People keep asking me what an OSR game is. They want a clear mechanical difference, like the one they think exists between Forged in the Dark and Powered By The Apocalypse, for example. You’re not going to get that here, you’re just going to get my opinion, so I can link to it rather than explain myself again.

OSR, NSR, POSR et cetera, are the same category of games: Mostly false dichotomies driven by a history of nerd-driven overcategorisation with an an icing of wanting to differentiate one community from another. Skip to the end of this paragraph if you don’t care very much about history, and just want to know what an OSR game is. People will faff about because the term OSR (and NSR) have meant multiple things over the years. The definitions have not been static. But nobody asking me “What’s OSR/NSR?” is asking about history. They want to know if they’re going to enjoy playing with me. So, if you’re interested in the history of the OSR, click Marcia’s post, and its’ extensive bibliography, or Tom’s analysis. If you’re interested in how the NSR has redefined itself over time, read the post where Layla defined the term here, (although it was coined by Brian & Brendan it seems) to Yochai’s where he argues that it’s no longer a category of games but a community, to this one more recently which contradicts both. In the time since the NSR community formed, the OSR community has become far more diverse and welcoming in its major spaces like the OSR discord (once purple, now rainbow), to some degree necessitating those that identify as NSR re-aligning their identity. My friend Warren argues here that the correct term for the current crop of games is Post-OSR, and he’s convincing, but everyone still uses the term OSR. I like none of these three terms — they feel like inside baseball to me. I substitute it for DIY D&D or DIY elfgame — it’s there in my byline. And all of these things mean the same thing, if we’re talking about if a specific game is OSR. So, I’m going to use OSR in this post because it’s what the people who ask me, ask me about.

TL;DR: when I say OSR here, I also mean NSR, POSR, DIY D&D and DIY elfgame.

To talk about what an OSR game is, you need to think of categorisation as clustering of features. If you match enough features, you get a game that “feels” OSR. I think of these features as being across multiple axes: Rules features, Playstyle features, and Community features.

Rules Features of the OSR

I’ll start with Rules, because Marcia did all the work, and it’s data-driven, and she made graphs. I can’t talk about rules features any better she did here, but I’ll summarise.

There are six clusters of types of rules that Marcia identified:

1. Faithfuls, characterised by class-based distinctions between characters, and a lack of dependence on individual character abilities. Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy are examples, notably known as retro-clones.
2. Moderns, characterised by character abilities and universal resolution procedures. Dungeon Crawl Classics and World Without Number are examples, which I think notably are both forks of 3rd Edition.
3. Blacks, characterised by simple math, dependence on ability scores, abstract item usage, and real-time encounter checks. The Black Hack is an example, although it’s quite influential, with Whitehack and The Vanilla Game also fitting in a similar space.
4. Odds, characterised by emphasis on character ability scores and removal of attack rolls. Cairn and Mausritter are examples.
5. Knaves, characterised by no classes, individual character ability, and lack of play procedures. Tunnel Goons and Mork Borg are examples.
6. Baroques, characterised by a renewed interest in play procedures. Errant and His Majesty the Worm are examples.

Interestingly, while I’m not going to reverse-engineer Marcia’s work, it’s pretty clear where some newer games would fit here: Shadowdark, for example, is clearly Modern, where Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is clearly Baroque. It’s less clear to me where or if Trophy Gold fits into this graph. Marcia is pretty clear about the fact that this graph works only because the similarities between the groups are so great. What Marcia doesn’t say, is that the fantasy games generally accepted as NSR are mainly sitting on the right side of the graph: The “DND Unlike Cluster”, as she calls it. I think it’s also important to note that Marcia clarifies that “OSR games are virtually the same thing”, which is why a data-based rules analysis like this contains any meaning. These are subtle differences in rules. All of these OSR games support a very similar table experience.

The point being that: It’s not meaningful in my opinion to differentiate NSR from OSR from POSR games in terms of rules, except in the broadest sense, which is that you can see from Marcia’s visualisation that the games that identify as NSR are essentially a subcategory. One person may place greater emphasis on a small difference than others (I’ve written three rulesets myself, I’m not judging anyone who places the emphasis on minutiae), but the experience at the table is virtually the same, which means to me that the OSR is really unified by those similarities rather than by the differences.

Playstyle Features

So let’s talk about that table experience. So, you more or less have three lists that define the playstyles, that are mature and well avoided, and thousands of new ones that I won’t go into. Let’s summarise:

Laylas‘:

Have a GM, Weird Setting and Living World, are Rules Light and Deadly and focus on Emergent Narrative, External Interaction and Exploration.

Ben Milton’s:

High lethality, an open world, a lack of pre-written plot, an emphasis on creative problem solving, an exploration-centered reward system, a disregard for “encounter balance”, the use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees…

Ben Milton – Maze Rats

The Principia Apocrypha is a 50 page essay by the same Ben and Steven Lumpkin that goes into detail on all of this, basically serving as a set of principles a la Apocalypse World for both referee and players. These are the principle names:

• The table is yours, rulings over rules, the referee is impartial, preparation is flexible, build responsive situations, embrace chaos but uphold logic, let them off the rails, player ingenuity over character ability, good items are unique tools, don’t mind the fourth wall
• Cleverness is rewarded, ask them how they do it, let players manipulate the world, offer tough choices, challenges have hard or no answers, subvert expectations
• Deadly but avoidable combat, keep up the pressure, let the dice kill then but telegraph lethality, reveal the situation, give them layers to peel, don’t bury the lede, NPCs aren’t scripted, keep the world alive
• Learn when to run, combat is war, not sport, don’t be limited by your character sheet, live your backstory, power is earned, heroism proven, scrutinise the world, interrogate the fiction, the only dead end is death, let your creativity flow, play to win, savour loss

You can see the very clear overlaps between these three lists, assuming you accept some paraphrasing, which to me indicates that these are all effectively saying the same thing. Ben says you don’t need them all: “The more of the following a campaign has, the more old school it is”. Here’s a summary of the things that I think are common to all three lists. Obviously the Principia Apocrypha is far more granular and many of those are folded into few here or minimised in my list as good advice rather than core principles. The terms “rules buy-in” and “table agency” are useful ones coined by Chris McDowall and Zedeck Siew respectively, which help clarify the original terms in my opinion:

1. Deadly (but solvable) combat and hazards where the expectation is that the players are out of their depth
2. Living world, often driven by randomisation of some kind, that operates to some degree without regard to the players
3. Interaction is focused on creative problem solving of external problems rather than internal drama
4. Any narrative emerges organically, rather than through preparation
5. A reliance on rulings rather than exhaustive rules, which leads to greater “table agency” where you are empowered to find the right solution for your table, due to the de-emphasis of the rules as “word of god”
6. An emphasis on exploration into a lethal unknown, often but not always through rewards systems
7. Minimum rules buy-in due to the rules-light nature of the game. Even the more complex end of the OSR (which are the modern rule sets, and perhaps some of the baroque ones) are very light compared to something like Pathfinder or 5th edition, allowing a “just turn up, we’ll figure it out” attitude (but also less mechanical chunks to chew on, so to speak)

Interestingly, this basically matches up with how I describe what I do when people ask me (supplemented by my friend Sam).

You’ve heard of D&D? I play DIY D&D, because I don’t really enjoy the most recent version, and instead I focus on exploring weird, unknown and dangerous spaces (like derelict space craft or ruined castles) full of weird people, and those relationships. Because I don’t focus on combat, it tends to be a little horror in the sense that you can’t go toe to toe with your foes, you need to be smart about it. But you’ll spend most of your time talking to people, trying to figure out what’s going on, and finding cool things that have unexpected effects. It’s good for people who like imagining fictional worlds, trust the people they’re playing with, and don’t want to deal with a lot of rules.

Me, IRL

Going back to the list, this is why I say things like “Blades in the Dark is OSR” from time to time: It arguably satisfies 6 out of 7 of these criteria. It is also why people often snarkily say “But does that mean 5th edition is OSR?” Yes, it can be. It definitely can be. Sandra is a highly influential voice in the OSR and runs a 5th edition fork. Dungeon Crawl Classics is a 3rd edition fork. That’s the whole thesis: It’s a playstyle, as much as it’s a set of similar rules.

Community Features

However, unlike the first two which are a list of features something OSR may or may not have, the community features that surround the OSR are basically common features to all the games. There are two major community features, in my opinion: Module ecosystems (I’ll digress a little there, as is my wont) and a DIY community.

“If it can run B2, it’s OSR” is a common tongue in cheek reply with a grain of truth to it; basically every fantasy OSR game is compatible or has rules for conversion for modules written for B/X, an old version of D&D currently popularised as Old School Essentials. It’s a lingua franca of sorts. But “Can run B2” isn’t the whole story; because games like Cairn, Mothership and Old School Essentials don’t rely on modules from the 80s. These have their own thriving ecosystem of modules. For these games, the ecosystem is as much a part of the game as the ruleset itself; they rely on the ecosystem of modules to sustain play. This is because modules are a nutrient that OSR games use to grow and to thrive.

There are games that don’t have ecosystems, but those systems are universally desirous of an ecosystem; that deep-seated desire for an ecosystem in the absence of one is a defining feature to me as well. I wouldn’t argue that, for example, Yokai Hunter’s Society is OSR, but I’m not playing it until Tokyo City Crawl is released. I think The Door Locks Behind You is OSR, but I have nothing to spur me to bring it to the table, in the lack of an ecosystem. Errant is absolutely stellar, but there aren’t enough modules for it for me to want it at the table. Significant time and effort are put into getting modules published for Cloud Empress and for Best Left Buried in order to bring their community the nutrients to survive. Things like the Twisted Classics and Cabin Fever jams take OSR games like Liminal Horror and Pirate Borg to a level that invites play, through creating an ecosystem through community engagement. I struggled with Pariah until Atop the Wailing Dunes was released. Modules are an important nutrient that most OSR games require to thrive; they often make little sense in their absence.

I should interrupt there, and say that to a degree, I recognise that there is a subset of OSR games that appear to buck that trend towards module ecosystems. These are two major groups: The first are grand campaigns, like Wolves Upon the Coast, His Majesty the Worm and (I’d argue) Blades in the Dark. The second is the megadungeon game, best explored through the podcast Into the Megadungeon. But I don’t think they actually buck the trend. I think megadungeon campaigns are simply examples of home-brewed modules (I’ve been privy to the amount of work Miranda puts into Nightwick Abbey, for example), and they’ve been there since the beginning of the hobby and declined specifically because of the existence of modules becoming wider-spread. And similarly, grand campaigns are simply games that strap a ton of modules to their main game. In Doskvol, you are trapped in a small space with a bunch of factions, after all: How different is that from a megadungeon, really?

This is probably a good place to digress into the minutiae of the interaction between certain modules and certain variations in playstyle. The entire reason I write so many Bathtub Reviews is that differences in modules are important! And they really fall into two popular categories that focus on different things, though not exclusively, with a bunch of other categories in the periphery: Classic dungeons, and scenic dungeons. Classic dungeons like Nightwick Abbey and Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, really rely on the minutiae of Old School Essentials or similar systems for their tension; you think about exploration foot-by-foot, you’re often mapping as you go, monster speed is essential, treasure distribution is important because it’s tied to progression, class level is a major consideration in building your dungeon. In scenic dungeons like Crown of Salt or Ultraviolet Grasslands, descriptions can be less specific and concrete and more easily improvised and are more focused on other aspects: Weird and striking locations, faction play, and interesting characters. This is one place where the interplay between the modules created by the community and which of that larger list of features your playstyle includes interacts in often surprising ways, to create emergent fiction in different ways. There are of course other types of module — many — but I don’t think I’ve done the work or that this is the place to elucidate them all. The more general point is that the interaction between this aspect of the community and the playstyle you experience at your table is meaningful, and the experience you have with one module is not the same as another.

A second important feature is the DIY community, which was mentioned way up by both myself and also by Ben Milton, whose quote above I concluded early, and finishes with: “and a strong do-it-yourself attitude and a willingness to share your work and use the creativity of others in your game”. Basically, players, referees, fans are active participants in the ongoing development of the game (or perhaps the OSR as a whole). The OSR blogosphere is, to me, the most salient aspect of this DIY community, but it definitely extends to the hacking and development community, including jams and informal releases, that responds to and is in conversation with most games. When I released Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, a modern version was released within weeks of my initial release, for example. Jams inviting the community to expand Barkeep on the Borderlands and His Majesty the Worm occurred in just the last few months. There are even movements to preserve this conversation, in the form of things like Blogs on Tape, and Knock! The reason Marcia’s graph earlier exists at all is because of this conversation; Sam Dunnewold said in this interview, that the culture of “I’m playing Cairn but with these four blog posts” is a major part of the DIY culture of the OSR, and he’s right, which is why I prefer having DIY in the name. This DIY nature is, in my opinion, why variety of systems and rules evolves in my opinion from the DIY nature of the scene: It’s about bespoke rulesets for your table, and these many similar rulesets reflect that.

Conclusions

Well, that took forever to write, and largely regurgitated what other people have said. Woe is me. However, it serves its’ purpose.

TL;DR, if you want the pitch:

You’ve heard of D&D? I play DIY D&D, because I don’t really enjoy the most recent version, and instead I focus on exploring weird, unknown and dangerous spaces (like derelict space craft or ruined castles) full of weird people, and those relationships. Because I don’t focus on combat, it tends to be a little horror in the sense that you can’t go toe to toe with your foes, you need to be smart about it. But you’ll spend most of your time talking to people, trying to figure out what’s going on, and finding cool things that have unexpected effects. It’s good for people who like imagining fictional worlds, trust the people they’re playing with, and don’t want to deal with a lot of rules.

Me, IRL

TL;DR, if you want a summary:

In my opinion, the games often labelled OSR, NSR, POSR and whatnot are all trying to provide a very similar table experience; it’s pretty meaningless to try to separate them in terms of mechanics and playstyle, because they all share in a core cluster of rules and playstyle features, and vary only in the specifics (and the playstyle specifics may only vary at your table and in how you and your friends implement those playstyle features). What they do all share, is a need for a shared community around which people create and contribute to an ecosystem of modules and rules additions or modifications. This community is the key nutrient that the OSR thrives upon.

So, let’s get creating, and let’s get blogging.

Idle Cartulary

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