OSR Is there an uptick of "fairy tale" style OSR products?

[Libertad]

The OSR is no stranger to thematic trends among publishers. Grimdark and weird fantasy were popular about seven to ten years ago, and Conan-style swords and sorcery can be spotted in publications like DCC's Lankhmar.

But I've noticed among some of the more popular products a hewing towards themes reminiscent of foresty, classic fairy tale fantasy. Dolmenwood is a popular crowdfunding campaign; the Waking of Willowby Hall involves a cloud giant on a rampage looking for his pet goose rumored to lay golden eggs; the Gardens of Ynn takes place in an extradimensional ruinous garden overrun and abandoned; the Blackapple Brugh and Barrow of the Elf King involve dungeons set in or near a forest that house a great elf lord.

It could be confirmation bias, and I am aware that quite a few of these adventures have been published years apart. But when it comes to some of the more popular publications out there, it does feel like a recurring element like with how weird fantasy used to be the thing for the OSR.

 

[Voadam]

I don't watch things comprehensively enough to say about historical or current trends but I think fairy tale stuff is fairly recurrent.

I got Tales of the Old Margreve for a D&D style Grimm's Fairy Tale forest vibe similar to why I picked up Domenwood but Margreve was from 2010, Pathfinder 1e days.

Castle Gargantua is from Labyrinth Lord days in 2015 and is another giant's castle thing, though more beanstalk fairy tale giant setting turned grimdark/LotFP megadungeon than lighthearted fairy tale.

 

[Gus L]

Sure and maybe?

The fairytale setting gloss has been around a while. In the Mid OSR days gonzo and grimdark battled it out for official "OSR" aesthetic and I guess grimdark largely won. It's never been the only thing though? Currently dark fairytale has a bit of an upsurge, and it's not a bad thing - grimdark is a bit stale after 10 years or more.

I suspect this is mostly Dolemwood's doing, but I could be wrong. False Machine has always been interested in the style as have other OSR bloggers and designers, and I think lighter crunch/classic rules/high lethality systems today benefit from an aesthetic that separates them from the expectations of vanilla/vernacular/high fantasy that mark 5th edition and similar contemporary traditional systems. As long as an adventure makes it clear that it's breaking with the modern D&D expectations it can succeed because players expectations are different. Players in a fairy tale setting or grim dark setting don't expect to be heroic all the time, they expect to be the underdogs and in both (at least the darker sort of fairytale) its possible, even likely that characters might fail or die.

 

[aco175]

Sometimes trends change based on current events and the economy. Similar to how the moon landing changed pop culture away from cowboys and westerns to space. Poor Woody. A tight economy might push people to yearn for more childhood things like fairy tales.

 

[Aldarc]

There is also a fairy tale supplement for Mausritter.

I would also say that Beyond the Wall leans closer to fairy tale fantasy in addition to its stated young adult fantasy literature (e.g., Chronicles of Prydain, Earthsea, etc.).

I think that fairy tales - at least aesthetically - ground a lot of OSR fantasy in a lower level fantasy than D&D power fantasy as well as a certain degree of fairy tale “whimsy.”

 

[borringman]

I would say confirmation bias?

I don't think it ever went away, nothing does, there are always keepers of the flame. But it's certainly been at quite a long nadir. Nothing's taken the world by storm such that I've heard about it (it would have to be pretty big because I live under a rock, but that's my point -- nothing's reached that size).

I've had conversations w/ friends about it, pointing out that stuff these days is so consistently some variation of satire, deconstruction, grimdark, parody, derivation, or whatnot, that we've raised an entire generation of nerds completely unfamiliar with what was being deconstructed. The deconstruction is their baseline. I have no idea how they see all this.

Maybe that's why modern D&D looks so odd to me? It's not grounded in anything, because the folks playing today grew up deprived of seeing what the ground looks like!

 

[Reynard]

I'd be interested in a list of what OP thinks of as "fairy tale fantasy" OSR materials.

 

[Sacrosanct]

When I did Twilight Fables 2 years ago (ENNIE nominated ), I also put out an OSR version. It's all about historical folklore and mythology, rather than modern Disney or D&D fairy tales.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I will point out that Bryce of tenfootpole.org has been reviewing modules for years and presumably has some influence on OSR module writers, has long been a fairy-tale fancier. His favorites are Oriental Adventures modules because they generally have the sorts of talking-animals/fanciful-situations that he enjoys. There've been Faerie Tale scenarios for years, but I think any perceived increase in Faerie Tale products may just be due to an increase in product quantities across the board.

 

[Voadam]

The OSR is no stranger to thematic trends among publishers. Grimdark and weird fantasy were popular about seven to ten years ago, and Conan-style swords and sorcery can be spotted in publications like DCC's Lankhmar.

But I've noticed among some of the more popular products a hewing towards themes reminiscent of foresty, classic fairy tale fantasy. Dolmenwood is a popular crowdfunding campaign

I think of Dolmenwood as also being dark and weird.

From the Welcome to Dolmenwood PDF: "Dolmenwood is an enchanted forest campaign setting — creepy, whimsical, and psychedelic in equal measure".