Designing a Hexcrawl Where the Campaign Begins After the Party Dies

I'm working on a campaign structure that begins when the party dies.

Instead of a TPK ending the story, the characters wake up in Hell and have to crawl their way out.

The setting is set in HELL where devils, demons, and damned souls are all competing for power. The challenge has been figuring out what death should mean when the characters are already dead.

Some problems I've been wrestling with:

• If resurrection exists, death stops feeling meaningful
• If death has no consequence, tension disappears
• If punishment is too harsh, players feel stuck

to solve this, I came up with the idea of demons turning souls into money. Devils trade them, burn them for power, or use them to buy a sandwich from Arby's (there's an Arby's in Hell). I'm even printing paper bills for GMs to hand out to players as money.

But I'm curious how other designers have approached this.

If your campaign takes place somewhere where death is already part of the setting (hells, underworlds, afterlives, etc.), how do you keep death meaningful without making it frustrating?

What kinds of consequences would you design for dying in a place where you're technically already dead?

My project is called HELLCRAWL and it's part of OSE Month launching on Kickstarter May 6th. Everyone who backs in the first 24 hours will receive a free intro adventure called HELLCRAWL: Dead on Arrival. The GM plays the judge of the dead and judges the characters for their sinful ways. Follow all the OSE Month projects here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/collections/ose-month/coming_soon#nav