OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[Mannahnin]

Regarding your post about OSR applied to other games--I can see an argument for not using it to apply to games still in publication (which pushes my example of Cepheus Engine out), but how about retroclones of Gamma World or Marvel Superheroes, both of which exist, and both of were out of print at least as long as most of those early editions of D&D? And which arguably also have distinct playstyle differences?

That's definitely an interesting question. In my observation those games were a side-interest of some participants in the OSR going back to the beginning of the movement, and they're a good edge/corner case demonstration of why the OSR should probably be more capacious than just Old School D&D. Though a lot of this is personal opinion, of course.

Honestly, that's what I mostly feel is true, but that doesn't mean having some structure to what a campaign is about is somehow outside the bounds. Yes, early games tended to be more sandboxy, but its not a binary thing here.

The problem is it also tends to get bundled up with support for structural things that didn't really have anything to do with that playstyle per se. As an example, the really soggy attitude you get on some OSR proponents about anything but random character generation. That's got nothing to do with whether your doing sandbox style play or the early quasi-caper play.

Now, not everyone in the OSR feels that way; Kevin Crawford is willing to accept to arrays for example. But there's a lot of odd attachments that don't seem to have anything related to any particular style so much as just general resistance to anything that came after the period they call back to.

Yes, though I think some of those mechanics are at least tangentially part of the same exploration. Random character generation still has some adherents, but has become increasingly outmoded in D&D design. Re-examining how, for example, OD&D and B/X treat ability scores, can give us more insight into when and why random abilities can work and be fun, even if that's something I completely abandoned while I was playing 4E, and mostly so with 5E.

 

[Malmuria]

One of the points of contention within the OSR, and referenced in the blog post series, is whether rules lite games that are not retroclones "count" as OSR. There are some good questions to be asked here: things like xp-for-gold, exploration procedures, morale and reaction rolls, and classic saving throws might be things that end up on the cutting room floor if you are trying to fit all of your rules onto two pages. At that point you are sort of relying on players having a wider knowledge of old school mechanics so they can import things easily (which, probably a fair assumption given how niche these games are in the grand scheme of things).

But given all subcultures are fractal, there is a tone of resentment with regards to all these "NuSR" games and products coming in and becoming "popular." I see this in particular with some of the reaction against things like "artpunk" aesthetics (Mork Borg, etc). I get that it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but to me if you like a certain style of game, argue for it on its own merits rather than as simply being not-something else. (I feel this same way about OSR or Indie folks who relentlessly drag 5e, with anti-5e becoming their whole gaming identity). I'm just happy that so many people are creating so many different things.

 

[rogueattorney]

I was deeply involved in the initial retro-clone phase of the OSR. I was the moderator for the Classic D&D forum at Dragonsfoot and was in contact with pretty much all the main principals. I actually advised the makers of OSRIC to take a different approach other than the retro-clone. (They were smart to ignore me.) Later I helped draft some of the correspondence between the makers of OSRIC and WotC.

Putting myself back in the headspace of an O(A)D&D player circa 2004 and it was a deeply weird time for us in the hobby. Maybe those that have come to D&D since then don't know, or maybe those who were perfectly happy with 3.x at the time didn't realize, but it was actually quite hard to get support for the game then. WotC's pdf program was sporadic, low quality, and was eventually pulled entirely prior to 4e coming out. You couldn't even get consistent access to some of the rule books. The B/X books that are now the basis of much of the nu-OSR weren't ever legally available until 2013. Dragonsfoot and a few other sites put out free adventures, but the copyright propriety of doing so at the time was nebulous at best. There was also a sense that we could get some more and better quality stuff if people were able to sell their products.

There were a ton of products in that era that I called "fishing for grognards." Game products that seemed to be trying to sell to the old school D&D player without actually being the kind of D&D we used to play... Necromancer's "first edition feel," Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics, various Gygax products from Mongoose and Troll Lords, Zeitgeist's Blackmoor stuff, Kenzer's Hackmaster. So there was this notion among us that "the professionals" obviously thought there was a market there, but among my circle we were all dissatisfied with the product because it wasn't what we really wanted - i.e. support for the games that we had going right now.

The first time I saw reference to using the OGL to reproduce the 1e rules was on Rob Kuntz's Pied Piper Press forums (long gone, alas), and it was in regard to finding a vehicle for Gary and Rob to publish some of their old Greyhawk stuff. That would have been about 2002, 2003. That discussion went by the wayside when Gary formed a deal with Troll Lords to publish his stuff with Castles & Crusades. But after C&C again disappointed many of us (pretty much all the guys behind OSRIC were play testers for Castles & Crusades) and the Gygax materials from TLG only came out at a snails pace, the impetus for something else came about.

So, the initial push was not to put out some sort of D&D-ish product that met up with certain ideas about how D&D should be played. Nor was it a celebration of general nostalgia for 70s and early 80s rpging. It was quite purposefully an attempt to publish support for specific out of print editions of D&D that were not generally available at the time in a manner in which they wouldn't get sued. No one was trying to exclude other "old school" games from the club. It's just that there wasn't any impetus to make a clone for, say, Tunnels & Trolls or Call of Cthulhu because those games still existed in pretty much the same form as they had always existed and were readily available from their publishers. The whole point was that wasn't the case for old school D&D. Trust me, all the guys involved in that initial retro-clone push loved Runequest, Traveler, Tunnels & Trolls, Call of Cthulhu, WHFRPG, and so on.

Also, I don't think it can be understated how much the "not get sued" part was up in the air prior to OSRIC getting published. It's taken for granted nowadays that if you want to publish an adventure that is roughly compatible with out of print editions of D&D that you can just do it through the OGL. That was not a sure thing at the time. And when OSRIC and the first couple of OSRIC products hit the market, there were some really PISSED people. A lot of folks who were really invested in that whole "fishing for grognards" spectrum of products I described above did not appreciate OSRIC coming along. And WotC did contact the publishers of OSRIC. I don't think I can say much beyond that and point out that 15+ years later, OSRIC is still out and nobody's been sued.

There were a lot of guys who did proof-reading and various other support for OSRIC, but really Matt Finch and Stuart Marshall are OSRIC's daddies. Almost simultaneously, Chris Gonnerman did BFRPG, basically by himself, which is just incredible. Then came Dan Proctor's Labyrinth Lord and Matt's Swords & Wizardry, and by 2008 basically all the pre-2e versions of D&D had a clone ruleset and some support.

To say they succeeded beyond our wildest dreams is an understatement. Guy Fullerton kept a list called Hoard and Horde which it doesn't look like he's updated in about a year, but gives you an idea of the sheer deluge of support we were finally getting for our games. Literally thousands of products. A lot of it was shovel-ware, but I wouldn't say that was at a greater rate than a lot of the shovel-ware TSR tried to sell us back in the day. But a lot of it was first rate... Gabor Lux's Echoes of Fomalhaut fanzine, the whole Advanced Adventures line from XRP, Anomalous Subsurface Environments, etc., etc., etc. Beyond that, WotC reprinted OD&D and the 1e hardbacks as well a several other hardbacks and adventure compilations, and started taking their stewardship of their older IP seriously with the pdf program with DriveThru, including several print on demand options.

From our perspective, we won. We got what we wanted. Not much else to do other than game. So, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that the OSR mantle has been taken up by those who are neither satisfied with WotC's version of D&D and who want something different/more than the same old, same old pre-WotC editions. I kind of wish they'd come up with some other term for themselves than "OSR." but it is what it is.

 

[Malmuria]

I was deeply involved in the initial retro-clone phase of the OSR. I was the moderator for the Classic D&D forum at Dragonsfoot and was in contact with pretty much all the main principals. I actually advised the makers of OSRIC to take a different approach other than the retro-clone. (They were smart to ignore me.) Later I helped draft some of the correspondence between the makers of OSRIC and WotC.

Putting myself back in the headspace of an O(A)D&D player circa 2004 and it was a deeply weird time for us in the hobby. Maybe those that have come to D&D since then don't know, or maybe those who were perfectly happy with 3.x at the time didn't realize, but it was actually quite hard to get support for the game then. WotC's pdf program was sporadic, low quality, and was eventually pulled entirely prior to 4e coming out. You couldn't even get consistent access to some of the rule books. The B/X books that are now the basis of much of the nu-OSR weren't ever legally available until 2013. Dragonsfoot and a few other sites put out free adventures, but the copyright propriety of doing so at the time was nebulous at best. There was also a sense that we could get some more and better quality stuff if people were able to sell their products.

There were a ton of products in that era that I called "fishing for grognards." Game products that seemed to be trying to sell to the old school D&D player without actually being the kind of D&D we used to play... Necromancer's "first edition feel," Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics, various Gygax products from Mongoose and Troll Lords, Zeitgeist's Blackmoor stuff, Kenzer's Hackmaster. So there was this notion among us that "the professionals" obviously thought there was a market there, but among my circle we were all dissatisfied with the product because it wasn't what we really wanted - i.e. support for the games that we had going right now.

The first time I saw reference to using the OGL to reproduce the 1e rules was on Rob Kuntz's Pied Piper Press forums (long gone, alas), and it was in regard to finding a vehicle for Gary and Rob to publish some of their old Greyhawk stuff. That would have been about 2002, 2003. That discussion went by the wayside when Gary formed a deal with Troll Lords to publish his stuff with Castles & Crusades. But after C&C again disappointed many of us (pretty much all the guys behind OSRIC were play testers for Castles & Crusades) and the Gygax materials from TLG only came out at a snails pace, the impetus for something else came about.

So, the initial push was not to put out some sort of D&D-ish product that met up with certain ideas about how D&D should be played. Nor was it a celebration of general nostalgia for 70s and early 80s rpging. It was quite purposefully an attempt to publish support for specific out of print editions of D&D that were not generally available at the time in a manner in which they wouldn't get sued. No one was trying to exclude other "old school" games from the club. It's just that there wasn't any impetus to make a clone for, say, Tunnels & Trolls or Call of Cthulhu because those games still existed in pretty much the same form as they had always existed and were readily available from their publishers. The whole point was that wasn't the case for old school D&D. Trust me, all the guys involved in that initial retro-clone push loved Runequest, Traveler, Tunnels & Trolls, Call of Cthulhu, WHFRPG, and so on.

Also, I don't think it can be understated how much the "not get sued" part was up in the air prior to OSRIC getting published. It's taken for granted nowadays that if you want to publish an adventure that is roughly compatible with out of print editions of D&D that you can just do it through the OGL. That was not a sure thing at the time. And when OSRIC and the first couple of OSRIC products hit the market, there were some really PISSED people. A lot of folks who were really invested in that whole "fishing for grognards" spectrum of products I described above did not appreciate OSRIC coming along. And WotC did contact the publishers of OSRIC. I don't think I can say much beyond that and point out that 15+ years later, OSRIC is still out and nobody's been sued.

There were a lot of guys who did proof-reading and various other support for OSRIC, but really Matt Finch and Stuart Marshall are OSRIC's daddies. Almost simultaneously, Chris Gonnerman did BFRPG, basically by himself, which is just incredible. Then came Dan Proctor's Labyrinth Lord and Matt's Swords & Wizardry, and by 2008 basically all the pre-2e versions of D&D had a clone ruleset and some support.

To say they succeeded beyond our wildest dreams is an understatement. Guy Fullerton kept a list called Hoard and Horde which it doesn't look like he's updated in about a year, but gives you an idea of the sheer deluge of support we were finally getting for our games. Literally thousands of products. A lot of it was shovel-ware, but I wouldn't say that was at a greater rate than a lot of the shovel-ware TSR tried to sell us back in the day. But a lot of it was first rate... Gabor Lux's Echoes of Fomalhaut fanzine, the whole Advanced Adventures line from XRP, Anomalous Subsurface Environments, etc., etc., etc. Beyond that, WotC reprinted OD&D and the 1e hardbacks as well a several other hardbacks and adventure compilations, and started taking their stewardship of their older IP seriously with the pdf program with DriveThru, including several print on demand options.

From our perspective, we won. We got what we wanted. Not much else to do other than game. So, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that the OSR mantle has been taken up by those who are neither satisfied with WotC's version of D&D and who want something different/more than the same old, same old pre-WotC editions. I kind of wish they'd come up with some other term for themselves than "OSR." but it is what it is.

Thanks for the perspective! Would you say "OSR" does or should correspond to any specific play style (as in Matt Finch's primer)? Or is it just about early editions, played in all the various ways those editions were played at the time?

 

[Greggy C]

From our perspective, we won. We got what we wanted. Not much else to do other than game.

Its pretty cool, I do like the OSE. Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person.
So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter. I guess I can just buy an extra 100 copies and massive profit from it !

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's definitely an interesting question. In my observation those games were a side-interest of some participants in the OSR going back to the beginning of the movement, and they're a good edge/corner case demonstration of why the OSR should probably be more capacious than just Old School D&D. Though a lot of this is personal opinion, of course.

The fact they were also TSR products confuses the issue, but as kind of an oddity, most games of that period that kept any kind of real fandom of any size also seem to have managed to stay in print (possibly just because they weren't owned by TSR, though there's obviously other issues with MSH). I've seen a couple retroclones of later games, but the only one that comes to mind was another licensed product and thus, effectively, forced out of print.

Edit: In fact, I have considerable sympathy for the poster a couple above and the position the OD&D and other early edition fans found themselves in, though I should note they weren't the only ones fond of games that could no longer be legally acquired. Besides the two I mention above, DragonQuest fans were in the same position as were fans of early editions of games that were in still in print in some form (I'm pretty sure that was the situation for Black Box Traveler at the time, though it no longer is).

Yes, though I think some of those mechanics are at least tangentially part of the same exploration. Random character generation still has some adherents, but has become increasingly outmoded in D&D design. Re-examining how, for example, OD&D and B/X treat ability scores, can give us more insight into when and why random abilities can work and be fun, even if that's something I completely abandoned while I was playing 4E, and mostly so with 5E.

There are absolutely proponents of random generation even now, but the preference seems unconnected in any logical way with the rest of the Old School D&D model usually presented by folks into that. Yet it still seems mostly attached to it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's not really worth the argument. IMO.

And you're not me.

 

[Malmuria]

Its pretty cool, I do like the OSE. Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person.
So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter. I guess I can just buy an extra 100 copies and massive profit from it !

Print copy of basic fantasy rpg is only $6 : Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game

You can also get a print on demand copy of the rules cyclopedia, not sure how much

 

[Aldarc]

Its pretty cool, I do like the OSE. Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person.
So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter. I guess I can just buy an extra 100 copies and massive profit from it !

I believe there is an upcoming Kickstarter for an OSE Box Set in February.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And you're not me.

And for that, one of us is doubtlessly grateful!

….pretty sure that is inarguable.

 

[Mannahnin]

Its pretty cool, I do like the OSE. Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person.
So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter. I guess I can just buy an extra 100 copies and massive profit from it !

Which game is on eBay for $240? OSE?

Necrotic Gnome is printing more of the OSE rule books. I just got copies of the Advanced Fantasy Players' and DM's hardover books in the mail yesterday, having ordered them recently when Exalted Funeral got some more in stock. I bought the Classic Fantasy volume around the holidays as well; I think during EF's Black Friday sale.

 

[Mannahnin]

There are absolutely proponents of random generation even now, but the preference seems unconnected in any logical way with the rest of the Old School D&D model usually presented by folks into that. Yet it still seems mostly attached to it.

Well, this gets into some of the ambiguity and sometimes contradictions involved with the question of what is "the Old School D&D model usually presented by folks"? As the article series points out, some of the common shorthand concepts, like "rules light" are not actually universal, even if they're bandied about very widely. A LOT of OSR fans clearly do really like rules-light games. OTOH, that's inherently contradictory to AD&D 1E being one of the original, most prominent games focused on by the OSR.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Mannahnin

So to address this post more directly, I think the contribution from @rogueattorney is helpful in illuminating some of the issues when it comes to discussing OSR or "old school" in general.

The first is that, as was helpfully pointed out, there was a specific movement in the very early early 2000s to clone rule-sets to enable people to play older versions of D&D. This was a specific response to the time that I think some people have forgotten (or newer players aren't aware of). Since this was just covered, it doesn't need to be dealt with in depth again, but this was a reaction against WoTC and 3e. In other words, because the older rulesets were not available, people craving the "TSR" experience instead of 3e looked to make their own, compatible rulesets (whether for OD&D, B/X BECMI RC, 1e, or 2e). Moreover, we see the explicit use of the name "old school" in two of the most prominent of these rulesets- OSRIC is Old School Reference and Index Compilation. OSE is Old School Essentials. That said, I wouldn't say that the desire to clone (or clean up a little) the older rulesets necessarily carries a philosophical component. It was just people that were worried because their favorite games had disappeared, and they would rather play the older rules than the new-fangled 3e (at that time). Notably, this was specific to D&D, simply because it arose in a very specific context of a new edition being released and older editions were not available (and would not be officially until 2013).

However, there is a separate component to this, which both involves the older rules (and retroclones) and stands independent from them. I haven't done a deep dive on this, but I would say that, arguably, it rose to prominence as a reaction to 4e. I could be wrong, but the earliest documents related to it as a philosophical movement (such as Matt Finch's primer) date to 2008. Arguably, "old school" or "OSR" is best conceived when thinking of a specific set of ideas as to "how to play" as a reaction against the direction of D&D- both 3e and the new 4e. Again, this is particular to D&D because it arose both as a reaction to the current "direction" of the game, and because it presented a "historical" version of the game as the way to play. This included ideas like- resource management, regular characters (not superheroes), unbalanced scenarios that the players would have to chose how to solve, a reliance on rulings by the DM as opposed to rules, and the idea of "player skill" not "character skill" (aka, skilled play). Usually, there would be additional bits added in (mapping, hirelings, etc.).

Notably, like all movements that call for a return to the past, it presents a unified, but false vision of what the past was. Obviously, and this should go without saying, the past is not a monolith. As you know, having read Elusive Shift, there was a vast variety of playing styles and approaches to OD&D in the 70s. While I think that OSR captures some concepts from then that have fallen out of favor in more modern games, it is also necessary to point out that it is certainly not true that every game back then was an attrition-based megadungeon crawl with 10' poles and disposable waves of hirelings. As you are aware, the sheer weirdness of the games is captured by the fact that so many early RPGs were, in fact, simply spinoffs of D&D (one of my favorite anecdotes is that Superhero 2044, the first superhero RPG published in 1977, was actually the campaign notes from an OD&D game where the characters went through a portal and met up with comic book heroes).

Unfortunately, when you have a style that is explicitly rooted in the the rejection of modern gaming, it will often attract people that are along for the ride not because they are rejecting the rules of modern games, but because they are rejecting the sensibility of the people that are playing. In other words, the nostalgic attraction isn't rooted in the simplicity of the rules or the belief that these rules better allow for a better game for their table, but instead a nostalgic attraction for a time when (in their opinion) they didn't have to worry about appropriation, or risque art, or inclusive play. The adoption of this, for these people, is a rejection of the modern ansd a political statement.

...which is unfortunate. I think that the vast majority of people attracted to OSR or "old school" games, specifically to the various retroclones and versions of D&D that seem to comprise the majority of the current "old school" market, just love aspects of the play or the rules. Others have stripped away the rulesets even more (this is FKR, which is just the latest iteration of "rules lite, DM adjudicates" that has been part of the hobby since the 70s as well).

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I genuinely love the older games and the history involved, and I have a special appreciation for people like @Sacrosanct that go out of their way to make inclusive OSR game, but it can be difficult to discuss these issues because they often get derailed for various reasons. Which is unfortunate, to me, because there are aspects of play that are worth discussing.

So, good luck!

 

[Greggy C]

I believe there is an upcoming Kickstarter for an OSE Box Set in February.

Yeah I'm signed up

Which game is on eBay for $240? OSE?

Necrotic Gnome is printing more of the OSE rule books. I just got copies of the Advanced Fantasy Players' and DM's hardover books in the mail yesterday, having ordered them recently when Exalted Funeral got some more in stock. I bought the Classic Fantasy volume around the holidays as well; I think during EF's Black Friday sale.

Yeah I'm only talking about OSE.

 

[Greggy C]

I actually advised the makers of OSRIC to take a different approach other than the retro-clone. (They were smart to ignore me.)

I have one question related to this.

Why retro-clone?

I mean I can guess why, it allows the old modules to be easily used, it leverages the brand, keeps the same monsters etc.

But the main issue is that everyone is still tied to the same license, and that license limits the possibilities of what you can do (and possibly it limited big publishers from getting involved?).

You could have created a new game, lets called it Mazes and Monsters, used most of the same mechanics and redid the monsters? It might take longer I guess but at least you would be free.

 

[rogueattorney]

Thanks for the perspective! Would you say "OSR" does or should correspond to any specific play style (as in Matt Finch's primer)? Or is it just about early editions, played in all the various ways those editions were played at the time?

The initial goal of the OSRIC was to get 1e AD&D back in print. I was in discussions with Matt and Stuart and the rest about whether and to what extent people were going to use what they were working on to make products that clashed with our sensibilities, and the conclusion was that people were going to definitely do that and that in the end, it wouldn't matter if we got 1e back in print so that the creators we knew would make product we liked would have the opportunity to do it with the rule system we liked.

I don't mean to speak for Matt, but my interpretation of the Old School Primer at the time was that he was introducing the "head space" to be in for people to appreciate the rule set he was selling - Swords & Wizardry. I didn't see it as a broad manifesto for old school gaming, but rather an introduction to the specific OD&D clone he had just published. I think that's pretty clear from the second paragraph of his Primer:

If you want to try a one-shot session of 0e using the free Swords & Wizardry rules, just
printing the rules and starting to play as you normally do will produce a completely
pathetic gaming session – you’ll decide that 0e is just missing all kinds of important
rules. What makes 0e different from later games isn’t the rules themselves, it’s how
they’re used.

Personally, I think that if people want to make games conforming to the style laid out in Matt's primer, that's all good. For example, I'm really intrigued by Ultraviolet Grasslands and the faux-old school game Encounter Critical (which actually preceded OSCRIC, Matt's Primer and the OSR as a whole by a couple years) is one of my favorite things ever. But I don't think that was the original intent.

 

[rogueattorney]

Its pretty cool, I do like the OSE. Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person.
So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter. I guess I can just buy an extra 100 copies and massive profit from it !

It really sucks that DriveThru doesn't have the B/X rules for pod right now. You can get the Rules Cyclopedia for $21 right now, though.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?filters=44828_0_0_44294_0

You can also get Labyrinth Lord, which is essentially the exact same thing as B/X and OSE. Seriously, the rules differences are miniscule. From Lulu for $21.95.
Lulu

 

[Mannahnin]

Which game is on eBay for $240? OSE?

Necrotic Gnome is printing more of the OSE rule books. I just got copies of the Advanced Fantasy Players' and DM's hardover books in the mail yesterday, having ordered them recently when Exalted Funeral got some more in stock. I bought the Classic Fantasy volume around the holidays as well; I think during EF's Black Friday sale.

Yeah I'm only talking about OSE.

I'm also talking about OSE.

I literally just bought three OSE rulebooks brand new from Exalted Funeral, so your comments that "Bummer the only copy of the game is on ebay at $240. I bought the pdf but I'm more of a book person. So thousands of modules but nobody is publishing more of the rule books, we have to wait for each kickstarter" are super confusing to me. The rulebooks are available for sale, not just modules.

 

[Mannahnin]

It really sucks that DriveThru doesn't have the B/X rules for pod right now. You can get the Rules Cyclopedia for $21 right now, though.
D&D Rules Cyclopedia (Basic) - Wizards of the Coast | D&D Basic | Player/DM Guides | D&D Basic | DriveThruRPG.com

You can also get Labyrinth Lord, which is essentially the exact same thing as B/X and OSE. Seriously, the rules differences are miniscule. From Lulu for $21.95.
Lulu

There are enough little changes in LL that it's more different than I like, but it's definitely a good game.

If one is outside the US, one can also build one'sown POD B/X.

Building my B/X Black Box

There’s this super-secret Black Book edition of the B/X Rules out there. They are printed up using Lulu or LSI by various gamers using the very very clean PDFs of the 1981 Basic and Expert ru…

dysonlogos.blog

 

[rogueattorney]

I have one question related to this.

Why retro-clone?

I mean I can guess why, it allows the old modules to be easily used, it leverages the brand, keeps the same monsters etc.

But the main issue is that everyone is still tied to the same license, and that license limits the possibilities of what you can do (and possibly it limited big publishers from getting involved?).

You could have created a new game, lets called it Mazes and Monsters, used most of the same mechanics and redid the monsters? It might take longer I guess but at least you would be free.

You know that Oliver LeGrand actually did make a game called Mazes & Minotaurs, which was based off of OD&D, but set in Greek mythology instead of Tolkien-ish fantasy? The first edition was released before OSRIC and the rest of the clones. The blog posts that started this thread references it.

But to answer your larger question, it goes back to the roots of where OSRIC came from. They wanted to publish supplements for 1e AD&D. They weren't looking to make a brand new 1e-ish game. If that's what they'd wanted, there was already Hackmaster, Castles & Crusades, Palladium FRPG, and literally dozens of others, or just hacking up 3e to fit their needs for that matter.