@GusL talks about the past and the future of the “OSR.”
I reject some recent efforts to… define the OSR as an ongoing concern
Seems a bit silly.
Personally I expect the fracturing into additional scenes and slightly varied design principles will continue… and with it the endless parade of new games marketed as “OSR” and utilizing a few basic types of mechanics
He’s probably right but I think there is such a thing as diminishing returns. I think the tide of new, very similar games will ebb sooner or later.
Similarly I suspect that the influx of 5E players (now mostly via Shadowdark) will continue and with it a tendency to produce scene based adventures that omit exploration mechanics. In other words, significant parts of the Post OSR will walk the same journey that D&D did in the 1990’s to focus on tactical combat, mechanically modeled character variety, and free form role play around the personalities of the characters.
I always omit exploration mechanics in the OSR games I run and I don’t think I’m drifting toward 5E-style tactical combat any time soon. I don’t think exploration procedures are fundamental to the OSR experience but I appear to be in a minority.
These two broad trends, along with the critical success of Mythic Bastionland, Cairn, and Dolemwood, will continue to support the tendency toward regional adventures.
This is an interesting observation. It’s true that when I think of the OSR-style games days I typically think of regional adventures.
A. Not Silly.
B. Tide hasn’t stopped for over 15 years. There are always people in this hobby who seem to think that what the world needs is another version of B/X … only fixed … because hit points are called “health points” and it now includes “Grimalkin” as a playable race (always instead of halflings…)
C. I don’t pretend to know where your personal game is going. When you omit exploration mechanics it tends to create a situation where set pieces (combat/RP/puzzles) are emphasized and militates for smaller locations. Complexity follows the locus of play - traditionally with D&D-alikes that has been from exploration to combat.
D. It does seem odd to think of fantasy RPGs and jump quickly to regional crawls rather then dungeons doesn’t it? Not bad - but it’s a different approach then the traditional one…
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I appreciate the thoughtful response to my prompt, Gus! Sorry the folks on Reddit are being predictably weird about it. I think those who took umbrage at your focus on procedural dungeon crawling overlooked something important: that procedural dungeon crawling is unique to the OSR and its offshoots. If location-based adventure design declines—or at least stagnates—within the OSR, well, no one else will carry that torch. So to me it seems quite reasonable to feel dismayed about the current state of exploration-focused location-based adventures.
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This was a very interesting post that I greatly enjoyed reading. The thing that caught my attention the most was the bit about Stonehell and B2, which immediately made me think “what about Arden Vul?” But I see a commenter already raised the same point on the post and Gus responded.
To get into even the more recent past, I also wonder how much Dungeon 23 has helped, by spawning successes like The Castle Automatic and Blades of Gixa. Maybe a few years down the line one of these will be the obvious banner carrier for this style of play? Given how hugely popular this type of thing continues to be in video games, I think there’s always a nascent audience for a good tabletop megadungeon.
@GusL I’m curious how your current views relate to city-based campaigns. Judge’s Guild products were produced really early in the game’s history, and I feel like we are seeing more emphasis on these types of settings lately. I myself, have been including them in my games more which feels like a blend of trad and OSR style play mainly because all of my references for city-based gameplay are from the Trad side of things. But I still run them as an explorable area, with random encounters, and in between location-based adventure sites like 35+ room dungeons.
Shadowdark, just released their mega-city the “City of Masks,” DCC is re-releasing “The City State of the Invincible Overlord." Would this fall under “playing outside” for you, or maybe it’s a new trend on the cusp of emerging?
Either way, it feels like a lesser explored space in the OSR, and one I personally have an interest in.
Arden Vul is popular - but it’s also a “high OSR” era product - it’s not super new. It’s one of my favorites, though it’s size and maximalist nature are potential barriers to playability for me.
I would also mention that it’s not just the production of large dungeons, it’s also the quality and playability. I have high hopes for Castle Automatic, but I also note that it is for a very distinct system that as I understand it dramatically changes exploration mechanics to a streamlined version. I will have to talk to it’s creator a bit to get a full grasp on it.
When thinking about more recent megadungeon efforts, the one that gets brought up is Ave Nox. I like much of the description, some of the novel ideas, and much else … but I also think it’s a failure as a dungeon because it is not written with exploration in mind - no random encounters being first and most glaring example for me. It reads as if it was written by someone who has never actually played a mega dungeon campaign… and this is the concern I have, that the dungeon design and refereeing knowledge is filtering out of the Post OSR space. There will always be location based adventures, but the question (or at least the simplest, dumb version of a question I have is) becomes if they will be written for “level based exploration” or “scene based narrative” ?
The OSR worked out a lot of ideas, techniques and a community of practice in the 2010’s related to dungeon crawling - I often feel like it’s been abandoned a bit by much of the Post OSR?
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So I didn’t get into urban adventures because I think they are always around, but I don’t see them as a major point of discussion, theorizing, play or design. Personally I’d like to see some of Ben L’s ideas (blogged several years ago) worked out more.
I also think that there are distinct games (Blades in the Dark always comes to mind) that are built for urban adventure - but that as a place for “old school” design it’s under developed. For older style stuff you also have the “Dungeon City” of something like City State of the Invincible Overlord - which I don’t think works very well and always feels a bit like the product of 80’s suburban anxiety about scary cities…yet utterly fails to catch the actual feel of a scary city…
I suspect there are useful ideas to be had and developed. My personal take is that cities should be designed around GP as the primary character resource … everything costs money in the city and adventurers go there to deal with patronage and factions, find information, acquire special items/spells and get jobs and deals… but every bit of time they take there costs and lack of money starts creating danger. Not just the underbelly of crime … or even rakes on spree … but entanglements, legal trouble, scams and such.
I don’t have a way of running this though - or at least I haven’t written one up.
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Thanks so much for the response. I’m going to dig through Ben L’s writing on cities. I hadn’t seen any of it. Your thoughts on GP as the character resource are interesting. I hadn’t been thinking about it that way, and you have me wondering about what more could be done with that now. My current campaign has used factions to anchor characters in the city. They started as low-level members of a faction that pits them with a problem in need of resources (financial and power through alliances) to solve. It has worked as ongoing time pressure, but it does suffer from the problem of the players needing to buy into the premise from the beginning.
Anyway, thanks for the info, you’ve greatly helped me with my research.
I enjoy that I first encountered this post in discussion elsewhere without realizing it was part of the Secret Santicorn we had going on here. 
A great write up that is well written and expresses your points well. You got me thinking more about procedural dungeon crawl experiences and whats it is like. I admit I am more into the OC kind of play, but after more exposure to AD&D 2e and some OSR games, including His Majesty the Worm, I’ve been wanting to give dungeon crawls more of a go, as well as learn their design. The dungeons I have crawled were much to small heheh. I see you have some other blog posts covering the design part, so I suspect I’ll be reading more of your writing!
For me, I found His Majesty the Worm to be a big breath of fresh air by including the classics we tend to be familiar with and then turning them on their head in new interesting ways. The orcs are a fresh take I greatly enjoy. The deck combat procedure quite interesting and much of the design inspiring in different ways.
I was hopeful as a player in my Curse of Strahd campaign we’d get some dungeon-esque play but we seem to have side stepped these. I brought my ten foot pole for nothing! 
A dungeon of diving into hell sounds fun design & play. Gives me sword and sorcery Doom vibes. I’m sure others have made it plenty. Perhaps that is “Stone Hell”, but I haven’t explored it or others much yet.
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