Hmm, yet another idea I had in bed at night, I need to post it before I forget.
This one deals with permanent death and offspring together.
The idea is that we give offspring as an options when a player dies. Say, when the player dies, you get a box that asks you if you would like to go to the character creation tool and pick a possible offspring to play as. The benefit and draw here would be that the offspring would be able to start out with many of the skills the parent had. The offspring could start our grown (and maybe contain info in the player page about who was the character's parent), but would start off with stats similar (if not a little better) than the parent (but maybe limited to better in 1 skill or something). That is to be discussed, but there is a catch.
In order to be able to do this, the player has to accept that this is the main character's last resurrection from the dead. This would have to be a big warning message to players, but could be interesting. The message would explain that choosing an son/daughter to play would give a stat bonus (or something like that, which would be an incentive). Then the bold words would say Warning, by doing this, you agree that this will be the last time Parent A (the main character's name) will be able to resurrect. If he/she dies again, it is for good, and you will then have to design your plot in the graveyard. (As a side-idea, only players who died permanently would be given the ability to choose a plot, which would be memorials to stay permanently in the game world). The player would then have 2 characters to pick to play. The parent, or the child.
I give incentives to "try" the idea because, lets face it, some people hate the idea of perma-death. This is a way to ease players' thinking into the mode that allows them to even try perma-death, or even try a game that allows for it. It is a gentle temptation to get players to try thinking out of the box and trying something that they might not normally do. With incentives and bonuses, however, you have to provide drawbacks as well, otherwise the balance of the gameplay is thrown off. So, the drawback is the acceptance of perma-death, without forcing it on people.
IMO, this could be a very fun (and new) challenge to gamers and might even make some try something new for once (imagine that?!?!?). There would be players who would have many generations worth of players (still alive) because when the offspring is played, the parent is still alive. If they were able to keep the parents alive, they could make a whole house full of generations of their character's family. Some players might try it and dislike it, then never do it again. That is the beauty of it, they have the choice! (oh, and obviously we would have an option in the GUI to tell the game to stop asking if they want to create offspring, so those who dislike it, don't even have to deal with it).
Anyways, this was just another of those random thoughts I have before falling asleep at 3:30am.