OSR v1

 This is one of the big, hotly debated ones, so we'll probably be coming back to it. To keep things clear, I'll version these--this is version 1--and link back to the previous and forward to the most recent version on all versions, so you can follow the logic along or just skip ahead to the most updated one.

The TL;DR:

OSR play is like an escape room or murder mystery party--there's a theme, you have a character, and there's puzzles to solve so you can feel smart. You're not expected to be very emotionally invested in your character, though you can ham it up if you want. 

A lot of it is low fantasy, entry-level warriors who were peasants yesterday and just picked up their first sword trying to survive in a horrible death trap dungeon, looking for magical treasure that will change their life.

Also the main thrust of OSR culture is very accepting, but there's some weird regressive corners, so watch out for that.

The Post:

At this point, the most defining aspect of the OSR is the fact that it cannot be fully defined or agreed upon. They have panels with OSR luminaries at GenCon where the first they all do is go around and say what they think it is, and all of them say they don't know. It's almost a mantra at this point.

It usually either stands for "Old School Renaissance" or "Old School Revival." The one thing everyone can agree on is they are invoking the early days of D&D: blue graph paper maps, ten foot poles to test for traps, and goblins in dank dungeons. That kind of thing.

It first emerged in the early 2000's but gained more steam 2010's, eventually being one of the two opposite twins that emerged from the post-Forge and G+ days: OSR and storygaming. Both persist as notable play styles and cultures to this day. They are opposites but sort of in the way some people say that the political Far Right and Far Left are like ends of a horseshoe, closer to each other than they are to the "center," which in this case would be mainstream "trad" D&D. (I disagree with the political theory, but here the metaphor works.)

There are a few manifestos that try to get at the heart of it, including the Principia Apocrypha, see further links listed below it on that post as well. There's a Ben Milton quote that hits most of the focal points: 

“The more of the following a campaign has, the more old school it is: high lethality, an open world, a lack of pre-written plot, an emphasis on creative problem solving, an exploration-centered reward system (usually XP for treasure), a disregard for "encounter balance", and the use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees. Also, a strong do-it-yourself attitude and a willingness to share your work and use the creativity of others in your game.”

Beyond the many loose descriptions of it as a style of play or a indie TTRPG scene or a Mythic Rebirth of the Better Old Days, another thing that it has become is a marketing term. Ben Milton's YouTube channel, Questing Beast, is a good example of this: he gets review copies of things from authors who want to be viewed in the OSR category to access that RPG market segment, and he shows them briefly in page-throughs that are basically just previews--he rarely claims to have actually played any of them or be able to do any kind of true "review." 

This is not a bad thing, and being a marketing term is not a bad thing for it to be. A good marketing term helps people spend their money on things closer to their interests, which they will then enjoy more. It's not far off from this blog's stated purpose of helping foster good GM style and game descriptive terms. Good terms for things are very useful. (Cue academic diatribe about the value of the humanities, etc., etc., yes, would you like that Tall or Grande?...)

But this is part of why it becomes so loose, as a term, as well, because a lot of it's use is essentially "If you liked other OSR stuff, you might like my thing, too!" And that recommendation could be hanging on it belonging to all the categories from Ben's quote above, or only one, or none.

A note on the culture: as I said above, most OSR culture is pretty open and accepting. Bad actors have by and large been ejected--see Zak S(mith) or Adam Koebel drama if you want to see examples. But there was a lot of overlap between the punk DIY sensibilities of early OSR work and problematic edgelord BS, including a lot of really regressive far right pockets, some of which persist to this day.

There was a minor kerfuffle around Ben Milton's Questing Beast YouTube channel that I think is quite revealing of where the overall consensus is now: he took an ad sponsorship from a publisher that turned out to have very publicly very regressive far right views, and just took the ad down and opted out of the conversation / controversy saying, essentially, "No politics on his channel." (I swear Ben Milton is not the whole OSR scene, he's just a really good example of all the best and worst parts of the current mainstream OSR.) There is still some hesitation from some parts of the OSR scene to repudiate really bad actors from the past, and that's just always something to watch, especially if you yourself are a targeted minority.

But also, Kelsey Dionne is a happily married lesbian, doesn't make a big deal about it (but doesn't hide it), and is allowed to be a major OSR leader with little to no hubbub. The general OSR vibe is "no politics," for good and ill.

And honestly, I think that's enough of a general overview of it for now. It's been much more exhaustively covered elsewhere, and if you want to dig into it more just start down the rabbit hole of the links on Principia Apocrypha or read the Wikipedia entry.

But what you've got here is hopefully enough that the next time a GM calls themselves an OSR fan, you have some sense of what you're in for--and that some follow-up questions might help clarify exactly what that means for them. Because OSR means a lot of different things to different people.

The Deep Theory:

Genre theory is a branch of literary theory that focuses on what genres are, how they develop and evolve, and how they function to produce works that are comfortingly familiar while still feeling new. 

Although genre is mainly applied to TTRPGs referring to the narrative genres they are set in--fantasy, scifi, etc. --it can also be really useful to think of RPGs in terms of gameplay genres, like we do with video games. A game like Half-Life participates both in the narrative sci-fi genre and the gameplay first-person shooter genre.

Genre texts use patterns of repetition and difference to present as being within the genre while still being new. The OSR is a prime example of this, where there are endless retro-clones and "hacks" of the earliest editions of D&D, each tweaked to the perfect preferences of the author and presenting enough familiarity to be interesting to OSR fans while having enough novelty to be worth trying a new game. The largest recent intervention in the OSR space, Shadowdark, is also a great example of how genres need to update themselves to stay relevant, and by splicing OSR themes and elements into a more modern but lightwey 5e-based rules framework, Kelsey Dionne created a perfect combination to appeal to both OSR style aficionados and the huge wave of new contemporary D&D players.

We see over time that genres go through cycles: experimental, classic, parody, and deconstruction. First a new unique entry that gathers a big interest, say, for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That generates a number of similar works that coalesce around similar "high fantasy" themes, like the Wheel of Time series or Dragonlance. The ubiquity of the type produces parodies that undermine and play with the conventions of the genre, like Terry Pratchett's Discworld books or the Piers Anthony's Xanth series. Finally it begins to deconstruct and even split into offshoots and subgenres, like the many, many hyper specific fantasy subgenres of today, everything from Romantasy to Urban fantasy. These subgenres can take on lives and genre cycles of their own.

OSR as a game genre has been quite resilient for a number of reasons. Nostalgia has a powerful influence on keeping trends alive. A lot of people clearly remember their first experiences of D&D from the Olden Days as deeply meaningful and formative to who they feel they are as a person. It also feels countercultural and rebellious--think of Eddie from Stranger Things. That is some part of the self image of a lot of that generation of gamers. They have multiple manifestos, that people actually read and care about. That kind of identification provides staying power. 

On top of that there's been enough new ideas pumped into it by very creative people to keep it really interesting. To my mind the heyday was the G+ era, where a bunch of like-minded weirdos took the gonzo vibes of old pulp fiction like Conan and turned the strangeness up to 11. My favorite OSR creations, like Deep Carbon Observatory, come from then. Upside down underground observatories created by ancient evil empires to peer into the deep dark underworld, recently uncovered by flooding, sought by unfair and manipulative rival adventurers, all amidst natural disaster chaos--yum yum yum. I eat it up.

Since it has become a marketing term more recently, it's lost some of that strangeness in order to become more widely palatable. I still think there are fun gonzo dungeons coming out of the Shadowdark community, for example, but they are often a little too beholden to genre tropes to go REALLY out there. That said, the genre tropes have coalesced enough around making the content that comes out imminently gameable that less work is required to drop contemporary OSR creations easily onto any table. One of the the things that makes me very happy is how much discourse in the OSR space focuses on things like clear layout, to make things as easy to run for a GM as possible.

So yes, I still back my fair share of OSR crowdfunders, and will continue to do so until it gets a little more stale. There's some life in the old girl yet...