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Does anyone else find the countless death scenes that the protagonist ends up in a little depressing? I haven't written any full games yet, and I've only killed them twice, but I still can't help but feel sorry for the poor buggar. 

I mean, it's not my fault she did stupid things x, y and z, I wrote all the possibilities, and if she plays her cards right she will do well, but all the same it hurts my feelings, you know? Maybe if the people who play it don't choose those options, it'll make me feel better, but the chances are someone will get her killed eventually. It seems that maybe I should make maybe a few staple death scenes, with several paths that lead to something like, "oh dear, you got stabbed," but that feels cheap.

Any tips on nursing these feelings, or reducing death scenes in a story where death is a necessary deterrent? 

Ha ha you have feelings!

Just create non-death endings which could still logically stop the protagonist in whatever their task might be. (imprisonment, reassignment, transported to some place far away, etc.)

There's countless ways to arrive at a losing ending without killing off the character. Death is just an easy shortcut much of the time, and honestly is a bit overused.

You don't always have to structure a storygame so that there is a certain 'good' ending, and the rest 'bad' i.e. death endings. Like what Endmaster and Mizal have said, you don't have to have your character die for it to be a 'bad' ending, and it needn't be bad at all. There are storygames where there are multiple endings which could be considered 'good'.

Ur a wee babby.

I mean, death scenes can be funny!

Yeah, like a whore dying by succubus. Or a thief having his life stolen. Or a therapist hearing voices and going crazy leading to a violent how-the-hell-did-this-happen death. Something Ironic.

Taco, Irony doesn't necessarily mean funny.

Pfft. How else could you make such a somber occasion any degree of funny?

Well, there's this one scene I wrote where I get shoved into an oven.

I don't see how you could make that funny.

Dialogue.

"Sent, don't do me like this! Don't Jew me!" You say, kicking the door (to no avail, as the rolling pin is still in place) as you feel the oven around you increase in temperature. "DON'T JEW ME LIKE THIS!"

"I can't have you coming after me, Tim!" Sent says. "This sandwich is too important! Okay, preheat to 500°..."

The oven is slowly getting warmer and warmer. You try picking up your pistol, but immediately drop it due to the heat.

"SENT!" you scream. "SENT, LET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"Sorry, Tim... If you can't take the heat..." He says as he puts on a pair of sunglasses. "... you should've stayed out of the kitchen..."

You hear "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!" fill the air as Sent walks away.

"SENT!" You plead as you fruitlessly kick the door. "SEEEEEENT!"

Well, perhaps someone else finds it funny. Personally, I don't.

I guess I've just seen it and heard people grieving over it too much for it to be funny with anything but a bitter tinge, like irony.

Hmmm... this opened with a Holocaust joke AND a bad pun. You've failed.

Not to be too much of a critic here, and I don't claim any cooking qualifications nor any skill in field for that matter, but...

Don't you preheat the oven before putting the item to be cooked in?

Isn't preheating postentry just... heating?

Also, your pistol heated up remarkably quickly given the oven hasn't even been preheated yet.

I dunno cooking. I'm pretty sure that if you dropped a pistol on a hot object for 10 seconds it'd be pretty hot.

Preheating just means the oven is heating up to the desired temperature at which it'll receive enough energy to remain static.

You'd still roast alive once it reached 200, or 300, or 400 degrees.

1. Kill Tim and remove all the innards.
2. Remove the head and save as a wall decoration.
3. Tuck Tim’s arms underneath his body.
4. Pat Tim dry inside and out with paper towels. Salt and pepper inside of Tim.
5. With fingers and cutting tools, separate skin from body and stuff with softened butter.
6. Loosely stuff large cavity of Tim. (Stuffing expands as it cooks)
7. Stuff neck cavity with a small amount of stuffing. Fold the neck skin over opening.
8. Using rope, cross the legs together and tie them securely.
9. Season Tim generously all over with coarse salt.
10. Season Tim all over with fresh ground black pepper.
11. Put Tim into a big ass roasting pan and throw into a big ass oven.
12. Cook until Tim is well done and place on table. (White boots on feet for decoration optional)

Ahem... a hobby you want to tell us about? ;)

Byootiful

Tenouttaten would sacrifice.

Empathy for one’s own creations while sort of amusing is also sort of understandable to a degree I suppose. So despite my mockery of your fee fees, I guess here’s a possible tip to master them in this case.

You have to just imagine yourself as an omnipotent being that has power over every “living being” in your world you have created. These people, places, and things all exist for your own whims whatever those may be. You have power of life and death. You can take away everything or resurrect it all, in fact you've probably done this countless times already.

You’ve been around much longer and seen more than these creations ever have or ever will. What are their deaths in the scheme of things? It’s merely one or several possibilities of what you can decide that happens to them.

However, in YOUR head you decide which course of “events” is the one that really happened. THAT is what is true to you. All those times the protagonist died? Meaningless. Didn’t happen. Was just one possible alternate reality you designed on a whim and then “threw away” because it didn’t please you.

Does it still exist? Sure, but does it matter? No, because you’ve already decided on what really happened in your world and in your world the protagonist lived happily ever after. (Or whatever other outcome you wanted)

If you want other endings to be ‘real” you can, if you want them all to be real you can do that too. It’s what YOU want because ultimately it’s your creation and there’s no need to get so upset about it.

Solutions:

1. The Jackie Chan Approach: The hero can be kind of a major asshole at times, but they try their best and they're likable jerks. You want to see them succeed, but you wouldn't mind seeing some slapstick, even if it's fatal... This is very difficult to pull off, and a lot of American writers have preferred to put Jackie Chan into the roles of nice guys that you DON'T want to see getting hit. Jackie Chan understands this dynamic much better, and his protagonists are often dicks that get hit just as much as the bad guys, as they progress through the story and learn stronger kung fu, they become more mature and kind, making you really root for them when he stops getting hit and takes on the bad guy.

 

2. The Realistic Approach: Your protagonist is a regular person, and there's only so many times they can invoke the wrath of Cthulhu, get beat up by angry meth dealers, get forcibly injected with Giga Herpes, etc. before they just pack up and go home. Fuck this shit! I have other things to do in my life than adventure!

3. The Pacifistic Villains Approach: The bad men have enough shit on their plates already, what with that evil plan and all, without having to deal with the legal business that's involved with murder. When she's snooping around their shit, they have her arrested for tresspassing, or knock her out and send her home.

4. The Pokemon Approach: This universe has an alternate method of resolving conflicts that doesn't involve death. People get awful beat up, figuratively or literally, but once you lose this little game-duel, you've effectively lost at life and are considered out of commission until you're restored or something.

5. The Cohen Bros. Approach: Your character simply fails to complete the goal. It ends with everything sucking.

The world she's in should be safe enough to avoid it most of the time, since apparently you have to make several stupid decisions to get killed, so I'd assume it wouldn't happen enough for you to need the Jackie Chan approach, but it's always an interesting and fun thing to see, though, done proper.