Old School Revival

The Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival, or OSR is a play style movement in tabletop role-playing games which draws inspiration from the earliest days of tabletop RPGs in the 1970s, especially ''Dungeons & Dragons''. It consists of a loose network or community of gamers and game designers who share an interest in a certain style of play and set of game design principles.

Terminology

The terms "old school revival" and "old school renaissance" were first used on the Dragonsfoot forum as early as 2004 and 2005, respectively, to refer to a growing interest in older editions of ''Dungeons and Dragons'' and games inspired by those older editions. By February of 2008, a pre-launch call for submissions for ''Fight On!'' magazine described it as "a quarterly fanzine for the old-school Renaissance". The two terms (revival and renaissance) continue to be used interchangeably according to user preference, though a 2018 survey found that most respondents understood the R in OSR to mean "renaissance" over "revival", with "rules" and "revolution" as distant third- and fourth-place choices. Ben Milton describes the use of "Revival" as a return to older role-playing games, and "Renaissance" as taking inspiration from the kinds of play they engendered.

History

The OSR movement first developed in the early 2000s, primarily in discussion on internet forums such as Dragonsfoot, Knights & Knaves Alehouse, and Original D&D Discussion, as well as on a large and diverse network of blogs. Partly as a reaction to the publication of the Third Edition of ''Dungeons and Dragons'', interest in and discussion of "old school" play also led to the creation of ''Dungeons and Dragons'' retro-clones (legal emulations of RPG rules from the 1970s and early 1980s), including games such as '' Castles & Crusades'' and '' OSRIC'' which were developed in OSR-related forums. Zines dedicated to OSR content, such as ''Fight On!'' and ''Knockspell'', began to be published as early as 2008.

In addition to the development of internet platforms and printed rule books, other printed OSR products became widely available. In 2008, Matthew Finch (creator of ''OSRIC'') released his free "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming", which tried to sum up the OSR aesthetic. Print-on-demand sites such as Lulu and DriveThruRPG allowed authors to market periodicals, such as ''Fight On!'' and many new adventure scenarios and game settings. These continue to be created and marketed, along with older, formerly out of print gaming products, via print-on-demand services.

In 2012, Wizards of the Coast began publishing reprints and PDFs of ''Advanced Dungeons and Dragons'' and ''Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set'' materials, possibly in response to a perceived market for these materials driven by the OSR.

By the early 2020s, the OSR had inspired such diverse developments in tabletop gaming that new classifications such as "BrOSR", "Classic OSR", "OSR-Adjacent", "Nu-OSR" and "Commercial OSR" were being used.

Games

A variety of published RPGs can be understood to be influenced by or part of the OSR trend, ranging from emulations of specific editions of ''Dungeons and Dragons'' such as '' OSRIC'' '' Old-School Essentials'', and '' Labyrinth Lord'' to games such as ''The Black Hack'', ''Mörk Borg'', and '' Electric Bastionland'', which are designed to recreate the "feel" of 1970s roleplaying while taking only slight (if any) inspiration from the early rules.

Broadly, OSR games encourage a tonal fidelity to ''Dungeons & Dragons'' as it was played in the first decade of the game's existence—less emphasis on predefined endings, and a greater emphasis on player choice determining the fate of characters. OSR Games provide play where wrong decisions can easily become lethal for characters and do not guarantee satisfying endings to character arcs. Characters live and die by player choice as opposed to the story's needs.

Style of play

Matthew Finch, in his 2008 book ''A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming'', sets out the four pillars of OSR:
# Rulings from the gamemaster are more important than rule books. Concoct a clever plan and let the gamemaster rule on it.
# Player skill is more important than character abilities. Outwit the enemy, don't simply out-fight them.
# Emphasize the heroic, not the superheroic. Success lies in experience, not superpowers.
# Game balance is not important. If the characters meet a more powerful opponent, either think of a clever plan or run away.

See also

* ''Dungeons & Dragons'' retro-clones
* History of role-playing games

References

{{reflist

Dungeons & Dragons
Old School Renaissance role-playing games