WHAT'S THIS ABOUT THEN?
An OSR game jam for the month of June! Make a retroclone! Make a module! Make a bestiary! Make a spell list! Make some cool items or NPCs! Make something fun that would fit in somewhere between 1975's Temple of the Frog and 1984, when Dragonlance ruined everything.
WHAT IS AN OSR?
OSR stands for "Old-School Revival" or "Old-School Renaissance" and refers to an ideological design movement that existed roughly between 2000 and 2009 before splintering off into post-movements. Put simply, the OSR was and is a rejection of scope creep and rules changes that began to be introduced to D&D in the mid '80s. With the release of the OGL (Open Gaming License) in 2000, people began creating retroclones of previous rulesets - specifically LBB (Little Brown Books, the original D&D), Holmes (Basic set), Moldvay/Cook (Basic/Expert edition, AKA B/X) and Mentzer (Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals, AKA BECMI).
Post-2009 the OSR fractured into numerous quabbling sub-factions and splinter movements based on adherence to the "classic" concept of OSR - ie, "can it run Keep" - or merely emulating the "feel" of older editions and being inspired by their rulesets but not being bound by them or compatible with them. After the loss of G+, the OSR's version of the Library of Alexandria, these Post-OSR sub-factions further splintered into aesthetical discussions of "artpunk" versus "minimalism," birthing the modern movement I call the ASR or "After-School Renaissance."
WHAT ARE THE RULES?
Be kind to yourself and others, and keep yourself and your work free of bigotry and hate. You can submit just one thing, or multiple things. You can submit something new, or something you've already created. You can (and should!) charge for your work, but you don't have to, either. It would be nice if you used the #OSRJuneJam hashtag to talk about it on Twitter. It would be even nicer if you rated other people's submissions!
WHAT COUNTS AS AN OSR?
Classically an OSR is a retroclone that can be used to create new content for and run old content from pre-2nd edition D&D (so LBB, B/X, BECMI). This definition would go on to include non-retroclones with an old-school "feel" according to some generally-accepted design pillars and now includes a particular "old school" aesthetic.
I may be somewhat of a purist myself - as in "OSR means I can run Keep on the Borderlands without much conversion work" - but for the purposes of this jam, OSR is like porn: you know it when you see it.
THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAMPLES OF "CLASSIC" OSRS:
- OSRIC
- Labyrinth Lord
- Swords & Wizardry
- Old-School Essentials
- Basic Fantasy RPG
- Untold Adventures
- Delving Deeper
- Blueholme
- Castles & Crusades
- Hackmaster
THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAMPLES OF POST-OSRS:
- Dungeon Crawl Classics
- Dark Dungeons
- For Gold & Glory
- Fantastic Heroes & Witchery
- Beyond the Wall
- Knave
- The Black Hack
- Whitehack
THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAMPLES OF ASRS:
- Five Torches Deep
- Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells
- Into the Odd
- Mausritter
- Cairn
- Mork Borg
- Troika
- The Vanilla Game
- Bastards.
- Redhack
- UNCONQUERED
WHAT IF I'M A NAZI?
Then you can fuck off.
If you're the kind of person that the above statement offends, you can fuck off.
You can also fuck off if: you're the kind of person that pals around with wannabe culture vulture white supremacists like RPG Pundit, wannabe satanist christian conservative transphobes like Venger Satanis, authors of articles titled "In Defense of Rape" like GrimJim, or are one of the libertarian dweebs that do free PR for the above.
SOME THINGS YOU MAY FIND HELPFUL
https://greygnome.com/free-art-assets/ - Jason Glover has put a lot of his art free for personal and commercial use! Thanks, Jason.
https://newschoolrevolution.com/public-domain-art - Yochai Gal has made a whole page of links to public domain images. Great work!
https://dysonlogos.blog/maps/commercial-maps/ - Dyson Logos makes maps freely available for personal and commercial use! I've used many Dyson maps for my games. They are excellent.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view - the OSR Principia Apocrypha, which is pure ideology but has some foundational principals that some may find interesting.
People like logos! These two handsome logos were designed by Matt Jackson and are released Free Forever into the Public Domain with no attribution requirements or possibility of being revoked in the future.
