[DonathinFrye]

I've never seen this on ARM, though I will admit that I've not been able to play the game much because of aesthetics, unfortunately, more than anything else. I somehow doubt, though, that their staff would allow for players to post relevant IC information to have meetups to "help new characters get going again". On RPIs, you don't typically go out and kill mobs to get equipment. I know that when I worked at Shadows of Isildur, the other head staff was almost too nazi about punishing folks for any sort of outside communication with players at all (beyond the forum, which was monitored to keep IC info out). I don't think that you can realistically expect players not to talk on AIM, and I don't think that you can fairly punish them for doing so.

At any rate, I'd be surprised if you saw someone posting about a "help my new character get equipment again" meetup on ARM and nobody was punished or corrected on the issue by the staff. I've heard good things about the ethics of ARM's staff. Of course, I also heard good things about the ethics of Shadow of Isildur's staff when I was a player; I am not beyond being surprised.

But I will stick up for permanent death here. I've ran PK-oriented MUDs, Hack+Slash, been involved as a staff and player on more MUDs than I can possibly remember, for over two-thirds of my life now. The choice of making death permanent in your game is a serious design feature; truly, if you do so, the entire concept and play of your game needs to respect this feature. Table-top games are (typically) permanent death. There have been very popular MMOs with permanent death as an optional mode of play. RPIs (at least, the ones utilizing the RPI Engine) are permanent death. There may not be a great number of RPIs out there, but the ones that continue to exist have good-sized playerbases of people who enjoy the danger and realism of being able to have your character quite literally die. The fear of death, choosing to stand and fight in the face of death, murder, execution, your friend/enemy/ally dying and mutating into a monster infront of you, death in childbirth, the loss of family or friends, the slow numbing of a soldier who grows accustomed to his brothers dying around him ... these are such potent forces in writing, in roleplay, in immersion; permanent death changes the stakes in which the events of the world and characters around yours unfold.

It's not right for every setting or every MUD. But if you have a story with high stakes, where you want your players' characters to mean something to the story through sacrifice, or weakness, or any of those things augmented by my points in the previous paragraph ... if you want that element of finality in your game, more than you want to not hamper players with loss of equipment and character - then permanent death may just be right for you. It's all in the genre.