There lot of different kinds of adventures you can design, and play. I think not all of them have been analyzed or talked about as much as they deserve. Last night I played in an online game with Jim Raggi, and the kind of adventure we played just one of those.
The kind of adventure that most people think about when they hear "old school" is probably the location, or site based, adventure. It sits there, and you can come and go as you like while exploring it. Another adventure is the one where you have a string of occurrences, a time line, and you can interfere with it as you like. Naturally there are more than those two. I think it would be interesting to have a conversation about styles of adventures. Their strengths and oddities, and pitfalls to look out for both when designing and running them.
Imagine this.
You have an interesting location, and some people there. Something then happens that upset the status quo, and everyone of those people there have an interest in using the change to their own advantage. Let's say the player characters wont be happy with most of those developments, but find themselves in a position to have to be the arbitrators between all the different wills pushing and shoving.
Is that old school? When is it not? How do you create such a game if you suck at developing NPCs (Like I do)? How would an expert game master handle a situation like that, to make it smooth to run and enjoyable to play?
I'd love to see more talk like that in the blogosphere.