Write to the theme of the roleplay, not the theme that you want to insert.

Start off by thinking about their adventure and what you wish to achieve. Maybe they're a complete nobody that hot pull in because they were at the wrong place at the right time, or perhaps they got mixed up in identity with someone else, or maybe they—instead of having someone die—owe some money or have a stolen set of goods.

On a lot of my characters now I rarely use the death aspect [i]unless[/i] it works in with the character properly. As an example my last character is a superhuman who discovered her abilities by accident after they lead to the death of another human. She's gonna be haunted by those memories and will hate her abilities, but that's because I want to write a character who has to come to terms with how dangerous she is when everyone else is able to fly, teleport or even read minds—abilities that are safe in comparison.