While I'm up on my soapbox about it: I don't understand the whole "Old School Renaissance" movement in D&D. Why OSR when you can just OS?
I would say that question is based on a misconception. The Old School Renaissance was not originally centered on retroclones, nor, I would argue, is it really even now. It was about re-examining, re-engaging with, and proud apologia for the original TSR D&D editions. OSRIC was, IIRC, the first retroclone, and was specifically designed to facilitate folks publishing new
modules for and supplements to 1E AD&D (
Old School Reference and
Index Compilation). It was not intended to replace AD&D, but rather to explain it a bit more clearly and be a publishing tool to facilitate those modules/adventures and supplements.
As overgeeked mentioned, retroclones got popular in
part because for several years WotC stopped selling PDFs or PODs of the original rules, so retroclones filled in a gap in the market there.
Of course, retroclones also represent a great creative outlet- MOST of them incorporate some house rules, refinements, clean-up of or at least clarification of the older rules. So after OSRIC and BFRPG and Labyrinth Lord and so forth paved the way and established clearly that WotC wasn't going to freak out and get litigious about clones, more and more people got into cloning. And hopefully that helps answer your question about why people keep making clones.
Nowadays I would say that clones have disproportionately high visibility online compared to their real importance, just because the publishers promote them. But if you spend time in OSR forums and Reddit and so forth, while the clones themselves do get a fair amount of discussion, a ton of it is still about the original rules, and about modules and dungeons produced for OSR use, which are mostly actually FOR the original editions. Just labeling them with the current most popular clone (right now it's OSE, of course, which is really a very faithful re-presentation of B/X) avoids trademark issues, and helps cross-market.
I hated making daiquiris. Or any sticky, frozen fruit drink...loud, time-consuming, requires lots of cleanup, and the person ordering them usually doesn't understand that bartenders basically work for tips.
For a second I was confused, then remembered how ubiquitous frozen daiquiris are. Just within the last year I got to be a big fan of a classic daiquiri. Very elegant and simple.
