A common complaint I've seen is that death shuts down RP. Or that there's no rp in just being killed. So when is there "enough" rp that a death isn't "meaningless"?
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I always ask myself, does this death lead to some RP, is there an alternative, especially were IC alternatives offered (if possible, sometimes things just happen), and if not - can I make some RP of it at least AFTER the death, leave the poor sob with some hooks.
Some possible helpful things to think about as the victim are…
Who are my enemies? Can I blame one of them even if I don't know who actually did it? Can I use this to fuel a campaign against someone I want to tear down?
Who is my competition? Same questions.
Why would someone want to kill me? If I can't think of anything overt, am I maybe doing something that's pissing someone off and I don't realize it? Am I in someone's way somehow? What kind of biz am I involved in that might annoy someone enough to kill me?
Is it possible the person that killed me would reach out if I offered to make peace? Maybe I can do some kind of work for them or a favor to get them off my back. Maybe I can create an ally from this where I once had an enemy.
How angry am I? Do I really care about finding who killed me or would I rather to take my anger out on some other poor sap?
They stole my gear when I died. I could scrape by at my day job until I can afford it again, or I can take advantage of someone else's weakness and steal their shit instead. I can get by if I make my problem their problem instead.
In general, I think it's good to escalate before resorting to murder, but it's otherwise fine most of the time with one exception. I'm not a huge fan of chain vatting. The funny thing is chain vattings, in my experience, are so targeted that it's hard not to find out who's doing it. But it still isn't fun, even when you know why it's happening and who's doing it.
But again, there are ways that RP can be created from your deaths even if you never find out why you died. Getting no RP from your killer is not a dead end for your RP.
If I'm not going to get a scene of being chocked/snapped in the sewers, neither should you.
Click X on browser mid-choke and come back in six hours to type "go clone".
Ultimately it takes two to tango, you already killed someone, you have substantial gain from it of some kind that you dictated (lets exclude the rarer case of self defense working, suicide by another player etc, and assume indented murder), and now you put entire onus of the situation on the victim, with zero consideration for that party.
It's really not that hard to alias hop and provide some sort of hook, rather than just enjoy the post-vat dinner theatre from silence, it's just… Not very respectful to the other party in my view, as you put the entire workload on them, ICly and OOCly. And if you OOCly cannot figure out how to make it at least a bit somehow fun or intriguing for the victim, maybe postpone the murder until you do.
