Hi there! Please don't apologize, these are some very good questions. There are two things to be addressed here: how death happens and what happens after death. So let's break it down.
1. There will never be a situation in which the possibility of death comes as a surprise to the player. If a character is venturing into a potentially dangerous situation that might lead to serious injury or death, the mods will let the player know that they're looking at a high-risk high-reward roll. Depending on RNG, character actions, and circumstances, a failure might end in death, injury, or some other consequence. HRHR is basically the player signing a waiver: if you say you're okay with the roll, then you acknowledge the possibility of character death as a result.
That being said, only a critical failure on HRHR is going to guarantee character death. A three, for example, might get a character from snooping somewhere dangerous they shouldn't be to having a knife held at their back — but not quite stabbed yet. Generally, we'll do our best to give players both the HRHR heads up and an opportunity to react in the event of a low roll that isn't a crit fail. While we will never be able to have the level of back-and-forth that a real tabletop RPG might due to the nature of the medium, we do want to encourage creative problem-solving. Even (especially) creative problem-solving to parkour away from danger.
2. What happens after you die? In the Imaginary Island, not very much, at least not on the surface. You don't experience anything in particular, and it doesn't feel as though any time has passed. You just get mortally wounded or eaten or whatever and then . . . wake up, back on the beach, good as new. So that's weird.
Death tolls are optional but encouraged. Some examples of death tolls might be forgetting someone important to you, losing a specific important memory, losing a sense or skill, etc. Any loss, gain, or change of something, tangible or intangible, that would be significant to your character counts.
As for why some characters get death tolls and others don't: the rules are a little bit different here on the Island. There's no technomantic force bringing people back from the dead. It's not something, it's someOne — although ICly, this won't be known at game start. Whoever that someOne is, sometimes they're able to pull souls back from the Astral Plane before a bit of them gets stuck. Sometimes they're not. Luck of the draw ICly, player discretion OOCly.
Hope all that makes sense! If you have any follow-up or additional questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
no subject
1. There will never be a situation in which the possibility of death comes as a surprise to the player. If a character is venturing into a potentially dangerous situation that might lead to serious injury or death, the mods will let the player know that they're looking at a high-risk high-reward roll. Depending on RNG, character actions, and circumstances, a failure might end in death, injury, or some other consequence. HRHR is basically the player signing a waiver: if you say you're okay with the roll, then you acknowledge the possibility of character death as a result.
That being said, only a critical failure on HRHR is going to guarantee character death. A three, for example, might get a character from snooping somewhere dangerous they shouldn't be to having a knife held at their back — but not quite stabbed yet. Generally, we'll do our best to give players both the HRHR heads up and an opportunity to react in the event of a low roll that isn't a crit fail. While we will never be able to have the level of back-and-forth that a real tabletop RPG might due to the nature of the medium, we do want to encourage creative problem-solving. Even (especially) creative problem-solving to parkour away from danger.
2. What happens after you die? In the Imaginary Island, not very much, at least not on the surface. You don't experience anything in particular, and it doesn't feel as though any time has passed. You just get mortally wounded or eaten or whatever and then . . . wake up, back on the beach, good as new. So that's weird.
Death tolls are optional but encouraged. Some examples of death tolls might be forgetting someone important to you, losing a specific important memory, losing a sense or skill, etc. Any loss, gain, or change of something, tangible or intangible, that would be significant to your character counts.
As for why some characters get death tolls and others don't: the rules are a little bit different here on the Island. There's no technomantic force bringing people back from the dead. It's not something, it's someOne — although ICly, this won't be known at game start. Whoever that someOne is, sometimes they're able to pull souls back from the Astral Plane before a bit of them gets stuck. Sometimes they're not. Luck of the draw ICly, player discretion OOCly.
Hope all that makes sense! If you have any follow-up or additional questions, please don't hesitate to ask.