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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9467950" data-attributes="member: 82106">I hold no truck with 'OSR folk' most of whom I have concluded are entirely sans clue with respect to actual old school play. I have a copy of the OSRIC PDF someplace, never read it in detail, so I can't comment on its take on 1e.Honestly, people reworked/warped/corrupted/improved (take your pick of adjectives) 1e so fast it isn't even funny. Truth is, the MM came out, we used that with OD&D/Holmes, the PHB came out, we used that as an extension of Holmes! We just fused together whatever and made it work. Whether we played the way Gary did or not? I dunno, we'd barely heard of the guy to be perfectly blunt. We did understand the game nature of the system though, and the stuff Gary said about advice and then when the DMG came out, at least some of the stuff in there, we were pretty much in line with. Still, you could find a LOT of leeway there!So, IMHO the basic schematic of play is the classic dungeon crawl, with a keyed map on ruled paper, filled with lots of rooms and corridors, possibly some natural caves, and potentially some weird areas that don't exactly conform to any specific rules, because the GM made them up and they just don't. MOSTLY the original game handled this stuff pretty well. When the dwarf reached into the chest and blade trap sprung, his hand was cut off. There's not really a rule for that, and the fact that it didn't just grow back when he got cured or regenerated, well, it just didn't. Yes, there was a good bit of stuff like this. Still, when the party got to a door, the thief sniffed and listened, and then Grog commanded the mule "Go Bang!" and the door crashed in. If the party didn't want to fight something, they didn't bang in the door! MOSTLY. Now, there was an area in my level 1 dungeon where there was a Flesh Golem. It had 2 hit points. Level 1 PCs, generally, cannot harm this golem, it was not something you could get past. Yup, that does not correspond to the normal encounter tables, but it was also confined to one hallway, and if you were smart enough to realize a Magic Missile (and not much else) can kill it, then you could get a sweet treasure!This is pretty much how risk/reward dungeoneering play works.</blockquote>

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