>>96408599
OSRIC didn’t kick off the OSR movement. It followed in the wake of Castles and Crusades, which was the original “Try to emulate older editions while being OGL-compliant game.” And it even then both those games came after Hackmaster. OSRIC is also not very good or faithful, so I don’t know why it’s got a whole paragraph to itself in the most faithful and recommended section, aside from your guide being generally a wordy mess.

>>96407979
Depends on what you want out of OD&D. If you're just curious about the history of the game, it's easy enough to print out a pdf and you can have all the fun of trying to make sense of it while half-way inventing your own game, just like people in the past did.

Also, if OD&D seems daunting, Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules is designed to be specifically undaunting.