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Dwarf Fortress is an entirely unique kind of game experience, and it's not designed to be a role-playing game, which is why it's not. It's incredibly fun as a systems builder, as a simulation engine, and as a space for ever-escalating conflicts. But again, it's not a tabletop role-playing game. Part of what makes "losing fun" in the context of Dwarf Fortress is that your fortress doesn't necessarily depend on one dwarf. Bad things can happen. In fact, terrible things can happen to individual dwarves. But individual dwarves aren't your character. Your purview as a player is broader than that. It's the colony as a group, the suffering of an individual character isn't emotionally as affecting as your singular character in a traditionally architected RPG. It's more akin to losing a couple of hit points and a set of skills temporarily until a new one wanders onto the map. "Losing," in the context of Dwarf Fortress, that being the potential descent into being a failed colony, comes as a result of a series of decisions combined with bad luck. There's always the opportunity to look at the situation and say, "Oh yes, I see how I got here. It was by doing this and this and this, and this thing happening, and that thing happening, and all of this coming together at the same time. I could do better next time." AD&D specifically is written in a way that shows how expensive resurrection is. It's a costly spell. The components are not cheap, and outside of some major temples, you're probably not just going to find somebody capable of running around with it, including your party members. I don't know where you got the idea that it's implied that resurrection is implicitly highly likely. Thank you for putting it out there in black and white that you don't think of your characters as characters, though. That you literally conceive of them as pawns because, "How much time did you really lose by having your second-level character die?" That is only something you could say if you have absolutely no care about the character or what it can be, what it could be, or what it was. Too many people are playing D&D. It doesn't matter what they come into it with. We know what they come out of it with, which is literal conditioning not to think of their characters as characters, as people with roles, as characters it's worth spending time with because their struggles are interesting, but just to see how long you can keep it alive in a hostile world, which might be interesting, but it's not compelling in this context, or at least not in the sense that its proponents are putting forward. There is a good argument to be made that classic tabletop RPG play, as embodied in OSR/D&D, is not role-playing gaming at all, but in fact adventure wargaming under modern definitions. And when seen through that lens, it actually works better and makes more sense. Maybe it's time for people who play D&D to stop pretending that they enjoy roleplaying or roleplaying games, or to accept the bifurcation in the way gameplay occurs. They should probably learn to play better games. Maybe they'll learn some roleplaying along the way.