Old-School Revival or Renaissance?

The OSR Wikipedia page lists OSR as standing for either Old-School Revival or Old-School Renaissance. I’m not sure if a preference exists within the OSR community or if a consensus on what OSR “stands for” could ever be achieved. And it may not matter – the difference between “revival” and “renaissance” may simply be a matter of semantics or personal preference. However, it occurred to me the other day that the distinction between these two initialisms could perhaps speak to a greater distinction in the OSR community.

First, a discussion of what these two terms mean to me.

 “Revival” conjures images of a dead thing come back to life. In other words, reanimating a (previously) dead corpse, like Lazarus up and walking about. For all intents and purposes, the “revived” thing is the same as it was before it died, unchanged.

Pictured at right: The rules of early D&D, reconstructed. Pictured at left: revivalist OSR players, eager to play.

 “Renaissance,” however, conjures images of the Italian Renaissance. During this period, artists gave “rebirth” to Greco-Roman artistic influences. However, the artwork created during this time did not perfectly re-create ancient Greco-Roman artwork. Instead, Renaissance art distinctly comes from the 15^th and 16^th century. You can tell the difference between ancient Greco-Roman art and Renaissance art if you know what to look for. Renaissance art drew inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome but did not emulate it with perfect fidelity.

The ancient Greeks and Romans never did anything like this.

 To me, this speaks to a greater division in the OSR community between faithfully re-creating the rulesets of early D&D and adding innovation to make something new.

Of course, when I say “conflict,” I do not mean an open debate or “opinion war” actively being waged. I think the OSR community is the OSR community, and many more things divide it than the conflict I present here.

However, a person or product can identify themselves as “OSR” if they seek to emulate or integrate something from early D&D into the games they presently play. And, once that person seeks to emulate something from early D&D, the question arises: to what extent do they want to re-create (what they perceive as) early D&D? Do they see an element or two they wish to capture, or do they wish to recreate the entire play experience?

To me, Old School “Renaissance” speaks to the former. A member of the “Renaissance” finds some value in early D&D and scraps the rest in favor of crafting their own ideal, personalized play experience. On the other hand, Old School “Revival” speaks to the latter. A member of the Old School Revival seeks to emulate early D&D as closely as possible, because emulating early D&D is their ideal play experience.

Again, this distinction is purely arbitrary and not grounded in actual divisions of the OSR community. I don’t believe people go around labelling themselves as “Renaissance” or “Revival” based on their gaming preferences. However, this spectrum helps me better visualize the content and products I see coming out of the OSR scene.

For a moment, let’s imagine a caricature of someone on the extreme end of the “revival” movement. This person would seek to emulate the play experience of early D&D as much as possible because that is the play experience they desire. They would study the notes of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax to determine how they ran the game and try to mimic them in their own. They would use only notebook paper for character sheets, and perhaps buy sets of dice on which the numbers need to be colored-in with crayon.

Of course, this individual would need to choose exactly which game to emulate. First edition or B/X? Greyhawk or Blackmoor? Published modules or homebrew? This decision rests on the play experience they desire. However, for this hypothetical person, their desired play experience rests in their conception of the past.

Contrast this with a hypothetical member of the “Renaissance,” who instead studies early D&D and looks for elements of it to bring into a game firmly rooted in the present. They would pull more from modern “innovations” in gaming and take from early D&D only what they find value in. Theirs would be a game that captures the“feel” they want from early D&D, but the actual game they play may be substantially different.

This distinction is helpful for thinking about the gaming systems from the OSR scene. For example, I would place rules systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Castles & Crusades, and Knave firmly in the “Renaissance” category. They capture certain elements of early D&D while injecting significant elements of change to create a different play experience (which, in the minds of their creators, improves the game in some way). These publishers would not make their games if they didn't think there was a reason someone, somewhere would want to play their game instead of the 1st edition or B/X ruleset.

On the other hand, rules systems like the OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and (most recently) Old School Essentials take comparatively less liberties with their source material– and this is a point of advertising for them. These rules systems are geared towards members of the “Revival,” who seek to emulate early D&D for its own sake.

A game like the Basic Fantasy RPG perhaps rests somewhere in-between, re-creating many elements of the early D&D rules while simultaneously touting itself as its “own game.” Arguably, D&D 5^th edition may edge in on the far end of the “Renaissance” side. Compared to fourth edition, it includes many more “old-school” elements than its predecessor. Wizards of the Coast, at least in part, published 5^th edition in an appeal to bring wayward OSR players back into the fold.

Interestingly, even “revival” rules systems do not (and cannot) perfectly reproduce the play experience of early D&D, even by keeping the text of the rules, as early D&D is full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and differing interpretations. On his blog, Jason Alexander called early D&D the “Ur-Game” because it was a primordial soup of rules and rulings played in so many different ways. Every table – in fact, every session – was unique.

Furthermore, even those relatively “revivalist” rules systems include changes made by the authors/publishers. For example, Labyrinth Lord adds first-level spells for clerics. Old School Essentials “balances” the classes in the Advanced Genre rules. So, even those rulesets intended to faithfully reproduce early D&D include value judgments made by their authors/publishers. Even with these changes, however, they still more closely recreate the rules systems of early D&D than those that only take it as inspiration.

In sum, when thinking of the OSR scene, I imagine it on a spectrum with “revivalist” culture on one side and “renaissance” culture on the other. “Revivalist” artists attempt to re-create the play experience of early D&D as much as possible (though it is a Sisyphean task), while “Renaissance” creators take inspiration from early D&D and “run with it.”

To be clear, I’m not inherently in favor of one or the other. I see value in both. However, I think identifying this distinction helps me see and articulate what I see happening in the OSR scene more clearly.

A Few Closing Thoughts

So, what have the last thousand words brought me?

First, it helps me recognize the OSR movement as an artistically reactionary one. In response to the changes that arose from third (and especially fourth) editions, the OSR movement began to look for value in past versions of the game and capitalize on that value in the present.

This division between “renaissance” and “revival” also helps me think about my own gaming attitudes and preferences. I recognize that a lot of the value I find in “old-school” gaming is pragmatic (ex. more streamlined gameplay, greater reliance on player creativity, etc.). However, I also recognize that at least part of the value I see in old-school gaming is nostalgic. I admit that, when I see the squad on Stranger Things playing D&D in their basement, there’s part of me that longs for that experience myself. And faithfully recreating the play experience of early D&D, aside from its pragmatic benefits, taps into that emotional desire to re-create a past experience I never personally shared.

Stranger Things is pretty masterful in the way it taps into a viewer's nostalgia for the past. What D&D player sees a scene like this and doesn't want to join in?

 Furthermore, I think I’ve recognized that early D&D’s “do-it-yourself” attitude means that “cleaving closely as possible to early D&D,” by definition, means deviating from the established rules - which is an impossible conflict to navigate.

How can you simultaneously emulate early D&D and ad-lib from it? You can’t. And I think that contradiction– its malleability – is what allows D&D to be so many things to so many people. This helps explain its widespread popularity, but also the inherently fractious nature of its gaming community. From the very start – due to the creative, spontaneous, and imaginative nature of the game - D&D was destined to have its gaming base doing a host of different things and calling it all “D&D.”

I realize how this post might come across as a rambling exercise in navel-gazing, a debate about semantics, or – in general – just a fruitless and futile discussion. For myself, however, I find it personally helpful to see this distinction and articulate it.  And hopefully, you have found it at least somewhat helpful (or interesting), too.