Whither Reddit? In the meantime, here’s a place to chat up old school revival (OSR) and new school revolution (NSR) style TTRPGs.
My name is Todd aka Hexed Press and I am the current caretaker (have I always been the caretaker?). Here are some other places to find me, if you are so inclined:
There are no precise definitions, no good distinction, and nobody really needs one anyways.
My personal definition: NSR is OSR without the nostalgia. So instead of glorifying old D&D versions, NSR games remove unnecessary complexity and the systems are simpler but just as fun.
I've never heard the term NSR either. Maybe something like Dungeon Crawl Classics which has old school flavour with newer styled crunch?
NSR is still very new and thus hard to define. They almost all use modern mechanics to get a feel of the olde game. They want that olde game simplicity and quick resolutions.
I think pandatheist at the Bone Box Chant blog does a solid job defining it here (and expanding on it in a followup post): https://boneboxchant.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/nsr/
To quote the definition, NSR games:
I think all of those things (except maybe Weird Setting IMO) cover the genre well with an intentionally broad and inclusive definition. I also think looking at examples may be most illustrative and understand that it's more a community than one particular set of traits. Yochai Gal (of Cairn fame) has a great article on this very idea: https://newschoolrevolution.com/2022/05/04/the-new-new-school-revolution .
This is a good answer. As the blogpost says, I would separate the NSR design community and the NSR philosophy into two related but distinct categories; essentially what @[email protected] suggested is correct. Cairn for example is very much an "OSR game" in that it focuses on lethality, problem solving, critical thinking, emergent narrative, and so on. But it eschews B/X compatibility (not even close!).