Can't you just back-up game save file and copy it back when your character dies, so you don't have to think about new name? As a bonus, you'll be able to continue playing your former character as if nothing bad happened... ;)

Hmm, fair points you have here. I haven't played RLs that much so I guess I still have that urge to make different runs sort of a story of different characters. Might well pass over time, who knows.
As for coming up with 100+ names for characters (although those don't die to random things, I have to admit), well, I do play that MMO with what, 130+ different characters, so it's not a new experience.

//I'm totally naming one of the characters Chump just for fun's sake.
That raises one question though: why play roguelikes at all if you aren't comfortable with some of their most distinguishing features?

Sometimes save-scumming is needed.

Try Elminage Gothic and play it as if it is roguelike. You'll be surprised to see amount of hings which can cause your defeat. You'll see that you can get challenge even with save-scumming :) I truly wonder how far you'd get as this game is huge and has a lot of dungeons (some with truly frightening features).

Notable thing about death in roguelikes - oftentimes you can do nothing about that, RNG decided that you lose, so you lose. Kind of sad to lose a lot of progress because you failed saving throw against some instant death spell.

You can pretend it has ironman mode and play like one, I promise you unforgiving and ever-increasing difficulty (it will start out very easy of course).

If your party gets defeated in dungeon, you will have to make new characters. You might want to rescue old characters, but you won't be able to easily do it with fresh party....

Eventually you will wish that game gave you second chance, then third chance... until you recognize the beauty of save-scumming :)

Also non-procedurally generated dungeons allow for truly interesting dungeon design. Some dungeons don't even fit Euclidean geometry well, which you won't see in roguelikes ;) One dungeon managed to frighten by its features even me, which is a rare thing.

Grind can save you from some problems, but it isn't truly necessary, you will get enough exp just by exploring dungeons. Persona games weren't grindy, they simply relied too much on elemental/personas' combos - if you had right abilities and personas, boss fights were easy, if not, you lose without chance to win. Only exceptions were final and newgame+ bosses.

There are also ways to get easy exp. There is no level cap. You might need to grind in late bonus dungeons which are much harder than main game dungeons, and get increasingly more hard to the utmost absurdity, but it is very deep in postgame (game is huge, postgame itself = 3 gigantic dungeons).

There is a variety of classes, races, gear, spells and their combinations to make life much easier.

Just stay away from big red shadowy figures (marked by red dots on map), it is impossible to defeat them without preparation much later in the game. They are really nasty (one of them is even named Immortal, guess why...).

Я вот предполагал, что Кунг Фьюри появится на GOG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMj4rSYK_38

Только что прошёл Brothers - a tale of two sons (http://www.igromania.ru/articles/215678/Brothers_A_Tale_of_Two_Sons.htm)... Прямо таки слов нет!.. Настоятельно рекомендую к прохождению всем, кому нравится игры-истории! Интересное управление, захватывающий сценарий, красивые пейзажи... Мне кажется ей самое место на GOG! Голосуем - http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/brothers_a_tale_of_two_sons

Хотел проголосовать, но оказалось, что я уже ранее проголосовал.

Вот ещё за что нужно голосовать:
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/age_of_decadence

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/

Выглядит многообещающе! :) Сам играл? Хотелось бы комментариев уже игравших

Не-а, буду ждать финального релиза в октябре. Вроде как её в GOG собираются выпустить.