Death happens often in Dungeons and Dragons. Imaginary death, that is – many of us have witnessed a fictional demise at the hands of the dice. Fewer people associate the death of a real person with their D&D game. Fantasy escapism is usually just that – an escape – from real-world troubles and heavy concerns like our own mortality. But what happens when a Dungeons and Dragons player passes away?
There are many answers, though some are more surprising than others. In one notable case, the death of a D&D player created an entire community. I’m talking about AdventuresOfGalder, a Reddit group dedicated to honoring the characters of deceased tabletop RPG players.
(Author’s note: This article contains discussions of death, illness, and suicide that some readers might find upsetting.)
It started with Laurence – and Galder
“It started when my best friend Laurence was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 2018”, Phillip, a group moderator, tells Wargamer. “He put out a post on the /DnD subreddit asking if people would remember his character of Galder.”
Laurence’s original post from September 2018 can still be found. With a few weeks left to live, Laurence was looking to create a memento of Galder in an official book. After playing for four years, D&D meant a lot to Laurence: “it has kept me and my old friends from school together, it helped me find new friends at uni, and I’ve even had the pleasure of playing my first completed DnD campaign”.
Phillip says the post “gained a huge amount of traction”. “We were even contacted by Mike Mearls, who was in charge of D&D at the time, and got some official spells published in the charity publication The Lost Laboratory of Kwalish.”
Later, Laurence’s character would also star in Galder’s Gazetteer, a Zipperon Games supplement whose proceeds were (and seemingly still are) donated to the Cancer Research Institute. Galder narrates the gazetteer, which features a variety of DnD classes, spells, monsters, and adventures. It also features an appendix of memorialized NPCs.
Not long after Laurence’s post, Phillip says the original mods created the AdventuresOfGalder subreddit. “After Laurence passed a few months later, it was quite quickly decided to commemorate other deceased players and their characters, and it’s just grown since.”
Over half a decade later, AdventuresOfGalder is populated with RPG-themed obituaries. Many share details of a loved one’s life and death, followed by stories about the RPG character they played. Commenters share kind words for the person lost, and they’ll often find a way to memorialize the deceased’s character – naming spells after them, adding them as NPCs, or referencing them in worldbuilding, for example. As of writing, AdventuresOfGalder has around 23,000 members.
“Making the post brought a sort of finality to it”
One such member is Trenton, who made a memorial post for his friend Byoung in 2023. “My post was made about a year after my friend died”, he tells Wargamer. “I made it because I wanted to leave a place where I could share my favorite things about playing DnD with him.”
“Making the post brought a sort of finality to it, I guess”, Trenton adds. “Even though he had been gone for a year at that point, it was still this lingering question among my group and myself of ‘how do I move on?’.” He says that several commenters would honor Byoung’s character, a crafty cult-leading Kenku called Silent Chatter, by adding him to their own games.
“The community response really helped”, he says, “and changed how I play DnD to this day.” Trenton was inspired to follow the example of players who honored a lost person’s character in their world – and he added Silent Chatter to a new campaign.
“Even though Silent Chatter wasn’t directly in my homebrew world, as it was created after the player’s death, he is canonically built into the lore of my world in a way that I think my friend would have loved.” “This is the world I’ll be DMing in until I stop playing DnD”, he adds. “While I’m sad my friend won’t ever get to play in it, his character plays a pivotal role in the history of the world. That’s my sort of way of remembering who he was.”
In Trenton’s original post, he wrote: “Byoung was an incredibly kind and welcoming person”. “He [brought] me, the shy kid who had no friends and had never played DnD before, into the game with open arms and was patient while I learned.” “He was a non-traditional student, working hard to be able to quit a job he didn’t like. He took his own life this past June.”
“Understanding that others share the same type of grief is comforting”
Micky also made a post in AdventuresOfGalder after his friend Jon passed away in 2021. Jon and Micky were both players in a D&D group that formed during the 2020 lockdown. Jon roleplayed as a human Ranger named Korbokk, while Micky was a half-elf Druid named Draxon.
“Our group consists of old friends from childhood”, Micky tells Wargamer. “We are all in our 40s now, and some of us have been friends since elementary school. Jon grew up a few doors down from my wife, two blocks down the street from me.”
Jon was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, in the spring of 2020, and he joined Micky’s campaign just a few weeks later. “All through lockdown, we played every week”, Micky says. “Jon missed one session, and a lot of his sessions he played in a hospital in Texas hundreds of miles from home.”
“He was the most enthusiastic player, and he loved all aspects of the game, and much like he was in life, he meticulously took notes and organized his character with spreadsheets.” “He fought cancer for a little over a year”, Micky says, adding that Jon passed away in November 2021.
Korbokk the Ranger also passed away, and Micky says he was honored by a Viking funeral “as per Jon’s wishes”. “It was sad and hilarious when Jenny [a fellow player and chondrosarcoma survivor] rolled a nat 1 on the flaming arrow twice”, he adds. “My character finally cast Firebolt to light the pyre.”
Micky says that his post about Jon (which has since been lost) received a handful of responses, “mostly just people cheersing the memory of Korbokk”. “Understanding that others share the same type of grief is comforting”, he adds.
Micky also says that Dungeons and Dragons has become more than a game for him and his friends. “Playing a game like D&D with your friends brings you together; it isn’t just gaming.” “We share our lives with each other every time we play.”
“It isn’t therapy, but it is a safe place where friends can let go of troubles and have some fun”, he continues. “We start every session telling about our weeks, and end every one with ‘I love you’s. I hope we play forever.”
“Working within Adventures of Galder helped me better myself”
While many find AdventuresOfGalder in a time of mourning, Michael Margolin had been part of the community for years before he lost a friend. His original posts feature adventures and ideas that commemorate Galder, and he was a community manager in the group for some time.
As part of the group, Margolin says “I send messages of encouragement, of hope”. “I let people know that the world is lesser for the person lost but greater for their having been here.” “I make it known that it is okay to grieve for people who were imperfect, that it’s okay to keep moving forward, and that loss comes in many forms.”
In 2022, Margolin shared a Reddit post announcing that his friend David had passed away. There, he writes: “I have stories of the times we played D&D together… but I just wanted to make this post since his funeral was yesterday. I still don’t know how I am going to honor such an empowering person like him.” Sharif’s most memorable character was Agini, “a wood elf pyromancer of venerable reputation.”
“When David died, I felt that the community I and many others worked tirelessly to build turned around and supported me”, Margolin says. He apparently keeps David’s memory alive in his games, but the same honor is extended to other characters from AdventuresOfGalder’s Hall of Heroes.
Margolin adds that AdventuresOfGalder, and tabletop RPGs in general, have given him far more than just comfort. “My relationship with RPGs has evolved quite a bit”, he says. “First from a time in my life when I was so bad at basic communication that I often hurt my friendships. I was a creep for a while, but I practiced my social skills with professional help – and RPGs helped with that practice.”
“Working within Adventures of Galder helped me better myself”, he adds. “I’ve become the man I want to be, guiding others to kindness, confidence, wisdom, and imagination.”
“Have an open seat at your table to honor the dead.”
Everyone’s experience with death is different and deeply personal. And even if you’re not mourning, there are things to be learned from a community like AdventuresOfGalder.
“If I had to tell people who haven’t lost someone one thing, it would be to check in with your group”, says Trenton. “If you have a group you like playing with and who has stuck around, that’s something special.”
“My friend took his own life and was very very good at hiding how much pain he was in – we had no clue until after he was gone”, he adds. “Check in with your friends, because you never know what someone is going through.”
Phillip’s advice for players, regardless of whether they’ve lost a companion, is to keep playing. “The number one thing that keeps me sane and that really helped me get through my lowest points after losing [Laurence] was playing the game that he introduced me to”, he says. “I definitely am more conscious about the time I spend playing and enjoying the company of my friends.”
Michael Margolin advises us to “choose kindness”. “Have an open seat at your table to honor the dead. Have another open seat for new players and welcome them. Tolerate absolutely no disrespect or intolerance. Be creative and patient.”
Micky has the final word: “I don’t have much to say to players who haven’t lost a player other than I wish them good health.” “I hope the games never mean what they do to us, because I would quit playing forever if it meant Jon could stay.”
Source: Wargamer
