It does get a bit tedious starting every entry with a reference to this neigh mythical German rpg blogger’s carnival, doesn’t it?
Anyway.
As part of it, we looked at graves, undead and undead characters. We did not look at the other type of characters from the grave: The resurrected.
Down to the point:
Resurrections are great!
Apart from the obvious advantage of getting to continue playing a favourite character, the whole process – the very idea – seems to offer so many possibilities for gaming, so much potential to do exciting stuff (and have it done to you) or simply go on adventures (to have someone get resurrected) and be a hero (by resurrecting someone).
If there weren’t just so many games seemingly going out of their way to make resurrections boring (D&D, I am looking at you!)…
All that potential coming to nought. What could be an exciting, even nerve wracking experience, where the (return to) life of at least one character hangs in the balance, is reduced to a loss of gold or mana points. If we are lucky, there might be a single roll in there somewhere, deciding success or failure – so that’s at least some excitement.
Luckily, though, there are also games out there, which put more emphasis on resurrection.
For me, the first place in that department goes to Earthdawn, hands down. This game offers a whole colourful palette of different options for resurrecting fallen characters, even the basic varieties of which come with inbuilt difficulties and limitations galore, to say nothing of the additional dynamic generated by the rich background information. All that pales to nothing however, when compared to such jewels as an incognito visit to the grand masque held within the dreams of Death, with the express goal to steal away one of the dancers to return her to life.
Brilliant.
Beautiful.
And so in our next articles on From the Grave, we will be looking at some more options for resurrections in other games.