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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9383057" data-attributes="member: 82106">As one of the originals of 'old school play' (starting in the mid-'70s) I can say that we almost universally found a focus on such minutia as "how exactly did you construct your torch" to be tedious and beside the point. Sure, some details could matter at certain points, but the trick wasn't to continuously focus on such things. It was to have a sense of when to introduce them (as either a GM or a player) without bogging the game down into dubious nonsense. Read Gygax's 1e DMG prefatory material, and description of the combat system, etc. It's clear he wasn't ALL that interested in details that didn't further the game aspect of play, and contribute to the fun and overall challenge. IME with true old style play that was focused more on being good at handling things within the rules. That includes a lot of resource management, time management, and imaginative problem-solving, but not so much obtuse knowledge about the exact right kind of wood to make a torch out of. Besides, there are about zero GMs who have a detailed mapping of species distribution of trees, density of fallen and standing dead wood, etc. In the end it all winds up being up to the GM as to what the effect of such knowledge is anyway.</blockquote>