Have you noticed this obnoxious little meme floating around the old-school community? "We don't explore characters. We explore dungeons." This, apparently, is the new slogan for the OSR. This is what we're doing now: inventing some kind of trumped-up mutual exclusivity between exploring the campaign world and all that stuff that used to get filed under "good role-playing" back when I was first learning this game.
Well... lah-dee-freakin'-dah! Seriously, where does this pig-headed macho bullshit keep coming from? If you want to play in a role-playing game where the characters don't have any character, that's fine, I guess. But it sounds damned dull, if you ask me.
I play old-school D&D for the characters. Literal dungeons are incidental. Actual dragons may or may not be involved. I explore dungeons, the wilderness, the planes, outer space, and my character's psyche... and I am old-school.
The drawers of boundaries, the builders of walls, the sayers of "nay," are all cordially invited to choke on that.