Guess what's in print?

Wolf-packs & Winter Snow Revise Edition is in print! It's 300ish pages of palaeolithic weird-fantasy and I finally fixed the horrible print errors that made it illegible. So have at it.

That is all. Still osr high priestess.

On the Place Of Grim Subject Matter

Warning: this is gonna have some bleak stuff, and some stuff relating to sexual violence. In it, I talk about being the edgiest of edgelords, and also delve into some very personal stuff. This may sound worryingly close to storygames. Feel free to skip this one if it's not your cup of tea.

There was a broohaha lately involving a convention rpg one-shot which apparently involved all the PCs getting raped, which is perhaps not the most sensitive way to game with total strangers. 

That's what prompted this post, but the ideas had been milling around in my head for a while.

* * * * *

So. First up, let me tell you about Dr Choi, the pro-life campaigner's worst nightmare.

Dr Choi was a character I ran in a mixed-splat World of Darkness game a few years back. We were all servants of the Wyrm in some capacity; I played a Wyrm-tainted Changeling who worked for Pentex.

Pentex are (in the setting) a spiritually corrupt medical research company, known for their (deliberately) poor ethics and the spiritual taint their products spread, as well as their various bio-weapon related side-projects. Specifically, she worked in Embryology - the study of how embryos develop. Stem cells and all that jazz.

A few months into the game, the Black-spiral-dancer pack I was working with captured a pair (one male, one female) of enemy werewolves. My PC lobotomised them both with silver spikes (to keep them docile) and set about breeding my new test subjects.

This was the beginning of Dr Choi's descent into utter, unrepentant atrocity. All that horrible stuff you're imagining my PC did? I did that. I did worse. 

People say that playing truly evil characters is dull because doing atrocities gets boring after the first time. Those people lack imagination. 

(It remains a point of pride that the most fucked up PC I've ever played was for Changeling the fucking Dreaming, and that she managed to put the antics of the Tzimisce and BSDs to shame).

Dr Choi is perhaps the most extreme example of this sort of thing, and also somewhat atypical in that she was deliberately as grotesque and horrible as I could possibly make her. Everybody in that game was on-board with going full-throttle horrible and seeing just how dark we could take the world-of-darkness setting.

There are other examples, though, most of them rather more tasteful.

I play in a regular Vampire the Masquerade Larp where - among other things - rape, incest, psychological torture, child trafficking and other nastiness are explicitly on the cards. The game uses pretty careful tools to ensure that players are opting into the darkest stuff, and players who don't want to deal with it don't have to. But. I've dealt with some of the nasty shit in the game, and had a lot of... I wouldn't say fun, for all of it. But they've been experiences I'm glad I had. The game is dark and gothic and atmospheric and genuinely the best larp I've ever been to. It gets under your skin. It's fucking great.

Like, I cannot hype this game up enough. If Bex & Delia (or people who know them) read this, fuck, I can't thank them enough for the work they put in.

Shortly after I lost my Grandmother (who had been there for me in some really difficult times, gave me a place to stay when things were rough at home - of all my family, she was probably the one I was closest to) to Alzheimer's I played in a Changeling the Dreaming game. 

Changeling deals strongly with loss of self; if your memories of your life as a changeling fade into the mundanity of mortal life, how do you respond? How do those watching it respond? How do you face forgetting with dignity?  I'd just watched my closest family member forget who she was and die from it. And then I'm playing a character who's in that situation herself, feeling herself slipping away, watching her reality recede bit by bit to be replaced by something far emptier, knowing that in a few months time she'd have people around her, and she'd not recognise them, and that would break her former friends' and lovers' hearts. So she said her goodbyes and killed herself while she was still herself.

I mean, it was super sad. I cried a bit after the game. But it was also really fucking cathartic. It let me work through a bunch of difficult complicated feelings I'd been trying to ignore. 

Shit like this is why we, as a species, tell stories. 

I'm about to start a VtM 5th Edition game. I'm not a fan of everything that system does, but the way it focuses on feeding and touchstones really zeroes in on the very personal aspects of the game. With the characters we've got set up, it's looking like domestic abuse is gonna be a thing that comes up. And I've got some history with that, that's left me with some emotional issues to work through, but the group are all people I trust and am comfortable with. I'm expecting it to get dark and intense and I'm really looking forward to it.

* * * * *

So, why am I talking about this?

Well. The old staple conversation of Rape In Tabletop RPGs has reared it's head.

On the one side, we have people arguing that you should always be able to rape to your heart's content in RPGs because, uh, free speech? And if a player can't hack that, they shouldn't be playing RPGs. Because, you know... on a certain political wing, Trigger Warnings (and their cousins in RPGs: lines and veils, etc) are a tool of the SJWs that threaten our precious western civilisation.

On the other side, we have people arguing that rape is never OK to put in your games. That old James Desborough article, tastefully named "In Defence Of Rape" gets trotted out and mocked, as does much of the LotFP back catalogue where things get unusually edgy.

Here's the thing: the games listed above - which are, really, only the tip of the iceberg - are some of the best, most intense, most rewarding experiences I've had with RPGs.
There absolutely is a space for this sort of thing in roleplaying, and attempts to erase it leave the artistic and emotional potential of the medium lessened and hollow. 

Indeed, one of my favourite RPGs of all time - Monsterhearts by Avery Alder - is explicitly about messy teenage sexuality, and it can (if the relevant characters are in play and the relevant mechanics get triggered) get real bleak real fast. Its a game where sexuality can be predatory and weaponized and abusive. And, I mean, I've had some (minor) experiences with this sort of thing, but that doesn't get in the way; it gives me that much more context and emotional resonance to draw on.
There have been larp games which have brought me to floods of tears. There have been games where the NPC I played - bleeding and broken, lying twitching and whimpering and screaming - made the players feel ill. This shit can be powerful. The interactivity of the medium, the viscerality of it (particularly in larp, but also in ttrpgs) can make you feel things in ways that other mediums just can't.
I mean, fuck, I talk about WoD a lot in this post, but Death Love Doom is, imho, a fucking masterpiece for how it can get under your skin and really produce an uncomfortable horror experience in a genre (D&D) where that sort of thing doesn't normally go so well.

But, there's a flip side to this. Would I use a Changeling the Dreaming character to work through my grief with a bunch of strangers or casual acquaintances? Of course not. This stuff makes you emotionally vulnerable. It can be too much all in one go. I've had games where we go "ok, that scene was hardcore, let's pause, get some food, and step back from the game to chill" because that level of intensity's unsustainable in more than short bursts.
You gotta use safety mechanics. I'm not a huge fan of the x-card as the main solution to this stuff (I've said so at length here) but other ideas, such as Lines and Veils, and regular check-ins, and so on are vital if you're gonna create an atmosphere where people feel safe and comfortable delving into this stuff. And, indeed, if it all gets too much, you gotta stop the game, because people's emotions take priority over the game unless you're a fucking sociopath.
((Admitedly, I am perhaps not great at calling time-out for my own good sometimes. Like, physically, I've got injured in larp fights by not making the 'pause the game for health and safety' call when somebody was about to stand on my head. I've been hit in the face with the butt of a weapon, spat out a tooth, and kept on playing. I'm not great at self care. But fuck it, I'm having fun and I'm not dead yet.))
And, like, not everybody's gonna be up for this sort of thing all the time. I'm not! A lot of the time I just wanna be chill, throw some dice around, fight some skeletons. Some people are fragile, or don't have the same experiences to draw on, or are uncomfortable exposing themselves like that, or have really nasty memories or phobias, or just don't enjoy horror. That's cool.
I wouldn't have played most of the stuff listed above with total strangers, or with people I didn't trust to handle it well. Even among my IRL friends, there's plenty I wouldn't be happy playing a game like Monster-hearts with.

So what's my point? My point is that this sort of thing is powerful and can lead to some amazing experienes if you go all-in on it. But for it to work, you need a level of trust between everybody involved. Everybody needs to feel safe and to be buying into where the game is going.

Obviously, that can't happen if you spring this stuff on somebody by surprise.
Like the proportion of women that have been raped, sexually assaulted, abused in relationships, etc is pretty fucking high, and this isn't news to anybody with half a brain. But, like, the proportion of men who've had this shit happen to them is surprisingly high as well, and nobody fucking talks about it, which is its own problem. Which means that the chances are, even if you don't know about it, somebody in your group has probably had to deal with this shit irl.
If - and it's a big if - you want to do this sort of thing, you wanna find a group of friends you're comfortable being emotionally open with, and then work out which themes you want to explore. It doesn't have to be rape! You can get really fucking dark with parental abandonment, Alzheimer's, war, all sorts of shit... pick a topic that works for your group.
You can make a joke of it and be grotesque and outlandish - see Dr Choi, above - but that robs the experience of some of its horror and catharsis. Leaning into it, taking it seriously and getting immersed can be really rewarding.
Its not for you, but if you've been considering this sort of game and aren't sure, it gets my seal of approval. But, in the words of an immortal scholar*: The Bleak Horror Of Man's Inhumanity To Man is a Sometimes Food. Maybe play some Paranoia or whatever after to cleanse your palette.
*cookie monster


* * * * *


Unrelatedly, I've declared myself Evil High Priestess of the OSR. I now have a fancy hat, ominous robes, and a wobbly-bladed knife made of obsidian, and am keen to start ripping out hearts and offering them to Ungoliant.
IA IA! SHELOB F'TAGN!

Stuff In Print and Other News

Just a quick one, I've finally got test prints back for The Stygian Library and The Dolorous Stroke back that don't have those weird transparency issues, which is nice!
(The solution turned out to be taking a really high-res screenshot of each page, and making a new pdf where each page is just that screenshot as a .png. It's not the most elegant method but it works; there's a slight affect on the crispness of the text but it's basically fine).
So now you can buy them! Here is The Stygian Library and here's The Dolorous Stroke.
There are probably typos, but fuck it they're done now.

Wolfpacks Deluxe will get sorted out and - hopefully - likewise be up for sale soon as well. It's a big chunky 300-page hardback, but I have hope. Likewise Esoteric Enterprises. 

I've revived my 'ship sailing into the west' module idea, and been hashing stuff out for it. That's probably my next project to come out. That or finally finishing the ref stuff for Esoteric Enterprises, but that's gonna be a long slog before it's done.



(There's also still a fundraiser going Mandy's stuff. Any help you can throw at her means a lot.)

Go Buy DMT!

"Hello? Mission control? This is Agent McCormack reporting in. Location... deep dreamscape, second layer, reflection of East-London dockyards. Requesting urgent support. Entire team pinned in combat with unknown assailants." 

"At least [fragment missing] on our position. Seemingly human, emerging from the harbour, most with fish-like alterations, many armed. ...I don't know, give me a [speech inaudible, sounds of gunfire]. Good God, it's huge! Coming out of the water, slithering this way." 

"It's [fragment missing]." 

"Oh! I hear police sirens in- [wet ripping sounds] Jesus, it got Granger, his skin came right off... Mucus everywhere, guns don't do... oh Jesus Christ, it sees me! [inaudible, heavy breathing and footsteps] Get me out of here! I can't-" 

[Transmission ends in static]

So. Deep Morphean Transmissions is done. You can buy the referee book here, and the player-handouts here.

So now I'm gonna ramble about the project a bit. 

Structurally, the game comes in two parts that you need both of. First up, the player materials contain all the rules of the game. This is, I think, a big thing. All the rules you need in order to play are on your character sheet, fitting on two sides of A4. I stripped down the game mechanics a lot so that you only got the bare essentials left. These are:

• Attributes (Charisma, Intelligence and Will), which you roll under to do most things.
• Saving throws, which work like you'd expect in OSR.
• Rolls to hit, and defence (the equivalent of AC). If you attack, roll greater than your to-hit value to do so successfully. However, if your roll is greater than your victim's defence value, the shot hits but is deflected. IE, if you have a to-hit of 11+ and your victim has defence of 18+, then a roll of 1-10 misses, 11-17 hits and does damage, and 18+ hits but is deflected harmlessly.
• HP, which are reduced as you take damage, and on 0HP you leave the dreamscape.
• Heart rate, to which you add all your dice rolls, representing the increasing stress you're under. If it gets high enough, you're in the zone and can be badass (rolling again if you fail), but if it gets too high, you have a heart attack, taking you out of action just like if you run out of HP.
• Reckless rolls roll twice and take the higher result. Careful rolls roll twice and take the lower result.
• A special Technique or two for each department:
  >Security Agents can intercept attacks, and attack again if they drop an enemy.
  >Surveillence Agents get thief-skill style abilities that always work but increase heartrate when used; one such ability per level.
  >Tech Support Agents get a limited number of support and recovery abilities, much like a cleric's limited pool of spells.
  >Logistics Agents get an unreliable ability to call Mission Control for help.
• You get XP for learning secrets and completing mission objectives. Every 10XP levels you up, improving your saves, to-hit and an attribute of your choice by 1. Maybe it affects your department technique, too.

And that's fucking everything. Congratulations, you now know enough to play the game.
So yes. The player stuff is pretty minimalistic. But that's fine, complicated mechanics don't make the game good, they just slow stuff down. The bulk of the gameplay is in how these mechanics interact with the setting and the monsters, and the properties that emerge from that.

In this case, playtesting has been pretty encouraging. My players have thrown themselves face-first into experimenting and exploring, trying weird stuff I didn't think of (there's a section in the referee book called 'things the agents can do' which is, more accurately 'weird things my playtesters tried').
And this is where the referee book comes in. It's also small - 77 pages, of which 7 are bumf rather than content and another 15 or so are full-page illustrations by Scrap Princess -

interjection: I fucking love Scrap's art in this book. Like so much. She's knocked it out of the park imho. Look at this brilliant madness!

interjection over.

so. Ignoring 15ish pages of art and seven of indexes and stuff, that leaves about 55 pages of content.

That's tight. It's the most concise I've ever released a full project. Which, to be honest, was tricky. I've been pretty ruthless in editing out things that seemed superfluous. Everything's been tightly trimmed. This is the bare minimum to run the game.

Incidentally, just like the Ref book not repeating the player-facing rules, it also doesn't include any of that 'how to be a good OSR referee' stuff. I can write for pages and pages about that, but here I didn't bother. If you're running it, you probably already know how to referee. So I cut it.

Anyway.

Inspiration-wise, it's both a weirdly mixed bag and very tightly-themed. The game's a dreamlike blend of espionage and noir and lovecraft and surrealism and body horror. It being written by me, there's plenty or parasites and transformations, ways to go mad and have your PC fucked with, and also an entire monster entry that's assembled from a big pile of random tables. 

Tonally, it's drawing on stuff like Paprika and Jacob's Ladder and Lacuna and Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories. Games in this setting will be excursions into paranoia and weirdness. The breaking down of reality is a big theme, unsurprisingly.

I even managed to get it to include the old standard of Law vs Chaos alignment, which is a first for me. Really though, Law vs Chaos just maps onto Reality vs Madness in this case.

Anyway, it's been a few months of furious work, and here it is. I hope you like it.

Thanks go to Scrap, my playtesters, and Chris (who ran the campaign back when I was a student that inspired this).

~ ~ ~

Also, while you've got your wallets out buying my stuff, there's a fundraiser going for Mandy Morbid's legal fees here. Mandy's a massive nerd and a real sweetie irl, and this has been a very shitty year for her for the sorts of reasons you can probably guess, so any help you can throw her way will be appreciated.

Visual Design Stuff for Deep Morphean Transmissions

So the dreamscape based game is nearing completion. It's acquired a title - Deep Morphean Transmissions (the acronym is DMT) - and most of the text is done, and the layout's largely there, too. So Imma talk about it a bit.

I've been working with Scrap Princess on the illustrations, it's been really interesting; I've never collaborated on visual stuff before. There's been some back-and-forth about the illustrations and the look of the thing. She had the idea of using analogue photocopy textures, which have become quite a prominent thing. Like a sketch would be drawn, photocopied, more drawing on the photocopy, and so on. You get layers of noise and grime building up there, it's super cool, I really like the direction she took.

You can see that in this image, the grimy textures in the drawing. The same photocopier texture from one of these images is what was used for the page header/footer.

I've been giving scrap's art a full A5 page per illustration, with the header/footer extending to the full page around it to tie things in. It's simple but I think it looks quite striking.

The book's divided into rough sections, with the header on each page saying which section it is and what the rough topic of the page is. I've tried to limit each topic to a two-page spread, although that's not always possible. Some topics get 2 or 3 two-page spreads if the subject matter is bigger, but that's still gonna be divided into 'chunks' of a two-page spread each. Where a topic is smaller, it gets a single page, and the facing page gets one of the full illustrations on it. Likewise, if a topic covers three pages, the fourth in the little four-page section gets an illustration.

By now, you'll have seen that the text all has a watermark behind it, these are all public-domain images, often heavily processed. Each section gets a repeating watermark on each page, in washed-out blue & violet colours that tie in with scraps art. The idea here is that these images do the work of giving a page some visual interest, while fading into the background in a way that a foregrounded picture wouldn't. Plus, by repeating across multiple pages, each topic is tied together by the watermark, giving the sections more visual cohesion. Here's an example:

Other than that, in terms of design I've tried to keep things pretty clean and modernistic. Ariel's not a font I usually like, but it's got a sleekness to it that works well with the look I'm going for here. Likewise the tables being simple square black lines works alright here, I think. For the headings, meanwhile, I've gone with a typewriter font that I've found vaguely reminiscent of a nice 'mid 20th century' aesthetic that works for the subject matter.

So yeah, it's coming together. I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking.
Oh, as a final thing, the core mechanics of the game all go on the PC's character sheets, including how character gen works. So while the rulebook has commentary and advice on the rules, you need to read the handouts to know the basics. There's also gonna be a set of printouts to give players with plot-hooks and hints, that work as in-character documents that the PCs are given during their mission briefing. They're gonna have the scrap-princess art (because it would be a shame to waste it, she's turned out some really good stuff), as well as carefully edited public domain stuff, and bits of text.

Anyway, that's where things are. I'm probably got a few days before I release this thing - it needs indexing still - but it's well on its way. And I'm pretty pleased with it.


~~~

Oh, also, there's a fundraiser for Mandy Morbid's legal fees, because that whole situation continues to be dreadful. Here it is, maybe throw her a few bucks.

Something Rots Pt 1: The Fate of DeMontfort

So, I'm running a short Dolorous Stroke campaign at my local gaming club, for five players (each with one character and perhaps a sidekick) on one side, joining together on a Noble Quest.

Short pitch for the campaign is that there's an isolated valley, in which a huge battle was fought a few decades ago, and which now contains the mass grave of those who fell. The PCs are various nobles sent to make sure nothing bad is going down.

Since this session needed to function as an intro to the game (only one of the players had tried TDS before, and most were new to skirmish gaming) I set things up to form a neat intro to the game.

On the player's side, we had:

Sir Reynauld, a knight hospitalier with axe, shield and crossbow, and some faith powers. A generally competent all-rounder of a knight.

Sir Ector of Badenworth, an elderly knight, coming back from retirement for one last job. On horseback, with various melee weapons for different foes, a longbow, and all of the sensible adventuring gear.

Sir Ector's grandson, on foot with a bow and other gear. 

Sir Aedyn, a reclusive nobleman who doesn't deign to go outdoors much. Equipped for necromancy, with the ability to feed on other people's Virtue cards when he pulls their souls out. Lightly equipped, not really a front-line combatant.

A ghost Sir Aedyn can summon to fight on his behalf, a spooky skellington spearman.

Sir Barnebus the Shield, a foot knight with defensive focus, a big hammer, not much brain, and a fairy paramour who's placed him under an enchantment. Another solid melee beatstick like Reynauld.

Bill the Peasant, Sir Barnebus's hired man-at-arms, with shitty stats and a spear.

Lady Eleanor Blackwood, a minor noblewoman with various support spells and theurgical spells.

Nefta, an angel summoned by Lady Blackwood, a big looming thing that's very fast but not that good in a fight.

That's nine models on the player side, with a mixture of marksmen, spellcasters, summoned minions, support and front-line fighters.

The board was a rough blob, divided in two by a rusted fence diagonally. On one side, we set up the PCs, among marshes and stunted trees. On the other, a denser forest with a small chapel at the back. Here I set up the main opposition the PCs would encounter: Sir DeMontfort, an absolute beast of a knight with high stats and some weird corrupt biology, and his four retainers (two with spears and shields, two with bows). These five were all pretty simple, save for DeMontfort himself who had a couple of interesting tricks - a minion he could summon (by vomiting out his own skeleton to fight next to him) and some healing - alongside his fucking nasty high stats. A single knight, some supporters with spears, and some archers would give us a good overview of the basic dynamics of a fight, without anything too weird happening.

I also set up a little mandrake in the woods; it initially looked like just a cute lil' plant, but would prove important later in the fight, hopefully teaching the players to pay attention to their surroundings. Likewise, I lined up some scary looking models - skeletons, ghosts, tree-monsters and so on - next to the board to keep my players guessing what might go wrong.

The game started with Sir DeMontfort hailing the PCs, and telling them to leave this cursed place (they were about to enter the horrible vale itself, through a gate in the fence), lest he be forced to drive them away. 

As Sir Ector and DeMontfort negotiated, (both moving out of position to talk like gentlemen), some of the PCs tried to sneak towards the gate leading into the woods, not doing a particularly good job of escaping notice. Meanwhile, DeMontfort's men-at-arms took up defensive positions and took aim in case things kicked off.

After a little back-and-forth roleplayed between myself and the PCs, they got an idea of who DeMontfort was and what sort of curse he might be labouring under. It was at this point that they noticed the mass of leeches squirming under his skin and, concluding that something was badly wrong, decided to kick off a fight.

In the initial skirmish, DeMontfort belched forth his skeleton to hold the PCs at bay while he galloped back to the gate to set up a defensive position with his men. His skeleton was rapidly cut down, as was the ghost Sir Aedyn summoned to tie up the archers. After a brief flurry of exchanged shots, in which Aedyn got clipped by an arrow, losing blood but soldiering on, things devolved into a melee in the centre of the board.

As those on foot attempted to push into the woods, it devolved into a massive brawl with DeMontfort and his spearmen holding off Bill, Barnabus and Reynauld. This fight went as I'd hoped: it quickly became apparent to the PCs that they needed to control the tempo so fights would be resolved in their favour before DeMontfort could get involved and swing things with his frankly obscene 7 Prowess. Bill fought heroically (especially considering his shite stats) but had one leg sliced off by an attacker.

Finally, Sir Ector charged into the fray, catching DeMontfort from behind and smashing his head with a single sword-swipe. The leech-infested knight, gravely wounded, accepted the PCs offer of surrender. 

This seems good, right? Well, no. The little mandrake from earlier had been quietly ambling towards the fight, and - seeing blood spilled - gave a horrified scream that tore at the very souls of those present. Worse still, a group of huorns shuddered free of the trees hosting them and lurched angrily towards the fray!

This prompted a frantic re-negotiation as DeMontfort's men and the PCs took up defensive stances (and DeMontfort himself began crawling back to his skeleton to reclaim it). The huorns hit these lines in a horrible orgy of violence, smashing men-at-arms to the ground and ripping them apart. 

As the PCs fought a desperate defensive battle against the tree-monsters, Sir Barnabus sprinted up to the mandrake in question and promptly stomped all over it, taking it out of the fight. The huorns were driven off, and the fight itself ended. The fallen were patched up, and the PCs stuffed the dazed and unhappy mandrake into a sack for later use.

The whole fight was intended to teach a few lessons; in the first half giving the PCs an understanding of the importance of positioning and timing, which sunk in eventually after I made a point of screwing their plans over with cleverly-timed charges and fights. In the second half, the mandrake's shriek and emerging tree-monsters were intended to demonstrate the more narrative aspect of things, that your objectives would shift and the fight would often involve unforeseen complications. Dealing with the mandrake required the PCs to be clever and think in terms of the fictional world, which they got pretty quickly.

The whole thing had taken around two-and-a-half hours to resolve. We concluded with a thorough debriefing of DeMontfort, who informed the PCs that the water was tainted, and drinking it was what had infected him with the horrible parasites that drove the two sides to fight. He warned them that things would only get worse further into the valley, and drew them a little map with various points of interest on it. From this, the PCs decided that they would attempt to find the valley's main river and follow it upstream to it's source, to see what had corrupted the water.

Essentially, the map lets the PCs give a suggestion for what they want to do next: next weeks game will feature a fight on a river-bank against giant leeches and the cursed vampire-knight whose been training them.

Anyway, here's a picture one of the players took of the board. Having custom minis for everything and a lot of neat terrain seems to have really hooked my players, so I'm definitely glad I went all-in on the modelling for the game. None of it was super-exciting, but it all worked together nicely.

Playing Chess With Death

A set of rules I'm considering for what happens when a PC actually dies.

When you would die, Death comes to claim you. Time freezes, everything but Death and yourself become somehow less than real. You die automatically and are led away, unless you can do one of the following:

Gambling with Death
You can offer to play against Death in a game of skill or chance. You and the other PCs actually play a game against the GM (who represents Death), perhaps liars dice, a hand of poker, a riddle contest. Death gets to choose the game (GMs, pick one you're confident you can win). If you lose, death gets to take one of your companions as well as you. You only get one shot at this each time death comes for you.

Bribing Death
You offer Death a substitute soul in your possession, to take instead of yourself.  Spells to claim people's souls, such as Magic Jar, are useful here. Alternatively, if somebody has signed a contract saying you own their soul, you can sell that contract to Death in exchange for your own life. The soul should be at least as valuable as your own, but Death might be willing to haggle. Might.

Bargaining with Death
You promise Death something he wants. You might finally kill somebody who’s frustratingly evaded him (such as a lich). You might allow him to possess your body for a time. You might be set a  quest of cosmic importance. It’s up to Death to decide if he accepts, and if he feels you’re trying to renege, he can snap his fingers and have you die whenever he wants. If you do this, even though you get to live, your life just got a lot more complicated, and if you die while completing Death's task things will only get worse.

Fighting Death
If you insist. Death has 20 HD, passes all saves on a 2+, kills you on a successful hit rather than dealing damage, and is immune to fire, drowning, poison, mind-control, etc. He is a divine being and can, basically, create whichever supernatural effects he wants. You won't win this unless you have an especially clever plan, and even then it will only work once.

If you successfully wriggle out of dying, Death leaves, and you snap back to reality on 1 HP.


Where Does Death Lead You?
The GM makes a judgement call as to where your soul goes after death, based on the  virtue of your deeds, any pacts made with supernatural beings, and so on. This will affect your next PC.
If you go somewhere good, treat all 1s when rolling for attributes as 6s.
If you go somewhere bad, treat all 6s when rolling for attributes as 1s.
If your soul is claimed by a supernatural being, as well as this then your new PC is tainted by that being and may have an appropriate weakness (such as double damage from Holy things) and a tell such as an extra finger or birthmark.
If your soul is totally destroyed, you roll up your stats normally. However, your next PC is soulless, and dies automatically when they hit 0HP: no saves, no injury tables, no bargaining with death. Find a way to gain a soul before this happens in order to avoid this.