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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 7680813" data-attributes="member: 3285">As kids who grew up with Dungeons & Dragons have gotten older, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2864-The-Geekification-of-Everything" target="_blank">they've entered a new phase of gaming</a>. These adult gamers now have enough influence as customers and game designers to return tabletop gaming to its roots.  But if their efforts to bring back a past industry end up shaping the future of gaming, is it really Old School anymore?[ATTACH=full]272856[/ATTACH] <a href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/gamers-round-gambling-dice-beetle-1955286/" target="_blank">Picture courtesy of Pixabay.</a><h3>The Four Year Cycle</h3>To explain the popularity of the OSR, it's helpful to understand what changed about gamers: they grew up. In the early days of gaming, the time available to early role-players was much more limited, as <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080121182801/http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/adventurous" target="_blank">Kenneth Hite explains</a>:That cycle is no longer true.  The "graduation, marriage, childbirth," etc. has its own duration, and once life settled in older gamers rediscovered the role-playing games they loved.   Their limited time made them crave games they knew, the ones they grew up with.  Mike Mearls, Senior Manager of Dungeons & Dragons Research and Design, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1590-What-is-Happening-to-Tabletop-Roleplaying-Games" target="_blank">outlined the dilemma facing today's gamers on a PAX East Panel</a>:This nostalgia fueled the creation of many imitators, some successful, some not -- and the brand owners of D&D had a sometimes contentious relationship with their fans, as well shall see.<h3>Love D&D, but Don't LOVE D&D</h3>Budding game designers have always tinkered with the games of the past. Throughout the 90s, a lot of energy went into improving Dungeons & Dragons without really breaking fully away from it. Ron Edwards called them "fantasy heartbreakers," <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/" target="_blank">which he described as</a>:One of the reasons "fantasy heartbreakers" existed was because there was no legal means for aspiring game designers to easily launch their own variants. Frank Mentzer, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120812002938/http://www.eldritchent.com/page/Frank-Mentzer.aspx" target="_blank">the father of the BECMI version of D&D</a>, explained to me in an interview:Eventually, the tide turned as gamers became less interested in improving on D&D and more in recapturing the elements of the game they enjoyed.  They also had a back catalog of content they wanted to play again, so compatibility was paramount.  The proliferation of older gamers and the Open Game License (OGL) primed the market for a gaming renaissance. What, exactly, that renaissance constitutes is open to interpretation.<h3>What's OSR Anyway?</h3>Shannon Appelcline defined the OSR in <a href="http://amzn.to/1FnusGJ" target="_blank">Designers & Dragons</a>:Mentzer defined OSR a little more broadly:Whatever the definition, the sheer number of OSR-style products in the early aughts meant it was more than a passing fad. Eventually, the OSR became so powerful that it began shaping how designers thought about game design, most specifically the latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons.  Mentzer explained what changed when I interviewed him:The OGL would provide designers a means of expressing all of these play styles and more.<h3>Enter the OGL</h3>Ryan Dancey, VP at Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) leading Dungeons & Dragons at the time, launched the OGL with the intent of ensuring D&D would live on in perpetuity.  Citing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect" target="_blank">Theory of Network Externalities</a>, Dancey envisioned a license that would bolster sales of the main Dungeons & Dragons rule books by encouraging more players to play ANY role-playing game.  Dancey called this the Skaff effect, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20021016015219/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e" target="_blank">named after game designer Skaff Elias</a>:Using the OGL, WOTC's efforts opened the way for game companies to take on the risky costs of creating adventures, while supporting the sales of the three core rule books that made up Dungeons & Dragons: the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. By opening the license to small developers, the gaming scene exploded, with more content than ever before. In addition to the sales benefits to WOTC, Dancey also hoped that the OGL would encourage innovation:This allowed some interesting divergent paths for fantasy role-playing, but perhaps not in the way Dancey expected.  <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/the-open-game-license-a-case-study-in-open-source-markets/" target="_blank">Chad Perrin explains</a>:The advent of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons was a turning point for the OGL, fragmenting fans of the game. Perrin divided them into three groups:The "grognard" market would go on to strongly influence future games by tailoring the OGL to recreate the kind of games they enjoyed as kids. Mearls <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20101203230138/http://mearls.livejournal.com/151714.html" target="_blank">explains what he thinks went right and wrong</a>:The OSR wasn't about "rapid, constant improvement in the quality of rules" but rather what rules they could remove to mimic the feel of earlier editions. The OSR ended up looking more backward than forward. That doesn't take away from the remarkable innovation that the OGL engendered. Marty Walser <a href="http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2015/07/ryan-dancey-saved-dnd.html" target="_blank">credits Dancey and the OGL for the OSR's success</a>:<h3>Making Peace With the Past</h3>One of the ongoing challenges that TSR faced was the fragmentation of its player base between different settings and different editions, <a href="http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p2.html" target="_blank">as described by Allen Rausch</a>:With the advent of the Internet, publishers no longer had control over the obsolescence of a game -- games could live on forever in digital format. WOTC's acquisition of TSR and the D&D brand paved the way for new editions, but it also inherited TSR's baggage. WOTC was faced with a choice: continue waging TSR's battle against the proliferation of D&D clones or embrace them.The OGL, modeled after open software design, was a key part of how content was shared on the Internet.  But the OGL didn't work out that way, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20101203230138/http://mearls.livejournal.com/151714.html" target="_blank">as Mearls explains</a>:It took some time, but eventually the open-design thinking seeped into the development of the Fifth Edition of D&D -- undoubtedly influenced by the fact that Mearls' gaming cred was grounded in dozens of OGL-powered products. He explained in an interview:WOTC helped fuel the OSR by re-releasing the <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/09/dungeons-and-dragons-white-box/" target="_blank">original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120318133813/http://www.gamehead.com/article/1625/wizards-coast-reprint-add" target="_blank">reprinting the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tomes</a>.  It was a sea change for the D&D brand. WOTC recognized that there was a market for older products and even supported them by <a href="http://www.dndclassics.com" target="_blank">releasing older editions of D&D in PDF format</a>. Steve Wieck, COO of OneBookShelf, Inc., shared with me in an interview:Since WOTC's embrace of its digital back catalog, there have been many OSR variants, each encompassing a different style and edition of past versions of D&D. One of the more popular is OSRIC, as Appelcline explained:OSRIC was just the beginning. Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord Games streamlines the OGL rules so they are more in the spirit of the Original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set. HackMaster by Kenzer and Company continued a series of compatible rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  Mentzer explains how the OGL helped the proliferation:Appelcline adds to the OSR list:<h3>D&D Returns to its Roots...Again</h3>The success of the OSR has been unprecedented. In fact, it's so popular that Appelcline argues it's not even a movement anymore:The announcement of Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons had a conciliatory tone that focused on bringing fans of all editions back into the fold. Robert Schwalb, a designer on the development team, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120115083011/http://www.robertjschwalb.com/2012/01/dungeons-dragons-next/" target="_blank">shared how they plan to accomplish</a> a grand unification:Just how much the Fifth Edition was influenced by the OSR was answered in <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/11/04/mike-mearls-head-of-dungeons-and-dragons-rd-does-reddit-ama/" target="_blank">Mike Mearls' Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit</a>:OSR-style games currently capture over 9 percent of the RPG market <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php" target="_blank">according to ENWorld's Hot Role-playing Games</a>. If you consider the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons to be part of that movement, it's nearly 70 percent of the entire RPG market.The OSR has gone mainstream.  If the OSR stands for Old School Renaissance, it seems the Renaissance is over: D&D, in all of its previous editions, is now how most of us play our role-playing games.</blockquote>

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