Game Theory question: Is killing the whole party off a 'buzz kill'/taboo?

[vvalkingman]

So, I revisited an older project of mine and am thinking about bringing it back. The question is, should this be a book/movie or a game? Does killing off all the characters kill the story? Or is it ok since you are basically dealing with an antihero cast of characters? Here is the concept:

"Concept": ShowHide

You have 13 characters from the get go. They are a unit of knights that are going down a path of insanity. In the beginning, I give the players the feel that the actions that the knights take are justifiable. At one point, the knights liken themselves as invinicible gods of death and get in over their heads, completely losing the original focus for their own arrogant agendas. In a large scale battle gone wrong, they lose four of their number including the leader & second in command. After narrowly escaping, the remaining knights have a self-examination and begin to doubt themselves because of their foolish actions so far. It is in this self-examination that a new leader rises from among them and they decide to go off and fight one more battle to fulfill their original goals. They plan to go all out with no room for failure; however, one of them during that self-examination comes to the conclusion that all that they have been doing has been mindless killing and that all their sins are just catching up with them. During the final battle, that character betrays the group by letting in the enemy soldiers and ultimately commits suicide. The remaining knights fight an epic final battle against the opposing knights with many of the mini-battles having double knockouts(they both die). Only the main character remains at the end of the battle, having been unable to succeed in their final push. It is at this time while the winning knights are interrogating him, that the player finds out that there really is no reason to what they have been doing, they weren't even knights to begin with because the kingdom that they "represented" was fictious. They were just wandering insane serial killers. At the moment of his execution, standing beside the pikes with the heads of his former comrades, the main character is asked for his final words. He smiles and says "I am fear, I am destruction, I am death." The reason that he is smiling is because *pause for effect* his ropes have come lose. He kills the executioner and the guards beside him, takes the executioner's giant ax and leaps out into the crowd swinging before he is finally taken out by one of the holy knights he had fought previously. It ends with their "fictious" benefactor, who was hidden in the crowd, walking away.

Now, in terms of playability, death is really tough on players in rpgs...specifically if they put any time or effort into fixing them up. So what I was thinking about doing, was creating a point system where you upgrade the characters armor, weapons, skills, etc with points. That way when they croak you get the points back in a point pool. Their spirits live on with you, etc etc lol thoughts?

[Blizzard]

There is two things that I'd like to add...

First thing is that death should never be forced or that a character should die just for the sake of dying. I noticed that the best way is to create anticipation that he will survive, but then he dies anyway. The player reaction is usually "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" which is exactly what we want.

The second thing...

CP: ShowHide

In Chaos Project I let all characters die as well. Depending on which ending you are going for either the final boss kills the party (bad ending), Endout, Ariana and Sydon kill Jason and then die later on as the universe decays (sad ending), or Jason kills the rest of the party and then goes back to the Chaos Machine in order to activate it and sacrifice his life to save the universe (good ending). Basically you can kill off all characters, but you should make sure that it's legit, that their deaths are not pointless. They are the main characters after all, their deaths should never be pointless.

I generally like your idea of insanity and the double plot twist at the end.

Spoiler: ShowHide

The first twist is when the player realizes that they were all just nutjobs that were walking around killing people for a fictive kingdom. The second is when their "fictive" benefactor actually exists. It makes you wonder what the whole story was actually about.

I think you should add more story elements in between. The outlines so far seems to me that you could play it through in 3 hours according to this storyline. You should stretch the story and their emotional and psychological journey without forcing it. I think that slowly letting one by one go more and more insane would give you the effect of unforced progression of the plot.

All in all, this sounds like a very interesting story. I'm looking forward to it. My personal opinion would be that it would be a better book/movie than a game, but it can definitely be pulled off as a game. In that case you need a good skill system and a good EXP system as the characters that die will be lost forever. I think that some sort of system affecting the whole party would be best here as you never really lose anything when one of the characters dies.

[vvalkingman]

Thanks for the input, Blizzard the anticipation of death comment made me rethink a certain character's death at the hands of a former student. Originally I was thinking he would die but in the process the student would die as well...now i want to reverse it. I want the teacher to win, walk off alittle smiling being all smug and then die, perhaps with a shocked look on his face before poof hehe i like it also, since you revealed plot twists in your own project ill let you in on a third major plot twist:

Spoiler: ShowHide

The main character isn't who he says he is. He thinks his name is Leon and that he's served the benefactor since that benefactor took him in and raised him as a child. In reality, his name is Russell and he served as a Captain of a squad of knights in a kingdom far to the east. As the story goes, his kingdom sent his particular squad on a suicide mission. That kingdom decided that they wanted to start a war with a neighboring nation but needed to be "in the right" so they choice to do away with Russell's squad since they were popular among the people. So yea, he was to betrayed by his own king and kingdom...needless to say it left him a bit unstable mentally especially for a guy who had such a strong loyalty to the kingdom...he didn't cope well with being betrayed and that is shown later as he takes on the persona of Leon who is extremely paranoid and who almost loses it when he finds out that one member betrayed them.

Also, I think you might find the ending a bit more interesting knowing that spoiler along with the details of what happens:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Leon is being led to go get his head cut off at the end and basically, i go back and forth with his perception of what is going on and what is actually going on. Leon likens his walk to get his head chopped off next to the heads of his fallen comrades as a returning commander being awarded a medal along side his subordinates.

what are your thoughts on that development?

I actually do have a large storyline I just wanted to summarize it so I could give you guys a gist of where I was coming from and going with it without having you read a novel haha thanks again for all the input. I'll be making a project page for this project soon. I call it Knights of the Black Gate. Just give me alittle time and I promise I'll show you something cool

[Blizzard]

I like the direction in which the story is going. You put a lot of detail in there, it should definitely be interesting.

[The Niche]

This should be incredibly interesting. I personally would hope that there isn't a permanent end with the benefactor walking away. I'd like to know what happens to him, why he got the knights to go kill people.

& Blizz: DAMMIT!!! I thought the other three didn't die, he just knocked them out! You just ruined it all for me >8U!!!!!