Sounds reasonable enough. I think lots of people would be interested in checking out modules in a more 'traditional' mode so as Estar says the best response is for the Grogs to produce what they advocate and distribute it, either paid or free.

Even after reading loads of spiel on Appendix N (a lot of which I've read and think has little to do with early D&D), Grognardia, Dragonsfoot and K&KA I'm not really sure what anyone means by 'traditional' D&D if most of Gygax's own modules don't even meet the bill? Location based adventures? Okay, that is an OSR cliche at this point that probably needs to be challenged but it can also be evergreen in the right hands. High lethality? Gold for XP? As I recall there's a fair bit about urban adventuring in the DMG but many proclaim that city adventures are yet another perverse deviation. What exactly is it that makes something 'traditional'? Honest question.

I think traditional is a better starting point than Gygaxian though not only because that odd adjective has been seriously abused but I find it hard to find much of a common thread through his best module work which is rather more varied than he is often given credit for.

PS. Is there really any evidence anyone Gygax hired 'admitted' they 'really' wanted to be successful fantasy novelist? That sounds like a predictable disparagment by implication of the rather talented Tracy Hickman, favourite whipping boy of the Pope and a lot of OSR types who couldn't design a Ravenloft if their life depended on it.

And let's not forget the often excessive fictional details in Gygax's Hommlet, Shrine and Vault not to mention that post-TSR it seems he himself was more than a bit interested in becoming a successful fantasy novelist.

On a practical level, having listened to a podcast with former-wargamer and early TSR module writer Douglas Niles, I think any expression of interest in novel writing could just as easily come from a desire to make a decent living as it often pays better than being an RPG designer. We've lost most of the great designers of the past to novels, video games or teaching game design because of the poor financial rewards of a career in TTRPGs.

Quote from: estar;965548Here are some of what I remember
Stars without Number 2011

Can you unpack this for me? SWN keeps getting referenced at a "setting." But it isn't a setting in any manner that I have seen the term "setting" used.

There is the slightest conceit for a setting in the SWN rulebook -- Once Upon a Time there was an interstellar civilization, and then it collapsed, and now people are exploring again. That justifies the sandbox style Crawford builds for the game... and then he leaves all the setting details up to the Referee. Everything from rolling up the subsector map and building words. If there's any setting there, it is built by the Referee.

I may be missing something, but other than the collapse of the interstellar civilization there is nothing concrete or specific about any setting a Referee or Players might be exploring in the game -- making it wholly different (as far as I tell) than the other setting books and games referenced in this thread.

But I might be missing something!

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;965797But I might be missing something!

Pundit stated that the third wave is about different setting AND different genres using classic D&D mechanics. Stars without Numbers is an example of the latter. Although later, the DCC RPG is a similar example.

Quote from: estar;965798Pundit stated that the third wave is about different setting AND different genres using classic D&D mechanics. Stars without Numbers is an example of the latter. Although later, the DCC RPG is a similar example.

Huh.
Okay. Thanks!

As for me, I don't really care about the number of waves as much as the quality of the surfing.

Quote from: Dumarest;965824As for me, I don't really care about the number of waves as much as the quality of the surfing.

Can you really judge the quality of an RPG product without an abstract model of the industry to measure it by?

Quote from: estar;965798Pundit stated that the third wave is about different setting AND different genres using classic D&D mechanics.

Does the OSR, even in this third wave, still require D&D mechanics? I thought stuff like Runequest or Metamorphosis Alpha were part of the OSR.

Quote from: Baulderstone;965828Can you really judge the quality of an RPG product without an abstract model of the industry to measure it by?

Well, I'll hire a pundit to measure the quality for me.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;965831Does the OSR, even in this third wave, still require D&D mechanics? I thought stuff like Runequest or Metamorphosis Alpha were part of the OSR.

They are, but estar focuses on D&D and its derivations in these posts. Sadly that is true on every forum I've seen.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;965831Does the OSR, even in this third wave, still require D&D mechanics? I thought stuff like Runequest or Metamorphosis Alpha were part of the OSR.

The Old School Renaissance is focused on the playing, promotion, and publishing of material for classic editions of Dungeons & Dragons, it part of a larger old school renaissance involving a revival of interest in older RPGs in general.

The deal is this, there is a group of hobbyist who like to play, promote, and publish for classic D&D editions. Circa 2008, for a variety of reasons the label Old School Renaissance gained widespread currency as a shorthand for this group of hobbyist. Promptly one week later people were already saying shit about how a bunch of D&D gamers were stealing the term old school to mean only D&D when there are so many other worthy older games out there. It been used as a club ever since.

One reason, out of many, Old School Renaissance got stuck to the D&D gamers first, is that two of more popular older RPGs, Runequest and Traveller, never had a break in continuity like classic D&D did. Circa 2004, Chaosium was publishing material for Basic Roleplaying, and the Traveller community had it own unique thing going with the Third Imperium and multiple successive editions. And many of the RPGs originating the mid 80s still had some kind of support going on like GURPS and Hero System.

Hence my "fussy" "all caps" OSR  is focus on classic D&D but is part of a larger "small cap" osr.

Finally to have to keep in mind that the OSR "all caps" is built on a foundation of open content and uses digital technology like print on demand for distribution. The biggest barrier to anybody showing how the rest of the OSR is doing it wrong it the amount of interest and time you are willing to put into a projects. The side effect of this is that the all caps OSR is a kaleidoscope of small to medium size publishers all marching to the tune of their own drummer, including myself.

Enough of us have adopted OSR to make it a semi-useful label but it not commonly used in serious marketing. For that we rely on promoting our name which for me is Bat in the Attic Games. If somebody is trying to pull off a multi-publisher effort like the current OBS sales, or the loot crate subscription that Erik Tenkar is trying to develop then you will see the use of OSR.

For me, and probably others, I don't really care about the use of Old School Renaissance, but I think it is neat how it works into the acronym OSR. Which of course alludes to TSR and lends itself to a similar style logo. Just a fun bit of nostalgia to use as a part of what everybody is doing.
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I do like the map logo OSR.

Quote from: Voros;965720Even after reading loads of spiel on Appendix N (a lot of which I've read and think has little to do with early D&D), Grognardia, Dragonsfoot and K&KA I'm not really sure what anyone means by 'traditional' D&D if most of Gygax's own modules don't even meet the bill? Location based adventures? Okay, that is an OSR cliche at this point that probably needs to be challenged but it can also be evergreen in the right hands. High lethality? Gold for XP? As I recall there's a fair bit about urban adventuring in the DMG but many proclaim that city adventures are yet another perverse deviation. What exactly is it that makes something 'traditional'? Honest question.

I think traditional is a better starting point than Gygaxian though not only because that odd adjective has been seriously abused but I find it hard to find much of a common thread through his best module work which is rather more varied than he is often given credit for.

I'm not saying that Gygax's modules aren't traditional or Gygaxian, I'm saying that the episodic module campaign that became the de facto D&D standard was an unplanned consequence of releasing a lot of tournament modules but not a lot of meat and potatoes world-building stuff.  Gygax's modules are great - his low level stuff (B2 and T1) set good foundations for world building, which the DM is then directed to do (in B2) on the presumption that after this primer the DM is ready to go (or in the case of "T2", follow-up material didn't get published for years).  But I think most DMs didn't build out the world from that point - they went and bought another module with a usable level range.  And so D&D became for many people a sort of hurky-jerky affair where the players finish an adventure, the DM provides some bridge to the start of the next module, and off they go.

I don't like "traditional" because immediately you get people who say "I never played that way so it wasn't MY tradition".  And they're right.  All of the people who've played D&D for 30+ years were at one time bunched into the same rules and so used those rules as they pleased from day 1.  There was never a period of broad agreement on how D&D was "best played".  Which is why I prefer the term "implicit game/world".  I don't care how anyone used the game, there is an underlying philosophy of the author there to be found for those who would be interested in playing AD&D that way.  

I also would like to emphasize I am not saying "everyone should play this way", to head off any butt hurt posts from that Brady dude.  The idea that everyone would want the same things out of RPGs is laughable.  So if you or anyone else reads this and think all or part sucks, I simply ask that you remember I am not saying "you should play this way because Gygax advocated it".  I am instead explaining how I play, why, and things I would like to see in products using D&D/AD&D rules/mechanics.

The elements I see in the implicit game break out like so.  Note that I am not claiming this as a K&KA manifesto of design principles.  They are my thoughts.  I'm probably forgetting another half-dozen or so because these are mostly off the top of my head.  I'm separating them into world stuff and DM-to-DM advice or general game principles stuff.

It is not as if these are all completely unaddressed in OSR material which often takes these general themes and further adapts them.  But in terms of addressing the whole

Game Play Style Presumptions Implicit in the Core AD&D books

AD&D is a roleplaying game, but the roleplaying is merely an element.  It is a game first and foremost.  Roleplaying bends to the needs of the game not the other way around.  Roleplaying is not the overriding sole point of playing the game.  

Quote from: Gygax, Realms of Roleplaying, Dragon #102There was a long period of time when action, rather than role playing, was the major focus of gaming, and this was especially true with respect to tournament scenarios at conventions. Thus, an AD&D game scenario would typically stress combat with monsters to achieve the goal set before the characters. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way — much emphasis is being placed on how well the player takes on the role of his or her character. Personification and acting are replacing action of the more direct and forceful type — be it sword swinging, spell casting, or anything else.

Before this trend goes too far, it is time to consider what the typical role-playing game is all about. First, it is important to remember that "role-playing" is a modifier of the noun "game." We are dealing with a game which is based on role playing, but it is first and foremost a game. Games are not plays, although role-playing games should have some of the theatre included in their play. To put undue stress upon mere role-playing places the cart before the horse. Role playing is a necessary part of the game, but it is by no means the whole of the matter.

The term "skilled player", "player skill" or some variation occurs countless times (my PDF software doesn't provide a total count, but perhaps others do) in the PHB and DMG.  Character acting to the point of refusing to simply burn the troll because the character is not considered to know what the player knows is an example of this core concept being essentially lost.  The player was expected to get better and apply their experience to each character they ever made from that character's first level, not establish in-game some acceptable reason for their player knowledge.  "Metagaming" is just "gaming", and was thoroughly and completely expected; celebrated.  T.Foster related a story on his blog yesterday about playing with Gygax as a 13 year-old, and what I found interesting about it was the following:

QuoteMost DMs I had played under to that point, especially the RPGA DMs, drew a pretty firm line between "in-character" and "out-of-character" communication, and tended to discourage the latter. The tone was pretty dry and formal and the idea seemed to be that when you were playing you were in the game. Gary's game wasn't like that at all. Except when he was reading boxed text, he was totally informal, very chatty, very prone to OOC and off-topic digressions. He also gave tons of ongoing feedback to us about how well or poorly he thought we were doing, and what would have happened (better or worse) if we'd done things differently. Effectively, after each encounter he'd go "behind the scenes" and tell us about it from the DM perspective. This was totally different than anything I'd ever experienced before - pretty much every other DM I'd ever played with tried to maintain as much of a poker face as possible and to give out as little info as possible - but it both made the game much more engaging - none of our attention ever wavered - and gave us a much better idea of how the adventure "worked" and what was expected of us, which helped us to improve our performance. The game wasn't a confrontation, it was more like a conversation.

Continuing, centralizing playacting as the main point of AD&D gaming subtly but materially makes it less likely for casual participants (i.e., people who do not make RPGs a primary focus of their free time and fun money) to play AD&D games, instead concentrating the pool of players among the much smaller minority of people who greatly enjoy playacting.  Gygax clearly thought/hoped AD&D would break into the same sort of cultural mainstay status as monopoly; I don't think this was because he thought the majority of the culture would share the current RPG hobbyist's play priorities and assumptions.

Likewise, the word "story" occurs precisely zero times in the PHB, and only once in the DMG - in the foreward written by Mike Carr.  And even then, the context of Carr's use is not one of the DM basing adventures around a plot.  AD&D is not a game conceived around the concepts of the DM coming up with plotted arcs.  Tournament modules were loosely pre-plotted as a necessity for grading multiple players on a level field; but contextual necessity evolved into an underlying standard.  This is where location-based adventures differ from, say, A1-4.  Putting such a burden on the DM subtly but materially makes it less likely for casual participants (i.e., people who do not make RPGs a primary focus of their free time and fun money) to run AD&D games, instead concentrating the DM role among those who are creative in this specific regard.  

Lastly, in regards to story in AD&D, I'll quote P&P in this regard, because I agree with him:

Quote"The role of a superior DM is NOT to tell a story to his or her players. The DM need only provide an interesting and challenging environment for the players to explore and then administer that environment totally impartially. Superior players will be able to create a character-driven, interactive story from these raw materials, and neither the players nor the GM can tell where the story is headed."

- The Gospel of Papers&Paychecks

Leading out of that, the game is built around campaign play, which is a process.  None of the process is meant to be skipped.  Location based adventures are most useful to this because the how/why of character interaction with the location, and reason for exiting the location are completely player-determined.   "Adventures" are the central element of campaign play but the entire process is equally important, and the boundary between "pre-adventure", adventure, and "post-adventure" is fuzzy.  All of these should be enjoyable and exciting, albeit in differnt ways.  All are equally important and meant to be played through, not mostly hand-waived.  I believe this one reason why the DMG emphasizes that it is critical to keep track of the passage of time, as that plays into making pre- and post- activities meaningful.  More game materials that aren't meant to be ohmygodsocreative are needed for meat and potatoes grunt work replacement for DMs who would like to run a more organic and "whole" campaign world, but simply don't have the additional time necessary.

When it comes to the game world's geography, physics, societies, etc., the DM is fully in control.  He is also in control for the overall atmosphere of the game location - the literal room/area/table where the people come together, and should permit no asshattery out of any person towards other people.  When it comes to the goals, actions, motivations and interaction between the players and their characters - the DM is not involved.  (As an example, re-read the section of the DMG for assigning XP).   The players should drive the day-to-day activity of the campaign after zero-day.  The players have a responsibility to conceive of personal goals for their characters and interact with the game world in ways the player hopes will achieve them - not just show up on Thursday night and expect to passively toss dice and basically ride the ride someone else put all the effort into conceiving.  Likewise, the DM have a responsibility to run the world independent of the players, so that it is a moving breathing thing that is interesting to interact with and gives the players plenty of ideas.  Again harkening back to the section on time in the DMG, the DM's game world is presumed to have multiple groups of players operating in the same continuity.  This is, in my view, where DM creativity is pegged into the red zone.  It is not in coming up with what the players do next, it is in coming up with everything the players are not doing.

Point blank, impartial refereeing results in dead characters.  The DM should pull no punches with characters in the moment.  That doesn't help them become skilled players.  Likewise, the DMG encourages a merciful DM who allows do-overs from simple hit point death (most basic combats) through raise dead to be "no great matter".  The DM needs to have the ability to walk the middle path where the world is uncaring, but the gods aren't indifferent.  Many DMs get pedantically caught up with (they consider) maximum verisimilitude to the point where they punish the player by saying it doesn't make sense that player breaks such as raise dead, or wish, are opportunities commonly available.  

Leading out of that, AD&D is a game, not a fantasy world reality simulation.  Just like role-playing, where either the game or the fantasy world reality simulation must bend - don't bend the game to the fantasy world to the detriment of the players out of slavish devotion to indifferent consistency.  We're here to enjoy each other's time, and no one is going to have "God damn he could design a flawless fantasy physics system and build worlds that seemed more real than ours" chiseled on their tombstone.  Examples of this would be (IMO) DMs who keep players in perpetual starvation mode; skin flints who hand out magic items rarely because they believe even a +1 sword should be special, or that finding a pot of silver should be incredible.  Now if you have players who want that, sure, go ahead.  But AD&D was designed around the tropes of casual fantasy fiction, and most people think of that when they think of an adventure game; not the desires of the minority who thinks HARN was the greatest world/system ever written.

If you're the DM, see the game as both a solo game and a shared game.  The solo DM game is creating for creation's sake.  It may, or may not, ever be experienced by the players.  You as DM create locations, spells, magic items, tricks, traps, dungeon levels, NPCs, etc., for the same reason a writer writes - because you are driven to regardless of potential audience.  DMs who feel that if they spent time creating it, that the PCs must run through it or the DMs time was wasted are placing their own personal gratification above player agency, and that diminishes the ceiling of possibility in their campaign.


Game World Presumptions implicit in Core AD&D Books

AD&D is really a western in medieval drag.  The civilized east coast types are moving (back?) to settle the frontier.  The player characters are either white/black/grey hats interacting with this macro process in different roles depending upon their choices.  They will explore past the known edge of the frontier; recover treasures which fuel the process; contend with the dangerous elements both inhumanely monstrous as well as competing humanoid; and eventually carve their own ruled areas out of the pacified area, contributing to the DM's evolving world in the process.  Higher level play introduces contending armies controlled by PCs into the campaign.  When the PCs aren't exploring dungeons or clearing the marches, their activities will often lead them into cities where 1) agents of the cosmic entities discussed below often operate; 2) contain stuff they need available nowhere else; 3) house political actors and guilds they may become enmeshed in, requiring player action.

Fighters are the dominant actor-class, even considering the power individual spellcasters can potentially bring to bear at any time.  (Most of the fiddly bits lots of people dropped out of the AD&D combat engine directly penalize magic-users and make them easier to disrupt/kill).  

There is at least one, and probably several, tentpole megadungeon(s) which start out heavily used, decreasing in use as character power allows greater variety, but always present challenge and wealth to the players.

The dungeon is where players have somewhat greater control of their risk as it is stratified.  The wilderness has no stratification so choose your time of entry at your own peril.  In-between the wilderness and the core civilized lands are the marches which are dangerous, but heavily weighted towards understandable factors (bandits, pirates, raiders, etc.)

Alignment is real.  The cosmic conflict underpins everything.  The world the PCs walk around on is the asset which will tip the playing field in favor of one or another of the cosmic factions, and sees frequent interaction with powers.  This interaction may be mostly indirect due to constraints, but it is continual, planned, and heavily contested.  Evil especially seeks to open up ways to more directly manifest and gain control.  

Law seeks to impose order (which I see as reducing/eliminating magic, eventually, as natural law grows strong enough to refuse the possibility of supernatural warping).  Chaos seeks the primal disordered landscape of unconstrained persons, action, and also magical forces.  Neutrality is either "cosmic" or "selfish".  Cosmic neutrality seeks to maintain the present balance (i.e., the world depicted in the AD&D materials) between the two (e.g., Circle of Eight).  Selfish neutrality really doesn't care about all that and doesn't necessarily get their jollies off of suffering, but wants easy wealth and doesn't feel overly inhibited in how it gets it (e.g., the neutral AD&D bandit from the monster manual).  Most humans are selfish neutrals.

Good seeks to make the world safe for the least of these, prosperous to the point of eliminating want, and beneficient.  Evil enjoys the suffering of others and seeks a world where power is used as the powerful see fit, to their own personal benefit.  Neutrality is as above.

Shit was really weird in the recent past.  Civilization receded but weathered the storm.  Alien and bizarre stuff is all over the place, hidden in corners.  But these are palate cleansers within the game world, not the focus of the game world.  The majority of the game world resembles recognizable human myth and themes passed down throughout the ages, not only stuff Weird Fantasy authors from 1900 forward came up with.  (This also broadens the points of connection to the game which non-hobbyists will have.  It's much easier to get people to play a game if they are familiar with big parts of it conceptually.)

Humanity has the initiative and the edge.  But it can lose that initiative.  Unless its destiny is disrupted in some way, all other elements in the world will wane as humanity waxes and extends its control.  Demi-humans are allies mostly, but elements of them likely resent their lesser role.

Quote from: Voros;965720PS. Is there really any evidence anyone Gygax hired 'admitted' they 'really' wanted to be successful fantasy novelist? That sounds like a predictable disparagment by implication of the rather talented Tracy Hickman, favourite whipping boy of the Pope and a lot of OSR types who couldn't design a Ravenloft if their life depended on it.

And let's not forget the often excessive fictional details in Gygax's Hommlet, Shrine and Vault not to mention that post-TSR it seems he himself was more than a bit interested in becoming a successful fantasy novelist.

On a practical level, having listened to a podcast with former-wargamer and early TSR module writer Douglas Niles, I think any expression of interest in novel writing could just as easily come from a desire to make a decent living as it often pays better than being an RPG designer. We've lost most of the great designers of the past to novels, video games or teaching game design because of the poor financial rewards of a career in TTRPGs.

On this one, I know that there are interviews out there.  I can't recall where I saw them, whether it was interviews on blogs, TSR alumni threads at DF, or somewhere else.  But I've seen the sentiment in multiple places from people who were contemporary employees that a lot of the 2nd/3rd wave of hired designers after 1980 were open about taking jobs designing with TSR because they though it would give them a leg up on getting books published, and being an author was their primary goal.  That isn't a Hickman-specific knock, although I am in no way a Hickman fan.  I don't wish him bad juju or anything, but his products don't make me want to play D&D.

Gygax certainly wanted to get in on the gravy train of TSR novels when he saw the popularity of Dragonlance.  I don't know if he was interested in being an author more than a game designer, though.  Once he lost control of TSR he used his novels to kill off Greyhawk's universe in a statement, and I don't think he wrote much after that.  So not a writer's writer.  (On an aside, the Gord novels may be marginal works of fiction, but they are excellent quasi-campaign journals, and give a lot of insight/detail into how Gygax envisioned the implicit setting as I discuss above.  I think they're worthwhile reading to a DM for game-related reasons).

I can understand not taking this as gospel if you want to see a cite first, I just don't have the time to dig up where I read it.  So disregard what I said seems preposterous; it wasn't a main point.

Quote from: EOTB;965863I don't like "traditional" because immediately you get people who say "I never played that way so it wasn't MY tradition".  And they're right.  All of the people who've played D&D for 30+ years were at one time bunched into the same rules and so used those rules as they pleased from day 1.  There was never a period of broad agreement on how D&D was "best played".  Which is why I prefer the term "implicit game/world".  I don't care how anyone used the game, there is an underlying philosophy of the author there to be found for those who would be interested in playing AD&D that way.  

Thanks for the extensive and reasoned response.

I'm going to read it all but just wanted to respond immediately to this and say this is an excellent point I hadn't considered in terms of the issue with the use of 'traditional.'

I certainly have responded in a similar way to claims of authority based on 'how the game use to be played.' It is a fatal flaw in Finch's Primer which otherwise has good advice for DMs but presents a faulty idealized narrative of how people supposedly played in the past.

And no worries about digging up a citation for the novelists claim. Even if true for the reason I gave above about financial viability I wouldn't find it a damning statement anyway. I'm just leery of certain 'truisms' repeated on forums with no sourcing. Like the long standing claim that Williams held gamers in contempt, a claim that no one outside of the tighest Gygax camp (Mentzer, Kask), in other words those with a very big axe to grind, has ever confirmed.

Quote from: Voros;965720Sounds reasonable enough. I think lots of people would be interested in checking out modules in a more 'traditional' mode so as Estar says the best response is for the Grogs to produce what they advocate and distribute it, either paid or free.

Even after reading loads of spiel on Appendix N (a lot of which I've read and think has little to do with early D&D), Grognardia, Dragonsfoot and K&KA I'm not really sure what anyone means by 'traditional' D&D if most of Gygax's own modules don't even meet the bill? Location based adventures? Okay, that is an OSR cliche at this point that probably needs to be challenged but it can also be evergreen in the right hands. High lethality? Gold for XP? As I recall there's a fair bit about urban adventuring in the DMG but many proclaim that city adventures are yet another perverse deviation. What exactly is it that makes something 'traditional'? Honest question.

I think traditional is a better starting point than Gygaxian though not only because that odd adjective has been seriously abused but I find it hard to find much of a common thread through his best module work which is rather more varied than he is often given credit for.

PS. Is there really any evidence anyone Gygax hired 'admitted' they 'really' wanted to be successful fantasy novelist? That sounds like a predictable disparagment by implication of the rather talented Tracy Hickman, favourite whipping boy of the Pope and a lot of OSR types who couldn't design a Ravenloft if their life depended on it.

And let's not forget the often excessive fictional details in Gygax's Hommlet, Shrine and Vault not to mention that post-TSR it seems he himself was more than a bit interested in becoming a successful fantasy novelist.

On a practical level, having listened to a podcast with former-wargamer and early TSR module writer Douglas Niles, I think any expression of interest in novel writing could just as easily come from a desire to make a decent living as it often pays better than being an RPG designer. We've lost most of the great designers of the past to novels, video games or teaching game design because of the poor financial rewards of a career in TTRPGs.

A traditional D&D module, as I see it, is blueprinted beautifully on page B51 of the D&D Moldvay Basic Rulebook. It is very straightforward and simple, yet seems to have been forgotten by most adventure writers today.

A. Choose a Scenario

B. Choose a Setting

C. Decide on Special Monsters to be Used.

D. Draw a Map of the Dungeon

E. Stock the Dungeon

Not exactly rocket science is it? The very first part is, I think, an art that has been largely forgotten. A scenario isn't a largely completed story merely requiring a few protagonists to roll some dice at certain points before concluding at the grand finale. A scenario is not a sketch of a novel, or movie or play when the scenario is intended to support actual game play.

Definition of scenario
plural scenarios
1
a :  an outline or synopsis of a play; especially :  a plot outline used by actors of the commedia dell'arte
b :  the libretto of an opera
2
a :  screenplay
b :  shooting script
3
:  a sequence of events especially when imagined; especially :  an account or synopsis of a possible course of action or events

Definition 1a makes a boring as fuck railroad of a role playing game. Definition 3 is far more applicable to adventure design that isn't scripted. A proper scenario as the focus of play does not assume or script in anything regarding the participants.

Module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands is a great example of a scenario based adventure. The scenario involves the folks at the keep needing assistance with the marauding humanoids in the nearby Caves of Chaos.

This is usually met with disdain by whiny story-wanking bitches complaining about a lack of plot. They are dead wrong of course but that doesn't stop the crying and complaining. There are things going on and relationships that can be exploited. It is only a simple hack & slash fest for those who either just want beer & pretzels action or those too dumb to pick up on things. Players are not led by the nose from plot point to plot point. The module and the game as a whole was written for people that supposedly enjoyed using their imaginations. There are so many outcomes possible depending on where the players go and what they do. A good playable scenario always allows for that. A poorly scripted railroad does not.

The issue with that defintion is it comes close to restricting all 'traditional' or Gygaxian play to dungeon or hex crawls only. Its also more constructive when creating a definition to not build it on a strawman representation of the 'wrong way' to play as you have. Defining something by what it is NOT is lazy and often reactionary.

I think your point about scenarios as a rough outline that the PCs and DM (it is always a collaborative process) can take and run with is very useful and insightful, if perhaps a little intimidating for new DMs.

As I already noted the DMG has a lot of material on urban adventuring and the Vault of the Drow is far from a dungeon. I think EOTB's defintion of a role of a city in such a campaign is more useful:

"...their activities will often lead them into cities where 1) agents of the cosmic entities discussed below often operate; 2) contain stuff they need available nowhere else; 3) house political actors and guilds they may become enmeshed in, requiring player action."

That third point is particularly true of a place like Erelhei-Cinlu and the scheming of a city like that will almost naturally drive the game to be heavier on the role-playing element.

A bit OT but if there's one phrase that needs to die (and I believe like a lot of OSR stupidity it was coined by the Pope) it is the ridiculous one of 'Gygaxian naturalism.' The last thing most Gygax adventures are is naturalistic. Sure, in some dungeons he tried to apply some basics of ecology and logic of how the monsters would interact but to apply the term naturalism to the nonsensical setup of the Caves of Chaos or Lost Caverns of Tsojanth is silly, not to mention his taste for the outright surreal in the Dungeonland/Land Beyond the Magic Mirror modules. Gygax's greatest strength was his  often wild imagination not his occasional and often half-hearted attempts at verisimillitude. To focus on the latter over the former is almost perverse.