Topic: Examples of Old-School Play?

I'm inspired by Is This How D&D Is Supposed to Be Played, where James lists the modules he thinks best exemplify D&D.  The rulebooks were full of great ideas, but the game was the campaign the DM and players created, and many people certainly used the modules as a guide for how to do this.

Another aspect of what makes the game is the actual nuts-and-bolts of the game session, so I'm wondering if people have any references that they think are a really accurate example of play. Not a description of what the characters did, but a description of what the players at the table did, that you can read and say "Yes! That is exactly what it's like when we're playing and everyone is having a great time."  Even better if it's a description of play for a module like Death Frost Doom where (as I understand it) much of the play is outside the combat-simulator meat-grinder.

Re: Examples of Old-School Play?

ShawnH wrote:

Another aspect of what makes the game is the actual nuts-and-bolts of the game session, so I'm wondering if people have any references that they think are a really accurate example of play. Not a description of what the characters did, but a description of what the players at the table did, that you can read and say "Yes! That is exactly what it's like when we're playing and everyone is having a great time."  Even better if it's a description of play for a module like Death Frost Doom where (as I understand it) much of the play is outside the combat-simulator meat-grinder.

This would be interesting to examine, but not interesting to do. At least not for me. I know there are podcasts where people play different games, but I wonder if people act differently just because they're being recorded.

The perfect person to do things like this would be my girlfriend, because she hangs around the apartment while we play but doesn't participate. She'd be the best judge of whether people actually enjoyed themselves, and what the process of play actually is like during an involved game session (not every session is so... I think last session everyone present was half-elsewhere, myself included!) because she's an outside observer, and she's been in the background often enough that people pretty much ignore that she's there while we play (most interesting example is when we had an Olden Domain game hosted by someone else, and she came along and just knitted on the couch at these peoples' house while we gamed).

(I just asked her. "I don't think I can write about it in an interesting way. I think it would be very boring.")

Re: Examples of Old-School Play?

I'm taking this thread as a challenge.

Re: Examples of Old-School Play?

Here are my best examples.  You can ignore the stuff at the beginning...

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 … arned.html

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 … y-axe.html