>>96707384
I wouldn't be able to find it now cause I'm terrible at bookmarking blogs, thinking I'll never need them again, but I remember reading a blog post by some guys who tracked down and got to play an actual session with Gygax himself shortly before he died. I remember one line in it saying that after he and his friend created characters, they started doing quirky voices and bantering with each other and acting like idiots, which earned a scowl from Gary. But then they played through the story, which involved them meeting and speaking with NPCs and they wound up having a good time and getting a great story out of it.
I also remember reading another blog where (might have even been the same guys) played with another legend in 0D&D style, and he remembers they were making a shit ton of gold from the adventure, but the DM was going out of his way to actually give life and soul into the NPC followers they hired.
>"Um, sirs."
>"Oh, yes NPC #13?"
>"Dave."
>"D-Dave? Oh, yes. Dave... what can we do for you?"
>"Are you going to use all that illgotten loot from the adventure to revive Thomas."
>"You mean NPC #7?"
>"He has a name. And some of the other men are worried that if you let Thomas go, that it might wind up being the same for us. We helped you on the adventure after all, ESPECIALLY Thomas. You aren't going to leave him to rot, are you?"
They said it wound up causing this loop that was strangely fun where they'd go on adventure, need the gold to revive followers that died, then go on another adventure to raise the gold to resurrect the followers that died, then they'd go on adventure for MORE gold to raise the followers that died on THAT adventure, then...
Basically what I'm getting at is that all of the old grognards loved stories, but I think what they hated was the more modern practice of people trying to write their own stories in the backgrounds of the characters ahead of time, then bring those to the table. The story was meant to be the game.
