Original D&D (1974):
The party intends to make their way to a part of the 1st dungeon level that they haven't previously explored; the southwest quadrant of their map. After a bit of fruitless wandering around in the maze (and running away from some wandering monsters) they finally manage to find a passage that takes them in that direction. They meet a group of lawful gnomes who tell them that the area they are headed for is occupied by goblins, but the party isn't able to convince the gnomes to join them (mediocre reaction roll). Anticipating a large fight, the party decides to head back to town to hire some men-at-arms. The magic-user will also swap out the Charm Person he had prepared for a Sleep spell. The fighter's player calls his friend Joe who has a dwarf character and tells him "we're about to roust a big group of goblins, want in?" to which Joe replies "I'd love to but I've got a term-paper due in the morning that I need to finish. Kick some ass for me and leave a copy of your map behind so if you all get wiped out Fred and I can at least follow in your tracks in this Saturday's game and finish 'em off."
The next day the party re-enters the dungeon with 6 men-at-arms, and head quickly for where they left off before, trying to minimize wandering monster checks. The gnomes they had encountered the previous day are no longer there. The party soldiers on into the "goblin area" and meet twenty goblins. The magic-user takes out a few with a well-cast sleep spell, before retreating and doing little in the combat. The fighter and cleric perform more ably, but the bulk of actual fighting is done by the men-at-arms with the players serving as command figures -- the cleric has a high charisma, giving the men-at-arms a loyalty bonus, so he gives most of the orders. The fight takes a while (both in game, and out of game) - five combat rounds, which translates to five minutes in the game. But then, the goblins' morale breaks and the last 6 run away. 3 of the 6 men-at-arms also survived.
The PCs spike all the doors shut and leave 1 man-at-arms listening at each of the room's 3 doors for approaching wandering monsters (or the surviving goblins coming back with reinforcements) and proceed to loot the room and search the place for secret doors. They find a concealed door in one wall, which leads to a treasure chest. The players suspect the chest is trapped so the magic-user suggests standing behind rather than in front of the chest while he opens it. Alas, the poison arrow trap fires "up" rather than "forward" so the ref declares the magic-user was still in the arrow's path and was hit. He fails his save, and dies.
Opening the chest, they find a magic sword, but the fighter's player fears it might be of an opposite alignment so he's afraid to pick it up. He tries to order one of the men-at-arms to pick it up, but he refuses (and the ref notes that he will have a lower loyalty score going forward). Finally, the cleric's player convinces the fighter's player that since he's lawful and 65% of magic swords are lawful he'll probably be okay, and since they're only 1st level it's worth the risk. The fighter agrees and picks up the sword -- hooray, it's a lawful +1 sword!
One of the men-at-arms reports that he hears something approaching from the south passage, so the PCs take their loot, retreat back the way they came, and head home. It's been about 2 hours real-time so they decide to call it a night, even though the magic-user's player has his new character (an elf) rolled up and is ready to go. Next session their plan is to explore past the door in the west wall that the goblins fled through, because there's still pretty much blank space on their map in that direction and they don't yet feel confident enough to venture onto dungeon level 2.
