There's a game Kongregate (anybody, feel free to jump in with the name) where its essentially a roguelike. You pick a class and race and go down the floors, leveling up.

When you die, you lose everything (gold, weapons, etc) but you unlock an 'epiteth'.

When you start a new character you can use 2 or 3 epiteths (provided you've unlocked them) and they alter your initial skills and stats.

Essentially, you have to die 3 times to get the best epiteths and add them to your final character.

Maybe that could help?

Thanks! Sounds like an awesome game. Does anyone know the name? Would love to try it!

However, I am more concern with how to explain it storywise, rather than the game mechanics of it. Even though it is multiplayer, I am going to follow roguelike RPGs and not explain anything. Just let the player die and respawn fresh with the same name without reason.

However, I am more concern with how to explain it storywise, rather than the game mechanics of it. Even though it is multiplayer, I am going to follow roguelike RPGs and not explain anything. Just let the player die and respawn fresh with the same name without reason.

Perhaps you might tell us more of the story itself so that a piece of lore justifying/validating the use of revival/resurrection can be developed more easily.

I agree with others that any kind of resurrection will have to translate to either divine intervention, magic, or high tech; so if you are aiming a lot of realism, you can't have resurrection.

If you're looking for a plot device that allows you to revive characters in gameplay while still make believable story deaths, you can sort to nature; like a very powerful medicine that sprouts from specific trees, flowers or forests. It can heal many fatal wounds (the ones from normal battles) but it can't heal extremely serious injuries like the ones from the story plot, or at the time of their plot deaths this medicine was taken/robbed from inventory and there's no close tree in vecinity.

It's still a form of "magic", but the idea is having something that is believable enough ("this could work in real life", explains why it works, and why it can't be used as a Deus Ex Machina), and restricted enough to explain how is it that it can't resurrect story deaths (why it didn't work)

Of course if your game characters die A LOT, it's still going to ring a bell when gameplay mechanics conflicts with story's permadeath.

But don't think it too hard, Final Fantasy VII had both an item "Phoenix Down" and a spell called "Full Life" to revive party members, and still had a major character died permanently in story, and there's a lot of jokes on the internet about that (which is a good thing, that is people talking about your game).

One way you could explain 'resurrection' in a non-tech, non-magical way is to change the way being 'killed' is treated. Often times people can be knocked unconscious, badly wounded, or just generally appear to be dead, while still only being in a near-death state.

Once you can explain it like that, you could, lore-wise, say that some random passer by has found you and either helped you heal, or returned you to a hospital or something. This seems like a reasonable explanation for outdoors areas, though not necessarily for the Dungeon Of Ultimate Doom (or other places like that) where random passers by are unlikely. But that could be just another way to make your dungeons unique and make them seem like an actual threat, like some place that truly is dangerous for the player, where they can die permanently.

Of course, always being badly wounded or having a near-death experience might also seem unrealistic, so you could give a small chance for perma-death every time you're 'killed'. You could make it dependent on how often the player dies - i.e. if they haven't died in over an hour, there's 1% chance of perma-death, but if they die twice in ten minutes, there's a 50% chance of perma-death on that second 'death'.

To sum up my thoughts regarding this...

When I posted this thread, I was returning to an old project and did not have a clear idea. Now, I am pretty sure it will be a rogue-like RPG with perma-death, that is not "hardcore". E.g. the indie game "Rogue Legacy". It will have limited multiplayer elements, like "Dark Souls" (players can occasionally join the same game, or leave messages in the game world).

I was deciding between two ways to handle the perma-death:

1) The player's character permanently dies and he needs to create a new one.

2) The player control a team or family (e.g. Rogue Legacy) and when one dies, he can pick another.

I did not want to use any magic or high technology to resurrect the player because I am really hoping to make the game world a dangerous place where characters get torn to shreds if they are not careful, and also give the rogue-like perma-death feeling of making runs into the dungeon (players retain some of their loot upon death, just like in Rogue Legacy).

In the end I decided to simply revive the player's character without explanation. The player respawn in his house, whatever he kept at home is intact, but what he brought along are destroyed.