Perhaps nothing illustrates the separation of old school play from new school better than their respective attitudes about player character death. Life seemed cheap in the old days and a typical session (not campaign) might see the death of one or more characters, not to mention the more expendable henchmen and hirelings. Old school rules can handle dozens of combatants and adventuring parties were often dungeon expeditions of perhaps a dozen or more individuals. Players often controlled more than one character and characters often had a henchman or hireling also controlled by the player. In contrast, new school games involve lengthy character generation procedures and character sheets with a lot of data, so it is uncommon for a player to control more than one PC during a session. Often a player will have only a single character in a campaign. Investment in that single character makes character death something to not take lightly.
My special snowflake: Playing in a Pathfinder campaign that generally meets twice a month, my PC is an Elven Fighter/Wizard. I built this character (point buy, not random rolls) along old school lines aiming for the White Box elf class limits of 8th level Magic User, 4th level Fighting Man. At level 6/3 he has accumulated a number of magic items, feats and skills which make the character a one-elf wrecking machine. As a player I have a number of decisions to make for this single character each combat round. I have been playing this one character for a couple years now and as my sole "playing piece" in the campaign have some investment in keeping him alive. The other players in the campaign are in a similar situation having a single character which is fairly well advanced in experience and accumulated magic.
The stable: in my early days of White Box and The Fantasy Trip play I recall we all kept a "stable" of several PCs, often at various levels of experience. (Character sheets were often 3"x 5" index cards.) When getting together to play a game, we assembled a party of adventurers from our stable of characters, then attempted to hire any additional muscle we thought might be needed. We often ran more than one PC each. The White Box character sheet is a simple affair and with initiative by side even an involved combat with several PCs, henchmen and hirelings is quite within the capabilities of an experienced player. We had our favorite characters and tried to mitigate risks to those PCs, but we went into the session knowing "someone's PC was likely to die".
There are a lot of factors that have contributed to the changes which have occurred in our hobby over the four decades I have been playing adventure games and it is not my goal here to describe them all, nor even to postulate what has brought about a popular change in attitude regarding character death. The point here is that PC death can add an element of fun to the game by increasing the risk. Loss of a favored PC doesn't have to take one out of the game (or campaign) and the threat of loss adds to the suspense and verisimilitude. When it happens, make it an event during the game. Other PCs may want to recover the body, say a few words (in character) about the lost companion and perhaps revenge his/her death. Tragic death is a part of many good stories, there is no reason to avoid it like the plague in our gaming if the game is designed to handle it well.
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