[Belenos]

This is to answer a portion of the original poster's question, "how does permadeath affect roleplay"

I staff on Armageddon and I have played there for a number of years. One significant aspect of permadeath is the level of emotional involvement it inflicts upon you. In all the games I have ever tried, never have I gotten the level of emotional attachments to online events than I have with this game. It is not uncommon to find your hands shaking in RL after having just narrowly escaped being killed, or to feel genuine loss when your character, or another character dear to you ends up dying. Most any long lasting player understands and has experienced this.

This is not true for every character you play, just those characters you find yourself attached to. With some of my characters I was pleased to see them finally die. There are also people who play more aggressively and tend to die with considerably more frequency than I did. These people are probably less inclined to become emotionally attached to a character.

In our game permadeath, complete and utter permadeath is not an incidental part of the game, it is key tenant of what we are about. I would argue that it has a significant impact on roleplay.