The Quick Primer for Old School Gaming was a huge influence on me when I first started playing blorbily but looking at the 2024 edition of that primer now I can see how far we’ve drifted apart.
Sure, someone overhearing our tables wouldn’t hear a difference. The “moose head example” would sound the same. Players describe how they are looking for treasures and traps rather than rolling for it.
I call that style of play “diegetic mechanics” and for me it definitively came from the old school primer. It’s so awesome. I definitely handle as much of the game as I can that way.
But the difference is the “improvisational” part. “Rulings, not rules.” The primer has an example of a DM deciding on the fly that a particular rogue has a 1d6 chance of finding traps (in addition to pouring water and knocking with poles I guess).
That isn’t my jam. If there is something behind the moose head it’s because it’s written down. Not because “oh the players are messing around with a moose head, I want to reward that and making up a secret compartment behind it”. Playing that way would not be blorb.
When I say “rules, not rulings”, new DMs, please do not be scared!
By all means, start small and with a simple ruleset! I want new DMs to take up the shield and go for it and not be overwhelmed by having to read a thousand books! But when you make a “ruling”, write it down and make it a rule instead. You can polish and revise it between sessions if you want and consult your players too, knowing it’s goose&gander and things you let them do, monsters might be able to do too.
Creating new mechanics and new rules is an amazing way to keep a blorb alive, a blorb that’s bigger than what you could manually track or create. We made the “looking for stuff outdoors” rules when it became impossible to in detail prep every single flower in every single square foot. But when doing so, I want to be guided by the blorb principles. No fair picking paper after seeing them choose rock, and no tier three truths if I have a tier two truth and no tier two truths if I have a tier one truth.