My discovery of the d100 OSR

Another side of the OSR that I haven’t much experience is with the d100 games based upon the Basic Role Playing engine (I'm probably late to the party on this one - nothing unusual here). In my glory days of role playing, it was pretty difficult for me to come by any gaming material that wasn’t TSR which of course meant that we played a lot of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, FASERIP Marvel Superheroes, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, etc. Occasionally, someone would happen upon something else that we’d incorporate into our RPG cycle (back then we tended to play D&D on Saturdays, Top Secret Fridays, Marvel Superheroes almost any free moment we could squeeze in, and Sundays would be one offs). When I was gaming in earnest back in 1986-88, I was a military brat and lived in West Germany, so my exposure to games was pretty much limited to whatever the PX/BX happened to stock. This was pretty much limited solely TSR products, but on occasion you’d get some FASA Star Trek or Battletech. On occasion, one of the new kids would join the group and would expose us to something like Toon or Villains and Vigilantes (two more favorites of ours). Now, I know 1986 isn’t what most would consider in the Old School Range, but I did play back in the early 80’s but since I was not even a teen yet, my exposure to anything other than Dungeons and Dragons was pretty much nonexistent.
So, what the heck has this got to do with anything? Well, back in the early days, RuneQuest was a pretty popular alternative to D&D. I can’t say I was totally unaware of it because I did read Dragon Magazine and they had adds for all of these wondrous games that 1) were not available for me to purchase (I couldn’t mail order either as my folks would not have gone along with that) 2) and even if the PX/BX did stock them, I probably wouldn’t have had the cash to buy them (Hey, I was 13/14 and the market on lawn mowing and other chores in the military housing area was already taken by the 15/16 year olds). Now apparently there is a parallel OSR movement that is recreating the glories of early RuneQuest and other d100 based games. I must say that I’m intrigued. A company called d101 Games is publishing an OSR equivalent to RuneQuest called OpenQuest (here’s a link: http://d101games.co.uk/books/openquest/). I do have RuneQuest 2nd Edition that I picked up on a whim a well as the Mongoose iteration of the game, but I have not given it any serious investigation. In addition to OpenQuest, it seems that others are putting out d100 compatible material and several items can be found at Lulu. I have yet to delve into any of this other than on the very surface, but it would seem that the OSR is getting broader in scope. I’ll be checking OpenQuest out and if anyone knows of any other interesting OSR spin offs, then let me know.