Embryonic ideas for a new game

 For the last seven-ish months, I've been playing in a semi-weekly old school-friendly game group. Yes, actual face-to-face tabletop roleplaying. We've been using Old School Essentials and Shadowdark RPG, depending on who's DMing any given session (in separate campaigns, of course.) So far, things have leaned toward a high-heroic tone. Magic is plentiful and potent. Characters are very competent, and have fairly exotic backgrounds (randomly rolled, but of the dispossessed scion of a noble house/orphan raised by werewolves/on the run from organized crime range of the spectrum rather than the "unremarkable peasant boy/girl picks up a rusty sword" sort of origin story). 

At the same time, and for the last several years prior, my Goblins & Greatswords fantasy heartbreaker project has gone basically nowhere as I spin my wheels back and forth between making bold, sweeping changes to fix things that bug me and shying away from those changes because they stray too far from the nostalgic feel of the D&D of my youth. I had intended it to be my ideal version of classic D&D, but the challenge of hewing closely to the original feel while upgrading suboptimal systems is proving to be a nightmare. At this point, I'm probably going to let go of it entirely.

Which brings me to where I am now, and my realization of what I'd like to see in a new old school game. I want something simple, not just rules-wise but fiction-wise as well. I want that "unremarkable peasant boy/girl picks up a rusty sword" game. Or "unremarkable middle-aged shopkeeper picks up a rusty sword," as the case may be. People of humble origins who, for whatever perfectly relatable non-soap opera reason, decide they want to, or must, try their hands at being something a little less ordinary. Motivations for taking up a career of adventure needn't be steeped in drama and intrigue. Something as prosaic as needing to supplement the family income because the farm is in trouble due to the drought, or your older brother died in a mining accident, will do just fine. Even something as mundane as being hopeless at, or bored by, your family's trade is a perfectly fine reason to dash off into the unknown with a backpack and a sharp stick.

This is all possible with standard D&D rules, of course, but I'm pondering how a ruleset might specifically support and incentivize particular tone. Here are a few ideas I'm kicking around my head:

• Player characters start without classes. They're no better at fighting, magic, stealth, or anything else than their neighbors in the village. They're effectively normal humans, though in this game I'd make normal humans relatively more robust than D&D normal humans. (I don't want this to be a frustrating treadmill of losing PC after PC to sudden random deaths, nor a DCC-type "funnel" in which all but a few PCs are killed off.) Any character can try anything within reason; they're just not very good at any of it. Characters may gravitate toward particular class roles due to how they're conceptualized by their players, or due to attribute bonuses or penalties, e.g. a character with good physical strength may incline toward a forceful role, while a more agile one might utilize stealth more often. Even so, because they're more alike than different at this point, and because they're not very good at any professional adventuring skills, they'll have to rely on player skill and teamwork rather than character skill if they're to survive and succeed.
• Beginning PCs may use any kind of weapons and armor, though the options actually available will initially be very limited. Equipment such as heavy armors and weapons of war won't be available from standard equipment lists; you won't be able to start your career off with plate armor and a two-handed sword. Instead, weapons and armor will be limited to things you could reasonably expect to find in the possession of common people: leather jerkins, quilted gambesons, daggers, spears, clubs, staves, farm implements converted to crude polearms, and hunting bows. 
• As stated above, anyone can try anything. Anyone can swing a club, try to sneak past an enemy, or attempt to cast a spell from a scroll, and in the beginning, there's not a lot of difference in their ability to do those things. 
• Only upon gaining their first level will PCs be able to choose a proper adventuring class. This may take more than one adventure as normal humans to acquire the necessary experience. Even then, class roles are not as sharply defined as in traditional D&D-like games. While they start out quite similar, as they gain class levels, their skill sets will slowly diverge from one another.
• PCs won't lose the ability to use the equipment they could as normal humans once they gain a professional adventuring class, but will have to consider disadvantages of certain options relative to their class abilities, e.g. heavy armor and large, bulky weapons hindering stealth activities. This will tend to nudge characters organically toward classic archetypes, without shackling players to them through outright prohibitions.
• Mighty magic items and fabulous treasures make for good stories, but not realistic expectations. Especially in the beginning, good quality non-magical gear is a pretty fabulous find, and looting enough silver pennies to keep your brothers and sisters back home fed and clothed makes you the talk of the local public house. Hold onto your dreams, though, because bigger things are out there... just probably not at level 1.
• Hit points (or whatever I end up calling units of life/health) will start out a bit higher than regular D&D to buffer against the caprice of the dice, but accumulate much less rapidly thereafter, to maintain a sense of danger and ensure those starry-eyed peasants, if they survive, become wise and cautious adventurers, not overconfident one-man armies.
• Hopefully, the PCs being explicitly ordinary and not heroes (at least to start) will foster more openness to avoiding combat and mitigating danger through clever play. You're not mighty warriors, not even mighty warriors in training; you're a ragtag band of farmers' sons and daughters, balding shopkeepers, apprentice seamstresses and blacksmith's assistants. You're not expected to go out and be the bane of dragons and slayers of goblin hordes. Regardless of any false bravado with which you may cover it, you're not fearless; you're nervous and apprehensive, because whether you've been fretting about it all along, or you're rudely awakened to it by your first encounter with a vicious giant rat, you're in at least a little bit over your head. You don't have some heroic destiny; if you're not careful and clever, you could die out there, with no more meaning than to be dinner for that rat's nest full of vicious giant rat babies. Roleplay accordingly.

The working name I've come up with for this project is Unlikely Heroes, though it will surely change whenever I'm struck by something more apt and catchier.