Querying OSR Blogging Scene Vibrancy

On Ye Olde Question of 'is the OSR dead' but this time with some data - based on community participation in jams and challenges and continued appearance of 'big idea' posts - not dead yet.

A bit ago there were a slew of posts on the OSR blogging scene losing vibrancy - and I had no way to tackle that in a non-subjective way. Hero of our times Elmcat has been sweating over a red-hot RSS feed to pull together a colossal graph of the OSR blogverse by back-tracking peoples blog feeds and linked posts. They have also generously provided us with 'top 10 posts' lists for the last ten years which allow us to at last have some sort of visibility on activity levels.

The Blogverse, by Elmcat

To try and get a sense of vibrancy increasing or decreasing, what metrics are we using? The main complaints that seem to get brought up are a shift toward selling product in place of improving practice at table. Even there, one mans post refining practice at table is another mans "why is there yet another 'how to dungeon crawl' post?" A laudable retro-clone to one is anothers sign that everything is a rehash.

Another set of complaints is the channel-jamming effect of various awards, various crowd-funding seasons and so on - but those are social media noise complaints. The underlying concern is the reduction in new creative things. I think we must accept some repetitive blogging as new folk rediscover the basic truths of gaming styles and blog about it. Our institutional memory is nil so it feels unfair to get salty at folk when they write up something older hands already know - how were they to know what they just wrote was hotly debated on defunct social media sites years before they could even read?

So to try and find a handle on whether or not we are seeing creativity fall off or whether we are getting new ideas, we can turn to Elmcats great labour to try to spot whether big new touch-stone posts, those with a lot of link-backs, are still emerging.

Published	Post	Links
31 October 2018	Automatic List Generator v2	233
17 October 2007	Grand Experiment West Marches	143
19 December 2008	Party like its 999	95
08 October 2019	Landmark Hidden Secret	80
06 May 2008	Shields shall be splintered	87
06 July 2024	RPGADAY 2024	72
10 June 2017	Tomb of the Serpent Kings	71
06 April 2021	Six Cultures of Play	69
07 May 2016	The GLoG	70
24 April 2011	twenty quick questions	75

Actual Test: Dungeon Creation Process from The Breakfast Ossuary

After seeing it praised on the purple OSR discord, along with the note that the original blog was lost to the internet wastes, I thought it might be useful to unearth and try out "Zero to Complete Dungeon Generation, Waffle-Style" - now only findable on the internet archive.

The steps of the 'Waffle-style' method are:
Step 1 – Concept Shopping - vibes, mechanics, themes - pick 10-20
Step 2 – Monster Shopping - choose level, list 1-6 monsters
Step 3 – Rough Layout - 5-10 rooms in rough layout
Step 4 – Stocking the Rooms
Step 5 – Revisions
Step 6 – Keying the Dungeon

Shiny TTRPG links #250

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Chaoclypse’s Substack writes BEAR WITNESS!

Traverse Fantasy gives us General Update (Icon0clasm and more!)

TRAIPSE shares The 10 types of special rooms

Alchemist Nocturne gives us Guns in fantasy

mrmagusjester shares D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the best-ever edition

Sage's Sanctum gives us Handling Factions in a Hexcrawl

Play Material writes Varieties of Scenes in TTRPGs

Afraid of Encounters gives us Gamemasters are Game Designers!

Observations of the Fox shares Crossovers between Seasons

Nordic Larp writes Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience

Dice Goblin gives us Sub-Hex Design: Seven Anchors of Wilderness Play

Review: A Home Reforged

tl:dr; a game of dwarves delving the dark to restablish outposts; tight old-school style with some nice mechanical twists.

Where did this come from? Zinequest 2024. I had it on my shelf but recently managed to get bits to table thus a review.

Art by Michail Papanchuk

Nice little book, focuses on a theme and while first impression might be 'oh, dwarves, have we not done this' - this is actually a neat compilation of all the things you would need for a dwarven delving campaign that are often scattered across lots of books and need legwork from the DM. Here we have everything you need in a single package.

The book itself is a fat zine or a small book - 92 pages - with about ~ 1/4 of the book made up of 'ready made scenarios' that make this ready to go out of the box. I am more of a fan of the 'adventure that showcases the system' as time goes on and these are good examples of that.

Actual Play - Hexcrawl25 - The Swooping Lizard Affair

Inspired by a discussion elsewhere I ran session #20 of my hexcrawl recently and it provided a nice illustration of pure map based play over an in-game day and a bit. Written up to follow Jenx first best practice: "Record your hobby experience" while continuing the DM commentary addition to the session notes.

The short version; with a few days to kill until the party needs to pick up something and eager to test out a magical item that was alleged to make their draught-lizard faster, they set out to hike back up to a landmark they had seen. They sensibly navigate around hazards then spot something interesting, "Squirrel!" off the plan and end up wrestling with a wild-magic surged flying reptile mount in a session heavily driven by the wild-magic surge table.

Characters

Herb - Firbolg "Alchemist" (artificer)
Eggie - Goliath "Wizard" (wild-magic sorcerer)
Cortez - Dwarven Fighter

Plus minions
Clarabelle - tabaxi, small, servant
Fabricator Technician #207 - insectfolk, small, observer
Cedric - big lizard beast of burden

Session Recap

Shiny TTRPG links #249

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the last days of the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid.

Of Dice and Dragons launches this months RPG Blog Carnival with Feasts and Festivals in Your TTRPG Campaign

Of Dice and Dragons also shares Wanted: Hosts for the 2026 RPG Blog Carnival!

LootLootLore gives us Diagetic Bingo

Congas.blog writes Finding my community

Chronicled Scribblings of the Itinerant Overlord gives us AD&D Training Costs: A Common DM Unforced Error

Sage's Sanctum shares A Calamitous Random Encounter Alternative

Old Men Running The World asks What Makes Me Want To Run A Game?

Grumpy Wizard shares Five Lessons About the TTRPG Business From Mike Mearls

Fluorite Guillotine gives us minimalist jam post-mortem

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Strangers in a Strange Land

forestsofcernutis gives us Proto-D&D

Bruce Heard shares D&D Castles: Operating Costs

Crow’s Corner gives us Halloween One-Shots: Read, Played, Reviewed

Review: Beyond Dread Portals

tl:dr; self-contained RPG of world-hopping fantasy, old-school system, great, concise setting.

My 'support your local gaming houses' campaign - this is from d101 games in the UK; I saw this pop up as a kickstarter, pitching a "tabletop roleplaying game of multidimensional world-travelling fantasy" which speaks to my plane-hopping interests and the pitch also noted that the "easy-to-learn rules are built from a core loosely based on the world's first fantasy roleplaying game, tailored to fit the setting" so I was interested in something that was setting-forward, with less focus on classes and sub-classes, more on the portal-hopping.

Cover art by Jon Hodgson

First impression was of a nice self contained book, fatter than I was expecting at ~320 A5 pages and with a nice ribbon. Within we have clean lay-out, no columns, black-and-white art by Dan Barker, Jeshields and Paul Tomes. The vibe is very much a cleaned-up old-school book, self-contained with everything needed in here.


So what is all this stuff you get in the book?