The Rise of OSR Tabletop Gaming

OSR is the popular shorthand for "Old School Revival" or "Old School Renaissance", a popular movement among new tabletop RPGs to draw inspiration from the design choices and play style of the earliest D&D editions from the 70s, rather than the modern products being released today.

The OSR movement is comprised of everything from articles detailing ways to get into "Old School Gaming" to wholly-new games, developed in the style of old D&D.

This topic is quite niche to the tabletop RPG community, but I think anyone interested in game theory and game design could find the research interesting; especially when it concerns why such a widespread return to form has occurred amongst the community. There is often emphasis in OSR put on player agency over the now-prevalent linear adventure plots, so this may be a chance to get to the heart of why these games drew peoples’ attention in the first place, and how the new innovations within modern products may be detracting from the initial strengths. Lastly, the role of the internet in gamers organizing their interests and creative ideas in this way cannot be understated and could form another basis for investigating how the movement grew.