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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9526039" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Tricky, as I kind of think that "What is the OSR play style" is potentially an unanswerable question.  There have been several attempts to define the play style, dating back to <a href="https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf" target="_blank">Matt Finch's Quick Primer</a>, but they're all somewhat subjective.  <a href="https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html" target="_blank">Principia Apocrypha</a> (Ben Milton, Steven Lumpkin, David Perry)Skerples' <a href="https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/06/osr-introduction-for-new-players.html" target="_blank">intro to OSR for new players</a><a href="https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/What_are_assumptions_about_how_to_play_an_OSR_adventure_that_you_think_might_not_be_commonly_held_as_desired%3f" target="_blank">Google+ Discussion started by Scrap Princess</a>, contributed to by lots of others- I like Patrick Stuart's list of 10 short principles at the endWell, I think it's important to note that it started on the forums, because it was thing before retroclones came to be, and I've seen some folks treat OSR and retroclones as synonymous, which I think is definitely wrong. Despite its evolution or degeneration to being a marketing/publishing category, IMO that's just a sub-section that takes up a lot of space and attention and airtime nowadays.I agree that the OSR movement really took off on the blogs, with tons of people exchanging ideas and expounding on their own, and explaining how they were putting them into practice. And offering lots of sweet gameable content for free!  Some people really made a moral point about that (I seem to recall Kellri being vociferous about it, for example).And from there Google+ became a haven for folks sharing even more, and enthusiasts in the scene playing in each other's games remotely.  So there was kind of a hyper-acceleration of theory and practice within that community, but only for folks who were on G+.  (I barely dipped my toes in it, mostly sticking to the forums and blogs).  Re: your A, B, and C, I don't think you're far off.  I do think that there was a fair amount of variety in the game styles of the Old Schoolers.  Lots of Trad, but also a fair amount of Gygaxian Classic. And once folks were on the forums swapping ideas, I think there was a tendency to start talking theory and comparing notes.  Remember that AD&D mostly ruled the roost at first, with OD&D having a minority of partisans, and B/X gaining its huge mindshare later.  <a href="https://save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/grab-bag/philotomy/" target="_blank">Philotomy's Musings </a>was Jason Cone writing at length about how he used and thought about OD&D, both to new players and to AD&D fans who never got into OD&D or who had moved on from it long ago.  Sure, I think that B/X took over from AD&D and OD&D in OSR spaces because of its relative simplicity and clarity.Most of us (at least in the US and UK) who started after '79 started with a Basic set of one iteration or another, but swiftly moved to AD&D because it was the "REAL" game.  For grownups.  With more complex and powerful options.  But because AD&D 1E's rules were so opaque and complex, basically everyone houseruled them and nearly everyone simplified them.  A lot of folks coming back to D&D in the 2000s after 3E looked at AD&D and then looked again at B/X  or BECMI and were like "Hey, turns out we just ignored the AD&D initiative system and used the Basic system the whole time".  "I thought we were playing AD&D strictly but we actually ignored a lot of it.  And B/X is less of a headache and looks like it suits my needs better."OSRIC was the first retroclone because AD&D used to hold that OSR mindshare.  But gradually, after it came out in 2005, B/X started taking over.  And hence we see Labyrinth Lord and BFRPG in Jan and Feb of 2007 both implementing a simpler rule set more akin to B/X, but including popular concepts and options from AD&D.</blockquote>

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