Before the OSR

I must confess it still baffles me that, even after all these years, the nature of the Old School Renaissance remains a matter of contention in some quarters. Given that, I suppose it should be no surprise that there's no universally accepted start date for the OSR, though I think a good case can be made for 2007 or 2008. I favor 2007 myself, though 2008 is also a good choice, since it's the year in which Gary Gygax died, as well as the year in which old school blogs really exploded in number and influence. 2008 is also, not insignificantly, the year in which the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons was published and I think we'd be remiss in overlooking 4e as a symbolic Bright Red Line. The OSR owed much of its early energy to the shudders of revulsion many felt at the marketing campaign that presaged Fourth Edition's arrival.

One of the reasons a start date is difficult to pin down is that, prior to both the dates I mention above, no less than three significant rules sets inspired by old school Dungeons & Dragons appeared. To varying degrees, each one exists outside the OSR ecosystem, despite the fact that the OSR owes huge debts of thanks to all three. Without their trailblazing examples, I'm not sure retro-clones would have existed, or, if they had, they might well have appeared later or taken different forms than they did. 

The first of these was Castles & Crusades, first published by Troll Lord Games in 2004. Though I do not play it, I have a personal affection for C&C, since it was my gateway to old school gaming. Like a lot of people, I'd returned to playing D&D in 2000, with the publication of Third Edition. Also like a lot of people, I grew tired of 3e and was looking for an alternative to its ponderousness. C&C was the very first game I checked out in my quest, having been drawn there due to Gary Gygax's association with Troll Lords. The designers of C&C were, I think, among the first people to recognize that Wizards of the Coast's Open Game License (OGL) and System Reference Document (SRD) gave publishers the raw materials from which to rebuild something akin to AD&D. 

While one can quibble about the final result, C&C was close enough for my tastes at the time that I readily embraced it. More importantly, the game eschewed all the skills, feats, prestige classes, and other cruft that made Third Edition such cumbersome mess. Better still, C&C built up an active, enthusiastic, and imaginative community around itself. Reading the C&C forums was joyous: every other thread wasn't devoted to dissecting the rules or arguing over the best way to "build" a character. People were just playing the game and having fun doing it. As a new refugee from WotC D&D, this was revelatory and I'll always be grateful for it.

Around the same time, I also came across the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game (BFRPG), which was first published in 2006. Basic Fantasy takes a similar tack to C&C, in that it leverages the OGL and SRD to recreate a defunct edition of Dungeons & Dragons, in this case, as its name suggests, the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic and Expert rules. BFRPG went farther, in my opinion, than C&C in using WotC's resources to present a game that played like its inspirations. This was important, because it demonstrated just how much could be done with the OGL and SRD if you were determined to do so.

BFRPG is significant in another way. Castles & Crusades was the invention of Troll Lord Games and some aspects of its design, such as the Siege Engine core mechanic, remained proprietary, which limited the ability of third parties to support it. By contrast, everything about BFRPG is completely "open," allowing anyone and everyone to add to it as they wished. Even more, the game's site actively promotes supplements and adventures produced by others, which is the same spirit I associate strongly with the earliest days of the OSR, when ideas flew fast and furious and everyone involved was sharing and promoting one another's wacky ideas. 

Also released in 2006 was the Old School Reference and Index Compilation, better known as OSRIC. The original purpose of OSRIC was to provide a legal framework for the creation of adventures and supplements to support Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. However, because, at the time, AD&D was no longer readily available, except through the second hand market, some gamers began to use OSRIC as its own ruleset, playing it rather than using it for its original purpose. In doing so, OSRIC effectively became the first retro-clone.

OSRIC went far beyond C&C and BFRPG in terms of its willingness to make use of the content of the SRD to recreate an earlier edition of D&D. Indeed, at the time it was first released, there was some concern that Wizards of the Coast might object and take legal action to suppress it. OSRIC was thus the veritable canary in the coalmine. Because no legal action occurred, it emboldened others to follow suit and, within a couple of years, there were many retro-clones released. Without the boldness of OSRIC, that might never have happened.

Nowadays, I don't see as much talk about Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, or OSRIC as I once did, but the fact remains that the contemporary OSR owes a great debt to each of these pioneering games. Without them, I doubt we'd where we are today.