A shrike for my dreams: AD&D, B/X, and the OSR: By the numbers

Is AD&D still alive and well, or an older part of the OSR that is fading in popularity? This week’s post is an apology: after I wrote “AD&D is too complicated for the OSR” in the Sly Flourish Discord, a pair of kind folks rightly pointed out (and I quickly agreed) that I was wrong-headed and ahistorical there, between OSRIC and a persistent community of fans. I lacked perspective: while I grew up memorizing BECMI and the AD&D 1e and 2e books, I then took a break for decades, started back on to 5e in 2014 and then, in covid times, found my way the B/X side of the OSR.

Hearing about AD&D’s continued popularity surprised me, especially since many new OSR+ games are derived from B/X D&D (e.g., Shadowdark, the Borgs). But we all agreed that we didn’t know exactly how popular A&D was, relative to B/X-derived OSR games. In general, it seems like we all don’t know which RPGs are popular, if Bob World Builder’s recent poll is any indication. So, this week’s post examines data from con games to answer an important question: how many OSR folks are still playing AD&D?

Relic of the past, or ever-open door?

But before we answer that question, a few others come up, the answers to which I have moved to the end because who wants to wade through a page of text before reading the cool stuff? The questions are:

Does playing the older editions count as OSR play? tldr: yes.
Which older editions count as OSR? tldr: all of them that feel right.
How am I going to count the relative numbers of AD&D and B/X OSR players? tldr: using game attendance data from three 2025 cons: Gen, Gary, and North Texas RPG.

Now let’s get to the fun stuff: what I learned.

Takeaway 1: There is a ton of AD&D still being played at all kinds of cons.

Look at the size of that orange slice, which is the number of attendees at AD&D con games (including retroclones and the rare AD&D-adjacent OSR game). Not too shabby, even at GenCon! Clearly there’s a vibrant community of AD&D-playing con attendees.

Takeaway 2: B/X-derived games outnumbered AD&D at all cons, but were less dominant than I believed.

B/X-descended games, as a group, do dominate OSR con games, led by Shadowdark, Mork and Pirate Borg, and B/X itself. But it’s worth noting that AD&D was more popular than any individual OSR game across all cons, with the sole exception of Pirate Borg at GenCon. That’s right, more folks were playing AD&D at these cons than Shadowdark! My mind is officially blown.

Here’s the data itself in table form: one can see the large number of AD&D games on offer, which makes it less likely this is all one group of really focused fans. GaryCon had the most OSR games, but a respectable variety of OSR games were found at Gen Con. NTRPG focused on older games and (not shown here) had the greatest number of OD&D games.

Other interesting observations: 4e is rare as hen’s teeth at cons, while 3e-descended OSR games are well represented, showing the enduring popularity of Dungeon Crawl Classics (and its sister systems) at conventions. And as OSR-adjacent games derived from Runequest, Mothership and Dragonbane were popular at GenCon and GaryCon.

Takeaway 3: Trad games are common at both Gen Con and Gary Con

Gen Con, to likely no one’s surprise, was dominated by trad games. Trad games had nearly 7x more offerings and 9x more players than OSR games at that con. But it surprised me to find that an OSR-focused convention like Gary Con also had a robust trad game scene. That said, trad games have broad appeal and promotional budgets to boot, so I don’t know why I was truly surprised. NTRPG is differently focused: trad games had far less traction there, but the diversity of older games was impressive, with many I hadn’t heard of before or seen in the wild.

Takeaway 4: OSE and Cairn are rare finds at con games: maybe we ought to change that?

Across GenCon, GaryCon, and NTRPG Con, I found a grand total of 27 games of Old School Essentials (counting both OSE and Dolmenwood), 2 games of Cairn, and 9 games of Mausritter. And apart from 2 games of Mausritter at GenCon, all of these wonderful games were at GaryCon. That’s right, there were no OSE or Cairn games, and almost no Mausritter games, at GenCon or a smaller OSR con, and that’s a shame–I love each of these systems, and Dolmenwood is a fucking masterpiece, with top-notch adventures and a hexcrawl so detailed you could retire there. And while Between Two Cons is going to host a ton of Cairn games of course, we need more!

I had a chance to meet Yochai last week at the wonderful indie con Gamefacecon in Baltimore, and I suggested that he start a Warden program for Cairn, like Pirate Borg does for its Harbormasters. He said he has been thinking about it, and I encourage you to bug him about it until it happens.

But honestly, we don’t need to wait. If you are like me and want to see more Dolmenwood, Mausritter, and Cairn games at cons, well…we have to create the world we want. Time for me to volunteer to GM Cairn and Mausritter games at local cons: more people need to wander through the woods, and to learn to fear cats.

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The DETAILS:

Does playing the older D&D editions count as OSR play?

Yes, because A) OSR is a play culture that re-interprets and re-imagines the playstyles of older D&D editions and B) retroclones of older editions are part of the OSR’s history (OSRIC, a retroclone of AD&D, literally put the O.S.R. in the OSR!) and present. Modern AD&D players are certainly playing in a culture where they are influenced by OSR ideas–the one time I played AD&D at a con (2023), it bore a decent resemblance to the games I remembered from the 80s, but it was NOT the same. So, because we all know a single experience is certainly the truth, let’s move on.

Which older editions count as OSR?

Here I could arbitrarily draw the line at 3rd Edition, when DnD got so complicated and full of player options that it became a trad game. But because fruitful cross-pollination can come from pulling cool ideas from newer editions (like my Feats for Shadowdark, if I say so myself) AND because DCC is derived from 3rd edition and yet beloved by OSR folks, I am going to track the relative current popularity of 3e and 4e as part of my OSR game tally. I am also going to track OSR+ games like Mothership that derived from Runequest, because they are spiritual OSR cousins.

How am I going to count the relative numbers of AD&D and B/X OSR players?

There’s no one best way to do this. But today I am going to pull player numbers at RPG conventions, which we all know are heavily influenced by promotion efforts from RPG companies, organizing legions of DMs to keep the torch burning and fans excited. If AD&D is still a popular OSR game at conventions, then it must have a big loyal community, right? Because last I checked, Wizards is not promoting AD&D at conventions.

Focusing on cons with data on all games in downloadable form, I pulled attendance numbers for one big general convention (Gen Con 2025) and a couple of medium size OSR conventions: Gary Con 18 (2025) and North Texas RPG Con 2025. Here are links to the game data for Gen Con, Gary Con, and NTRPG Con: while the OSR cons were neat csvs to pull from Tabletop Events, Gen Con was a tough nugget, it exported as series of a funky game tallies that I had to write an excel script to process after manually downloading all relevant categories. On top of that, Gen Con doesn’t make its past con attendance info available online, so the link above now leads to the 2026 con events. However, I just found this wonderful website listing all past Gen Con events, which I wish I had found last month.

For each game at each con, I sorted them into three categories: 1) OSR games, 2) Not-OSR games (Trad), and 3) Huh?, or the I-have-NO-idea-what-this-rare-game-is-and-life-is-short-let’s-move-on category. Then, within the OSR category, I further sorted games into their ancestor system: B/X and earlier (including OD&D), AD&D (1st and 2nd edition), 3rd edition, 4th edition, Boot Hill, Tunnels and Trolls, and Runequest.

First I counted the number of games offered in each category. Second, for each game played at each con, I added together the tickets sold and the number of people wait-listed, to arrive at the total number of people that wanted to play that game. Yes, that means that the total player-numbers will be repeats of individuals playing in different games, and it’s possible that all the Shadowdark players at Gary Con were just ten kobolds in a trenchcoat–but it’s unlikely. Regardless, because all games were treated the same, we can learn something useful here about community excitement, even if it’s all just gangs of rival kobolds in trenchcoats.

If you have questions about the data that you want me to explore, or are more curious about how I cleaned and parsed it, please let me know in the comments.

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