OSR What Has Caused the OSR Revival?

[fjw70]

Where was all this exactly? I've been going to the Wizards site since it was on AOL and I don't remember really any edition warring from 2nd edition to 3rd edition.

The edition warring I saw was on non-WotC sites. I think that is also significant. From what I can tell the OS folks pretty much stayed off the WotC boards during the 3e/3.5 run, but when 4e hitboth OSR and 3.x folks thought it was okay to go on 4e boards and slam 4e.

 

[MJS]

This is all very interesting, and I enjoy these discussions, but the answer to the thread title is: coffee.

 

[Minigiant]

I was thinking more like spaghetti sauce but hamburgers work too.

If only D&D and the RPG world evolved like the food world.

 

[Meatboy]

If only D&D and the RPG world evolved like the food world.

If they did WotC would probably have most of the market on lock down but we'd have who knows how many editions of "DnD". I could just see it now a whole shelf of core dnd books "Classic", "lite", "gritty", "tactics", "MAX", "X-TREME!!!!!!"...

 

[TerraDave]

11 pages and no answer?

Lots of reasons why someone might prefer pre 3E, but none on the timing.

There where always people who played 1E or B/X and some that stuck with 2E. But thats OS, not OSR.

The Pandora's box was cracked with 3.5, and hurled open with 4E. Check the dates on a lot of OSR blogs, or even the term OSR itself. OSIRIC came before, but the surge starts in 2008, and its not a coincidence.

People rallied around 3E. They liked it, and wanted to believe in it. And 3.0 has a lot of AD&D in it.

Eventually people began to say things like "NPCs are too complicated" and "Perception is a problem", "what is all this crap in [player oriented book X]" and "check out Dragonsfoot"

But there weren't very many of them. OSIRIC and Labyrinth Lord helped open the door further. But 4E, and WotCs attack on 3E, broke the consensus and made people wonder what other D&D they should try. OSR and PF are the beneficiaries.

 

[Ulrick]

11 pages and no answer?

Lots of reasons why someone might prefer pre 3E, but none on the timing.

There where always people who played 1E or B/X and some that stuck with 2E. But thats OS, not OSR.

The Pandora's box was cracked with 3.5, and hurled open with 4E. Check the dates on a lot of OSR blogs, or even the term OSR itself. OSIRIC came before, but the surge starts in 2008, and its not a coincidence.

People rallied around 3E. They liked it, and wanted to believe in it. And 3.0 has a lot of AD&D in it.

Eventually people began to say things like "NPCs are too complicated" and "Perception is a problem", "what is all this crap in [player oriented book X]" and "check out Dragonsfoot"

But there weren't very many of them. OSIRIC and Labyrinth Lord helped open the door further. But 4E, and WotCs attack on 3E, broke the consensus and made people wonder what other D&D they should try. OSR and PF are the beneficiaries.

I think we have the winner, folks! ^

I'd say the OSR was getting primed with the disenchantment people starting feeling toward 3.5e. But when 4e slaughtered a lot of "sacred cows" was when the OSR really took off, with blogs like Grognardia leading the pack and a number of OSR publishers coming onto the scene proposing alternatives to what WotC was offering.

 

[dd.stevenson]

11 pages and no answer?

Lots of reasons why someone might prefer pre 3E, but none on the timing.

Ahem.

 

[fjw70]

Where was all this exactly? I've been going to the Wizards site since it was on AOL and I don't remember really any edition warring from 2nd edition to 3rd edition.

IMO another significant factor was that around 2007/8 it seems a lot of people around my age (I was born in 1970) started getting back into RPGs after leaving them after high school and 4e and PF were just too different from what they remembered from the 80s for many of them.

So there was a perfect storm of 3.5 fatigue, old OS players reentering the hobby, and 4e being too different for many people.

 

[TerraDave]

Short version: unmet demand.

Long version: 3E inadvertently killed a couple of major playstyles.

1) Skills, especially spot and perception, turned out to be a poison pill for player-skill based exploration
2) Steep power curves narrowed the scope for sandbox play, and made life difficult for mixed level parties

There were several other factors that reinforced these trends (build-based character generation, WBL, etc.) that could be overcome by some thoughtful houseruling, but these two were the game killers IME.

Those of us who wanted wotc to roll back those changes with 4E were disappointed, to say the least. And, since early 4E seemed hellbent on disappointing as many people as possible, there were a lot of people open to alternatives. And then the thing sort of just snowballed--like Paizo, but much much smaller and more fragmented.

OK, I see it now, towards the end.

 

[GreyLord]

Where was all this exactly? I've been going to the Wizards site since it was on AOL and I don't remember really any edition warring from 2nd edition to 3rd edition.

No offense, but it was RABID there. No way anyone could have missed those wars. It was far worse then the 3e to 4e transition. It was the first time I think WotC put the boards on lock down, and then eventually moderated heck out of the boards, at first basically banning OS discussions, and then opening another sub forum with any discussion going there.

Basically they tossed out the old guard and Old AD&D players, and welcomed in the new guys.

This is where I think places like Dragonsfoot and other forums dedicated to 1e really got the power to take off as many of those exiled or attacked by WotC migrated to places where they could discuss their games freely.