As I don't seem to be able to comment on the blog through OpenID or Wordpress (mostly it just doesn't seem to work on blogger blogs at all...), I'll just leave a comment here.
Firstly, congratulations on another great episode! I really enjoy listening everytime. It could as well have been two hours and longer without boring me, it seems. It's refreshing to hear such in-depth discussions of game mechanics. You don't really see that elsewhere, at least not that regularly. Keep the episodes coming, please.
Some words on topic: In general I love the idea of permadeath and failure in games in general. Actually since I discovered the "roguelike world", it has become somewhat hard to accept games without failure at all (though some of them are obviously pretty enjoyable). Some games though, especially when they're long and are based a lot on story, are just not supposed to have permadeath in my opinion. And there have to be some random elements obviously. Thinking of a game like Final Fantasy 13-2, which I actually enjoyed a lot recently. It just wouldn't make any sense to have permadeath in there.
To be honest I sometimes don't even like it in roguelikes, like ToME or ADOM (though I love them both and wouldn't play them without permadeath either). It's just that you explore the huge world for hours and hours and then reach a location you don't know yet, make just one little mistake maybe and BAM... that's probably it. And then you have to explore the (structurally same) world for hours again. That can be pretty frustrating at times or at least prevent from directly starting over. It works much better in smaller/shorter games, e.g. DoomRL or (B)rogue, I think. I pretty much aggree with John Harris here, who I think mentioned something similar before on the podcast. Like roguelikes should generally not be that long? I guess it was on the Dredmor episode if I remember correctly, when the hugeness of the Dredmor floors was discussed.
So, looking forward to the upcoming weeks and all the 7DRL stuff.
