I think this has been discussed before, but it's usually about whether or not death should be permanent, and should saving the game be universal or only at predetermined points, etc. I'm planning to make an adventure game with Legend of Zelda (Ocarina of Time) styled combat. So recently I've been thinking of what a good way to handle death might be. I really wouldn't want to punish a player for dying by making them restart. And I've always hated the idea of things like Pheonix Down in Final Fantasy. But what if death were less of an Ultimate End, and more of a... nuisance? I don't know what word to use to describe it, really. What if death were a spirit or something, that enters your body when you "die" in order to claim it? You and death (I'd rather not incorporate the Grim Reaper, perhaps it would be represented by a darker and well... "deathlike" version of yourself) would begin a battle (mentally/spiritually?) of will to decide whether or not you'll live. If you can defeat your death, it leaves your body and runs away. I can imagine something that might be neat, like later in the game (once you've become stronger) you'd have to defeat each of your earlier deaths in a big battle. <-- balance here would be needed somehow. Attacks in waves, maybe? There are a few issues with this that I can see: - It's just stupid if everybody can do it. How much would it suck to beat the crap out of a boss and they just come back to life? - But I don't want the main character to be special. Sure, probably nobody wants to play a game about the life of somebody as unimportant as everybody around him/her (with respect to whatever problem in the world requires a hero), but I don't really like the idea of the main character being some kind of "chosen one" with convenient super powers. - This way of death gives the player a kind of second chance. But what if you lose against death? That'd be kind of lame, wouldn't it? - And what about coming back to life? Suppose you keep dying fighting the same enemy? - I don't want the character to be invincible. Honestly, I don't have much of a story yet, but one of the ideas I'd like to include involves the character being killed and thrown off of a cliff (coming back to life afterwards, but not by the same means described above). Well. What do you guys think? Please, positive comments only! (kidding) :D Any ideas for the issues I've come up with? Ways to improve upon the whole idea? -Nick

What if "death" isn't death at all, but some form of atrophy or decay? When you're defeated in combat, your spirit sets about repairing your body. This is a difficult task, and requires a lot of spiritual energy. While you are regenerating, your defenses against entropy are reduced, but not eliminated. A spirit of destruction breaches your perimeter and tries to destroy your being.

You have only a small portion of your spirit available to fight this force off (see things like Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" for an idea of the splitting of the will for different tasks) and so you have to basically engage in a little battle inside your body. The longer you hold out, the more effective the regeneration is.

This way, you always come back, but your performance in the mini-fight determines what condition you're in when you do. If you do a great job and the dessicating force can't even get a foothold on you, then you come back at 100%, ready to kick ass, take names and chew bubble gum. If it whips your monkey ass and pierces to the core of your being, you come back as little more than a reanimated corpse, in need of serious healing.

So death is important, since you might have to back off after you die and go get some rest or items. At the same time, it's not a guaranteed end-game scenario.

This is definitely an interesting concept, but i can imagine an abuse to this system: You fail the first time to recover all your life, then seek a monster, die on purpose, and try to fight again for regeneration. if you do a better job, then you've GAINED life through death. Not exactly what you were aiming for.

On the other hand, if the top health you are aiming for is the health you had right before the encounter with the monster that killed you, and have to achieve a great fight in order to be able to recover the same amount of life unless you really lose life, then I can imagine a problem. Imagine that you encounter a particularly difficult monster with only half of your lifebar. You die and achieve a lame regeneration of yourself. After that resurection, you are only left with, say, one tenth of your lifebar in the middle of nowhere, with probable attacks before you get back to full rejuvenation. Then what if you can't recover enough life in order to survive more than a few seconds in this world? What if you're stuck in a dungeon with monsters that keep popping back to life? Or if the analogy to the first zeldas is still valid, each time you change screen? You successfully kiled all the monsters on your path on your way down, were almost killed by a semi-boss, and had to go back up, with only a tenth of your HP? Very Hard. However, keeping going down with the same amount is suicidal too. So what to do?

Somehow, death, or its equivalent should NOT force you to begin the game anew, from scratch. You should be teleported back to some location, with some losses in terms of equipment, asking you to go again through SOME portions of the game, in order to recover some needed equipment, but NOT solve the damn riddles. Once they are solved, they remain so. And even in this way, I honestly don't know if it would be acceptable to most players...

Yours faithfully,
Nicolas FOURNIALS

Able to buy clones or some sort of insurence so you have a backup to revert to when you die. You lose what you were carrying (unless you can find your body before someone else steals you stuff), but you can keep your exp, and your money (assuming you some sort of electronic monetary system). This of course means that you are limited to a scifi setting which is a bit restrictive. You can force a price on the clones, either per purchase, or per death (or both). this means the player must keep a certain amount of money on hand throughout the adventure to ensure they survive.

Platformers have permadeath with clones. You get 3 clones, as each one dies you get to restart at the last checkpoint (be it a flag, the start of the level, start of the section, etc). After you run out of clones, you get the oppurtunity to aquire another set of clones. However with this set you are forced to start further back in the game. Instead of a checkpoint, it may be the start of the level. It may even be the start of the world (if a world is split into mulitple levels like super mario bros.). Once you run out of clone sets you have to start completly over. You can earn clones by finding certain items (ie 1-up mushrooms) or doing certain tasks (reaching certain scores).

However this systems works only because the game can be beat in a single sitting (ie 1-2 hours). Games that are longer will require some sort of save system. This means permadeath becomes less desirable. In fact any game in which you allow the player to save, means permadeath will probably be too harsh of a punishment. Alien Vs Predator for the PC actually had limited saves which caused an uproar because the game was so difficult. Players were given a limted number of saves. A later patch introduced unlimited saves.

Any system that makes the game frusturating will cause players to stop playing yoru game. Worse yet, they will tell their friends how crappy the game is (even if its good) because they forgot to use a heal potion and got killed by some ranomd creature while leveling up forcing the player to restart the game.

Legacy of Kain 3 had an interseting method of death. When the player died, they become a ghost. While a ghost they had to find a entryway/portal back into the living world. While in the ghost world you would have to fight spirits. If you died in the spirit world you had to revert back to the last save. This was crucial to the gameplay since you could force yourself into the spirit world to take advantage of being spirit (ie pass through gates, water had no density, etc).

Any system you chose should be integral to the gameplay. There should be a definate consistence to how it works. Also just because the avatar gets killed in a cutscene does not mean the player needs to play through the mini game to see if he resurrects. Instead allow the story to handle that part. You will have to keep death, but could allow perhaps another entity to intervene during that scene to explain what happens to the character (ie why he did not have to fight death to resurrect). There are many possibilities, however i will need to think about the ideas a bit more so that they are solid. Since your points about teh downfalls of your system may be fixable through some clever "rules" that affect how the death vs player stuff plays out.

Even if you didn't have permadeath, death shouldn't be meaningless. The player should have to go through some trouble to either prevent the death beforehands or to fix the situation afterwards.

Here are some ideas:

At the time of character death, the immortal soul is released. If the character is not spiritually strong, the soul will be cast into the abyss. If, on the other hand, the character is spiritually strong, the soul will continue its existence in the land of the living, but in incorporeal form, meaning that the only ways to interact with the rest of the world are magical/whatever means. If the character is especially strong, nothing seems to happen — the character just seems to be immortal. However, even in the last case there is more than meets the eye happening here, as in all these cases the body of the character dies.

Now, the abyss is not hell. It is just a neutral place for the spirits of the dead to reside. It is possible to atone/redeem yourself in the abyss and be reincarnated to another form (depending on karma and/or spiritual power, the possible forms can range from crawling icky things to sentient beings). It is also possible to gain enough spiritual powers to manifest yourself as a incorporeal being in the land of the living (see below).

Incorporeal beings in the land of the living have their means to interact with the world, even though they cannot interact physically. Spirits that are strong enough to stay in the land of the living (instead of being cast into the abyss) are also capable to possess other creatures. The stronger the spirit is, the stronger the possessed body can be (you could even add a minigame here, where the souls battle for the possession of the body, not completely unlike as suggested in the original post). With enough power it is possible to possess dead objects (including that good old rotting body which the character had before death). Possession could be only temporary. However, by casting the right spells (or whatever) you could make the possession permanent. Of course one of the ideas here is that you could try to find your old body and gain possession of it.

In the case where the spirit actually manages to either hang on in the original dying body or manages to possess it later on, game continues almost as normal, but with the exception that the body is dead. It keeps rotting and decreases charisma, bodily skills, and what have you and the character is practically an undead being. By getting the body back to life (e.g. with magic) you could repair some of the damage, but you could also just try to preserve the body with herbs and ointments and truly become an undead character (at least we would get an explanation where all those skeleton warriors are coming from).

You could divide all skills to be mental or physical (maybe even in a fuzzy way so that some skills can be both mental and physical), and success in physical skills depends on the body and success in mental skills depends on the soul. Also, you could try to balance the game so that you can't really become very strong spiritually without giving up some of the physical properties (e.g. in order to demonstrate to your deity that you are pious you have to flagellate yourself as a sign of humility or whatever).

You could also use the system for other things than just death — mental battles and "psionics" could take place in situations other than possession attempts; you could banish enemies straight into the abyss, leaving their corpses animate but without control; or you could even build a mechanical construct to possess later on (once again the vision of summoning spirits to control an army of electro-mechanically reinforced undead warriors engulfs my mind ([grin])).

And then some final notes:

As you said, it is more or less annoying if the player character is the only character capable of doing any of this. Thus, you need to create the whole game world and the background story with whatever anti-death means you choose to use in mind.

I don't really think you should make death a nuisance, at least a nuisance as in a chore. Death should have a meaning. Also keep in mind that death is something that happens to the character. You should punish the character for dying — not the player. Also, even if you didn't punish the player for character death, there is no reason why you shouldn't punish the character (of course, it's not as simple as that, since there is a sort of a bonding between the player and the character, or at least there should be if the player is role-playing).

Enough of the ravings of a mandman for now. And nondeath is permadeath. It has been proven (see the bottom of the post).