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<blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 5132254" data-attributes="member: 20239">I'm not sure it's &quot;about&quot; anything. I think it just IS.Around the time that 3e came out a lot of players who didn't migrate to the new edition (or who migrated and weren't happy with it) started getting together on the internet to talk about their games and sometimes to write and distribute free gaming material for older editions (primarily 1e). A few years after that, some guys decided to use the OGL and the 3e SRD to clone the rules for several early versions of D&amp;D, which helped to turn free distribution of gaming material into something (slightly) more commercial.The fact that what were formerly free, amateur .pdf projects started to become available as physical print products with wider distribution and more exposure at cons, in gaming stores and through POD sites like Lulu coincided with what appears to have been a major uptick in blogs talking about old school games. The death of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and a few other notable personages from the early days of TSR also created a lot of interest in the history of D&amp;D and older games at about the same time and fueled interest in both the blogs and the old games they were talking about. There also seems to have been an upsurge in the number of small Cons going on that focus on old school or retro gaming as opposed to the newest, latest games. People saw all of these things happening, felt that they were probably interrelated in some way and dubbed the phenomenon the OSR.So, from my perspective, there's no way to say &quot;This group comprises the OSR.&quot; or &quot;The OSR is trying to do X.&quot;. It's a label for a bunch of related events that all seemed to just happen within the same 5-8 year span, comprising a lot of different people, places and activities, most of which don't interact with each other in any directly observable way.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ourph, post: 5132254, member: 20239"] I'm not sure it's "about" anything. I think it just IS. Around the time that 3e came out a lot of players who didn't migrate to the new edition (or who migrated and weren't happy with it) started getting together on the internet to talk about their games and sometimes to write and distribute free gaming material for older editions (primarily 1e). A few years after that, some guys decided to use the OGL and the 3e SRD to clone the rules for several early versions of D&D, which helped to turn free distribution of gaming material into something (slightly) more commercial. The fact that what were formerly free, amateur .pdf projects started to become available as physical print products with wider distribution and more exposure at cons, in gaming stores and through POD sites like Lulu coincided with what appears to have been a major uptick in blogs talking about old school games. The death of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and a few other notable personages from the early days of TSR also created a lot of interest in the history of D&D and older games at about the same time and fueled interest in both the blogs and the old games they were talking about. There also seems to have been an upsurge in the number of small Cons going on that focus on old school or retro gaming as opposed to the newest, latest games. People saw all of these things happening, felt that they were probably interrelated in some way and dubbed the phenomenon the OSR. So, from my perspective, there's no way to say "This group comprises the OSR." or "The OSR is trying to do X.". It's a label for a bunch of related events that all seemed to just happen within the same 5-8 year span, comprising a lot of different people, places and activities, most of which don't interact with each other in any directly observable way. [/QUOTE]

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