Apologies for my ignorance, but even after reading some explanations, it doesn't really tell me what it means in specific games. Is there some basic details that are followed by all of these types of games?

I'd like to try something like SotS, but I don't like the idea of "perma-death" , for instance. I'm an extremely spazzy gamer, and if it were possible, I'd most likely shoot my own foot before hitting enemies. That's okay; I've come to terms with my failings, which is why I usually only play Bethesda RPGs ( The Witcher was the first RPG I ever played where I didn't cheat to make my character buffed enough to withstand punishment until I could adequately respond.)

Anyway, thanks for any help with this.

In regards to your hesitance towards perma-death, a game like The Pit is far kinder about it than most. The game has recipes that, once unlocked, will be available for the current and all future runs. Playing in Easy mode will limit you to only unlocking the first 50 of these recipes but they are generally all useful. As an example, there will be recipes to make more filling foodstuffs, modify or create weapons and special grenades, juryrig armors and so on.

Perma-death is great. Do not be scared of it. Instead, what really happens is that YOU the player of the game, learn how to be a better player and survive longer.

To quote from John Harris of @play, in this column he is speaking of what really makes a roguelike (and specifically Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer on the Nintendo DS):
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/03/play_the_delights_of_mystery_d.php

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The first thing you should know about Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, and something that I wish each of the above reviewers had been told before they wrote their pieces, is that it is a game.

That may seem like an obvious statement, but it's not as simple a declaration as it may first appear. While the G in RPG stands for Game, many are not games in the strictest sense: they care more about storytelling than play, and there is no real way to lose. The definition of game has been only recently expanded to cover the kinds of things most CRPGs are. Some still hold that opinion even now: the kinds of person who turn their nose up at RPGs are probably influenced by those old definitions.

In a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, if your party is wiped out it is not a real failure, for you can always return to your last save. So long as the player doesn't do something grossly stupid, like selling all his equipment and wandering the wilds naked, he's not going to fail at the quest. Meanwhile, Shiren the Wanderer is a game in a more fundamental sense, the sense that you can actually lose at it, and probably will many times before you earn your first win. While it is not real-time, it is still much like a classic arcade game, where games nearly always end by losing. As Dwarf Fortress reminds us, losing can be fun.

But it is still a role-playing game. It and other roguelikes arguably have better claim to that title than other CRPGs. There are games that got inspiration from the earliest incarnations of Dungeons & Dragons, but even now roguelike games, with their "no do-overs" policy, their dependence on player preparation, strategy and volition, and their opportunities for creative play more profound than just hitting the X button repeatedly, feels more like a pen-and-paper RPG session than many Western RPGs, and nearly all other Japanese ones.

The word volition up there isn't used casually, and it gets to the core of what makes roguelikes and traditional CRPGs, which both spring from the same ideas and ancestor games, so different from each other. In traditional games, the player is told, pretty much, exactly what to do and where to go. There may be some subquests, but the focus is on the main story, and there's not a lot the player can do to affect the route he will have to take. Roguelikes require that the player, instead, perceive what his needs are himself, take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, and make his own way through the dungeon. You cannot play a roguelike passively, letting a story wash over you. You must drive yourself forward and accomplish the game.
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Hope this helps, its a great article.

Rix

If you truly are a "spazzy gamer", then I'd think roguelikes are the ideal genre for you, once you get past the irrational fear of permadeath.

The best guide to wonderful world of roguelikes is the awesome Rogue Basin. Not only does it have a ton of info on every roguelike ever developed, it has some nice articles on the different major types that will help you figure out if you even want to swallow the red pill. It's geared to developers, but don't let that scare you. Even the developer articles are interesting reads.

Roguelike means a range of things, some of which have little to do with the original Rogue. The Pit is a traditional Roguelike.

If you want to be literal, the original Rogue was a complex-for-its-time turn-based dungeon crawler with random levels, random loot, random monsters, permanent death, and no returning to previous floors. It used ASCII characters in place of tile graphics, so at first glance it's a nonsensical mess of symbols and letters. Over time you learn to instinctively recognize what each character represents, and some consider that a part of the genre's appeal.

In Rogue, equipment and consumables have a wide range of possible good or bad effects that are not apparent until you try to use them for the first time. You could accidentally bind a cursed leather armor to yourself on the first floor and be stuck with it the rest of the game. Or you could find a collection of strength potions early and plow through monsters without taking damage. A potion could leave you blind, restore your health, or empty your food reserves instantly (very bad). Experimenting with the random loot you find is another cornerstone of classic Roguelikes.

Commands are entered using an extensive set of hotkeys. There are no simple shortcuts besides bumping into objects to interact with them. Managing your inventory, equipping your character, firing ranged weapons, drinking potions, firing wands, and reading scrolls all require learning one or more unique hotkeys. Many Roguelikes suffer from inaccessible interface decisions.

If you track down the original Rogue and try it, you'll pick up the general idea quickly.

Diablo was largely responsible for expanding the concept of Roguelike to its modern form. Diablo kept the random map layouts, random monsters, and random loot, but it plays in realtime and omits or simplifies most of the other elements of a classic Roguelike. Most of Rogue's negative consequences don't exist in Diablo. But it's a great deal easier to learn Diablo's controls and understand what you're looking at. Post-Diablo, a Roguelike could mean a classic Rogue clone, a Diablo clone, or anything in between.

Recent indie successes like FTL and Rogue Legacy have made the term a lot more nebulous. Now there are first-person Roguelikes that play out in realtime but take most of their design cues from Rogue's unforgiving dungeon-crawling gameplay. There are games like Borderlands that take their inspiration from Diablo's random loot system and have nothing else in common. Rogue Legacy is a side-scrolling platform game with player-chosen upgrades, but it still follows the tradition of random map layouts, random monsters, and permanent death. FTL is a crew management game that nonetheless manages to evoke the dangerous atmosphere of Rogue's random dungeon exploration.

So Roguelike can mean a classic-style game like Sword of the Stars, with or without modern amenities like graphics and mouse control. It can mean a streamlined action-RPG like Diablo. Or it can mean just about any genre of game incorporating randomness in place of level design, sometimes with permanent death. You could even call Minecraft a Roguelike by those standards. Basically, Roguelike means whatever the game's marketers want it to mean. It doesn't tell you anything definitive anymore.

In the most simple terms, it means die once = game over.

Here's the ultra narrow Berlin Interpretation, which only the most zealous roguelike aficionados lend any credence to.

For me, roguelikes must include permadeath, random level/monster/item generation, and turn based simultaneous play. That rules out FTL as a true roguelike in my book, but I still play the hell out it. Where Sword of the Stars cheats is on the permadeath part. It allows you to store items every fifth level for future starts and crafting recipes do not change. Those two features violate the Berlin Interpretation high value factors. Nobody gives a crap about the low value stuff any more, although I do love's me some good old ASCII display for pure nostalgia.

Sorry for forgetting about this question. For me, Spazzy means "Terrible at this". I really am. I doubt very much that I'd enjoy the Perma-death penalty, as I'd only panic even more than I do now, with save games.

You can always back up the savefile in these games and save anyway.