2nd Edition AD&D - reconsideration

[Falconer]

I got my start with 2e. 2000 came along, and I didn’t like any of the changes in 3e. Also, I was really getting into Greyhawk at the time, originally via the Gord novels. Those factors are what got me collecting 2e and 1e and OD&D and reading Appendix N fiction. It has been a fascinating and thrilling journey. In 2001 I started a campaign using a mix of OD&D, FFC, Holmes, AD&D 1e, and AD&D 2e. Over time, the 2e elements got used less and less. But I still have a fond spot for it. At the very least I can still use monsters from it; potentially also modules, though I’m not sure what. Oh! I did use Mud Sorcerer’s Tomb a few years ago. Excellent!

[tkdco2]

I ran a few 2nd Edition games within the last few years. I was trying to get a Forgotten Realms campaign going, but that only lasted a few sessions. Then I did a one-shot adventure from White Dwarf #64, The Dawn of Unlight. The adventure was set in Mirkwood and had stats for both AD&D and MERP; I opted to use AD&D. I haven't played much AD&D since.

[Deleted]

Was it, though, tkdco2? - "PC" (politically correct) is not the first thing I would think about when looking at 2e. What I registered, even back in the day, was that TSR was really trying to make D&D a game with a changed target group. Both 1e and 3e were games targeting a customer base that was probably 15+ years old. 2e, in contrast, really seemed to try to fish among people in their early teens; folks that weren't necessarily reading "adult" literature yet. I think this is part of the reason why some of the stuff would go on to age rather badly - you just can't do some settings from a YA perspective. "Birthright", for example, is a really cool gaming world and overall concept - but even back in the day, the source books themselves simply bored me because they seemed to have been written for kids.

[tkdco2]

I can't fault TSR for wanting to expand its customer base, but I wouldn't say they ignored their existing customers. The language was made clearer, but that doesn't mean it was made just for kids. There are adults who wouldn't have understood Gary's prose either.

But getting rid of demons and devils was done because of Pat Pulling and company. Getting rid of the harlot table was definitely a PC move, probably to make it more family-friendly.

[tdenmark]

Jul 28, 2020 8:38:54 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I got my start with 2e. 2000 came along, and I didn’t like any of the changes in 3e.

There isn't any changes in 3e you liked? Not even one thing?

[jeffb]

I hate promoting that place, but Jim has a bunch of good articles over there

JIM WARD on Demons & Devils


I don't see it as writing for children. It was simply writing to a broader audience. O/AD&D was written for a different time and audience- Wargamers/College Kids. By 1989, the market had more kids/young adults, teens, non wargamers, than 10-15 years prior.

And specifically, even if it was written with the YA market in mind-that's a good thing. Individual tables can decide how "mature" they want the game to be. As an adult running games for young kids for many years- trying to sift through some certain author's/company's work to make it more presentable for kids is a PITA, and usually not worth the trouble. I personally am not into edgy and dark, grim and gritty Fantasy. Elric is as far I like to step into that territory, so I'm fine with it keeping it PG. Individuals can always make things darker/more MA right at the table or look for specific products that are geared towards MA- Baking it into the core game is a bad idea.

[Falconer]

Jul 29, 2020 7:42:05 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

There isn't any changes in 3e you liked? Not even one thing?

I’m wracking my brain.

3e’s promotional campaign emphasized the fact that they were “bringing things back” from 1e. This intrigued me and helped nudge me to look into 1e, especially once I found so many things I disliked about 3e. Actually many of the things are present in 2e, just not in the core books. Most had been there along; some were already “brought back” or given new emphasis in WotC’s 1998-1999 products. So I don’t really count these, especially since I much prefer their 2e implementations.

You know, there is one thing I will compliment the 3.0e core books on vis-à-vis 2e. They included a default pantheon. I think the usefulness of this obvious—it gives you something to run with right out of the box, and it covers a wide enough bases that, if you want to introduce a different god or pantheon, you can just draw up a table of equivalents.

2e introduces Specialty Priests as a thing, but doesn’t give you any that you can run right out of the core. You can get the The Complete Priest’s Handbook, with its extensive Sample Priesthoods section, but even these are written as generically and as toolboxy as possible (and there like 60 of them). Forgotten Realms Adventures is much better for this, but that pantheon is so… saccharine? And anyway, you shouldn’t have to get another book in order to play a class given in the core. So that’s a point for 3e.

[Punkrabbitt]

Jul 29, 2020 7:42:05 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Jul 28, 2020 8:38:54 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I got my start with 2e. 2000 came along, and I didn’t like any of the changes in 3e.

There isn't any changes in 3e you liked? Not even one thing?

Not even one thing. I like 4e more than 3e. And 4e was horrible. But I ran it for my kids and my friends. 3e was so bad I didn't even bother trying to put together an adventure.

[hamurai]

My story is similar to Rafael's. I was born in ´81 and while I had encountered the Red Box as a kid, our group played AD&D 2e. It was what was available at the time we played and there were German translations of many books which were a great help to us at that time. We owned a few English ones, too, but I don't recall who of our group would have bought them as their English wasn't great at all at that time. I was the only one willing to go through those English books with a dictionary at my side and translate the most important parts for my friends. (It paid off though, I'm pretty good at English ) Our English books got lost or someone took them with them, I don't know. I don't have them and I have all that remains from that time as I'm the only one who stuck to the hobby past the year 2000. I remember the Humanoids Handbook and the Barbarian Handbook. Not sure what the others were.

Our first DM ignored many of the rules (especially skill rules) so it felt more like B/X or even OD&D, in retrospect. When I took to DM'ing I read through all the rules and decided to give them a try, but we ended up houseruling skills again.

Rules-wise not much of 2e has stuck in my mind apart from the (to us) klonky skill rules, but I still love Ravenloft and Dark Sun, two settings I've played with many (even non-D&D) rules systems and which still are my favourites to this day.

I've only known 3e from computer games first, played a little P&P 3e 2010-ish but rather quickly switched to OD&D then. I did like the new Saving Throws, but the feat system was too much (our DM had all the 3e books and tried to use them all, too). When 5e came my regular group switched to 5e and we're still using it.

[Deleted]

I think the general disdain many people on oldschool-oriented boards show when it comes to 3e is less related to 3e being all too bad, and more to the fact that, especially in gaming, you don't change a system once it works. Gaming is not so much about the quality of each system, as it is about establishing a semantical frame for you and your gaming group . "how what works". Once you have established that frame, and it works, you will generally keep using it for the task it deals with until you end that task. Or, in other words, how many of you have changed the rules of their *ongoing* games just because a new edition of the game came out?! - My bet is, not not many.

Now, 3e, I think, gained much of its popularity because it was such a fresh start: On one side, d20 offered a lot of new settings through the OGL, and on the other side, a lot of the beginner-oriented stuff was really good. (Crucible of Freya, Forge of Fury, Death in Freeport.) If you already had a campaign with a history, this stuff was neither necessary, or nor particularly appealing. But if you were a guy like me, who had been a kid when most of the old stuff for TSR had been released, this was really cool: Mind you, we're talking pre-Ebay times, here. Unless you stumbled over it at some garage sale, or were really, really lucky, stuff like, whatever, the old 2e boxed sets were just not as easy to acquire. - But was the rules update strictly "necessary"? Not really, unless you were starting a new game with the newly published stuff.

Personally, I appreciate d20, because it simplified AC, and because the system lends itself really well for online games, with the Skills and Feats rolling system. But from a balancing perspective, from a character options perspective, most of the changes 3e brought, I have slowly but surely removed from my tabletop games. Not sure how that echoes the experiences made by others, but that is 3e for me: "Ghostwalk", weirdly, enough, is still one of my favorite game supplements of all time. Not sure why, really, but had an absolute blast reading it, back in the day.

[tdenmark]

Jul 29, 2020 12:23:05 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I’m wracking my brain.

You gotta at least appreciate the OGL which came with 3rd edition and gave the fans the terminology and core rules of the game forever and thus: The OSR

[Aralaen]

2e came out when I was in college but it was a year before we switched to it. One thing that I discovered about it was that if you knew how to DM you didn’t need the DMG or the MM. All the core rule were in the PHB and I just made up monsters and magic on my own tailoring it to the party. Ran quite well. Playing without preset monsters or magic items was quite freeing. Probably my first true old school experience without knowing it at the time. Not a pretty book but not the worst either. The differences with 2e and 1e were not that tremendous. Plenty used 1e DMG and MM with the 2e PHB, I didn’t because when I traded in my 1e stuff I only had enough for the PHB.

[tkdco2]

I am not fan of the d20 system. I gave it a fair shot, but in the end, I decided it wasn't for me. I don't mind ascending armor class and the saving throws, but I'd rather stick with what I know. And clunky as it is at times, 2E is what hits my sweet spot. B/X is the other edition that does that.

[mrmanowar]

I do like 2E. It's the game I consistently run for my kids and it is the game I've experienced most because it was the first I could buy with my own money. I started with a mix of Basic and 1E but my 10-11 year old self couldn't afford that in 1988. When I became a DM for the first time in 1989 I had to go with what was purchasable and available. Many years later I discovered terrific books like Encyclopedia Magica, The Complete Wizards' Spell Compendium and the Complete Priest Spell Compendium book sets. Every spell, every magic item from every source all updated to 2E rules. No more looking up Dragon magazine or whatever adventure module/setting, etc. All right there. Never delved into kits too much as not many of my friends bought the class handbooks. We had a blast rules as is from the core books. THAC0 was easy to teach as it was basic math. Also, with my own kids, we started with a mix of 1E and Holmes/Moldvay basic for them to play but I found a problem. Namely, this: due to the collectible nature of that stuff even well beat up copies weren't cheap on the secondary market, so 2E it was. Very easy to adapt back to earlier versions. On the plus side I bought a few of the PHB's (first Easley cover; never owned any of the black border ones) and later had Jeff Easley, Zeb Cook, Steve Winter and Jon Pickens sign them all as well as at "advice" to my kids in them. We still play today, for example my kids just fought hags (green and sea) and did NOT like their 18/00 strength as well as other abilities. However, I have seen some rather creative uses of spells from them that I allow due to the vagaries of explicit scenarios.

In general I'm a big fan of running and playing either 1E or 2E and will play and run 5E, but my preference is the early ones. I mainly just play OD&D due to the lack of people I know who are willing to run it or they don't want to buy it and instead do a retroclone if I run it.