If you go by game release dates, 2026 is the year where Wizards of the Coast becomes the longest-running shepherd of Dungeons and Dragons. The release of 3e serves as an inflection point in how the game was designed, and as a historical note set the stage for the enormous surge in popularity enjoyed by both D&D and the TTRPG hobby as a whole in the following 26 years. This transition of power in the hobby also served as the impetus for the largest movement of D&D revanchism, the OSR. For better or worse, every edition of D&D Wizards put out eventually got its own revanchist movement: for 4e the backlash was harvested by Paizo and turned Pathfinder into the second-largest TTRPG. For 5e, the backlash was a slow burn, coming much later in the product lifecycle and mostly as a result of Wizards of the Coast’s attempt to rug-pull the OGL. It’s here now, though, and has brought us games like Draw Steel and Daggerheart.

The OSR, though, is special, because the grievances that started the movement are about playstyle more than one specific edition. D&D started as a wargame, and was molded over time (and editions) into the character-driven heroic fantasy game we know it as today. Somewhere in the ten year window between the release of original D&D and the release of the Dragonlance setting was something special, as the OSR tells it, a recipe for more grounded gaming. I think there is some merit to that idea; it’s one of the reasons I’ve written about the OSR before and also why I play games like Mothership and Mythic Bastionland. Even so. The era between OD&D and Dragonlance (the setting that “ruined everything” according to some) was ten years; the time that has passed between the release of OSRIC and now is about twenty. What does it mean to be part of a “revival” or “renaissance” that has been around for twice as much time as the thing that’s being revived or reborn?