First, let's start with a basic roguelike design. Turn based combat, procedural generation, the works. For the sake of this topic, let's take a roguelike design that doesn't allow backtracking; once you take the stairs down to a new floor, you can't go back to the previous floor. (This means there's no need for the game to remember what was on the previous floor.)

Now, let's make a significant change; when you die, it's not game over. Instead, the current dungeon level is re-generated (that is, it now has a new map, along with new items and enemies), and you are placed at the start of the newly generated floor. There's a death counter, but otherwise, there is no penalty for dying repeatedly; you even keep the experience and gold from previous attempts at the floor.

At this point, is the game still a roguelike? We've removed permadeath, but it still satisfies the other characteristics of a classical roguelike.

Now that death is no longer much of an issue (it's just a minor setback), we can do something that designers of permadeath roguelikes would be loath to do: We can make the dungeon generation much more chaotic. It is now possible for powerful treasures and enemies to appear early in the dungeon, and we no longer need to be concerned about fairness. (Enter a new level, there's a medusa in the room you appear in, you see the medusa, you turn to stone, you die; no big deal because the game will just generate a new floor.) Furthermore, we can remove one constraint that many developers of procedurally generated games have to deal with; specifically, that every generated floor must be clearable. As long as there's a suicide button to allow the player to force the floor to be regenerated, we can have floors that, for example, require the player to dig for the exit even if the player might not have the required tool.

Given a game designed like this, would you play it?

bump (so that this post shows up in the "Topics I've participated in" list)

Sounds a bit like an excuse for bad level design, but I might try it. And no, I wouldn't consider it a rogue-like.

One possible issue would be that mechanics such as hunger (or anything similar, like poison) that carries over from the last level could end one's game despite the respawn ability. If you respawn without any such effects, or if it won't carry over between the stages, I guess this would be avoided.

Still, if you might come across anything at any level, there isn't much point in proceeding. You're really just doing the same kind of random level 'til you get bored with it, you've seen it all, you've maxed out your character or you get to the end level/boss/thing. The main benefit from proceeding to a new level and not just starting a new game would be the character advancement. I suspect the player burnout rate will be even higher than with classical rogue-likes.

Would I consider it a roguelike? Heck no, no way.

Randomness and procedural generation are characteristics of roguelikes, but these alone do not make a roguelike in my mind. And I don't see much else in your description that would make this a roguelike.

Would I play it?

Why not, if it's fun to play. That's mostly dictated by features that are orthogonal to the way you deal with death and progress through levels. So what compels me to go on?

If memory serves me, Necrodancer gives you the option to continue (once?) if you die on a dungeon. It'll restart the level, generating it again. You do lose progress, but that's a minor detail. I'd press continue more than once to keep going, since it's fun and I want to see what's ahead. But I don't know if it would remain fun that way. Maybe it would need something else to go with it.

I wouldn't play it because I like the option of escaping difficult battles by climbing to the previous floor. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup implemented this very well with 3 sets of stairs on each floor. This way if you meet a very difficult monster, which is likely, you can go back and use another set of stairs to go on with the game.

If permadeath is gone in the game and if the level is no longer "clearable," then I don't see how a game like that could be very fun. The challenge of roguelikes is not only the random levels, but the possibility that one wrong move could mean death. This allows the player to recognize their mistakes and to try again to get further in the game.

I can think of a few ways to deal with this problem:

1. Certain things are more likely to happen at certain levels. For example, the most dangerous enemies might appear more often deeper in the dungeon.

2. The game would be designed to be short. I'm thinking that, perhaps, making the game usually clearable in about half an hour or so might work. (Of course, with bad luck it might take much longer.) Hence, the game would end before the player gets too bored, and they can then start another game if desired.

3. As I mentioned, the level generation would be *very* chaotic. The player could end up in very strange situations, and there could be some funny ways the player could die (or not). Perhaps the level of chaos in the level generation could be customized; at low chaos, strong enemies don't appear until deeper, and perhaps there might be some guarantees to make each floor more likely to be clearable. Well, in this game, there would be 2 obvious options for escaping difficult battles:
1. Make your way to the stairs down, and hope the next floor isn't as difficult (and that you can survive long enough).
2. Die on purpose. When you respawn, the new level probably won't have the same difficult encounter on it.

Also, the original Rogue didn't let you backtrack with stairs. Until you get the amulet, you can only go down, and once you do, going back up gives you entirely different floors.\

Japanese roguelikes (specifically Torneko/Shiren and their descendants) typically only let you go forward as well.

Nope. Perma-death is for me a cornerstone of roguelikes.

It sounds like we have a difference in philosophy here. You seem to be of the stance that death is this horrible thing that should be avoided at all costs and has no place in a successful run; I, on the other hand, think that any mechanic that can't benefit the player doesn't belong. As a result, I am of the opinion that death shouldn't be the end of the game, but rather should be available as a strategic choice in some situations (like if you can't clear the level), and should not be too much of a setback.

Doing this might even allow death to be fun; when you aren't punished with losing hours of progress, it isn't so bad when, for example, reading a sign causes you to be killed in a funny manner. Or, for that matter, that the stairs were fake and there's actually a pit of death there. Or, you read that scroll of armageddon, killing everything on the floor (including you); nice experience, but you're dead (and the death prevents you from using one of these scrolls to trivialize a floor).

I never said death was a "horrible thing" in the game. I'm saying the whole point of a roguelike game is to have to deal with the challenge of a non-recoverable death. Most video games out there give multiple lives or chances to allow the player to "die," but have some kind of recovery. This is why roguelike games are unique since they encourage the player to strategize each run and to not take the level for granted.

In roguelikes, some runs are good and some runs end immediately because of the game's "roll of the dice." This is the primary challenge and the main source of fun in my opinion. Since each run is a new experience, roguelike games have almost endless amounts of replayability.