How would you DM a campaign where the PCs are immortal beings ?

How would you DM a campaign where the PCs are immortal beings ?

Like any other campaign? Take the elements each player brings to the table, work them into the story and give them things to care about.

Then again, I've long held the belief that relying on death to create stakes is a sign of a bad GM, a bad group, or both.

Every time they reincarnate after dying they grow an extra penis in a random body location.

But what if I'm playing a girl?

Ever looked at Keith Baker's Phoenix: Dawn Command?
Not-Roman heroes are reborn in sacred fires in cave on the mountain above the capital every time they die. Each time they die, they learn from their loss and come back stronger, with their newfound strength taking different shapes depending on how they died. By ancient compact, they can only return seven times, though.

Dark Souls. You respawn at set points after being defeated, each time gaining points that add to an insanity DC. Roll against it every time you are defeated, and if you don't beat the DC, your character goes hollow, going insane, unplayable, but remaining forever immortal, as is the curse of the undead.

That isn't how it works in Dark Souls, though. It's all about willpower and dedication to something, not arbitrary insanity.

Going Hollow results from many deaths, yes, but holding onto your humanity comes from having things to care about. Promises to keep, enemies to defeat, all that jazz. The loss of memories that leads to utter Hollowing is a very slow process. Failure to defeat that enemy, failing to keep your promise, those are what really break your spirit and let you go all the way Hollow.

As we see from a lot of NPCs in the Souls games, it's also the result of victory. Once you achieve your goal and have nothing else to strive for, going Hollow is the only thing left.

I'd argue that's still a kind of death for the PC though, in practical terms of the player having to abandon the character after suffering X amount of unrecoverable damage.

Yeah, I do agree. For the purposes of the thread 'Make them die anyway' is not a good answer to 'How to deal with Immortal PCs', even if there are interesting ways to do pseudo-immortal PCs like Dark Souls or Dawn Command, mentioned above.

I make the game focus more on the fallout of their actions and long term repercussions with time skips between story arcs. Use the end of the precious time period to set up the start of the next one.

This, when hp is meaningless you target the clock

Consider looking into PS:T or Fallen London. The latter is a bit more lighthearted and a facet of the setting is that no one can die, barring something abnormal.

Make the challenges something you just can't sword into repeatedly. Political intrigue, possibly celestial intrigue if we're talking gods and not just Highlanders. Gods would actually make a kind of interesting idea here - the souls of their followers (and therefore XP or their life in a sense if you wanna go that route) could be at stake. A god's no good if no one's alive to worship or remember them.

Make the stakes appropriately high - the world being destroyed is still a big fucking deal even if you'll technically live through it. Even immortals have family they care about - Duncan Macleod is actually a pretty good example in this regard.

>focus more on the fallout of their actions and long term repercussions

A lot of players are only concerned with their character's mechanical progression. That's something to target too.

>A lot of players find this thing fun
>You should take it away from them!

Meh, OP just said immortals, and they are immortals, they just stop being playable. If OP wanted something more along the lines of PCs that can't die and remain PCs throughout the whole game, he should have been more specific.

Did he fucking stutter?

Well, in this case your goal is that of the protagonist in dark souls. Each time you are defeated you feel more and more like you won't be able to complete the task, therefore loosing your will and going hollow.

There are worse things than death.

Yeah, nice strawman. I can tell you're a rollplayer with a serious chip on your shoulder.

For the record, I'm talking about giving these players credible threats to things they care about to help them ENJOY the game more, because they have something at stake. Nobody at any time said "Remove all mechanical progression from the game".

Your retarded attempt at a sarcastic retort is as stupid as if you'd said this:

>a lot of players care about their characters' personal goals
>You should take it away from them by adding the possiblity of permanent character death!


And now you've been told. You may fuck off in shame at your leisure.

Still, I feel like that works better without absolute mechanics nailed to it, since it is very reliant on how people play their characters.

It's one of the things about the Souls universe (amongst many things) that doesn't cleanly translate to TTRPG's. In a Souls game, the only way you as a protagonist can go Hollow is if the player puts the controller down and doesn't put it up again. Letting yourself be defeated, losing the will to go on... It's a fascinating moment where the theme of the game and your experience as a player are linked.

Totally agreed. That said, if you do need/want absolute mechanics, as I assumed OP did, I think that would be the way to do it.

I can agree that credible threats to things players care about are necessary for them to enjoy the game.

Targetting someones character sheet and permanently crippling or even majorly slowing down progress to something is just being a dick.

It's also a fucking hassle for the GM, as it exacerbates any current imbalance within the party and in general just doesn't lead anywhere good.

So yeah, nah, it's a fucking stupid idea. Getting players invested in your world and creating things for them to care about which can then be threatened is always a better option.

Wow, that was either the most outrageous strawman ever, or a vast misinterpretation.

I've played with immortal and invulnerable characters. They can faint and the world doesn't stop just because they're not awake.

Of course if you're a shit GM that relies on bodily punishment rather than giving your players actual goals that they care not to fail, it'd sound harder than it is.

Tenra Bansho Zero had something like this with the Karma System. Each PC has Fates (goals, beliefs, relations, etc, etc) that can be used to generate Kiai. Kiai is used to boost action rolls and character advancement. Spent Kiai turns into Karma. Having too much Karma is inherently bad (you turn into an Asura, a lost soul); you can reduce it by sublimating (removing) Fates. And the wheel keeps turning round and round.

These
There are more ways to lose than just death and just because you can't be injured doesn't mean you can't be hurt
If you are immortal you still have to live in the world and your actions still have consequences, you can still be captured and imprisoned, you still have people you care about

Relying on Death as the only way to generate tension and create consequence for a player's fuck up is one of the biggest signs of shit GMs

Kill happy GMs also hurt other GMs in the long run, encouraging players to have little investment in their character and to not bother writing up a backstory or relationships with the world because the GM will just kill them off for cheap drama.

I've helped some people recover from that sort of experience, and it takes ages for them to really learn to trust again.

What I would do:
>Define immortal
I would need to figure out what would constitute as a character being immortal. Do they simply not age or die from natural causes? Are they immune from diseases they would lead to death? I would probably take a number from Highlander, where decapitations will kill an "immortal." This would extend to anything that would outright destroy their bodies.

>Establish where immortals fit in the world
More questions I would need to answer in some way: how many immortals are there? Why are there people that are immortal? What are the NPC immortals doing? Are immortals a well-known thing? Have there been any important immortals throughout history? Some of these questions may not be relevant, though. I have a tendency of over-think things.

>Figure out what type of situations immortal characters would experience
I would need to create potential plot hooks and adventure ideas that would entice immortal characters to do things. This may largely be based off the PCs. I would start looking at other media that used immortal characters to see how they handled things as well (examples: Highlander [TV show, movies], Lost Odyssey [videogame])

I wouldn't worry about game mechanics until I had everything else established in some capacity.

i would carefully consider what to put at stake for the PCs and whether the players would dig into those stakes

There's a very old fan-written expansion for oWoD for Highlander. It's a lot better than a lot of the stuff White Wolf released. That's what I would use.

Obviously GURPS can do this very easily.

>How would you DM a campaign where the PCs are immortal beings ?
I've thought about taking the premise of UQ holder (various types of immortals work against evil regime) and doing something with that. The range of ways to designate an "immortal" is pretty interesting if you are willing to stomach another Negima tier harem series.

From memory you have the MC who is your typical, Can regenerate from any damage, with the caviot that the damaged apendage needs to be destroyed before regeneration can occur. So reattaching limbs is fine but if you cut off his arm and seal it away with magic or something it won't grow back.

Then you have someone cursed by a god to be immune to weapons but still feel the pain as they pass through their body.

A person who can create a literal save point and upon their death they reset to it. (This also means that non lethal attacks don't trigger this like Petrification)

A guy who ate mermaid flesh and is a much slower regenerator but incredibly long lived.

A guy who is a full cyborg

The list goes on.

If I were doing this style I would save stuff like save points for DMNPC's and make it a plot device where the cast has to loop to solve a problem. I would want the players to have some variety in how they stay alive which would also create interesting encounters depending on how each of their forms of immortality can be countered.