The subject says it all.
Yes, OSR is.
Yes, it is. Just.
Aw crap!
Just what is "OSR?"
It usually means old school revival or old school renaissance and it's just a catch all term for blogs, books, gamers, communities, rules or whatever that have to do with an interest in older games, usually some form of early D&D and often the very earliest approaches to play.
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...
;D
Quote from: flyingmice;875789Originally 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...
;D
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.
Oscillating Sausage Receptors
Quote from: Nexus;875786Aw crap!
Just what is "OSR?"
Nah. "Just is "OSR"?" is a stupider question.
"Just what is "OSR"?" is relatively sensible.
It's a cute label that uses this nostalgic memory of 'how the game was meant to be played', the game in question is D&D (as all products using the OSR label are variants based on older versions of it.) It makes a base assumption that everyone 'back in the day' played the game the same way, and that way will always be the right way.
Which is frankly a load of bollocks.
Old School: That which was standard practice (or what I thought to be "standard practice," or how people at my school gaming club played, anyway) when I discovered the hobby.
New School: Any way of doing things I encountered starting about 9-18 months later, most of which is crap.
Ancient History: Anything people did before I discovered the hobby, of which I will only begrudgingly acknowledge the existence if someone flashes me a publication date, most of which is crap.
It stands for "OSR Said Recursively."
If you're too close to it you end up on Federal watch lists.
I've also got a follow-up post from five years ago, which I think in some way explains the attraction of "old school" --
* * * * * * *
Scene: me, Laurey, Marilyn and Jon jammed into Jon's dorm room on Orchard Hill. We were players in Jon's startup Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, ordering delivery from the Whole Wheat Pizza Factory. That very first weekend, I was up at UMass visiting (Laurey, Mal and I were high school classmates), and we played three consecutive days and nights, not less than ten hours each day. My first character sheet -- which I still have, nearly forty years on -- was on a large, blue file card, scribbled in pencil. Printed character sheets didn't exist yet, and the ones that came out a couple years down the road were laid out on a typewriter and run on a mimeograph machine, more often than not.
Weren't no published adventures -- Jon had scribbled his notes on loose leaf paper. I was the first GM in the group to use and paint minis, and that was two years down the road. For the most part, people in our gaming circles were "D&D GMs" by courtesy, since damn near every one had a VD&D homebrew that was wildly divergent from every other homebrew. Nonetheless, these were the days of the multiverse, and people would hop from campaign to campaign with the same characters, no matter how divergent the homebrews. Somehow it all worked.
Weren't no Internet, and instead of the give-and-take of RPG forums, which can attract hundreds of posts to a topic in an afternoon, you had the APAzines ... mimeoed and stenciled booklets eagerly hoarded, with comment turnaround time measured in months. The industry leader, Alarums & Excursions, never had a circulation of more than a few hundred. But where else could you hear the words of the Hargraves, Sapienzas, Perrins, Staffords, Blacows, Golds and other Secret Masters of the genre, and have them interact with you?
I am a much better GM, now. I use a vastly superior game system. I have the benefit of decades of learning about my genre and tech level. I have resources unimaginable in the 70s -- desktop publishing, word processing, online clipart. I have many years of investment in gamebooks, minis, props. I don't need to guess, I can pull up the Wikipedia article in seconds. I have a personal library I would have killed to possess back then; books on medieval technology, folklore, herblore, they're by my left elbow as I type this post. I can hit my game system's proprietary forum and get no worse than a same day opinion from a senior editor should I have any questions. Most importantly, the hobby has four decades of experience -- what works, what doesn't.
But I do look back at times, wistfully, back to when Laurey and Mal and I were all nineteen, and stayed up all night playing this wonderful game. I remember the warm fanboy glow I felt when Dave Hargrave called me a smart cookie, in print yet. I smile thinking of cat-loving Christine shrieking "Kill it! Kill it!" when the party encountered a cat, because she'd just heard about Arduin's kill kittens and was convinced this was one. I remember the elation when I killed a mofo dragon, solo, when all the rest of the party was WIA, because I tossed the greatest dice roll of my entire career (RM open ended roll, finishing around 450).
To paraphrase Hal Moore, we were gamers once, and young.
Whatever it was it's been torn apart by wolves and the pieces scattered on the wind.
Quote from: Simlasa;875831Whatever it was it's been torn apart by wolves and the pieces scattered on the wind.
For it was just... in an unjust world. :pundit:
Quote from: flyingmice;875789Originally 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...
;D
Quote from: GameDaddy;875794Huh? ...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:).
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;875801Oscillating Sausage Receptors
But that one has its own merits, too:D!
Quote from: Ravenswing;875818
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;).
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.
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.
Quote from: GameDaddy;875794Huh? ...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! ;D
They are all equal. Just... some games are just more equal than others, right?
OSR is those damn kids who keep playing on my castle green.
* pours boiling oil over the parapet *
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).
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: Haffrung;875895by 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 (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11962&p=198322&hilit=+old+school+renaissance+#p198322) 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.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;875893OSR 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?
Quote from: JoeNuttall;875889People 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.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;875893OSR 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.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;875931No 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
Quote from: JoeNuttall;875889People 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.
Quote from: JoeNuttall;875889Then 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.
Minor correction: 2nd Edition AD&D didn't go out of print until the 3rd Edition launch in 2000 (WotC bought the company in 1997). Indeed, anecdotal reports are that during the seven months (January--July 1997) that TSR was not printing new material, there were still enough books in the pipeline that AD&D was the top-selling game for all but one of those months--and that one month was the release of the shiny new edition of
Vampire: The Masquerade.
It is true, however, that the break between 2nd and 3rd Edition is stronger than any prior edition (and arguably any subsequent one), and WotC adopted a policy of radical division in support instead of the more gradual transition that had marked the 1E->2E shift.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;875893OSR 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.
Many, but probably not 'most'--not given how strong a presence 3E, Pathfinder, and even 4E have had in the market, to say nothing of things like WoD and Shadowrun. And even back in the old days, people were playing in ways that Pundit and other Grand Heresiarchs of the Old School would denounce as Blasphemies Against the Unholy Spirit of Demogygax. :)
Quote from: The Butcher;875946one of the defining traits of the OSR has been its thriving small-press (dare I say, "indie"?) scene.
Back when "Old School" was "Current School" fanzines were extremely popular (at least in the UK) - e.g. Imagine used to have a review column dedicated to fanzines - so it's funny that this aspect also had a strong resurgence.
Ask a stupid question, get a few dozen snarky answers!
The oftentimes pedantic "the way it's mean to be played" arguments unabiding, I believe the Old School Renaissance represents a point in time when the barriers to entry for self-publication were tore down. Several factors lead to this, including the PDF becoming the standardized format for digital publication, companies like Drive-Thru RPG coming into their own and promotion of works across role-playing game community websites with SEM/SEO ranks that drove new users to what would have been largely unknown games.
Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and other crowdsourced sites have led to a new renaissance, but abandonment of the term "OSR" seems imminent while the watchword is still nostalgia.
Personally, I am fond of old school feel, new school appeal when it comes to game design. Those are the sort of products which piques my interest.
Overheated Skunk Rectums.
The OSR makes me happy, but I ignore the drama and just focus on the products that interest me.
Quote from: flyingmice;875789In fact the only game is D&D. Specifically one certain version of D&D. The only question is which version...
There is a strong AD&D Revivalist faction of the OSR.
Not a big surprise considering AD&D's sales and scope of player community.
Of course, the epic battles between how various TSR editions are so incredibly different are kinda bizarre and laughably masturbatory.
Quote from: flyingmice;875874Just... some games are just more equal than others, right?
I know others may object to my use of the term, but I personally consider Mongoose an OSR company as they publish retro-whatevers of RuneQuest and Traveller.
Quote from: Spinachcat;875966Of course, the epic battles between how various TSR editions are so incredibly different are kinda bizarre and laughably masturbatory.
(shrugs) Edition wars have always been with us, even back before 2nd editions of anything
existed. Nothing different between "3rd edition sucks!" / "No, 4th edition sucks" and "What's with all these loser variants and homebrews, you gotta play by the book!" / "Only an idiot doesn't make changes."
Optimally Sauced Ravioli
Quote from: Spinachcat;875966The OSR makes me happy, but I ignore the drama and just focus on the products that interest me.
A good solid plan.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;875983Optimally Sauced Ravioli
I'm going to have some of that right now. Ravioli from scratch too.
Oh, shit, they're Tortellini.
OST?! I think I just got kicked out of the OSR on the grounds of wrong pasta.
The important thing about the OSR, the valuable thing, is that it's a design framework.
People tend to assume that having absolute liberty to make whatever you like will produce the most creative stuff; but just as often what will be produced is drivel, or just reinventing the wheel.
When you create a set of rules and structures, and then challenge someone to make something new WITHIN that framework, that's when you get some of the most creative stuff. And that's what the OSR has accomplished.