[10] Ben Milton describes the use of "Revival" as a return to older role-playing games, and "Renaissance" as taking inspiration from the kinds of play they engendered.
[12] Partly as a reaction to the publication of the Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons,[13] interest in and discussion of "old school" play also led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons retro-clones (legal emulations of RPG rules from the 1970s and early 1980s), including games such as Castles & Crusades and OSRIC which were developed in OSR-related forums.
In 2008, Matthew Finch (creator of OSRIC) released his free "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming", which tried to sum up the OSR aesthetic.
[22] A variety of published RPGs can be understood to be influenced by or part of the OSR trend, ranging from emulations of specific editions of Dungeons and Dragons such as OSRIC[23] Old-School Essentials,[24] and Labyrinth Lord[25] to games such as The Black Hack, Mörk Borg, and Electric Bastionland, which are designed to recreate the "feel" of 1970s roleplaying while taking only slight (if any) inspiration from the early rules.
[27] Matthew Finch, in his 2008 book A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, sets out the four pillars of OSR: