What if when we die, we respawn, as another human, or even, another species.
Each life, from birth to death is a roguelike run.
Weew, if it too difficult, will you reset for new run :v ? Just kidding. But also, I know that modern roguelike game have something to make you stronger, and inherited into new run, on and on. Kind of permanent upgrades.
So, perhaps, if this run too hard, endure it. Which will make you "get-gud", and hope for some useful bonus, permanent upgrades for further runs.
Technically, random race/class/etc upon a new life is really more common with Roguelites. (You kinda acknowledge that, but roll with me. Trying to be facetious with the Roguelike snobbery thing, not sure if I pulled it off lol)
Traditional Roguelikes usually let you pick what kind of fresh Hell you're setting yourself up for.
...So maybe this is Roguelike rules.
You fuckin chose your species, religion, and class.
Just not how much food you get to eat, what books you get the chance to read (without tremendous effort on your part) and when you will die.
Oh, sweet heavens, this is so much worse! We did this to ourselves
I've been saying " fuck this I'm rerolling" when life get extra shitty for years now. It is fun to see the faces of the people who understand what I'm talking about.
Personally I want the life setting " no loot drop on respawn" I would go to many more places if all I had to do is die and respawn at save with all my shit.... though walmart might get pissy about it.
Right before you are born, you make every possible decision you are ever going to make, and then your soul chooses the course that is least bad for most gain, like a min-maxer.
Or! Every time you make a decision that kills you, you die! But you soul hops to the reality where you didnt die, because the universe is an infinite dimension holograph of all possible everything, and it really is just about learning and growing
Anecdote time: once upon a time I was a young man working in chem hose. I would get sent all over to do onsight testing and repair with my work mate, we were good friends and druggos lol.
So we got sent to this beautiful majestic place to work. After work we took mushrooms and went to the national park. Fun! It got dark, so we went driving down some farm roads. After some time I decided to stop. We smoked weed, hung around, then after a bit got tired and went home. Sounds normal right?
Next day, couldnt find the weed after work, no big, lets hit that farm road, see it in the day, maybe find it. After some time the road ended.. at the resevoir. The weed was there, and so were my tire tracks. 5 feet away from the edge of the reseviour. Seems like oh, we would just have lost the truck and gotten out right? No. It was a sheer wall 20' to the bottom. We should both be dead, and in that other universe, we are dead...
Well, in that case I can only hope my next run goes better! Not taking a few decades to realize I'm a girl or just spawning with the right body would help a lot lol, wouldn't mind permanently unlocking that for future runs.
I think when you die you go back to the last checkpoint, and then you survive whatever it was that killed you. And you lose your memory of the time you died, so all you remember is the surviving arc.
I read a short story once that made me think about something similar, that everytime we die our consciousness shifts to the multiverse where we didn't make whatever choice lead to it. To everyone in that initial universe you'd still be dead but you'd continue on somewhere else.
While I don't believe in any afterlife experience 100%, this is the one I choose to believe in the most because it seems like the best. Fade to black is boring, and living forever in peace and happiness would get old quick.
I've never considered it like a roguelike, though... I like it! You can customize any aspect of gameplay before each run or just hit random and go.
I like to imagine being able to be transported some place like Tower of God and it being filled with powers and abilities to make things more interesting, but still having new sets of challenges of trying to find a way to the top of the tower while every level is different from the one before and perception of time is different now where hundreds of years is not a big deal.
living forever in peace and happiness would get old quick
I feel like this is something that gets misconstrued with the concept of death. It’s not like you’d be left with your thoughts and memories. After death is exactly what before birth would be like. Were you bored for the first several billion years? Eternity is an instant when you’re left with no concept of time.
I've heard accounts on multiple occasions, in person and not, of very young children having knowledge of things they shouldn't, or very specific stories about how they died... One very fanciful sounding example was of a child being led to safety through dreadful environment by an apparition that later in life was revealed to be of a family member that hadn't been born yet.
Even if only 1% of these stores are remotely true...
Something's fucky about reality. Things aren't as they seem. It's right in front of us, I just know it. It just isn't able to be comprehended past a faint feeling of confusion and unease.
No I don't lose sleep thinking about these things! You do! Lol