Iconoclast -- RPG -- Death
Nobody likes dying because of a dice roll, because games are supposed to be fun, and dying because of a die roll isn't fun. The dice rolls in this game can be even less fun, because combat is bloody, brutal and deadly, and it's pretty easy to die.
However, those simple, brutal dice rolls are balanced with a great deal of opportunity for flexibility. We don't encourage you to alter dice rolls, or to make exceptions to the rules (ie. "I have 2 Trauma left." "Ok, you take 15 Trauma." "I have 1 Trauma left."). But we do have some suggestions for how to use role-playing to avoid "The Big D".
In the movies, the hero always dies when he's supposed to, not before. If the hero died in the first 15 minutes of the movie, the rest of the movie would suck. Same thing with theatre. If Romeo is killed halfway through the play because he had a bad die roll, Shakespeare gets lynched. Iconoclast is more theatre than game, in this aspect. Death happens, and it happens a lot, but it doesn't need to happen to the main icons until the time is right.
First of all, let's explore why people die. Setting natural causes and diseases aside, let's look at the basics. You can be shot, stabbed, or strangled. You can bleed to death or be pummeled by rocks. You can drown, burn, sizzle in acid or be poisoned. All of these are not truly causes of death, however. They are methods which lead to the cause of death.
In the year 2100, there are no specific organs which are automatically fatal if you were to get shot in them, or have them torn open. Sure, having your lung pierced by a spear might hurt, and it might incapacitate you, but it is not immediately fatal. You can shoot someone in the stomach and they can linger for days, painfully. Arrows, bullets, shuriken, whatever. Nothing will kill you instantly. You might stop breathing. Your heart might stop pumping. But as CPR has taught us, these can be reversed. The only "true death" comes when you suffer brain death.
There are two main ways to suffer brain death. One is to suffer the loss of your brain. This occurs naturally in most role-players, but it will not be a likely cause of death for one of your icons, unless you are somehow decapitated, or find yourself amidst a nuclear explosion. Even losing small parts of your brain is not necessarily fatal--people have had half their brains removed, and lived. Gunshot wounds to the head often result in no permanent damage, even when segments of the brain are damaged or destroyed. If more than 20% of the brain is destroyed, retrieval is somewhat unlikely, but if 100% of the brain is removed, you're dead, Jim.
The second, more likely cause of brain death is the lack of oxygen to the brain. If you bleed a lot, your brain loses the oxygen it got from the blood, and you die. If you are strangled, the bloodflow to your head is restricted and you die. If you drown, your lungs stop taking in oxygen and you die. If you are in a fire, you breathe in toxins and lose oxygen and you die (most people don't die from the fire, they die from the smoke). And so on.
