The Old School Renaissance

 Debates about what the OSR is have been going on since at least the late 2000s. Lately I seen more rounds of discussion on this topic on various forums and on youtube like this panel discussion.

What sets the OSR apart, from the beginning, is that, unlike most corners of the hobby, it hasn’t been driven by a single author, company, or creative vision. While it grew from interest in out-of-print editions of D&D, its creative output quickly became rooted in open content under open licenses. That foundation created not a canon, but a commons.

And from that commons emerged a kaleidoscope of creative visions: rulesets, zines, hacks, adventures, philosophies, and play styles. The movement thrived not because it had a unified voice, but because it didn’t. It was, and remains, a productive chaos of competing, overlapping, and deeply personal creative visions.

Digital publishing supercharged this. The barriers to creating and distributing game content collapsed. Suddenly, anyone with the time and drive could turn their vision into a PDF, a print-on-demand book, a boxed set, or a full-blown system, no approvals required.

The OSR is shaped daily by those who publish, those who share, those who play, and those who promote. You can see just one slice of this activity on DriveThruRPG, with nearly 15,000 titles tagged OSR. Itch.io adds another 5,000+ projects under the same banner, each one a different take on what an “old school renaissance” can mean.

Many have tried to define the OSR. All of them fail, because definition implies boundaries, and the OSR has none that aren’t self-imposed. At its core, the OSR is an invitation. If you have the interest, the ideas, and the willingness to build, then it’s yours.

That’s the point. The OSR is what you make of it.