Is High Fantasy Just a Lack of Consequences?

You take any classic game system, such as RoleMaster, GURPS, or any OSR system, and put it up against 5E or any of these other modern "high fantasy" systems, and you will hear people say, "The newer games are more high fantasy."

Well, what is that?

High magic? Lots of fantasy races? Pulp action?

Not the "actual definition" but the "today's definition."

I get the feeling the meaning of high fantasy is being lost with D&D being so consequence-free, no deaths, superpowered characters, slap giants in the face, toss a dragon by their tail, planar characters, and godlike abilities. High fantasy is starting to mean something entirely different from the definition I grew up with.

The traditional definition of high fantasy was a world of plentiful magic with epic storylines. That hasn't really changed. I get the feeling that death is so hard (or even short-circuited with an X safety tool), combined with a "everybody wins" attitude, has shifted the meaning of high fantasy to a zero-consequence model and expectation. Safety tools being used to override referee judgments (you kill the guards, okay, you are caught and thrown in jail, X, we are triggered, take that back, no, we aren't) again reduce logical consequences and change the definition of the genre to a very cartoonish and zero-cost style of play.

You can't die.

There are near-zero consequences for your actions.

You have planar power.

You have a safe space to fall back on with your bastion.

No one can kill your followers there. Trip the safety tool, and your pets and followers won't die in the real world either.

Trip the tool again, and any consequences of your actions in the world won't be held against you.

Granted, this is an extreme example, but rules-as-written, this is allowed. No one in their right mind would allow safety tools to be used like this, right? Twenty years ago, if you had told me dying would be impossible in D&D, I would have laughed. This new breed of safety tools will change the game; we just don't know how yet.

With all these mobile game-like additions to the core rules, I really don't know what D&D "is" anymore.

The relative immunity of characters is a feature of epic fantasy, but it is not generally required. I could do high fantasy all the way back in AD&D, with lots of magic, plentiful magic items, and epic plots. Granted, you can do low fantasy with relative immunity, but that really isn't low fantasy anymore.

I can do high fantasy with GURPS or RoleMaster just fine, and the game is still deadly with high consequences to any possible action. In D&D, I feel my hands are tied by the designers to adhere to their style of play.

"Everybody wins" is not high fantasy.

I get the feeling that this high-character-power, zero-consequences, constant-winning, and immune-to-death aspect of D&D is becoming part of "high fantasy" to some, and even the genre as a whole. We lost the historical aspect of the game, too, with modern writers coming in and making everything too cosmopolitan and modern, and traditional high fantasy was one of the staples of the genre, and that seems like it is slipping away into D&D, essentially becoming an adult babysitting game, where there aren't consequences for any action.