This started out as a rant about OSR v NuD&D but it turned into me just rambling about history a bit...

The OSR community, if it can even be called that, on /tg/ and on twitter oft talks about D&D as if it comes in only two flavors; TRVE OSR and (using the term I coined on /tg/) NuD&D. But this ignores the transitional period. Afterall, the shift from D&D and AD&D being a game of exploration and adventure into a game of superheroic legend took a lot longer than the release of a single campaign setting module and a novel trilogy. 

Before I explain why the transitional period is important, I feel I need to establish the argument I am fighting against in its strongest terms. Within the OSR community there is a contingent of people large enough to make it feel to me that they are not just a vocal minority of pissbabies who argue that the release of Dragonlance heralded a shift in game design within TSR. That the popularity of Dragonlance was a watershed moment that told TSR to focus on overarching narrative structures and larger-than-life heroes. That D&D became a game where your characters were already important simply for being your characters, and that this was the birth of NuD&D. 

I should define NuD&D properly since I made up the name. It is D&D at its most storygame. Using the game mechanics as a backdrop to freeform roleplay that cares more about emotional and narrative goals. It is D&D when D&D feels more like an extended improv session, where everything is made up and the dice don't matter. 

I want to say, I do understand why some see this as the shift from OSR to NuD&D. It did very much hallmark the change of focus for D&D from an exploration game to a story game. But, no. This is where D&D entered into its middle years. It went from what we retroactively call OSR to the first of two middle phases. Yes two, first the shift to being a story game with late-AD&D and then a shift in character creation complexity in late AD&D2E. 

The first transitional phase was the death of exploration. In this post-dragonalnce era setting maps were rereleased without hexes, NPCs were becoming leveled characters more and more often, Printed modules feeling more like how to host a murder mystery scenarios. This first transitional period created the framework for the next. During this era, however, it was all ignorable. Squirreled away in setting guides and adventure modules you didn't need to buy. But y'all did and TSR saw that as the way to make money. They also saw that the number two thing in fanzines was character class options. The number one thing was monsters, of course, but character classes were super common. This lead into the second transitional phase. 

The transitional second phase is character complexity. It kind of started with 2E. On its surface it feels like it's just 1E with better production value on the books and less of Gary's purposefully obfuscating prose. But it isn't. It's 1E reconstructed to be the storygame that the first transitional period started. The game was full of optional rules to complicate or simplify gameplay as much as you want, it had a whole host of non-adventuring skills, a much expanded weapon and spell list. This may not seem like much, but it created the framework for the Complete Class series. Kits were the watershed for the second transitional period. From that moment on, your character wasn't Bob the Human Fighter. He was Bob the Peasant Hero (Fighter). This finally culminated in Players Option: Skills and Powers, which was the first step too far that got btfo'd by the fans. PO:S&P was little more than D&D trying to squeeze into GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy's panties, and it didn't fit. 

Then WotC swooped in and created D&D 3rd-ed and looked at the players rejection of PO:S&P and went "Eh, we just didn't sell it right". But it did something interesting. It fully embraced the higher power levels of late 2E and customization of heroes to an absurd degree, but it brought the "explore hex find the fun" gameplay loop back in a big way. Something a lot of OSR fans forget is that OSR was a response to the release of 4E, because it could not support classic style gameplay. Many of the community started with 3E/3.5 and liked it because it was a decent enough game that did nothing to prevent you from running it as a hexcrawl. Its rules understood that half the fun was the trip. The writers of 3.5 would have never described movement as "how you get from encounter to encounter" as they did on page 260 of the 4E PHB. Too bad 5E is an incomplete game that doesn't do anything well, but thankfully it has driven more people to the OSR, since Paizo isn't producing worthwhile mainstream competitors at all. 

Blep.