While I like Swords & Wizardry, nothing beats Old School Essentials as a "neutral base." Other B/X and first-edition systems, and ADAD and OSRIC fall into this category, have a lot of "extra stuff" to them, a wealth of class abilities, and a complexity level higher than the core OSE rules. With OSE I can use books to add abilities and not break the game, or have characters that get too complex and unwieldy.
There are times when a basic, simple, to-the-point game does a better job than something with 500 pages and rules for everything. All I need is my basic OSR system as my cake, and I shall decorate it from here myself and have exactly what I want.
Which works well with books that add abilities to the game, especially On Downtime and Demesnes, which treats OSE characters as "open starting points" from which you can add skills, trainings, and all sorts of other things through the downtime system.
We get trained by Wizards and Paizo so hard, and ever since 3rd Edition this was true, of the concept of "legal characters" like a "legal Magic: The Gathering deck build." The whole concept of "legal characters" is stupid, and runs counter to the old school ethos. If a character touches a magic fountain and gains the ability to "speak to ghosts" - guess what? Write that on character sheet and move on. There is no need to spend a feat, skill points, give up an existing ability, swap a language, or somehow "pay for it" in any way.
In old-school games, the ultimate balance for characters is retirement or death, and then never giving out that unbalanced power again. Most of the time, you will have a good sense of what would be balanced from the game, since it is simple, judging balance is easy. Talking it over with the player if a "granted ability" is too powerful is also an option, and this is something we also did in the old days. People knew if their character was "ruining the game for others" and we worked together to fix it.
It was nothing like today.
Death is also why you never, ever fudge your rolls. Nothing wrecks a game faster and throws balance in the bin when you change rolls to "be what you want." You will end up bored and walk away from the game. If you can't stand losing a favorite character, give them an "after death adventure" to escape the "land of the dead." That is also very classic fantasy inspired, and having the character return to the world changed is good fiction. Or, rule-zero it and have them get captured.
Or just come up with equal options, all interesting and plausible on a d6 for what happens at zero hit points, make a result of one equal death, and roll the die. Make a roll of a 6 recovering with one hit point. If you don't have the heart to do it, let the dice decide.
Fudging your rolls is how you create the characters that you end up regretting. All the player agency is removed, the skills players get at knowing "how far do we push it" are destroyed, and you are cheating yourself, your players, and the game.
There are a few more books to consider for this creation, and also we need to decide on a starting campaign. I will keep thinking this through and continue this series. I have this feeling of excitement that I am onto something here.
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