Old School Renaissance
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Old School Renaissance or Old School Revival is a cultural movement in tabletop roleplaying games based on the romantic reinterpretation of how people used to play roleplaying games in the 70s, with a special focus on popular games of this era Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D, AD&D, the Basic/Expert lines) and Traveller. The release of OSRIC in 2006 can be considered the start of the movement, as it allowed classic Dungeons & Dragons rules to fall under open licenses, which led to the birth of new games based on them such as Labyrinth Lord. Finding a specific definition for the OSR is a common topic of debate among the community at large, but some essays are considered authorities in describing its fundamental principles, such as the Principia Apocrypha or A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming which are the main bases for this wiki and article.
Principles[edit | edit source]
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), 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 - Ben Milton
OSR games put heavy emphasis on player agency and decision-making in the context of creative problem solving. Taking inspiration from the wargaming roots of the hobby, play often involves a challenge to overcome through strategy and player skill. Characters often start with few resources and abilities or even defining elements, earning them through risky play. The emerging narrative of OSR games often follows the pattern of rags-to-riches, telling the story of how a ragtag groups of average people survive against all odds to become seasoned adventurers, leaders and eventually lords.
A common saying in the community is "Rulings, not rules", meaning that referees are encouraged to make up their own rules should they encounter a situation not covered by their game system. This principle emerged out of necessity, as players are encouraged to find creative, unexpected solutions to the problem they encounter and systems cannot be expected to be as exhaustive. This leads to every table shaping their own game, expanding and mutating to accommodate the play style and personalities of its players and referee. This process has led to the creation of entirely new games.
Discourse around OSR often involves the concept of "Player skill". Player skill is described in opposite to character abilities, meaning that players are not supposed to rely on their character's skills and attributes to interact with the world. Players have to figure out by themselves what their character should do, how they should act, and how to understand the world around them. Players are expected to ask the right questions, and draw from their own knowledge, imagination and life experiences. In practice, this rewards player investment much in the same way as video games do, as the more they play the game, the more they interact with the world, the better they become at playing the game.
Like said previously, the emerging story of these games often involves the characters eventually getting rich and powerful. But as they accumulate influence and equipment, they can never become complacent. They must fight for everything they gain, and then fight to keep it. Apart from their own player skill, everything can be lost on a simple mistake or through bad luck, including their own character. This means that the players will always have to pay attention and think about what they do, equipment and advancements only giving them more tools to elaborate complex master plans and interact with the world.
The phrase "Combat as war" is another common trope of OSR discourse. It accompanies the idea that OSR games forego game balance, at least in the sense that challenges are not scaled to the level or composition of the player's group. Players should never know what to expect and act accordingly, preparing for the worst or avoiding combat entirely. This principle establishes, consciously or not, an atmosphere of horror or gritty realism as players face uncertainty and act under pressure. It has to be said that this principle only really works if the referee themselves act accordingly, by playing fairly and letting the dices speak by themselves.
Game design[edit | edit source]
Most OSR games are based on a main game loop that revolves around exploration and "town play". A typical campaign often involves preparing for an expedition, traveling to the adventure site, investigating the adventure site, escaping it and then going back to a safe zone where the players will be able to invest their newly acquired knowledge and tools to secure their position and influence the setting they operate in.
As OSR games nearly all share a common ancestry, they also feature much of the same game concepts, in the form of ability scores, saving throws, character advancement, classes, armor class, hit dice and critical hits. For this reasons, adapting adventures and rules from one system to another is usually not too difficult, which allows referees to draw from a pool of material that has been steadily growing for over 50 years.
Game systems embrace proceduralism, especially during exploration. Meaning that game phases are often formally defined and divided into turns with recurring actions for the referee and the players, like rolling for random encounters. In OSR, procedures rules are valued more than mechanics rules, as they help manage the complexity of the game and assist the players in making informed, well thought decisions. It also helps transmitting the spirit of the rules and making the play style more accessible to new referees as they can understand and run the game as intended by the designers.
Resource management is an important part of games of this style, as most choices during exploration are based on a fluctuating balance of risk and reward. Players are encouraged to push their luck while the more they explore, the more they take the risk of losing it all. Games model this attrition through external and internal factors to the group, like the hit points of the characters that get depleted through combat, the group's light as torches and oil that get consumed while exploring, or random encounters being more common or more dangerous as players interact with the adventure site.
Procedural content generation through random table is a core part of the OSR experience, which both help in alleviating the referee's from preparation work and ensure a sense of fairness in regards to the players.