Ways for main character to influence world following their death
The main character of a story dies before the story itself ends. Nothing new here, you can keep a story interesting following their death. But I have an additional requirement: The dead main character has to exert influence to the story world even following their death (diminished capacity acceptable), and I'm wondering about ways to achieve this.
This is for interactive fiction, where the reader gets to make choices on behalf of the main character. I'm exploring death as a possible consequence of those choices, but don't want that to stop further choices down the line completely.
An afterlife of some sort is one possibility; undeath, e.g., becoming a ghost, appearing in other characters' dreams, having their consciousness stored in a computer... What other ways are there?
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Set up your world as a version of The Matrix. When the player-character dies, s/he is removed from "the game," and can now only influence other players second-hand: mysterious text messages, altering the headline on a newspaper just as the "living" character looks at it, turning on a TV remotely, etc. So your player-character becomes a kind of deus ex machina, not able to interact directly with the other characters, but able to leave hints and breadcrumbs.
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As I see it, there are two possible ways for a character to influence others after death, but each has a number of variations.
First, the character could directly influence others after death. This would involve some sort of continued existence either magical or supernatural in origin. Some examples:
- Ghost (or any other non-material existence after death, such as a poltergeist, or other spirit)
- Uploaded brain (into a computer or robot)
- Cloning (depending on how magical the cloning process is -- in a more realistic universe, a clone would be an identical twin born later, not a repeat of the original person)
- Time travel (which stretches the limits of "after")
- Resurrection (same person coming back)
- Reincarnation (returning as a different person)
Another way for a character to exert influence after death is not to actually be there but to leave some sort of intentional legacy.
- A will
- Letters to loved (or hated) people
- Bequest with ongoing results, such as founding a charitable organization or school
Unintentional legacies are also possible
- Inspirational speech
- Taught a significant skill or piece of knowledge to another character
- WWDGD: What Would Dead Guy Do? (In other words, a life philosophy built around that of the dead guy, who acts as a moral guide for the living character.)
- Published knowledge that helps others (Dr. Dead Guy's research suggests that we can find the solution to our problems in this star system.)
- Unpublished documents that come to light after the death (see Emily Dickinson).
And one that straddles the border between intentional and unintentional:
- Children
- Parts of the body, either from donated organs or in the form of frozen sperm/eggs/other material
- Genetic legacies, particularly in terms of diseases that might get passed along
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5746. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Option 1: I'm Back!
For an IF game, probably the easiest way to allow character death is to allow some kind of backup, or a chance to be restored to life. Examples include:
- Cloning Technology - Your character has been cloned (or can be), and when the original dies, a clone takes his place. This method is used in the classic SF/humor RPG Paranoia, specifically to let characters be killed off constantly.
- Time Travel - In a time-travel story, sometimes the time-travel technology lets you "come in from the future" and make another attempt if "things go wrong."
- Beat Death - Some RPGs solve the death problem by making it simply an extra challenge: dying just takes you to a different level, which you must beat, and then you can return and continue with the game. So you could have a "Hell" level or a "Deal with the Devil" challenge or some such, allowing you to return to life once you beat the extra level. (I remember the Neverwinter Nights module Witch's Wake did this.)
- There's also the brilliant use of story-as-a-flashback in Zarf's Spider and Web (HIGHLY recommended!). Obviously you don't want to copy such a unique structure wholesale, but the unusual approach may give you ideas for similarly oddball structures that might work for you.
Option 2: I'm Still Here!
This seems to be more what you had in mind - ways to exert influence despite having, shall we say, shed the mortal coil. Do bear in mind, though, that creating a whole new mode of play can be quite a chore for an interactive-fiction game! If you like any of these ideas, you might consider basing the entire game around the concept, rather than adding the extra mode in as an odd extension.
Some ideas:
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Ghostly Haunting - Your own suggestion, and quite effective for your purposes. A ghost has limited interaction with the world - how limited is up to you. A ghost can certainly continue to wander around; maybe it's more limited in what it can touch and manipulate; maybe it can't speak easily to others. Maybe it also has new powers - like walking through walls, or possessing NPCs.
- A particular variation could set the player as the incorporeal sidekick of an "independent" NPC. Kind of the reverse of what Jeremy Freese did with Violet.
- Reincarnation - A more mystical/fantastical approach to having a backup character would be reincarnating as someone or something else.
- Guidance From Beyond - Set up some way to give advice to some sidekick character - dreams and visions; flashback memories; a will; a prophecy. You can set this up so the "advice" is retroactively assumed to have already been provided.
Hope this helps. If I have any other ideas, I'll add them on later.
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