As requested, I've made an OOC thread to talk about our play session from last night. It was great fun, and a lot of Events transpired. It felt like the session had a beginning, middle, and end, at least as far as my particular involvement was concerned. I have a lot of new ideas, character development, and Events swirling in my head afterwards.
Well I believe Ethos mentioned there might be a permadeath trait, but either way I'm always of the mind that it's up to the player whether their character ought to die or not. So far, I think most of us see the interest in letting a character die when it creates a compelling narrative. Death can certainly be a powerful motivating force for any character, depending on the context.
Permadeath has always been intended to be a trait that's in by or before the beta. It will be something you opt into for additional trait points. The way it will work is that if you're downed, you get a permadeath warning and an effect on you to remind you that you're close to death. The effect will progress each time you're downed, and after the 4th time you get downed you'll drop everything on the floor and your character will be deleted (the body will linger for a little while).
In order to reset the effect you'll have to go for a certain amount of time without being downed, which increases with each stage of it. Then you'll have those strikes progressively stripped until you're back to normal.