Bargains with Death?

Does anyone have any good ones they've used or can suggest?

Hmmm ... no ideas or recountings of old Bargains??  In our first game no one every got reduced to zero hp, so it didn't come up for us.  But it would be cool to hear how some GM's are responding to the Last Breath.

I was thinking that one interesting Bargain might involve Death requiring the character to send at least one soul to Him (each game session).  Failure to do so would result in part of the character's life essence draining away (-1 hp permanently).

A juicy one is - you can live but one of your party must take your place.  If you want to be cruel, make that player choose another character and make that character roll roll immediately (but with a bonus to make death unlikely).  If the other character survives, death tells that character exactly why he came calling.  If you want to be clever, tell them that another person must volunteer their life willingly within a fortnight - finding a willing volunteer is now a front.  

Very interesting bargains mease19!  Did you get a chance to try these in game, if so it would be cool to hear how they played out!

What about: the player may live but must be initiated into a death cult that worships death itself, take away their playbook and give them a cleric playbook.  Smile while you do it and don't break eye contact.  (Make them spend their next level up gaining the basic cleric moves and then have them level up as a cleric from then on)

My cleric of suffering accepted a deal whereby Death took his eyes. Glorious!

I had an Elven Death give a human a mission to help one of the elves in the party with something he was doing that was slightly counter to the human's wishes.

It's very context dependent, IME.

Agree with AnarchAngel that it's very context dependent.

I had a first level wizard die last night, due primarily to (a) a flood of unlucky rolls, and (b) my inexperience with GM moves and the progression from soft through to hard.

So I had a kind of kooky Elven death, who demanded that she return to the forest and rub up against 5 specific trees. Obviously only do-able amongst friends, but not a very hard dilemma, more embarrassing than challenging.

So I made one of the characters change alignment, become a supporter of a good god, (A PC's god) and have a little birdy on his shoulder telling him to do bad things...The character was aware of the change and wanted to do bad things however death would then withdraw the bargain and kill him.

From my AP...
Grundy immediately got up and fire-balled Zenu killing him instantly

Zenu rolled his "dice with death" and hit on a 9. I immediately switched into the voice of Jon's god and told Jon that he could hear his god too. Essentially, I gave the rather flamboyant ladies man and scoundrel Zenu a choice between final death and coming back...good aligned and with his life devoted to the gods works....under the watchful eye of Jon. (You should have see his player's face. It was awesome!) (Jon's player was pretty pleased too)

:)

Stu.

A couple of others from a con over the weekend:

• A death deathing fighter sent back to reap more souls.
• "You can return to help your friends but you can never leave the dungeon", then she did.

I've been trying to come up with personalized Death encounters for each of the characters:

- Homeless Ranger with ugly dog companion: The dog curls up against the Ranger's body, and shows up at the gates of death's realm uninvited. Death says "normally the souls of animals mean little to me, but the loyalty here shines like a jewel. Only one of you need step through the gates to my realm, and if you tell him to, he will go in your stead."

- Scrawny, runty Amazon fighter wanting to prove herself to her tribe of huge, powerful Amazon warriors: "Your place at the table of your ancestors is taken by another of your tribe. However, should she die in shame and cowardice, then that place would be yours instead. If you fail to gain her seat, however, then your soul shall be tormented for all time."

- Hedonistic Bard, always looking for cheap thrills and pleasures of the flesh: "You sought to 'live life to it's fullest', yet here you are. Obviously you were doing it wrong. If you wish, you may return to life and try again. Perhaps you just didn't live hard enough. So your desires shall be multiplied five-fold. You will need to eat five times as much to feel full. You will need to drink five times as much to slake your thirst. And as for pleasures of the flesh, well let us hope you can hire a whole team and schedule a day or two to get any real satisfaction or release."

I don't yet have anything for
- City Druid spy/infiltrator
- Knowledgeable, treasure-hunter-for-hire Rogue (a la Indiana Jones)
So if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open :)

Used The Lord Soth / Stradt / Deadlands deal a few times on evil PCs. Come back undead and make life incomplete...

haven't had cause to use it yet, but my party has a halfling thief who was raised by dwarves... if she meets death, it will offer her either to die now, and get a halfling afterlife (lots of sitting around having picnics and whatnot) or the chance to return to life and earn a proper dwarven afterlife (battles! crafting! drinking!)... but if she picks that and breaks any dwarven laws, her life is forfeit, and she gets dwarven hell (a barren desert where the sun never sets)

That's nice! Can you actually imagine her choosing the Halfling afterlife?

(The following note might not be relevant to this particular case, but is worth bearing in mind generally...)

The best Bargains with Death make the player seriously think about their character and the choice.

Let's see, some of the memorable ones have been:

Cleric of the Banshee Queen - return to life if he agrees that once they slay Orcus he will be bound to a throne in hell so that he can forever watch over the plane. (he accepted)

Fighter - true neutral and only in the dungeon for the coin, had to convert to another players god and fight for him instead. (he accepted)

Halfling Thief - made a deal to serve the intelligent sword Black Razor and form an assassin cult (she accepted)

In a Gamma World hack of mine the Giant Robot refused a bargain with death to have his programming rewritten to keep his fellow robots in service of the evil doctor.

- Hedonistic Bard, always looking for cheap thrills and pleasures of the flesh: "You sought to 'live life to it's fullest', yet here you are. Obviously you were doing it wrong. If you wish, you may return to life and try again. Perhaps you just didn't live hard enough. So your desires shall be multiplied five-fold. You will need to eat five times as much to feel full. You will need to drink five times as much to slake your thirst. And as for pleasures of the flesh, well let us hope you can hire a whole team and schedule a day or two to get any real satisfaction or release."

All of them gave me this feeling, but this one in particular: Read it hearing John Kramer's (Jigsaw) voice, from the Saw movies. Jeez now my version of death will just have to start the first last breath bargain with:

"I want to play a game..."