Evolutionary Gaming

 D&D has definitely changed.
For the better? For the worse? I can't say. I can say, however, that it is an entirely different beast than it was in the 80s.

Someone had suggested, with the choices you now make in character creation, how you build the character you want to play, people are more invested in their characters. You have backstory, you have a feeling of who the character is - they're not disposable heroes. And thus, you don't want to see all that work go to waste by having them die.

I don't believe this. I made characters with personality, backstory, a vessel for me to explore with, since the early days of gaming. Maybe not to the extent I do now, but it was there, with each hand-crafted six+ page character sheet.

Death was always on the table.
The first TPK I faced had my favourite character as one of the victims. That hit hard. I didn't like it. But I accept that it was a part of the game. If you don't want your character to die, you either plan and prepare accordingly, or you just don't have them go adventuring.

No, I don't think it's that - I think that's a symptom, not the cause. I think it has more to do with the way gamer's psyches have changed, and that is in part because of video games. Look at 80s video games, even the RPG ones, versus those of today. Back then, if you were playing, say, Ninja Gaiden, or Contra, or whatever, if you died, that was it. You started over from scratch. All the things you've collected to continue were gone. "Nintendo Hard" was a thing.

These days, you've got save points, or you simply get a 'do over', such as with roguelikes, and you progress. You screwed up? Save-Scumming is a thing. The idea is that you will never, truly, lose, you have infinite ways to pick up and carry on without facing the full consequences of failure.

And people want that in their RPGs. They're used to it in video games, they see it in TV shows and movies and books. The heroes won't lose. So, by extension, the player shouldn't lose, either. You don't have to plan everything carefully, be ultra resourceful with what you've got, and be sparing with your abilities. You push for a bit, take a short rest, and go.

Dungeons were a lot more gradual in the day. You'd push in until your resources ran low, returned to the inn to sleep and recover, then go back the next day. It'd take 3 to 5 days, if not longer, to fully plunge into a dungeon. Sometimes it took weeks.

They were not done in a single plunge.

Gone are the days where cure disease and neutralise poison were must-haves, because now diseases and poisons are more of a nuisance than anything else. You're not going to deal with 'you die in 3 rounds if you failed your saving throw' anymore. You get poisoned? You sleep it off. You get a disease? It's usually a short-term thing. Even the weather is rarely a threat. The goal is to get in, win, get out. And anything that makes that too hard is a Bad Thing.

Even the monsters are tailored to be a 'fair fight' - or more accurately, designed so the PCs will win. Even 3.5 said that encounters were designed to take a bit of your resources so the next fight is harder. Not 'the PCs have to really think about how they're going to defeat this threat, and may want to consider retreating and looking for another way around'.

You might guess what my preference is. But again, it's not whether it's better or worse, because that's entirely subjective. But it is definitely a different beast. I think that's one reason OSR is still popular - you've got people who want the feeling of actual threat - that their characters can and will die from random encounters, and may never make it to the end.

Tragedies happen. And yeah, that kind of play isn't for everyone.