Permadeath
[1] Depending on the situation, this could require the player to create a new character to continue, or completely restart the game potentially losing nearly all progress made.
[6] Early home gaming mimicked this gameplay, including a simulation of entering coins to continue playing.
[8] Few single-player RPGs exhibit death that is truly permanent, as most allow the player to load a previously saved game and continue from the stored position.
[5] Extreme forms may further punish players, such as The Castle Doctrine, which has the option of permanently banning users from servers upon death.
At the same time, games using permadeath may encourage players to rely on emotional, intuitive or other non-deductive decision-making as they attempt, with less information, to minimize the risk to characters which they have bonded with.
In these games, the player generally manages a roster of characters and controls their actions in turn-based battles while building their attributes, skills, and specializations over time.
[6][12][13] Square's 1986 fantasy shoot 'em up game King's Knight featured four characters, each of which had to clear their own level before rejoining the others.
[16] Summarizing academic Richard Bartle's comments on player distaste for permadeath,[17] Engadget characterized fans of MMORPGs as horrified by the concept.
[23] Star Wars Galaxies had permadeath for Jedi characters for a short period but later eliminated that functionality after other players targeted them.
[31] Those seeking to risk permanent death feel that the more severe consequences heighten the sense of involvement and achievement derived from their characters.
[33] However, in an online game, permadeath generally means starting over from the beginning, isolating the player of the now-dead character from former comrades.
Richard Bartle described advantages of permanent death: restriction of early adopters from permanently held positions of power,[34] content reuse as players repeat early sections,[35] its embodiment of the "default fiction of real life", improved player immersion from more frequent character changes, and reinforcement of high level achievement.
The penalty often means a great deal of time spent to regain lost levels, power, influence, or emotional investment that the previous character possessed.
Players no longer interested in those aspects of the game will not want to spend time playing through them again in the hope of reaching others to which they previously had access.
These games typically have rules to stave off this permadeath, such as through resurrection spells, since this would allow players to remain committed to their character.
