OSR What Has Caused the OSR Revival?

[Raith5]

I am not an OSR gamer (aside from playing Basic back in the 80s before any revival) but I have question that is slightly tangential to the the question of cause. Why are there so many different types of OSR games? When I have a quick look at them with my un-trained eye they look very similar - why hasnt a game is the OSR set become predominate?

 

[Li Shenron]

1) Nostalgia is real and powerful. Many who were kids in the 80s and 90s are now in their middle-age crises. Some get a sports car, some get an extramarital affair, some get their old hobbies back.

2) Unfortunately those exact old hobbies aren't available anymore, or at least their physical forms aren't, unless you have some money to waste (not that much), time to spend hunting for good copies, and some luck. It's certainly not unfeasible at all, but in the meantime, OSR pdfs are free. (Now we also recently had some old-editions reprints and the "classics" pdf releases, so this might possibly significantly decrease interest in OSR)

3) One more reason IMO could be a reaction against the trend of 3e and 4e of buying a lot of books or subscribing, IOW the feeling that you had to "keep up" all the time with the rest of the community can at some point make you want to get off the carousel. A "closed edition" (i.e. not asking you to check for updates) is more relaxing.

 

[delericho]

2) Unfortunately those exact old hobbies aren't available anymore, or at least their physical forms aren't, unless you have some money to waste (not that much), time to spend hunting for good copies, and some luck. It's certainly not unfeasible at all, but in the meantime, OSR pdfs are free. (Now we also recently had some old-editions reprints and the "classics" pdf releases, so this might possibly significantly decrease interest in OSR)

I think if WotC had released the reprints five years ago, that last (parenthical) point might well be right - with the reprints around, that probably reduces the demand for clones of the same material.

But I suspect the OSR has probably been around long enough now that a lot of those involved have moved beyond simply cloning old material, and on to providing ongoing support for it (or producng variants). It's probably not got the same tentpole appeal as, say, producing a clone of 1st Ed AD&D, but I think it probably does now have enough life as an entity in its own right to carry on.

(Plus, of course, those reprints were low-volume, high-premium items, meaning some of them are already becoming harder and more expensive to find. And the classic PDFs are probably a massive boon for the OSR - what were support products for the new edition are now supports for the clones.)

Certainly, though, it will be very interesting to see what the next few years hold for the OSR, because (almost) all the editions have now been cloned, because the classic PDFs are now available again, and because of 5e.

 

[Meatboy]

I am not an OSR gamer (aside from playing Basic back in the 80s before any revival) but I have question that is slightly tangential to the the question of cause. Why are there so many different types of OSR games? When I have a quick look at them with my un-trained eye they look very similar - why hasnt a game is the OSR set become predominate?

My theory behind this is because OSR material is generally simple its very to tailor to taste. So every author puts out what works for them. This is much harder to do when the systems are mechanically complex and all the parts are super entwined. I liken it to cars. Pop the hood on something 40 years old and something built in the last decade and it becomes pretty obvious what's easier to play around with.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

To me, it started at the days of 3.5, when "Complete Class" books were full of power creep and really good stuff was seriously lacking. Our group started working in a celtic campaign and HR3 became our main source of useful D&D-related rules. At that time, I was already making vast use of "Of Ships and the Sea" in another campaign, and I said to my group: "you know, if we're using more 2E books than 3E books in our games, we may as well come back and play AD&D again and see how it goes".

The first thing I decided to do was to take both the PHB and the DMG and read them carefully from the introduction to the appendix, as I wanted to run the game exactly as written to give it a fair review. It's worthy to say that a lot of people in Brazil started in RPGs with AD&D 2E, but in a time where oral tradition was a force more powerful than rules as written. To this date, I'm frequently surprised with how many people tell me that they started playing with AD&D but are completely clueless about what the books actually say regarding some basic rules like hit points or initiative. They played versions full of house rules believing that they were playing the game as written. Believe me, it's really weird.

So, after reading everything again we finally sit down to play. And boy, we had a blast. The game was actually very good; we surely missed the various clean-ups that happened in the shift to 3.0, but the game was very good, nevertheless. The numbers were not inflated, characters of different levels could sit in the same party and play just fine, and the cleric player was feeling great for earning XP from turning undead and casting spells that advanced his ethos.

I put a lot of faith in D&D Next's ability to evoke this kind of gameplay again, but only time will tell. I know that 2E has more stuff waiting to be used than I'll be able to use in a lifetime, so I feel no pressure to make the shift. Right now, I want to run a Council of Wyrms campaign and a classic Realms one, using the Spellbound Boxed Set, but I have no idea when I'll be able to, because I play a lot of non-D&D games as well. If next didn't manage to pull an equivalent experience, though, 2E will probably remain my D&D of choice for the years to come.

Cheers,

 

[Yora]

Only speaking for myself here, but the reason I first started looking into the pre-2000 games was pretty much D&D 4th Edition. That game made me realize not only that I didn't like what D&D had become, but that everything had been going into a wrong direction since 3.5e, and many of the problems that D&D has now are based on the basic principles of the d20 system.

I still play Pathfinder, because frankly the math of AD&D is so abysmally horrible that playing with the Pathfinder Core Rulebook still seems the better choice to me. But now I run my games with base classes and core book feats only and only up to 10th level, and the way I approach writing adventures and settings is very much OSR style.

It's not so much that the d20 system is worse than the AD&D system (both are bad in different ways), but the whole approach to character options and adventure structure that is found in pretty much all d20 seems just entirely wrong to me. As terrible a system AD&D might have been, the game at least had its approach to actually playing the game right.

I am not an OSR gamer (aside from playing Basic back in the 80s before any revival) but I have question that is slightly tangential to the the question of cause. Why are there so many different types of OSR games? When I have a quick look at them with my un-trained eye they look very similar - why hasnt a game is the OSR set become predominate?

That's actually quite easy to answer. As many old players will tell you, it was very common that groups were unaware of certain minor rules or decited to do certain things differently than the rules said. Back in the day, the creators of the games actually encouraged such things explicitly in the books. The rules were understood as a basic framework that every group should customize to fit their particular needs and preferences. There wasn't really an internet as we now know, and the people you'd been talking to about your game were usually the same people who were playing in your group. So you often were not really aware how much differently the game was played by other groups.
Now many people, and most of them are in their 30s and 40s, release their own version of the old rules, and obviously they alter them in ways that resemble how they used to play it in the 80s and 90s. If you look at the OSR games that are out there, but none of them really has the rules you would like, you can relatively easily make your own version and add it to the pool.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Nostalgia is an insufficient explanation for the OSR for at least a couple reasons. First off is that having fun isn't a nostalgia driven need. Those that revisit older games might initially do so partly due to nostalgia but that wouldn't keep them playing over the long run. Why do any of us play the games that we do? Because they give us the experience that we are looking for and they are fun. Secondly, there are those active in the OSR who never stopped playing these type of games since they were actively supported. It isn't generally possible to be nostalgic for something that you have never missed.

 

[Yora]

I only started with RPGs in 2000, just weeks before D&D 3rd Edition was released and I played AD&D maybe only two or three times. It isn't nostalgia if it's something I never really got familiar with, but I still see the superiority of many aspects in OSR games.

 

[Umbran]

Nostalgia is an insufficient explanation for the OSR for at least a couple reasons.

That may be true. But, as you note - is any *single* explanation likely to be sufficient to fully explain *everyone's* likes and dislikes? No!

Having fun is not a nostalgia-driven need, but nostalgia can help drive fun! And I say that it is quite possible to be nostalgic for things you never left - all that is required is happy past associations.

In OSR threads, folks (Perhaps not you, EW) often treat the mention of nostalgia as if it is some dirty word or something that must be excised from the discussion. For a hobby entertainment game, nostalgia is JUST AS GOOD a reason as any other, and should be embraced with all the other reasons!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Only speaking for myself here, but the reason I first started looking into the pre-2000 games was pretty much D&D 4th Edition. .

For me it started mid 3E with frustration over playes increasingly expecting adventures structured around encounters and the CR system and 4E was the final thing that caused me to go back to older editions.

i was getting increasingly frustrated with how adventures were structured in places like Dungeon and how people were coming to expect them to be built around planned encounters. I picked up the 1E DMG again, around 2005, which i hadnt really read through because i was more of a 2E GM, and found a lot there i liked in terms of adventure design. Wasn't 100% on board with everything, but it spoke to me more than what i was seeing in dragon and what wotc was putting out, and it reminded me of my early days when we just kind of allowed things to happen and focused on exploration. So for me reading the 1E DMG was a big part of it, but i still continued playing 3E. Then when 4E came out, i bought the books and realized it wasnt for me. The style of play (at least how it seemed to be presented) and mechanics just didn't appeal to me.

so i started playing other systems more, and during that time, i decided to run a 2E ravenloft game, because there is so much good ravenloft material written for the system. Once we played, it occured to me he system made a huge difference. My ravenloft games had felt stale under 3E, and i just figured it was because i was older and the setting wasnt as shiny, but using 2E, i felt inspired again and the flow of th game just worked better somehow (a big part of it for me was not having things like diplomacy and spot). Soon after one of my friends showed me lamentations of the flame princess, and then i started looking for old 1E material and picking up some of the retro stuff.

I am by no means a strict OSR gamer. I play 1E, 2E and various retroclones (including one we published) but I also still play 3E, Network System, Savage Worlds, and look into newer games like numenera (which i am eager to try).

One thing that surprised me going back to AD&D is i had assumed it would feel very clunky agter not playing it for a decade of 3E, but the system was not the problem i thought it would be. I realized while 3E did smooth a lot of stuff out, it also removed things in the process or added things that changed the exprience of the game. One good thing about OSR material is its the best of both worlds, they smooth things out, or keep 3E innovations that are popular, but also bring back some of the elements that are missing from current editions.