The OSR, which stands for “Old-School Renaissance” or “Old-School Revival” is a movement in the tabletop roleplaying game scene that seeks to recreate a playstyle derived from the rulebooks of classic RPGs. Beginning in the early 2000s, and inspired by early editions of games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller, the OSR was and remains a loose-knit community of players, game masters, and publishers. While there is much disagreement and debate among this group about the exact meaning of the OSR, generally there are a few hallmarks that distinguish what makes an “OSR game”.
“Rulings Over Rules”
“Rulings over rules” is a guiding maxim that eschews specific procedures and restrictions set forth by a rulebook in favor of the discretion of the game master, or GM. Many OSR games have a light rules framework and disclaim responsibility for many rules to the players. Ideally, this encourages players to come up with clever plans and GMs to rely on their own intuition to adjudicate situations, rather than following rigid procedural rules for the infinity of possibilities that arise from the normal course of roleplay. This way, tables build up rules over time, as rulings the GM makes are generally expected to remain consistent, resulting in a unique combination of the base game and a collection of house rules.
Challenge Players, Not Characters
The OSR values testing player skill and cleverness over their characters’ abilities. As such, character powers are often limited and relatively low in power compared to the “superheroic fantasy” of games like D&D 5E. The ideal OSR play focuses on using your wits and the tools at your disposal to overcome the odds. “The answers aren’t on your character sheet” is a common maxim in the OSR, meaning players seldom have abilities that simply solve problems on their own. Creativity in applying abilities, equipment, and skills, as well as management of resources, is far more important to the OSR.
No Such Thing As “Balance”
“The world does not scale to your power level” is another popular component of the OSR philosophy. Players are sometimes accustomed to “video game logic” where low-level characters always face low-level challenges, and the OSR bucks that trend. Open worlds with challenges both far above and far below player characters’ skill level are another hallmark of this playstyle. The OSR encourages players to fight dirty and use every trick, tactic, and tool at their disposal to tip the scales in their favor, and when outmatched, to negotiate or flee to live another day! Some OSR games even treat combat as a dangerous and lethal “fail state,” to be avoided if at all possible.
Prep Situations, Not Plots
Roleplaying games excel at a type of story called “emergent narrative,” where, rather than the GM or adventure module pre-writing a linear “plot” that the player characters follow, the story emerges from the actions and consequences of the player characters. Instead of plot flowing down from the GM, delivered to the players, whatever the players do and the world’s response to it is the plot. The OSR harnesses the power of emergent narrative and discourages preordained outcomes from GMs. Rather, the GM presents the situation, the players take action, and the dice fall where they may, producing a story that evolves naturally and directly through play.
OSR Games Today
In the decades since its inception, the OSR has burgeoned into a lively hobby scene, with independent, small press, and even major publishers producing game systems, adventures, and supplements under the old-school umbrella. This includes “retroclones” like Old School Essentials/Dolmenwood, effectively reproducing versions of classic “Red Box” Dungeons & Dragons, updates like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Kevin Crawford’s “Without Number” series that apply modern design sensibilities to old-school play, and the “NSR”, a huge crop of (often very rules-light) games that mix and match elements of OSR and modern games, like Mörk Borg, Into the Odd, Mothership, Shadowdark, FIST, and many, many more. Lots of these games rely on the accreted play culture of OSR games in order to strip down their rules to the bare bones, offering GMs a starting point, but trusting that through rulings and play, a unique game emerges from every table.
Overall, the OSR stands as an amazing example of a creative and productive hobby community continually iterating on a focused set of ideas for decades, producing a blossoming and diverse library of games, blogs, tools, play aids, and adventures. Thanks to their shared DNA, many products of the OSR are often intercompatible or easily converted for use with others as well! Whatever your thoughts on the OSR or the games themselves, the culture of sharing, collaboration, cooperation, and exchange of ideas is positively aspirational for the RPG hobby, and the contributions of the OSR cannot be understated.
If you’d like to try it out for yourself, check out StartPlaying’s listings for OSR games today!
Sean Foer is a game designer, editor, writer, video creator and professional GM.
