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[Graham-]

Permadeath is about consequence. If I can die permanently my victories are more meaningful, because I likely had to grow to gain them. I mean "grow as a player" here. When I play my favourite titles I relish in my own development, or the nostalgia about it. The rogue-like is permadeath for me. That's what it is, because permadeath is the most mechanically meaningful aspect of it. ... Maybe RPG-with-permadeath is more appropriate as a label. The dungeoning part is secondary.

I like the earlier comment that said the death should not come as a surprise. The player should usually have lots of opportunities to avoid it, at least to create dramatic tension, so the price of dying and restarting is well coupled with the narrative attention given to it. A long trip into the depths of a dungeon, followed by a death, should have significance... even if that significance is only in learning about mechanics - as it usually is. "Whoops I died because of x," where x is a simple idea, without nuance, is a boring thing to think. And we're back to Dark Souls . I can't resist.

[stefoid]

Really nice discussion! 

For my 2 cents, in fiction, leading characters rarely die, but when they do, meaning is generally attached to their death by making it the character's choice.  Self-sacrifice for a cause.   Like the guy who goes into the <bad danger> alone knowing that in order to <do the very important thing> is almost certain death.

So maybe this could be worked into an RPG in some way -- make the chance of perma-death optional based on … whatever.  Maybe some quests are perma-death quests and some aren't.  Maybe you can get grody powers for a time, but only at the expense of risking perm-death.

[oodavid]

Not sure where I stand with "permadeath" in general, but I like the idea of leaving corpses everywhere that decay over time. Maybe you could allow the corpses to be ransacked by their original owner up until the point it's just a pile of bones (then other players are free to ransack it)

[SuperBidi]

I'm a great fan of permadeath games (hardcore Diablo or Path of Exile for example), and at the same time I find them greatly frustrating when you lose multiple hours (or even days) of playing because of death.

An idea to avoid that is to create 2 levels of play. A lower level with permadeath enabled and a higher level without permadeath involved.

I'll give you a hack'n slash example of this theory :
You play a summoner, who summons creature which battle in a hack'n slash game.
Like in any hack'n slash, creatures evolve in level, being stronger over the time. Permadeath is enabled at the creature level of play : If a creature dies, you lose all your creature did.
But there is also the summoner level. The summoner also evolves because of your creature fighting monsters. And your summoner never dies.
That way death becomes part of the game. Losing a creature is anoying but, as you don't lose all progression in the game, it does not discourage you from continuing. You can even make death a part of the game by giving, for example, a big bonus at every creature death, bonus depending on how far your creature went in the game.

So, I haven't thought about how to create these 2 levels of play in your game, but it's for me the nicer way to die in a game. Keeping the frustrating part of death without discouraging the player from continuing.
Of course, every game must be different. If the player is doing twice the same thing after his death, he will quickly quit. But if there are many part of the gameplay he hasn't experienced, he will certainly continue to play over and over.

[Muz]

Player has to learn something new.
Player has to achieve something unique via death... like dying to a very rare artifact guardian or treasure vault. Permadeath should never be caused by mooks.
There should be plenty of replayability. The death itself should be something to look forward to so that the player can try something new after getting bored of a role.

[rek]

The life and death of the previous player character should leave an impression on the game for the next player character – this way no matter how attached you were to the character or how far you got, dying doesn't mean completely starting from scratch in a world that doesn't remember your previous efforts.

[oodavid]

You could Symon your own corpse as a zombie!

A non constructive brain fart

[baconman]

I'm gonna suggest taking a different mechanic from Dark Souls: switch gates.

Let's say you navigate through a whole, or maybe even half a dungeon, okay? Well, now there's a switch-gate you can throw open on the other side, so if you want or need to, you can go out and recover and come back; or if you get permadeathed, your next character can proceed through the now-opened gateway. Even if your characters aren't persistent, who says your world can't be, on some level?

Generate a world once a week, once a month maybe (whatever's an appropriate time frame for exploring it; maybe once a day if it's small; or just allow the player to generate worlds whenever's clever). So maybe you have two "paths" to begin with, but they form loopback points that allow them to become interconnected and more intricate by activating these switches. (Or discovering shortcuts within them, perhaps.) Then their endpoints bring you to a short path that forks again.

All a map really needs to be interesting are about 4 dungeons with gameplay variation, although 8-9 appears to be best (from NES standards). Then even as you create and utilize more mechanics, don't worry about making the world bigger, make the shuffling of the world more interesting; or even implement a "second lap" system where completing the game once alters the map into a hard mode (ala Terraria or Zelda) where you face more deadly enemies and mechanics to test the player's growth.

[saluk]

You mention building villages and having wars etc between villages. I would say that the life of a character is insignificant compared to the life of the village, and the lasting changes made in such a world. Make this progression clear and focus it on how the player has affected the world as the main point of progression rather than on how the world has affected the player.

I'm irritated in minecraft when I mine deep and end up losing a huge diamond hall - but my cool minecart setup that gets me down to those low levels is still intact.

[Verbante]

hi a permadeath online game would be really great!!
for a meaningfull death player must loose something when he dies
on good rogue-like games you loose your precious, unique; character, ship, crew which you r connected to
so you must make the characters customizable and adorable
also meaningless deaths shouldnt exist like falling into spikes and die or killing yourself
at this point three lives is a huge problem cause a player who didnt progress in the game but loose 2 lives will kill himself and that would make dieing a casual meanigless thing
3 lives is realy ok in level based games but i don't think the same for the permadeath one's
the motivation to play again is games replayablity quality and meaningfull death itself
meaningless deaths just anoy me
also you got the opurtunity to add an another looseabe thing on the game ''your friends''!!!
that would be sad but cool
but for this you should make socializing a nessesary or at least facilitative thing for survival
so if the game had everything above the player will embark to a journey which he will play as a unique charachter who he likes and will make friends and die loosing all in a not absurd but honorable situation ad replays
ps:i don't develop games so i did mention everything as if they are really easy but i know they are not

[quantumpotato]

Rogue Legacy for PS4 is a roguelike where the maze is randomly generated each time. When your character dies, you select a "Descendent" who has different traits than their predecessor. Skills are persistent across characters.

I recommend watching their Design Talk http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020541/Rogue-Legacy-Design-Postmortem-Budget

[diegzumillo]

I don't have much to add, everyone pretty much nailed the subject. But there was an interesting browser game I playe a while back that only allowed you to play once. Probably saves a cookie on your computer so you can't simply refresh the page and try again (cheating is easy though). But yeah, that's an extreme idea: make death be as close to the real deal as possible. Play, die, go play something else now cause you're dead in this game.

I googled the name and it's called One Chance. Short and sweet, I recommend checking it out.

[sodap]

Something that crossed my mind reading this thread: permadeath is/was the core of all/most arcade game designs

[s0]

"permadeath" is just the "default" lose state for games in general. permanent progress is actually the "abnormal" concept. it just became commonplace in videogames due to their unique technical capabilities.

[DragonDePlatino]

If your game is going to feature permadeath, then you need to make sure the beginning of each run is as interesting as possible.

When you described your game, I was immediately reminded of Don't Starve. Don't Starve also have village-building, survival and permadeath, but it had a terribly dully earlygame. At the start of every playthrough, you would be doing the same thing (collecting food, twigs and grass for several days) which got very boring very quickly.

To fix this, you could make subsequent runs of your game more streamlined than the previous ones to keep the player engaged. Have some sort of a diety system where the gods grant you starter resources on subsequent playthroughs. Allow fallen players to pass on a small amount of items to the next playthrough. Let veterans begin with items that let them trivialize the earlygame resource-collecting. Anything to let players jump right back into the action after they die.

[quantumpotato]

I don't have much to add, everyone pretty much nailed the subject. But there was an interesting browser game I playe a while back that only allowed you to play once. Probably saves a cookie on your computer so you can't simply refresh the page and try again (cheating is easy though). But yeah, that's an extreme idea: make death be as close to the real deal as possible. Play, die, go play something else now cause you're dead in this game.

I googled the name and it's called One Chance. Short and sweet, I recommend checking it out.

There was a game called "Make the right Choice" which showed the game through the lens of a rifle scope. Everything else was dark you had to pan around until you found a guy tied up in a chair. If you hit ESC, then reload, it says "You made the right choice" and is stuck. The reviews were all "I killed the guy in level 1, wtf now when I reload he's dead?"

[DangerMomentum]

One way permadeath becomes meaningful when it gives the player a chance to try a totally new approach / build / strategy. I think this is why it works so well in roguelikes- a new character and world is a fresh attempt at a winning strategy. It's up to the player to decide if it was their execution or their strategy that failed.

[sodap]

One way permadeath becomes meaningful when it gives the player a chance to try a totally new approach / build / strategy. I think this is why it works so well in roguelikes- a new character and world is a fresh attempt at a winning strategy. It's up to the player to decide if it was their execution or their strategy that failed.

I like how you explained it, well done

[Pedrosanchau]

You can make some skills, character, stats points carry on the next character.

As in reincarnation where people still have some traces left of their past lives.

[oakthesnail]

You should make the buildup to the highest attainable power level not be tedious or time consuming, which means the highest attainable power shouldn't be too far off being naked in the woods. Make the fun in the gameplay about doing things, taking action; not about building up the character. That could be limited to as what kind of combination weaponry/armor you decide you're going to use for that character's life.