I am apparently not cool enough to get it.

You need to go back a few days to see what they're going on about. I don't think jt's that great, but we probably need to know more about Pathfinder and 4th ed.

I thought it was just great standalone honestly. The blue dragon, at great wyrm, gets a power to turn liquids into sand. So there's a modern DM, going by the book, and an old school DM in the back, urging him to be literal in his interpretations and have it just fucking turn the PCs into howling, short-lived creatures of mostly sand, as a good way of getting a total party kill in there.

I like the old school

Like I said.