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Post by tdenmark on Jul 25, 2020 20:42:25 GMT -6
I don't consider 2nd edition much. It came out the year I joined the Army, there were plenty of players around, but we ended up playing a lot of GURPS. I did get the core books when they came out. The Player's Handbook was unimpressive. It felt like a downgrade from 1st edition, while it was better organized the writing was dry as sawdust. It was missing the high Gygaxian prose! The cover art was terrible. Sorry, Easley's older work is solid, but that cover did not work. It was a bland filing off of the edges of 1st edition. Recently I pulled the 2e PHB down from the shelf and read through it. Viewing it a little more objectively you know it isn't terrible. If it has one sin it was too safe. Much needed changes were not made like what 3rd edition did in terms of pushing the design and taking risks. (note, 3rd edition is not perfect, it has some good things and a lot of not so good, the best being it gave us the OGL). Specialists wizards and schools of magic were an excellent idea. They did a lot to fix the cleric class. And it has one of my favorite D&D illustrations.  Has anyone else found they can appreciate 2nd edition now? Or have you always liked it? |
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Post by makofan on Jul 25, 2020 21:06:44 GMT -6
I played 1st edition AD&D - never bothered to even try 2nd (I assumed it was just 1st edition with more rules)
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Post by Desparil on Jul 25, 2020 23:35:33 GMT -6
I don't consider 2nd edition much. It came out the year I joined the Army, there were plenty of players around, but we ended up playing a lot of GURPS. I did get the core books when they came out. The Player's Handbook was unimpressive. It felt like a downgrade from 1st edition, while it was better organized the writing was dry as sawdust. It was missing the high Gygaxian prose! The cover art was terrible. Sorry, Easley's older work is solid, but that cover did not work. It was a bland filing off of the edges of 1st edition. Recently I pulled the 2e PHB down from the shelf and read through it. Viewing it a little more objectively you know it isn't terrible. If it has one sin it was too safe. Much needed changes were not made like what 3rd edition did in terms of pushing the design and taking risks. (note, 3rd edition is not perfect, it has some good things and a lot of not so good, the best being it gave us the OGL). Specialists wizards and schools of magic were an excellent idea. They did a lot to fix the cleric class. And it has one of my favorite D&D illustrations. Has anyone else found they can appreciate 2nd edition now? Or have you always liked it? I think that the "Complete [Class] Handbook" series of books had a lot of the new things that the designers wanted to make a core part of the system, but couldn't because of directives from the suits. Having a smaller list of character classes, but lots of customization available through kits, schools of magic, specialty priests, etc. really should have been the edition's selling point, but because of the command that everything had to be compatible with the back-catalog, all that stuff got spread out among a bunch of optional splat books. When I started playing, most of what was being used was a mix or 1E and 2E products. For the most part, though, the 2E superseded the 1E where they overlapped in our play - THAC0 was easier than referencing tables, initiative received a much-needed clarification and simplification, allocating thief skill points meant you could actually have an ability or two at over 50% at 1st level, stuff like that. Although they were probably theoretically on the table, I don't think anyone ever actually wanted to play an assassin or monk. As a beginner, the books are also easier to learn from, and much easier to look things up in because the most important tables and rules were duplicated in both the PHB and DMG, and they each had its own index instead of that crazy double index that 1E did. We didn't really go in for the Monstrous Compendium thing; we pretty much used the 1E hardcovers for monsters and added the 2E Monstrous Manual to the mix when we got our hands on that. In any case, I played a lot of it and enjoyed it greatly, and that's what I used when I tried my hand at being a DM in the early 2000's even while a couple of my friends were starting to learn 3E and may have preferred that all else being equal. But honestly, I always just thought of it as AD&D, it would only be many years later when I discovered that lots of people on Dragonsfoot have opinions about it. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 26, 2020 3:00:40 GMT -6
I think that the "Complete [Class] Handbook" series of books had a lot of the new things that the designers wanted to make a core part of the system, but couldn't because of directives from the suits. Having a smaller list of character classes, but lots of customization available through kits, schools of magic, specialty priests, etc. really should have been the edition's selling point, but because of the command that everything had to be compatible with the back-catalog, all that stuff got spread out among a bunch of optional splat books. But honestly, I always just thought of it as AD&D, it would only be many years later when I discovered that lots of people on Dragonsfoot have opinions about it. This is the first time I've reread it since 1989! It isn't as bad as I remembered. Sadly the art does not hold up well, especially since they'd reached such heights during the 1e era, it felt rushed, low budget, and out of ideas except for a few choice pieces. The Class Handbooks really aren't bad. The kits, while a mixed bag, many are quite good. The Vikings Campaign Book is what the Norse Mythology section of Deities and Demigods should have been like. Like you I don't think I ever played it as 2nd edition, just as a supplement for 1st. Oh, boy, do they have opinions on Dragonsfoot. I dip my toes in over there once in a while, but they are just not as friendly and open as this forum. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2020 7:06:47 GMT -6
2nd Edition was around when I got into roleplaying but aside from playing the First Quest box set at school I never did much with it. A buddy of mine has the core books and I browsed through them, and mostly appreciated the beautiful artwork and better layout than the 1e books, but at the end of the day I believe that the bloat and complexity that kills modern D&D for me started somewhere between core 1e and core 2e. It's simply too bloated and too complicated for me to want to use mechanically at the table. As far as a fountain of inspiration and ideas, of course, it's great. Got a lot of great settings and modules, too. I always liked Dark Sun especially. I played the hell out of the pc Dark Sun games and still have them on GoG.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2020 7:21:55 GMT -6
2nd edition - you get thaco. Do you like the kits?
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Post by jeffb on Jul 26, 2020 9:11:37 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2020 10:43:18 GMT -6
I first started playing D&D via AD&D in the early 80s when I was 10. When 2E came along, we switched over to it and played it for years. I liked 2E fine. But I should add that we were not terribly rules-observant with AD&D or 2E. We often winged it and played it in a rules-lite fashion (mostly unconsciously so just mimicking how we were first taught to play when we were young).
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Post by asaki on Jul 26, 2020 12:04:16 GMT -6
I don't know, I really like most of the art in 2E.
The organization and clarification is nice, but I do prefer the Gygaxian from 1E.
Would be cool to see more of what Gygax's 2E would've looked like.
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Post by Desparil on Jul 26, 2020 18:41:27 GMT -6
I think that the "Complete [Class] Handbook" series of books had a lot of the new things that the designers wanted to make a core part of the system, but couldn't because of directives from the suits. Having a smaller list of character classes, but lots of customization available through kits, schools of magic, specialty priests, etc. really should have been the edition's selling point, but because of the command that everything had to be compatible with the back-catalog, all that stuff got spread out among a bunch of optional splat books. But honestly, I always just thought of it as AD&D, it would only be many years later when I discovered that lots of people on Dragonsfoot have opinions about it. This is the first time I've reread it since 1989! It isn't as bad as I remembered. Sadly the art does not hold up well, especially since they'd reached such heights during the 1e era, it felt rushed, low budget, and out of ideas except for a few choice pieces. The Class Handbooks really aren't bad. The kits, while a mixed bag, many are quite good. The Vikings Campaign Book is what the Norse Mythology section of Deities and Demigods should have been like. Like you I don't think I ever played it as 2nd edition, just as a supplement for 1st. Oh, boy, do they have opinions on Dragonsfoot. I dip my toes in over there once in a while, but they are just not as friendly and open as this forum. Hm, maybe the art in the old version wasn't as good? By the time I bought my own books, it was the 1995 reprints and I like the art a lot - especially, they have full color re-imaginings of some the classic pieces, such as full page, painted versions of "Emirikol the Chaotic" and "A Paladin in Hell." And yeah, I think they really hit their stride with kits in the Paladin, Ranger, and Bard books. The Fighter and Thief books, a lot of them were 'meh' or even under-powered compared to the default version of the class, though there were a few cool ones in each. And of course, the Priest book skipped them because it was focused on specialty priesthoods instead, with copious examples and guidelines for create-your-own. Overall I liked the class books a lot, too. And you're right, I had forgotten about the historical setting books since I never had any of those until years later; when I started, the DM who I was playing with had just bought the Forgotten Realms boxed set, so there wasn't really much interest in alternative settings. And at least by the time I was a couple years in, I would say in retrospect that I was really playing primarily 2nd Edition in practice. Just it wasn't really any kind of milestone or divide in my mind, because the core gameplay is substantially the same between the two editions of AD&D. |
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Post by cadriel on Jul 26, 2020 19:09:00 GMT -6
I started playing D&D and RPGs during 2e's run, in 1994. I ran a number of campaigns in 2e, using stacks and stacks of books. By high school graduation in 1999 I was a convert to the older ways and 1e, and then tried my hand with some Rules Cyclopedia. I got into other things in college but afterward I wound up gravitating to OD&D and other old school games - I only really started running 5e a couple years ago, and have been running that regularly.
There are ideas that I'd love to run in 2e. I'd love to run a campaign using HR4 A Mighty Fortress to do some Elizabethan era real-world swashbuckling, or using HR3 Celts to run a deep, mythic campaign set in the Ireland of pre-Christian myth. It'd be a lot of fun to bash through some Planescape as well. I played a lot of Dark Sun, and would happily do that again in 2e. But overall, the game got way too bloated and unmanageable with extra stuff. You really have to pick and pare down your materials to get it to run well.
2e was a dream for the monster collector, though. I have no less than eight monster expansion books - four Monstrous Compendium Appendix books, a Dark Sun, two Planescape, and a Mystara monster book - all in addition to the Monstrous Manual. And the MM has tons of art by Tony DiTerlizzi - some of it is simply awe-inspiring. The actual monster entries sometimes have filler but it's amazing that someone managed to write a full page about every single monster in the book.
The thing about 2e was, it was mediocre. You can always do worse - but you can also do better. Very few people mourned for it when it passed, and a lot of people were quite happy to move on to 3e and beyond.
As for the art? 2e's PHB was generally mediocre I agree, but later they had Brom and DiTerlizzi. The "outsider art" kitsch of early TSR AD&D was fun but these guys were on a whole different level.
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Post by Desparil on Jul 26, 2020 20:06:42 GMT -6
The thing about 2e was, it was mediocre. You can always do worse - but you can also do better. Very few people mourned for it when it passed, and a lot of people were quite happy to move on to 3e and beyond. I don't understand when most people express this sentiment. From my perspective, if 2E was mediocre, then implicitly 1E was mediocre as well because they're the same game - it would be like a Pathfinder player calling D&D 3.5 mediocre. And maybe this doesn't describe your feelings on the editions, but I find that many of the people who call 2E mediocre are die-hard 1E fans. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 26, 2020 20:59:18 GMT -6
I don't understand when most people express this sentiment. From my perspective, if 2E was mediocre, then implicitly 1E was mediocre as well because they're the same game I have a heretical thought! First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is mediocre.(yet I love love love it because it's the edition I played the most since middle school, so much nostalgia tied up in that game) |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 26, 2020 22:09:35 GMT -6
I don't know, I really like most of the art in 2E. The organization and clarification is nice, but I do prefer the Gygaxian from 1E. Would be cool to see more of what Gygax's 2E would've looked like. I was speaking specifically of the original 2E Handbook. It's mostly pretty bad. The 2e DMG is even worse. But, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2020 0:38:54 GMT -6
I'm a 2e kid. I was born in '82, I grew up on "Shannara", "Dragonlance", and on the swansong of "Mystara". I'm not sure if "adult me" would have picked the game, but then, this is not a question of sophistication: People generally play what is available and popular, and 2e was available and popular. Between "Dragonlance", "Birthright", and especially "Ravenloft", my personal style of D&D was shaped.
- The mood, but not the rules. Of the rules of 2e, I think almost nothing has stayed with me over these last 25 years. OD&D and RCD&D are faster and more concise, 1e is better suited for dungeon crawls and generally way more balanced, 3e, 4e, 5e, and Pathfinder have way better (and fancier) scenario design.
What has stayed, for me, in terms of gaming supplements, were the very, very excellent "Rogues Gallery" books, especially those for "Ravenloft" ("Islands of Terror", "Children of the Night"). They usually describe short scenarios based around one minor character or location, and are not just well done for their time, but usually hold up with later, more rounded-out material pretty well. More often than not, books and booklets like that have saved my poorly-prepared weekend sessions.
But to play 2e again, unless it's really for a specific campaign or adventure? - Unlikely. It's a good, well-supported system, sure. But there's also better stuff around.
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 27, 2020 4:58:03 GMT -6
I'm a 2e kid. I was born in '82, I grew up on "Shannara", "Dragonlance", and on the swansong of "Mystara". I'm not sure if "adult me" would have picked the game, but then, this is not a question of sophistication: People generally play what is available and popular, and 2e was available and popular. Between "Dragonlance", "Birthright", and especially "Ravenloft", my personal style of D&D was shaped.
Ravenloft is a real standout of the 2e era. Domains of Dread is one of my favorite books.  Funny, the more I think about it there is quite a bit of excellent 2e material. I guess I'm not the 2e hater I thought I was. Maybe what stuck with me was the deep disappointment with the original 2e Dungeon Master's Guide that was so thin it was practically a pamphlet. And they put all the cool flavor in the splat books instead of the core hardcovers. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 27, 2020 5:57:15 GMT -6
2nd edition - you get thaco. Do you like the kits? THAC0 predates 2e by quite a bit. Some of the Kits are pretty excellent. Others, not so much. A real mixed bag. But, to be expected when they made so many of them. |
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Post by cadriel on Jul 27, 2020 7:38:03 GMT -6
I don't understand when most people express this sentiment. From my perspective, if 2E was mediocre, then implicitly 1E was mediocre as well because they're the same game - it would be like a Pathfinder player calling D&D 3.5 mediocre. And maybe this doesn't describe your feelings on the editions, but I find that many of the people who call 2E mediocre are die-hard 1E fans. Like tdenmark said - maybe it's because 1e is kind of mediocre too. Although I think that this is made worse by 2e trying to smooth out the weird wrinkles and hiccups that 1e had, which are part of its idiosyncratic charm. It's not a robust or well designed unified system, and tinkering with it and adding extra parts (proficiencies, additional sub-systems) can definitely be a step backward in quality even if the underlying system is similar. Given the choice I'd rather run OD&D than 1e or 2e, and I'd probably want 1e with the extra Gygax-isms over 2e unless it was for a particularly idiosyncratic 2e game. |
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Post by jeffb on Jul 27, 2020 7:55:53 GMT -6
I had pretty much given up on D&D by 1983 and TTRPGs period by late 1985, and got my RPG fix through CRPGs, especially the Gold Box games when those showed up. I came back to TTRPGs 4 Years or so after 2E's release- mianly due to interest from what I was seeing in the CRPGs and on my local bookstore shelves. FOr me, having missed the glut of 1984 and beyond from TSR, the 2E Product shelves at the bookstores (B Dalton, Waldenbooks, etc) were impressive. Tons of books. All the crazy campaign settings, plus ones I was familiar with-Greyhawk (FTA), Forgotten Realms etc.
I hold no ill will to the edition. I think as a set of game mechanics, and utility as a set of rulebooks 2E is far superior to 1E. OF course it is missing Gary, and I'm guessing THAT is what people find bland/mediocre, etc about it. I agree. If I wan inspirational reading, I'm crcaking open the 1E books. If I want functional clear rulebooks, I'm going 2E.
I don't have much issue with what Mr. Ward did as regards to the Demons and Devils and parents and whatnot. It doesn't hurt the game, make it less playable, etc. The renaming of Demons and Devils is not nearly as much of a crime as the abomination that is PLanescape and the the ratification of a significantly changed Great Wheel cosmology through all AD&D official products. That's the real crime, Berk. If anything, that is the only real problem I have with 2E-later on they tried hard to make things official across the campaign settings as part of a AD&D multi-verse. Sadly that transferred into 3rd, and now 5th (another reason to love 4E).
I started collecting RPG material in 1994 and I picked up hundreds of 2E books (and hundreds of others) . The Biggest issue with 2E was the amount of budding fiction authors who were not game designers, and vice versa. There were few people who had the creative mind, and the game sense. Of course with all the people coming and going, and freelancers, it had to be tough. Certain lines, like FTA GH, and Ravenloft seemed to have the highest quality of good fictional elements, and game utility. Whereas, FR was feast or famine.
SO yeah, I never got all the animosity- But it just seems that D&D players are two camps- Those who want new editions and changes, or those don't want anyone effing with their edition of choice and to keep things static.
I also think as youngsters, we are less wise, more hardheaded, and more snobbish. As we get older, maybe have families and children, we loosen up a bit, and enjoy things just because enjoyment is much harder to come by as a responsible adult.
Despite the warts, I'd still rather see the 2E business model in action vs. Today (and as I stated in the other thread- I'm aware of the business ramifications of each- I'm speaking solely as a fan). I miss print magazines, I miss a pile of books to choose from on varying subjects. If anything today's D&D is "bland". 2E is a breath of fresh air after reading a 5E hardcover.
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Post by Piper on Jul 27, 2020 8:55:56 GMT -6
THAC0 predates 2e by quite a bit. Yes, see Appendix E in 1st edition AD&D's DMG ... it lists To Hit A. C. 0So, it was there in raw form, the only difference is the abbreviation was shortened a bit. |
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Post by Falconer on Jul 27, 2020 9:27:54 GMT -6
Also it seems to be just a statistic, not a mechanic.
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Post by linebeck on Jul 27, 2020 10:57:05 GMT -6
The funny thing is, when it comes to 2nd edition, I should have nostalgia for it, but I don't.
It really just reminds me of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, a movie from the same era which seemed okay at the time, but now strikes me as bland.
AD&D, in contrast, is more like the original "Clash of the Titans" - kinda dumb in retrospect, but still full of cool ideas.
OD&D is like the original Star Wars (just the first movie) - excitement and possibility with an implied setting that is not yet fleshed out.
Drawing the metaphor out...
3d edition is to me like the Star Wars prequels - the stuff you thought you would like, but presented in a form that is ultimately not what you actually wanted.
5th edition is like the recent batch of Star Wars sequels - nostalgia inducing at first, yet ultimately uninspired.
To torture the metaphor further:
4th edition is like Avatar - just a different game entirely.
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Post by Falconer on Jul 27, 2020 11:16:53 GMT -6
What do you guys think is the most common use of 2e today?
A. Use 2e core rules with non-2e modules/supplements/settings
B. Use 2e modules/supplements/settings with non-2e core rules
C. Use them together or not at all
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 27, 2020 11:54:42 GMT -6
Like tdenmark said - maybe it's because 1e is kind of mediocre too. Given the choice I'd rather run OD&D than 1e or 2e Yeah, weirdly, OD&D is a much better designed game. That first LBB + Greyhawk is lightning in a bottle. Actually, the decline came in Greyhawk with the Thief class. But, still, the design is just so perfect and elegant. I won't hesitate to play AD&D + Unearthed Arcana, it's still the greatest game of all time even with the added cruft. What AD&D loses in simplicity and elegance, it makes up for with flavor and personality. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 27, 2020 11:56:05 GMT -6
oh, I forgot about that thread. I'd even posted in it. Seems like there has been quite a bit of discussion about 2e lately. |
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Post by linebeck on Jul 27, 2020 12:07:09 GMT -6
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Post by asaki on Jul 27, 2020 12:30:43 GMT -6
I was speaking specifically of the original 2E Handbook. That's what I assumed  I didn't care much for the 2.5 edition (which the current PDFs are based on). Idunno, I always liked the illustrations, even though those hairstyles are super dated  4th edition is like Avatar - just a different game entirely. Or 4E is like The Clone Wars pilot movie: big mis-step, quickly fixed and forgotten. |
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Post by cadriel on Jul 27, 2020 12:34:31 GMT -6
What do you guys think is the most common use of 2e today? A. Use 2e core rules with non-2e modules/supplements/settings B. Use 2e modules/supplements/settings with non-2e core rules C. Use them together or not at all I just finished a campaign that did a lot of B, using 2e Greyhawk and Planescape materials extensively in 5e, and I would imagine that it's by far the more popular of the two options. But that's simply because - and the ORR Group report confirms this - 5e is the absolute majority of RPGs that are being played at this point in time. It simply makes too much sense for groups to pick up and convert 2e material - whether that's running one of the big boxed campaigns like Night Below, or using one of the 2e signature settings like Planescape, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Birthright, or Spelljammer, or mining the mountains of 2e Forgotten Realms material or the reams of other game-worthy stuff that TSR put out in the 1990s. When I say that 2e is a mediocre game I'm talking about the rules. I adore Domains of Dread, and Planescape, and both Dark Sun boxed sets, and Night Below, and Carl Sargent's run on Greyhawk, and the Complete Book of Necromancers, and HR4 A Mighty Fortress, and the Monstrous Compendium Appendices and Annuals, and a number of other 2e books. TSR put out so much material that, even if you figure that 90% of it was crap, the 10% that's left is a substantial amount. |
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Post by simrion on Jul 27, 2020 18:27:12 GMT -6
oh, I forgot about that thread. I'd even posted in it. Seems like there has been quite a bit of discussion about 2e lately. Well consider, it's now one of the "old" games. Heck 3E came out 20 years ago 😳 I played, well mostly ran, a bunch of home brew 2E in the mid 1990's having come in late (finding the core books in a used bookstore heavily discounted.) Found 2E gamers readily available and able to easily use 1E amd B/X stuff made it a no brainer for me. We still reminisce about that campaign 20+ years later. |
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Post by tkdco2 on Jul 28, 2020 2:36:13 GMT -6
2E is my favorite edition of AD&D. It may be a little too PC at times, but consider all the nonsense the company had to deal with at the time. The DMG was a smaller book than its 1E counterpart, but some of the material in the latter, like the spells, were already printed in the PHB anyway.
I used to use kits a lot in my games. I don't use them now, mainly because I prefer simpler games. Still, they provide flavor and I can always get ideas from them. U tried Skills & Powers when a friend was the DM. I didn't care for it, so I never bought it. I generally stick to the core rules.
I tried to like 3E. I was resistant to buying it for a few years, but my curiosity got the better of me. I bought the core rules and a bunch of splat books. But in the end I decided 3E wasn't for me, so I went back to 2E.
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I didn't care much for the 2.5 edition (which the current PDFs are based on).
