Quote: Also, what about a mix of both systems: What if you have some sort of "karma points" that you collect, save up, and can spend (depending on the death)? I haven't really thought that out, but my guess is that mixing the two systems could be fresh and new or monstrously confusing.
That's just good old extra lives. ;) Sure, that would work, but you might as well not bother. No decent RPG player (or whatever you'd call this game) would allow himself to run out of lives anyway. ;) Not if they have the option to keep reloading to avoid nasty situations. So you might as well go with always letting the player escape death. ... True, it might not be very immersive to know that you'll still survive after you've gotten shot and left for death for the twentieth time today.
You could always have a 95% chance of divine intervention. A 5% chance of a stab/bullet hitting your heart, or a drop breaking your neck would be enough to make player's try their best to avoid it. Combine that with infrequent autosaves, and the player is just as fearful of losing, but without most of the chance of dying.
Haven't thoroughly read this thread (no time), but I would direct your attention to a game called "Jagged Alliance 2", from SirTech.
The game had you attempting to take over an island called Arulco using a band of hired guns. The tactical game was turn based, and involved using said mercenaries to kill all the hostile people within a given 'sector'. Each enemy soldier killed had a chance to drop items upon death. The more times you saved/loaded within a sector, the less likely such drops were. I.e, if you played through the entire sector without saving or loading, perhaps getting some of your own mercs hurt or killed, then most enemies would drop exactly what they were carrying (armour, guns, medkits..) If you saved every 10 seconds, and loaded whenever any friendlies got shot, you could find that none of the hostiles in the sector drop anything at all.
Of course, in some genres, dodging death is entirely appropriate - if you're a superspy for instance, getting "killed" actually means getting captured, having the villain's plans explained to you in excruciating detail, and then being put into an easily escapable "certain" death scenario with a single inept guard ("activate the unnecessarily slow dipping device!") - of course, if you fail to escape the certain death scenario, you may face the dreaded "Game Over" - or fade to black and come back with admiring sidekick asking "how did you escape" just before some new emergency distracts you from explaining...
Obviously, in that scenario, getting captured means losing some game-time, and some equipment (most obviously your gun), but gains you information. Escaping the certain death yourself would use some resources, but give you the opportunity to colect various items from the enemy lair (including what was taken from you), while "how did you escape" would pobably use up some resources, and deny you the opportunity to loot on your way out.
