The Functional Definition of The OSR

2025-12-31

Tags: OSR Meta

The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone ‘a gentleman’ you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not ‘a gentleman’ you were not insulting him, but giving information.

When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker’s attitude to that object.

  • Mere Christianity, by C.S Lewis.

Anyone who has been in the OSR scene for anytime, they will inevitably be audience to or participated in the time honored debate of “What is the OSR?”

While I suspect most reading this are those with a baseline familiarity with the OSR (God this acronym is going to be used a lot…) For those not in the loop, old school revival/renaissance is a design movement with varying definition, but the most common one you’ll be given is what I call The Philosophical Definition of the OSR, based primarily on Matt Finch’s Quick Primer for Old School Gaming

The primary philosophical definition has four core tenets or zen moments as they are called:

  1. Rulings Over Rules: The GM should not be beholden to the rules over common sense and their own judgement, rather operating from the standpoint of what is logical within the fiction of the game world.

  2. Player Skill, Not Character Ability: A player should not feel limited to abilities and options as listed on their character, but be permitted to do what is logical and supported within the fiction and be rewarded for lateral thinking.

  3. Heroic, Not Superheros: Characters should never feel invincible, and what ability and power they have gained should feel earned and acquired over many trimumphs and defeats.

  4. Forget “Game Balance”: Encounters should not have guardrails or internal checks and balances. the threat and scale should be decided on what makes sense within the world and setting. retreat is always an option, and not all fights are winnable.

The problem with The Philosophical Definition is that it’s wrong. Not on the efficacy of its tenets or philosophy (for it is excellent in those respects) but because it does not actually describe or define what is an OSR game is.

As an example of this problem; none of the listed tenets would be mutually exclusive with running a game like GURPs or Vampire The Masquerade, they’d probably both benefit from a table that used those tenets, but nobody (reasonbly speaking) would call either of those games OSR.

And in the reverse case; You could hypothically play games like Basic Fantasy, OSRIC, Swords & Wizardy, Labyrinth Lord in a way that didn’t follow any of those tenets (much to that games detriment) but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would say that game wasn’t OSR.

The Functional Definition

The Functional Definition has only one requirements that must be satisfied to qualify: The game must be compatible with TSR-Era D&D. (0e, 1E, B/X, BECMI, 2nd, etc.) And that any discrepancies between systems can be resolved with mininmal conversion (such as descending armor class to ascending armor class, converting different saving throws, etc.)

Despite how limiting this requirement might sound at a surface level, the amount of things one can do under that limitation is actually astounding. the sheer volume of games that are radically different from one another, let alone D&D, yet all still being inter-compatible is actually remarkable!

  • Stars Without Number - Space Opera

  • Invisible College - Modern Occult Espionage

  • Operation White Box - World War 2

  • Atomic Punk 2240 - Post Apocalyptic

  • Gangbusters B/X - 1920s prohibition

These are just a few examples of OSR games that aren’t fantasy yet still OSR.

Likewise this definition is in keeping with the design schools origin and purpose. Often we forget that after 3rd edition, much of old school D&D had been abandoned, and finding copies of older games was more difficult than now with our print on demand services and digital scans. Thus the necessity of compatibllity was essential for running adventures.

it soon became apparent that not only were these games compatible with D&D, but now eachother. that games did not need to be strictly retroclones to be compatible meant that we could really explore almost anything under that framework.

To close, I think a lot of people hold to this definition implicitly. even if they aren’t terribly good at expressing it, and often when this position is held, it’s held in conjuction with the Philosophical Definition. I think the reason for this is the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming and its subsequent derivations are good at describing the Feel of the OSR, and thus we’ve mistaken a feeling for the substantive elements.

What of the Nu-OSR / NSR?

What of it? I’m actually quite glad it exists, as it lends credence to the functional definition, in that it acknowledges compatibllity by deliberately choosing to not be while also exalting the philosophical definition by using mechanics and GM advice that is in accordance with those virtues.

It is a school of design that does its own thing while still using similiar principles.

What is the point of this article?

I admit plenty of people have thrown their hat into this ring, probably too many honestly, and not everyone will agree on, My goal here is not to present myself as some genius who discovered “the true meaning of the OSR” or some other such rubbish, but to present a functional definition for people like me who want to be designers.

Secondarly there is another article I’m working on that addresses the specific issue of compatibllity in the OSR. The question being “what mechanics can we alter while retaining compatibllity”? So much of this article is laying the groundwork for that idea.