So what is this old school roleplaying gaming thing? A little more about the OSR

I post a lot of art and there hasn't been a lot of context as to what I do the art for, other than a few mentions of some products they are published in. So I figured I'd take the opportunity to post a bit about what the Old School Roleplaying gaming (OSR) is. First, what the initials OSR stand for is a contentious topic on some parts of the Internet (Oh Interwebz, controversy over geek culture? Say it ain't so!) entirely revolving around just what exactly does the R in OSR stand for? Some say Renaissance, some say revival, some say roleplaying and some say rules. Me? I don't particularly care. For the purposes of this I'll accept any but just use OSR from here on in. Anywho, if you know about table top roleplaying games then you probably know that Dungeons and Dragons was the boss game back in the late 70's early 1980's. D&D was created by Gary Gygax and David Arneson and published in 1974. I won't go into particulars, but if you really want to know more, there is an excellent book about how roleplaying started and evolved from the wargaming hobby. The book is entitle Playing at the World by Jon Peterson: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615642047/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0615642047&linkCode=as2&tag=playattheworl-20. I highly recommend anyone that has an interest in the hobby reading it.

Alright, so, D&D became quite popular in the later 1970's and spawned imitators, rules additions, and all manner of extra stuff. Some of it was just crap, but there was some great stuff too. It was a fast moving and freewheeling time in the hobby. As the game evolved, some people wanted a more codified version of the official rules and the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons system was born, to make a more consistent system that could be used at tournaments and conventions using a standard set of rules. I'm simplifying things quite a bit but that is a rather boiled down version of how AD&D came into being. AD&D tends to be the version that exists in a lot of people's minds when they think of D&D. See if these look familiar:

D&D was hugely successful at the time and there was a popular kid's cartoon made. Over time, the game continued to evolve. There were two distinct systems, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and the boxed games aimed at being simplier (though again, there is some contention here about the systems, so I'll not take sides and tread lightly) titled simply Dungeons and
Dragons:

Not to belabour the point, there were several successive iterations of the game that built upon the original or changed aspects of it. 2nd Edition AD&D was born in the late 1980's and added complexity in terms of new rules, new settings, etc.:

However, TSR, the publisher of D&D was in financial trouble and was bought out by Wizards of the Coast in the late 1990's. Wizards, after the acquisition developed a new edition of D&D, 3e which was very different from the iteration that came before, but did have some things the old timers found familiar.

I'll admit that I drifted away from RPGs, at least tabletop RPGs in the early 1990's. University, punk rock, and girls had my attention and I sort of drifted away. So when 3e came about, it had some fanfare behind it and I was interested. 3e is what brought me back. It was interesting and I liked it. However, it didn't have the same feel as old school D&D. I wasn't the only gamer that felt this way. Many old school gamers were brought back to the hobby but missed the older play style. One of the interesting things Wizards of the Coast (WotC) did was to create the open gaming license. This allowed for third party publishers to create new material that was compatible with the new system. And a lot of them did.

A lot of old school gamers took advantage of this opportunity to release material that harkened back to the old school play style but was stylistically more in line with 1st edition AD&D. Necromancer Games was one of the biggest of these and most successful. Necromancer has since changed to Frog God Games but has re-released their older material and continues to put out new stuff: https://www.froggodgames.com/necromancer-games.

Also, Troll Lord Games released a streamlined ruleset derived from the 3e rule set that simplified gameplay to emulate the 1st Edition play style. That game is known as Castles and Crusades: https://www.trolllord.com/. C&C is a solid game with a solid following even today. However, it still was not 1e AD&D.

Around the 2003-2005 timeframe, there were a lot of old school gamers that were clamouring for a return of 1e style games and 1e compatible products. Enter Matthew Finch. Mr. Finch leveraged the open gaming license to derive a rule set that was compatible with 1e products. This was known as the Old School Reference Index and Compilation (or OSRIC). OSRIC 1.0 was not intended to be a playable ruleset in as much as it was intended to be a vehicle that allowed for 1st edition compatible material to be legally created. There was a lot of controversy at first about this and a lot of nay Sayers. There was speculation that WotC would take legal action and go after anyone who dared to publish under the OSRIC banner. However, the idea caught on and people wanted more. They wanted OSRIC to be a fully realized rule set that was published and could stand alone. Thus OSRIC 2.0 was born:

Stuart Marshall had picked up the reigns from Matt to drive the project forward. Based at the Knights and Knaves Alehouse forums, the good people of the forum began the collective task of rewriting the rules to make them fully realized. This was late 2005-2006. It was a big task as it was set to recreate, as much as possible, the three core rule books (Player's Hand Book, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual). The call went out for writers, editors, and artists to volunteer to see the project through to completion. This is where I first came on board in the rpg scene. I'd always been an artist and geek so I gladly volunteered to do artwork for the project. OSRIC 2.0 contains some of my first published art. Here's the piece that kind of started it all for me:

And thus, the OSR was off and rolling. I'll continue the tale at a later time with the evolution of the OSR and my involvement in it. In the meantime, happy gaming!