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Really glad to hear that you found the post interesting and/or useful--and really excited to see whatever you come up with, whenever you come up with it.

We definitely agree that discovery and complexity are necessary, and that the goal would be simply to avoid the forms that they conventionally take in Berlinier roguelikes. Likewise, I love the idea of randomizing elements other than dungeons and potions (or dungeons and potions by other names, for that matter). Like you say, lots to chew on.

Thanks again for inviting me to talk!

That makes sense to me.

I did some thinking about how the Berlin Interpretation gets used and misused, and about what a No Berlin roguelike might look like. The full post is here: https://etao.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/no-berlin/

Some basic tl;dr thoughts:

• You'd have a consistent, non-random map that is entirely revealed from the start, and NPCs, items, etc. stay in roughly the same places each time, as Droqen specified in his original post.
  • BUT certain qualities of the payer-characters, NPCs, items, etc. would be randomized.
  • This would help to eliminate grids, "rooms," and other traditional dungeon stuff.
  • It would also de-emphasize exploration-as-such without eliminating a sense of surprise.
• Making monsters different from players could mean altogether avoiding monsters in the traditional sense.
• Since we're trying to avoid hack-and-slash gameplay, maybe we move away from combat.
• "Monsters" don't even necessarily have to be physical creatures. They could simply be bad things that happen.
• But there could also be room for literal monsters, of course, because monsters are cool.
• "Discovery" as such might be the one and only element that really couldn't be eliminated without wrecking what makes roguelikes compelling in the first place.