There's a very insightful post on
Blog of Holding about the AD&D 2e era and how it's kind of been lost in the shuffle between newer D&D (incl. Pathfinder) and the OSR movement. In the post, he feels the AD&D 2e era is due for a resurgence as well as a “voice” in the RPG blogosphere.
I started gaming in
the summer of 1989: A brief period of BECMI followed by an almost immediate leap into 2nd Edition. So I'd pretty much the definitional poster child for this "Lost" Generation.
But I think the reason no movement or "voice" has coalesced around this generation is that it's never been been lost because it's never gone away.
For example, the OSR has been primarily driven by revisiting/rediscovering:
(1) Out of print systems
(2) Different ways of
prepping and
running adventure material
(3) Different ways of
organizing your players and your campaign
And the exploration of these older ideas have resulted in the publication of
new products using these lost methods. Many of which have also found
new ways to explore these concepts.
With that in mind, let's consider what these elements are during the 2nd Edition era:
- Narrative-oriented / scene-based adventures.
- Encyclopedic presentation of campaign settings.
- Splat books.
- Campaigns defined by a consistent group of 4-8 players who all attend each session.
And what you quickly realize is that the distinctive elements of the 2nd Edition era are still the distinctive elements of the bulk of the RPG industry. I mean, I basically just described Paizo's entire focus and product line. There's nothing to rediscover here: People never stopped publishing this stuff. People never stopped playing like this.
(I mean, yes, the late-3E/4E Delve Style adventures can be seen as beginning to depart from the classic narrative forms set by
Call of Cthulhu and the original
Dragonlance modules. But Paizo's adventure paths are still being published every single month. And most other RPGs haven't followed the path of 4E.)
So when you're talking about something being "lost" from the 2nd Edition era, all you're really talking about are the actual rules for 2nd Edition. And maybe a specific campaign setting that's been allowed to malinger out of print.
And there simply isn't enough material there for a movement to really gain any traction. Particularly because 2nd Edition doesn't actually have a lot of mechanical distinction from 1st Edition. Once you've said "let me count the ways I liked 2E" a couple of times, you're basically asking a movement to coalesce around the glories of a proficiency system and three-hole punched monster manuals.
More likely would be strong communities forming around the out of print campaign worlds. But, of course, that's
already happened.
And to be perfectly clear here: I'm not trying to diss 2nd Edition here. I actually think some of the best D&D products ever published were published during 2nd Edition.
What I'm saying, to sum up, is that the
conceptual stuff from the era never went away: Which means there's nothing "new" to rediscover and add to your games. And there's no vacuum in the market waiting to be filled (because lots of people are still publishing products like that). So the only thing a "2ER" (2nd Edition Revolution) could be built around is a nostalgia for very specific products. And that's why it hasn't happened.
