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#1 Zardnaar Jun 07, 2015 1:17:51

OSR stands for the Old School Revival or the Old School Renaissance and it generally refers to the D&D editions published by TSR before the WoTC buyout in 1997. It mostly refers to BECMI and AD&D 1E though due to the influence of Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer on those editions. 5E has been influenced by the older editions of D&D more than 3E and 4E and I will briefly look at what ideas in 5E are influenced by older editions and speculate on the why the designers went down that path. First things 1st I will briefly look at the why there was even an OSR movement in the 1st place. TSR era D&D.   Original D&D (OD&D) Basic, Expert, Companions, Masters, Immortals (BECMI) AD&D (1E) AD&D Second Edition (2E)     Put simply the origins of the OSR movement lie in the rejection of D&D 3E by grognards. What is a grognard? Someone who prefers older versions of D&&D over WoTC editions of D&D. This was also helped along by the OGL which allowed various people to clone older versions of D&D. OSRIC was one of the earlier clones based on 1E and Castles and Crusades also started circa 2004 or so and it was a hybrid f 1E with some influence from 3E such as ascending numbers. Troll Lord Games who published C&C was also working with Gary Gygax before his death and he contributed to The Crusader which was a journal devoted to C&C had Gary writing articles on D&D.    Note that back in the early days of 3E prices on most AD&D books collapsed. On these forums you used to be able to advertise older RPG books for sale (I bought Demihuman Deities for $10 IIRC) and prices for AD&D books on ebay were generally very cheap perhaps $1-$3 in some cases with the exception of collectors’ items. People were dumping AD&D books for 3.0.The OSR movement was kind of small it seems but it had its origins in the early 2000’s.    Fast forward to 2007 and 4E was announced. Well the forums exploded and never really recovered and in 2008 rolled around and 4E was released. Early signs that the edition was in trouble was the PHB for 3.5 hit $50 or so on Ebay compared with a few dollars for AD&D books in 2000-2004 or so. 5E was discussed as early as 2010 and it was around then Pathfinder started to pick up a lot of steam as well. Work on 5E started in 2011 and by 2012 there was a full blown revival of older D&D. Around 25 clones or more were available, WoTC reprinted the previous editions books, AD&D prices started to go up on Ebay.    The fanbase was splintering and not all of them landed in Paizos corner. Monte Cook as late as August 2014 claimed D&D had lost around 2 thirds of the old player base, Paizo it seems got about half the rest stopped playing, stuck with 3.5 or went to OSR gaming it seems. In 2012 Dungeon Crawl Classics made it onto the ICV2 list for popular RPGs and when WoTC released PDFs of older materials on the online RPG sites the servers crashed due to demand. The OSR movement got a large influx it seems from the edition wars.   Personally I went back to 2E and the clones in 2012 after burning out on Pathfinder. Forums dedicated to OSR gaming such as Dragonsfoot.com often had things such as ex 3E/4E player returning to AD&D type posts in some cases those players had not even played TSR era D&D back in  back in the day. I only had 1 AD&D player myself my solution was simple I recruited Pathfinder players to 2E and ended up playing BECMI and 1E again along with several clones. If you didn’t like 3E or 4E or burned out one them you really only had one option if you wanted to keep playing D&D. So how big was the revival? Morrus on ENworld revealed that around 5% of the posts there were OSR related but note ENworld is not a dedicated OSR site. I doubt much more than 5-10% of the player base was actively playing OSR gaming though. On online sites though OSR gaming was making up a decent % at times and was beating a few editions of D&D that did not start with Path and end in finder.  With the new TSR era reprints though and the PDFs selling along with an overall increased awareness and interest in OSR gaming the developers decided to bring back some of those concepts in 5E it seems. Mike Mearls is also a known fan of 2E AD&D. The market and appeal was there it seems and TSR era D&D is more or less immune to accusations of its not D&D due to the fact they started the game. So here are the OSR influences I have seen in 5E.   1.       The game is simpler. Well simpler than 3E and 4E. This does come at the price of options (uber feats for example).   2.       Options. No splats as such yet but the core rules do have things such as feats being optional and optional rules in the DMG. Not all of the optional rules are good (advantage for flanking is a bit nuts I use +2 to hit) but they are there a’la 2E core books.   3.       Bounded accuracy. Good concept not sure if they got the numbers right or that they could have done it better. Numbers were a lot smaller in TSR era D&D as for example level 20 fighter in BECMI got +13 to hit.   4.       No magic weapons or expectations as a default rule. Magic item creation and aquisition is very much in the DMs control. Magic items are cheap and easy to make in 3E, 4E and Pathfinder by comparison. Magic items are kind of interesting again instead of being an accounting exercise.   5.       Magic item +’s top out at +3. This was from OD&D/BECMI. AD&D weapons generally topped out at +5, +6 in certain circumstances such as artefacts and frost brands.   6.       Subclasses. These are very similar to kits from 2E or archetypes from Pathfinder. In effect they have added plat book options to the 5E core rules.   7.       Some classes are heavily influenced by AD&D expectations. The Druid would be the most obvious one as the land Druid seems very heavily based on the AD&D Druid (2E had the best balanced ones IMHO). Even the land druids land options seems based on the Druid types from the 2E Druids book. The Wildmage Sorcerer would be another one coming from the 2E Tome of Magic.   8.       A starter boxed set and Basic D&D options. This is based on the old red boxed set and the B part of BECMI. 4 races and 4 classes isn’t that many more options than the BECMI rules Cyclopedia which had 7 classes with 2 optional classes. I would not mind a feat less basic game at some point just to try out with 4 subclasses and 4 races allowed.   9.       Nice throwbacks to previous editions past. Dragonlance and Greyhawk pantheons in the PHB. The Elemental Evil players handbook had a lot of 2E spells from the Tome of Magic in it. Abi Dalzims Horrid Wilting for example or Ice Knife fomr the Complete Wizards Handbook in 2E.   10.   A change in tone of the art work and a focus on realistic looking weapons. No more dungeonpunk and Wayne Reynolds cartoon looking art work. TSR art was often whimsical or non combat related.