I mean, if his goal was to understand how they played, yeah, that would be a smart way to go about it. But I don’t think that’s what he’s actually trying to do here. He’s just walking through the potential implications of a rule of OD&D he just learned, trying to work out how it would affect the structure and incentives of play if observed.
The actual 'rule' (if you can call anything in the original D&D game a rule) is found on Page 35 of
Volume 3 The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures
TIME:
As the campaign goes into full swing it is probable that there will be various
groups going every which way and all at different time periods. It is suggested
that a record of each player be kept, the referee checking off each week as it is
spent. Recon the passage of time thus:
Dungeon expedition 1 week
Wilderness adventure = 1 move = 1 day
1 Week of actual time = 1 week of game time
The time for dungeon adventures considers only preparations and a typical, one
day descent into the pits.
The time for Wilderness expeditions would include days of rest and recuperation.
Actual time would not be counted off for players "out" on a Wilderness adven-
ture, but it would for those newed in their dens, hideholes, keeps, castles, etc., as
well as for those in the throes of some expedition in the underworld.
As with all the text in the D&D booklets (LBBs) this is fairly obtuse and simply recounts a technique, note the phrase "it is suggested" and the use of 'Recon' (which implies a kind of estimating or 'rule of thumb' in my mind). Beyond that, the text seems a bit ambiguous to me. That is 'dungeon expedition' is allocated a flat week, while 'expedition in the underworld' for whatever reason is given its own different rule (but we have no rule to distinguish the two from each other). Nor is it easy to justify the 'real time' for characters that are in what is basically an underground wilderness (where supplies are likely to be very limited and critical) vs an above ground wilderness where no such passage takes place! Frankly I would simply discount the last clause of that last sentence, unless the PCs situation resembled 'newed in their dens...' (whatever that means, though I think we can assume 'newed' is a typo for some other word).
This leaves us with, effectively, a rule that basically says if your character sits at home then time passes at the 'real world rate' for that character. I would note that this rule ONLY applies to characters 'sitting idle', as a character involved in magical research or item construction follows rules found on Page 34 of Volume 1 instead, though surely they are doing said research in a place which would otherwise qualify as a character's 'home'. I don't think there is actually a specified rule for creating items, per se, in the original books, though presumably it would require a period of time, which would be similar in effect to spell research.
Finally keep in mind the following found in the Introduction: "As with any other set of miniatures rules they are
guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign." (Volume 1 Page 5, emphasis in the original text).
My point is, the whole idea of time passing based on real world time (at least at the granularity of weeks, note) is a very niche rule intended to simply give an idea of what happens when a PC is entirely idle and no other element of plot or rule enforces some other passage of time. I would HIGHLY expect it is also something that was frequently retconned (IE players showed up on Saturday afternoon fully expecting to be able to 'fill in' whatever their PC might have been up to last week).
