The Myth of Death as Stakes...

It's been said, especially in old-school circles, that character death is essential to the pulse-pounding stakes good adventures depend upon. Combat means nothing without danger, which means nothing if not the threat of death and dismemberment. Victory is all the sweeter if we can delay the inevitable end. Normally, this truth bears no further explanation except that imaginary death lacks the same sting, undermining the whole death-as-stakes paradigm essential to the experience. Reincarnation is a fresh character away...

Roll 3d6, in order, and we're back in the game. Unless, of course, we grow attached to our characters and inevitably struggle with the demise of a beloved persona. The game just isn't the same starting from scratch, especially when so much of our enjoyment stems from one particular character. In this sense, the loss is palpable. It's the same friends playing the same game but approached from an altogether different perspective it takes time to acclimate to, especially in a longer campaign. In this sense, the stakes are absolutely there. 

But it's still imaginary death, and I suspect most of us would welcome a reroll every 75 years or whenever the end inevitably comes. Short of euthanizing a player when their character succumbs to death (not a serious suggestion), the threat is pretty much toothless in any real sense, caveats notwithstanding. Lethal, old-school settings trivialize death, preventing the narrative attachments needed for high-stakes violence, whereas story-driven games prone to 19-page backstories skew towards survival, blunting death's influence...

All of which means that death as stakes is sort of a myth. Or put another way, it only works where roleplaying elements are the strongest and survivability (to the point of genuine attachment developed over continuous sessions) is allowed to happen. Things are valuable when they're rare, and death the most impactful when cherished characters face danger, however imaginary. Not surprisingly, it's the strategic players able to cheat death the longest who raise their own stakes, with survival casting mortality's unwelcome shadow.