, in order to leave with a high a game that they already decided to leave...

 yeah, Yaz?  that is  true, i had a good player  that wanted to 'move on" planned out the  death of the character ..and it  worked out well and   we could use it to further the strpoy line/

 I rather  keep the player though!

Does it really count as an ultimate, heroic sacrifice if someone's already decided to leave a game before putting their character in that position?

Sun... only for the story? I mean , if its  a module or  something, no?..but if its a homebrewed , heavy RP  game( like mine) stuff like that helps  'leave a mark"

 ::chuckles::  so does  plain stupidity..those deaths leave a mark too!

In reply to SunRuanEr (msg # 6):

As much as it counts when a character on a TV show makes a heroic sacrifice when they were written out to accommodate an actor's departure.

Tried it, in a game that the GM still will not end, tabletop game with the scenario begun in 2012.  Yes, really, 2012.  Over 200 sessions logged, I decide to send in my PC to be captured by the Big Bad Boss, armed with dynamite and grenades (the guards did not think to search him, duh, also bad GMing).  Our mission was to take out the Big Bad Boss.  My PC died, the Boss was mildly injured despite being less than four feet away, and nothing was ever resolved.  The only thing good to come out of this pandemic is that the game has been on hold for seven months now.  I hope it never recovers.  I made a new character for the game with flying ability and also had to constantly remind the GM I could fly.  (GM: How are you getting up the wall ?) (PC: I have wings.  I fly.)  The game has since devolved into random encounters gone wild with endless Nazis, their highly advanced weaponry and machines, and their never-ending supply of ammo.  It seems the GM is determined to have us lose, but is unwilling to commit to total party annihilation.

Oh, and the game system is designed for PULP Heroes, and rewards PCs with spendable points that allow them to modify die rolls.  The last time awards were given for roleplaying by this GM was sometime BEFORE 2012.  So, don't do the heroic sacrifice.  It won't work.

I had two characters in a zombie game and one of my girls blew herself up along with a horde of zombies in order for the rest of the group to escape. I guess it was kind of an easy choice for me since I did have two characters but this was a well-liked character and I know other players were sad she died. It made for a great story, though, so no regrets!

Well...there's two ways of looking at that question.  The first, and most obvious, leads me to say, No, nobody in any of the games I've played in has ever made that kind of sacrificial gesture.

The second?  Well...I've sat through a lot of gaming sessions where players decided to do stuff that very well could have resulted in their character's death, for the sake of the party or even just for one other individual character...and then seen the dice give them a miraculous save.  As an example, a Star Wars game I played in for years...our group had an aspiring Jedi, who was actually getting good enough to be something of a threat.  She was abducted by an Emperor's Hand, with apparent plans to turn her to the Dark Side and make a Sith out of her...

Well, this particular character had a long history of skirting with the Dark Side...so much so that, at various points in the history of the group, there were characters who assigned themselves to be 'watchdogs' for her...keep her safe--and if she starts going too far to the Dark Side, stun her (or kill her, if the stun didn't work).  And this wasn't a secret, either...her player knew all about it and actually thanked them on several occasions for keeping her from losing her character.  At the time of this particular abduction, her watchdog was a bounty hunter, who tracked the Emperor's Hand back to her ship, managed to sneak aboard, found the Jedi...and decided to get rid of the Emperor's Hand, knowing quite well that she likely outclassed him in many respects.  And when he found her, she moved to attack...

And the bounty hunter fired his grenade launcher at the ground, right between them.  Took her out.  He walked away with a few bruises.  There was no good reason he shouldn't have died, as well.  Yes, he had on armor...but more important than that, his dice had a strong sense of karma that night.  Rescued the Jedi and continued watchdogging her for another couple of years before the game finally died off from players going separate ways.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 11):

Nice! That’s what I mean! A player who is willing to sacrifice their PC for the sake of the narrative, not just they are bored with the character or the game and want to go out on a high, but a genuine risk their personal safety for the good of others.

@Silverlock
Sounds like hell.

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 12):

That group was full of people doing stuff that should likely have been fatal, and having it work out well.  It wasn't a weekly thing...but it was a regular enough occurrence that I got used to the GM's look of shock when it became apparent that this otherwise-suicidal plan was actually going to turn out well.

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 13):
Yes, it makes Hell look like a fun alternative.  On the bright side, I now know a lot about that particular system, having had to haul out the rulebooks so often.  Maybe when I recover from the trauma of abuse I'll run a game where there is action, adventure, and maybe even enjoyment.

It's pretty common I think with games that go long enough. As part of my RTJ process I ask people to tell me a fun RPG story as a way for me to get to know them better and quite a few of the stories I get are epic sacrifices. Especially when you're in the final battle against the BBEG it feels like a lot of stories trend where the party is being beaten down but someone offers up a crazy solution and gets the GM to buy it at the cost of their character.

As mentioned it is such a common trope that I feel players will lean into it when the situation presents itself.

On an aside it would be fun to role-play as a character who's only goal is to die a heroic death like that. Cue the Benny Hill music where the party has to keep him from throwing his life away at the drop of a hat...

Running two squads in Only War and I had a guy in each squad basically run to their death to keep heavy fire off of their squads. Granted you essentially have extra lives in that game since you are so expendable.

In the grimdark future of 40k, there is only The Expendables

Weirdly kind of the opposite?

I had a player in a sci-fi game (I love playing with this guy) where he had secret information from his organization about the only remaining race on this small planet the team had landed on.

The leaders of this cult-like race were planning on blowing the planet up in an attempt to 'rebirth' it and renew their dying race. Thing is, that was a bunch of drink the kool-aid bull---- and it would likely cause a black hole instead and kill millions of living beings (including the players).

This player never told anyone what he was trying to do, so he just seemed antagonistic to them when he basically single mindedly crashed the ship as they tried to escape the planet and crawled into old mines in an attempt to stop the psychopaths from blowing up the planet.

He made the 'ultimate sacrifice' but wound up killing everyone in the process.

I never done the ultimate sacrifice. I have however have one go to move when I want out of a game and I don't want the GM using him/her anymore, previously undetected heart problem acts up & instakills the character.

Did have one jackass GM use a miraculous save so he could kill her the way he wanted to. Never played with that danish again and left that message board for good.
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