What does the OSR mean to you?

 

When the open gaming license was made public back in 2000 by the Overlords at WoTC, the intent was to open up content to be published by 3rd party publishers, thus expanding the options for the consumer and driving the sale of those officially published books into more homes across this great land of ours. But, there was an unforeseen consequence of this. The OGL also opened the doors to the previous editions of the game, sparking would would become the present day OSR or Old-School Renaissance (Revival by some).

Since this time we've seen a number of retroclone rule sets published for the B/X, AD&D, Basic, Holmes and AD&D 2nd edition rule sets. Some of these really pushing the boundaries of rules-light content and revamping those official published rules into clean and much more usable versions. There is an ice cream flavor for all here...from the crunchiness of Dungeon Crawl Classics with tons of tables and random effect rolls, to Blackhack and Into the Odd which simplify rules down to almost pure narrative play.

With all the diversity of rule preference, there starts to form this question as to what is the OSR really? I can't speak for others and I certainly don't intend to, this is just my personal opinion. For me, the OSR is a feeling. It is not a ruleset, though some rules are more conducive to this feeling than other. It is not even a genre or setting, even though there is a vast array of these now available to the OSR consumer. It is that first D&D basic character, rolling it up at my friend's house one summer day...a Neutral alignment Fighter, Lance Warlend; if he lives long enough he can be titled a knight....I like this, this is the character I want to play. We venture into the dungeon, this abandoned castle on a lost island, dinosaurs wonder the wilderness, those seem dangerous, best to stay in this castle. Rooms explored, goblins slain, the last room has this large creature I've never heard of...a bugbear....three of my companions are dead, it is me and the bugbear, my hit points are getting low.....somehow the dice finally break my way, a hit, it goes down. In the chest is a flaming sword, holy shit, I'm so pumped, my heart is racing! I'm twelve and I've just had my first experience with Dungeons and Dragons, I'm now hooked for life.

The above is the OSR for me, well, getting back to that experience...it was the art in the D&D Cyclopedia that I was flipping through trying to grasp the rules, it was the grid map of the island and then the castle with all of the goblins that my friend had drawn up by hand, it was the high risk my character was under exploring for a way out and eventually overcoming by the skin of my teeth. Trying to recapture that feeling of wonder and adventure I experienced those many years ago, that is what defines the OSR to me. I love many of the published works, adventures and settings to come out of the community, but there is no one definition for what the OSR is, it is different for all us. By my definition it is not limited to a ruleset, the famous black and white art that defined the era. OSR could be at any table played with any rules if one wanted to be so.

So what does the OSR mean to you?