The thread where I ask a stupid question: Just What is "OSR"?

[AsenRG]

Originally Sane Republic. It's a group of RPG makers and their clients who have declared themselves independent of both mainstream RPGs and Story Games, declaring also that nothing after 1985 ever happened, and the best thing to play SF, Horror, Westerns, and Urban Fantasy is D&D. In fact the only game is D&D. Specifically one certain version of D&D. The only question is which version...

Huh? ...not just D&D...

OSR also include these games and variants of the following;

Tunnels & Trolls, Warlock, Empire of the Petal Throne, Runequest, TfT and/or early GURPS, MERP, Chivalry & Sorcery, Arduin Grimoire, Bushido, Aftermath, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, Traveller, Top Secret, Rolemaster, James Bond 007, Boot Hill,Villains and Vigilantes, Bunnies & Burrows, Star Frontiers, Harn, Space Opera, Champions, and... RIFTS Palladium FRP.

I like those two variants, when combined:).

Oscillating Sausage Receptors

But that one has its own merits, too:D!

To paraphrase Hal Moore, we were gamers once, and young.

Well, my gaming now is vastly better than what it was back when I was 18, so while I understand the feeling, I just can't share it;).

[Armchair Gamer]

A self-selected term for a motley and fractious assemblage of Neo-Gygaxians, gaming archaeologists, and pre-2nd Edition *D&D kitbashers, with a tiny fringe of representatives from other, generally pre-WoD systems.

[Chainsaw]

In my opinion, it sorta kinda means folks who like playing or tinkering with or publishing stuff for or studying some D&D edition (or its clone or variant) from pre-3e D&D, but possibly also including non-D&D of that era depending on whom you ask. A sizable chunk of that group thinks it's a stupid, ambiguous, loaded term and do not identify with it at all for various reasons.

[flyingmice]

Huh? ...not just D&D...

OSR also include these games and variants of the following;

Tunnels & Trolls, Warlock, Empire of the Petal Throne, Runequest, TfT and/or early GURPS, MERP, Chivalry & Sorcery, Arduin Grimoire, Bushido, Aftermath, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, Traveller, Top Secret, Rolemaster, James Bond 007, Boot Hill,Villains and Vigilantes, Bunnies & Burrows, Star Frontiers, Harn, Space Opera, Champions, and... RIFTS Palladium FRP.

Oh! uh... yeah... sure... right! Those other games are totally included! Everyone is like making like retroclones of them and like selling bunches of adventures for them and stuff!

They are all equal. Just... some games are just more equal than others, right?

[Gronan of Simmerya]

OSR is those damn kids who keep playing on my castle green.

* pours boiling oil over the parapet *

[JoeNuttall]

People played TSR D&D for 20 odd years, and the different versions are pretty much the same game. Playing TSR D&D was the obvious mainstream choice.

Then TSR went defunct in the late 90s and D&D went out of print, then WOTC D&D came out it was a very different game and lots of people switched. Anyone now playing TSR D&D was playing an unsupported out of print game.

People who had been playing 3rd edition and then switched back to TSR D&D talked a lot about it and lead a resurgence of interest in the game, which also lead to people playing other old out of print games, and to people talking about what sort of game they like to play.

And then the arguments started (as they always do).

[Shawn Driscoll]

OSR is just a playing style that most gamers use. See the game session text examples contained in AD&D 1st edition, or in The Traveller Book.

[Haffrung]

It's both a brand of D&D supplement in the style of very early D&D, and a school of RPG theory-craft that is one part nostalgia, one part one-true-wayism, and one part picking through the petrified stool of Gygax. Like a lot of cultural movements, by the time it was named it was already declining into vapid and self-conscious mediocrity.

[estar]

The OSR is a group of gamers playing, promoting, and publishing for classic editions of D&D or games using similar mechanics to classic editions of D&D along with whatever other interests them.

Some common but not universal traits are
*The heavy use of PDFs, Print on Demand, and other non-traditional publishing channel
*A Do it Yourself mentality.
*Use of the Open Gaming License as the d20 SRD has all the terms needed to support classic D&D editions and classic mechanics.

Anything else is specific to a particular individual or group. For example there is a niche of the OSR devoted to what is called Gygaxian D&D which focuses on OD&D and AD&D 1st material written or produced by Gary Gygax. Other groups focus on gonzo fantasy, sandbox campaigns/hexcrawl setting (like myself), weird fantasy.

The OSR is a subset of a larger old school renaissance in older games like Classic Traveller, Runequest, The Fantasy Trip, etc. But since the OSR is focus on classic D&D, it tends to be the group that garners the most attention.

The result of all this is that classic D&D edition now enjoy active support and that it probably has a collective audience similar in size to other 2nd tier RPGs. However to due to fact there is no dominant publisher this spread out among a two or three dozen separate publishers most of which are one-man outfits.

What the OSR is NOT is that it represent a statement about how to play tabletop RPGs. The ease of publishing and the widespread use of the OGL means that anything that can be done with classic D&D editions and their mechanics will be done. Including using them in other genres, making hybrids consisting of old and new mechanics, etc.

If you think it does then what you are seeing is the viewpoint of the author or group that you read. The two most common attitude I have personally seen are the Do it yourself attitude of making stuff happen, and a fuck you attitude if people are being critical of playing an older game.

The first was a legacy of the genesis of the OSR amid the development of the Internet and computer tech. The second is because the folks involved playing classic D&D are well that games are not technology. They play as well (or not) now as they did back in the day. That presentation is a separate issue from how the mechanics work.

[estar]

by the time it was named it was already declining into vapid and self-conscious mediocrity.

I guess that must of have happened right off because the first use of old school renaissance was in 2005.

Although to be fair it didn't gain widespread use until 2008. However that still  only two years after the release of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy the first two retro-clones. Still kinda early to say it all declined into vapid and self-conscious mediocrity.

Of course you could date it from the release of Castles & Crusade in 2004. The chain of events result from complaints over its development is what lead to the creation of OSRIC.

[estar]

OSR is just a playing style that most gamers use. See the game session text examples contained in AD&D 1st edition, or in The Traveller Book.

So how does my Scourge of the Demon Wolf fit in or Raggi's Lamentation of the Flame Princess adventures fit in?  Or Zak's material like Vornheim and A Red and Pleasant Land.

Have you actually read anything by anybody who uses the OSR label to describe their stuff or how they run their games?

[estar]

People who had been playing 3rd edition and then switched back to TSR D&D talked a lot about it and lead a resurgence of interest in the game, which also lead to people playing other old out of print games, and to people talking about what sort of game they like to play.

And then the arguments started (as they always do).

Yup pretty much it, except some games like Runequest and Traveller never had a break in the continuity. Yeah they had different editions but either their fan communities remained intact over the years or remained in print in one form or another.

[Christopher Brady]

OSR is just a playing style that most gamers use. See the game session text examples contained in AD&D 1st edition, or in The Traveller Book.

No such animal.  Never was any such animal, and whomever told people this is trying to sell them on an idea and ideal that never existed.

[artikid]

No such animal.  Never was any such animal, and whomever told people this is trying to sell them on an idea and ideal that never existed.

YMMV

[The Butcher]

People played TSR D&D for 20 odd years, and the different versions are pretty much the same game. Playing TSR D&D was the obvious mainstream choice.

Then TSR went defunct in the late 90s and D&D went out of print, then WOTC D&D came out it was a very different game and lots of people switched. Anyone now playing TSR D&D was playing an unsupported out of print game.

People who had been playing 3rd edition and then switched back to TSR D&D talked a lot about it and lead a resurgence of interest in the game, which also lead to people playing other old out of print games, and to people talking about what sort of game they like to play.

That's a pretty good summation, but in addition to playing and talking about any one of the several, only slightly different iterations of TSR D&D, one of the defining traits of the OSR has been its thriving small-press (dare I say, "indie"?) scene.

The variant rulesets get a ton of attention, and many of them deservedly so, but they pale before the sheer volume of adventure modules seeing print and especially electronic distribution.

Being a "fan-driven" thing is central to the OSR's identity, IMHO. Back in the 1990s you'd hit Usenet or the Web and find oodles of fan material for AD&D 2e, GURPS, Rifts, oWoD, etc. via "net.books" and websites (yay Geocities). Blogs more or less picked up the slack but the double whammy of the OGL (some, like Akrasia and misterguignol still compile and link their material on a sidebar on their blogs, God bless 'em). and the rise of epub made it very, very easy for fans to get their material out there in a quasi-professional format.