How much post-life advancement can/should a RL have?

[pampl]

Even though Angband has perma-death, like most RLs, it also has development over multiple lives in the form of the monster memory. Nethack has a bones file that lets you retrieve your lost gear (or something; I'm uncertain of the specifics). Crawl sort-of goes the opposite direction and creates a bone file full of ghosts that are more of a penalty than a help, until you get tired of them hassling you and blow them all to oblivion with a necromancer. DoomRL has "achievements", though I think they're just for bragging rights and don't effect the gameplay. Spelunky lets you bypass large chunks of the game after you've given enough money (over the course of multiple games) to having shortcuts built. The Shiren the Wanderer series has all kinds of development that occurs over multiple lives.

At what point does it go too far? Diablo 1 let your character keep all his experience and spells and inventory, and even your equipment could be retrieved if you were careful and diligent enough. I think that was probably too 'generous' for most of us. What separates it from these (other) RLs? Is it because you don't have to go through earlier (in terms of both the dungeon and character advancement) parts of the game again? Even in Spelunky in some ways you start at zero when you start a new life.

[will_asher]

I think ghosts (and recovering their cursed stuff) worked well in Nethack. I haven't met any player ghosts in Angband variants (although I ran away from some ghosts before meeting them in FA), but I don't think they'd fit well in a *band.
At the same time, I think it would be cool if Angband or a variant had a little more of this advancement over multiple lives thing. An inheritance might be good.

[Sirridan]

Possibly getting a random item from your home after death? Could be as nice as that *Acquirement* you're saving for dlvl 80, or as bad as that restore cha potion you chucked in there for some reason.

[Derakon]

Ehh, I prefer to start afresh instead of having twinked characters. There's such a huge power differential between the items a level-1 character has (barring ridiculous luck) and the items that a level-50 character has that giving any of the latter's gear to the former is all too likely to render the early game trivial.

Heck, even just getting a pair of gloves with FA and +15 AC hugely increases your durability in combat against early enemies.

The monster memory is different, since that's just there so the player doesn't have to deal with the tedium of manually taking notes on monsters' abilities.

[PowerWyrm]

MAngband and my variant PWMAngband turn players into ghosts when they die. Being multiplayer, you can ask a fellow player to resurrect you with a Scroll of Life, and, if you stayed on the level you died, you can retrieve part (or the totality) of your equipment. If nobody is around when you play, you can float up to town and resurrect at the Temple, but in this case you lose all your equipment. In any case, the cost of resurrection is half your current experience.

This was implemented initially to avoid perma-death due to lag or intempestive disconnections. With turn-based single player RL, this feature is pointless. You have plenty of time to think your moves, and death is a fair reward for playing mistakes.

[Nomad]

Nethack has a bones file that lets you retrieve your lost gear (or something; I'm uncertain of the specifics).

If you die on a non-special level, there's a chance (not 100%) that the level will be preserved as a bones file. Next time a player reaches that dungeon level, there's a chance you'll get the bones level instead of a new one being generated. All the rooms/monsters/items are preserved, and the player's stuff is left on the floor (with a high chance of each individual item becoming cursed) with a ghost over it. The player ghosts aren't too dangerous, but whatever killed the original player is also going to be hanging around, which is bad news if it was something horribly OOD or the infamous 'gnome with a wand of death', but good news if it was YASD at the hands of a newt.

It works pretty well as a system because the new player still has to fight their way down to the same depth as the first player did and defeat the original cause of death to collect the goodies, and to make use of them they've then got to schlep big heavy stacks of cursed stuff around until they can de-curse it. But I can't see it working in a roguelike without permanent dungeon levels, because of the impossibility of ID-ing, de-cursing and sorting big stacks of stuff without being able to leave stashes behind on the level to come back to.

[pampl]

Ehh, I prefer to start afresh instead of having twinked characters. There's such a huge power differential between the items a level-1 character has (barring ridiculous luck) and the items that a level-50 character has that giving any of the latter's gear to the former is all too likely to render the early game trivial.

Heck, even just getting a pair of gloves with FA and +15 AC hugely increases your durability in combat against early enemies.

The monster memory is different, since that's just there so the player doesn't have to deal with the tedium of manually taking notes on monsters' abilities.

Wouldn't starting with a scroll that instantly descended you 10 or 20 floors also remove some tedium? I know it's not exactly the same situation as monster memory, but boredom is boredom, and many players find the first few dozen floors to be boring after completing them so many times. What if making it to floor ten (or 20, 30, etc) in under a certain amount of turns permanently unlocked an elevator to that floor? The player would have proved they were able and willing to dive quickly past those levels, and they're easy enough that if you can do it once you can do it 3/4th of the time or more, so what's the point in making them replay a part of the game they don't find interesting?

(Not that I'm seriously planning on implementing this kind of thing in a *band variant, at least any time soon; I'm just curious about people's thoughts on it)

[Nick]

Wouldn't starting with a scroll that instantly descended you 10 or 20 floors also remove some tedium?

Or, in my case, one that just killed you outright.

[will_asher]

Or, in my case, one that just killed you outright.

Yeah it would save a lot of tedium if we make every character start with a potion of death.

[rdermyer]

If you die on a non-special level, there's a chance (not 100%) that the level will be preserved as a bones file. Next time a player reaches that dungeon level, there's a chance you'll get the bones level instead of a new one being generated. All the rooms/monsters/items are preserved, and the player's stuff is left on the floor (with a high chance of each individual item becoming cursed) with a ghost over it. The player ghosts aren't too dangerous, but whatever killed the original player is also going to be hanging around, which is bad news if it was something horribly OOD or the infamous 'gnome with a wand of death', but good news if it was YASD at the hands of a newt.

It works pretty well as a system because the new player still has to fight their way down to the same depth as the first player did and defeat the original cause of death to collect the goodies, and to make use of them they've then got to schlep big heavy stacks of cursed stuff around until they can de-curse it. But I can't see it working in a roguelike without permanent dungeon levels, because of the impossibility of ID-ing, de-cursing and sorting big stacks of stuff without being able to leave stashes behind on the level to come back to.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Any *bands do that?

[rdermyer]

Yeah it would save a lot of tedium if we make every character start with a potion of death.

Random potion: "of death" or "of augmentation".

[fizzix]

I originally read the title as.

How much post-life advancement can/should a Real Life have? and was very confused.

[Roch]

I originally read the title as.

How much post-life advancement can/should a Real Life have? and was very confused.

I'd say advance all the way up to the pearly gates, if not beyond.

[bron]

I originally read the title as.

How much post-life advancement can/should a Real Life have? and was very confused.

Yeah, me too. But I found the discussion made a certain amount of sense, in a disturbing sort of way:

"Even though Angband has perma-death, like most Real Lives ..."

"With turn-based single player Real Life, this feature is pointless."