Rules Weight and the 2e Campaign Aesthetic

[zeraser]

The very idea of a second-edition grognard - reminiscing fondly about zipping around the skies on an amethyst dragon while bladesinging - is kind of funny, isn't it, but there's no need for it to be; that game's about 20 years old now. I'm aware that there's a handful of retroclones designed to mimic the 2e rules, but from what I've seen, they don't work too hard to capture the particular campaign aesthetic I remember, one in which players aspired to be your Richard Cyphers, your Rand al'Thors, and your Belgarions instead of your Conans and Fafhrds, and moreover one in which the ouroboros had digested enough of its own tail to excrete such fancies as characters who were dragons polymorphed into human form, spriggan characters who could suddenly be 40 feet tall, and parties in which every character was multiclassed into at least three classes. There's a ridiculousness to this milieu that's no more ridiculous than the ridiculousness of 70s gonzo D&D, but your 2e characters won't meet their end falling into a pit trap (although they might wade into a sea of gith and never wade back out).

With all that in mind, here's my question: How would you open up a very light game like OD&D (or, better yet, Searchers of the Unknown) to these possibilities in as few rules as possible?

[kesher]

You know, I never played 2e, but that description just made me want to.

You're drawing a connection between 2e and the popular fantasy literature on the time that I've never seen anyone make before, and it makes a lot of sense to me in terms of explaining the aesthetic. Belgarion indeed.

[Finarvyn]

The problem as I see it is that OD&D and 2E are nearly opposite on the rules scale. 2E adds in skills and "kits", puts in lots of modifiers for stats, and so on. In order to make 2E into an OD&D-like game, I suspect you would have to ditch much of what makes 2E its own experience.

I have the 2E rules DVD disks, which have the rulebooks in Word format, and I tried once to take the 2E rules and trim them down to something I liked, but found that I ended up cutting everything out.

On the other hand, there are a couple of "Fast Play" rules sets out there which were 2E-based, I believe, and they might be a good starting point. The "Diablo II" quickstart rules are pretty good, and I believe there is "Wrath of the Minotaur" and "Eye of the Wyvern," and maybe a couple more as well. One of those might be the right kind of starting point if you wanted a "rules lite" version of 2E to play more like OD&D.

[zeraser]

I guess what I'm asking for is a way to have all the fictive in-game things about 2E without being reliant on 2E's specific rules implementations of those things. Like maybe multiclassing is dealt with by collapsing all classes down into a single ur-class?

[Deleted]

Sept 7, 2013 14:04:45 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

The problem as I see it is that OD&D and 2E are nearly opposite on the rules scale. 2E adds in skills and "kits", puts in lots of modifiers for stats, and so on. In order to make 2E into an OD&D-like game, I suspect you would have to ditch much of what makes 2E its own experience.

I have the 2E rules DVD disks, which have the rulebooks in Word format, and I tried once to take the 2E rules and trim them down to something I liked, but found that I ended up cutting everything out.

Fin, most of what you call out about 2E are optional rules. If you look at the just the core rules (i.e. non-optional) it's not a complex version of the game at all. Maybe the "optional" tags aren't as well marked in the Word files as in the print version of the books.

Sept 7, 2013 14:12:02 GMT -6 zeraser said:

I guess what I'm asking for is a way to have all the fictive in-game things about 2E without being reliant on 2E's specific rules implementations of those things. Like maybe multiclassing is dealt with by collapsing all classes down into a single ur-class?

Zeraser, take a look at Fate Accelerated edition (available for free download). I think how it condenses a lot of information about characters might be useful in how to approach something like that.

[battlebrotherbob]

I would recommend Adventures Dark and Deep. Its labeled as a what it Gary did 2nd ed. Having the Players book and DM book it is much better than that. More of a OGL 2nd. I was never a fan of 2nd ed, being a 1st ed guy myself, but this version makes me want to play that version.

For me only two things that bug me. Firstly the Paladin as a sub class of Cavalier and 2nd Thief-Acrobat. Other than that, which is fixable, a strong rule set.

[Stormcrow]

Sept 7, 2013 18:59:01 GMT -6 @ptingler said:

Fin, most of what you call out about 2E are optional rules. If you look at the just the core rules (i.e. non-optional) it's not a complex version of the game at all. 

Correct. AD&D 2nd Edition without any options is more or less the original boxed set plus Greyhawk's expanded abilities, hit dice, and damage rules, plus the more popular sub-classes. There are lots of other minor tweaks, like an expanded reaction table, the replacing of the attack tables with THAC0 calculations, and different experience rewards (XP for treasure is optional).

Indeed, AD&D 2nd Edition without options looks a whole lot like "Basic" D&D.

[zeraser]

It's these optional rules, though, that defined much of the flavor of the edition for me (and, I suspect, others who joined the hobby in the 2e era). The question I'm trying to answer - one which I'll post a provisional stab at in due course - is whether the crazy crap that those rules ignited in our imaginations can survive without the mechanical framework of the rules themselves.

In other words, what I want to get at about 2e is precisely those things that Gygax wouldn't have done.

[battlebrotherbob]

Ahhh, different question. My thoughts, right off the top of my head would be no. Especially if one is looking at the first splat books. The complete books. Maybe some of the fluff can be transferred, its the kits that would make it harder to do. That is where the mechanics get changed, and the power creep really begins.

What I remember about 2nd ed was that the original 3 books were cleaned up 1st ed game. The first Complete books then started the power climb into the sky. It seemed, at the time, it more and more ridiculous. Not saying your experience was wrong, but for me it destroyed the game. Starting with UA it was becoming more and more about "Official" AD&D and less about making it up as you went along making it yours. Now the above is just my Humble Opion, so take it what its worth.

IF I were going to try something with the extra books I would use it as an source of ideas and not the rules. If a character looked interesting I might take it and make it fit not just use it plug and play.

[rabindranath72]

I came to 1e after having started with 2e (and before that, the Red Box.) Indeed we never made use of any of the "Complete XXX" book. The most exotic piece at my table besides PHB, DMG and MM was the Tome of Magic. So I don't know about all this "gonzo" stuff you speak about, or Belgarions instead of Fafhrd, or crazy multiclassing (which was far more strict than the stuff which appeared in Unearthed Arcana, by the way; in particular regarding elves.) So yes, in hindsight, a cleaned-up 1e, rules-wise. We made the error of adding the Player's Option stuff at some point, which led us later to simply scrap 2e in favour of 3e, seeing as the latter (core at least) was a further clean-up and update of the mess that was later 2e.
Back to your question: what you want to do implies looking at stuff which was not core for 2e. Seeing the huge number of sources, good luck with that!

[Falconer]

Sept 8, 2013 18:43:17 GMT -6 zeraser said:

It's these optional rules, though, that defined much of the flavor of the edition for me (and, I suspect, others who joined the hobby in the 2e era).

That’s true for me. We used a jumble of Forgotten Realms books (especially the Faiths & Avatars series), Planescape books, and Complete books in addition to the PHB, MM, and miscellaneous MCs (the DMG was never used). We never thought the “optional” rules were optional, because all the other books demanded their use, and we couldn’t possibly imagine a game without them. We never thought there was such a thing as a “Core Rulebook” — that concept came into popularity with 3e, and IMO is an anachronism when applied to 2e.

[Deleted]

I started with Mentzer Basic and Expert and moved to AD&D 2E. I owned a lot of the complete books, but pretty much all characters were made just using the PHB in the campaigns I ran.

[Deleted]

I ran an "epic", 2e-ish campaign once using S&W. It's not especially hard.

[premmy]

I think that much of the "2nd. ed. feel" is actually largely independent of the rules and only have to do with what elements you have in your plot and setting. If you can identify these elements, just introduce them into your OD&D game and you're halfway there. Quick brainstorming:

There's a certain type of High Fantasy style which I call the "Aesthetics of Exaggeration". A tall tower is not simply tall: it's at least a hundred storeys tall if not twice that much, and it's comparable to modern skyscrapers. A large castle is not simply large: it's frigging Ghormenghast. An old artifact or wizened sage is not simply old: they're at least 5000 years old even if they only look maybe a hundred. A large army is not a hundred thousand: it's at least a million. Elaborate armour doesn't meant a plume AND an aventail on your gold-enlaid spangenhelm: it's actual gold painted vermilion and covered by spikes. Needless to say, the big bad villain isn't a 9th level necromancer who's threatening to overtake the nearby town and whom you need to kill by chopping his head off with any random sword; it's The Necromancer, who's probably the inventor of that entire branch of magic, he's threatening to take over the entire world, and you can only kill him by throwing the One Necklace into the gap of Mount Fate. None of this is rules-dependent.

Similarly, you don't NEED 2nd. ed. rules to have your epic heroes ride dragons and be members of ancient societies sworn to safeguard mankind. You just put that stuff in the game, and when they say they try to ride the dragon, you curb your grognard instinct to reply "Ha-ha, yeah, sure. We're not playing 2nd edition, boyo", and just let them do it.

I daresay that at least half of what makes 2nd. ed. distinct from "true old school" has nothing to do with rules.

[kesher]

"The Aesthetics of Exaggeration"

Nice. Very nice.

[Stormcrow]

Sept 11, 2013 12:42:18 GMT -6 Falconer said:

We never thought there was such a thing as a “Core Rulebook” — that concept came into popularity with 3e, and IMO is an anachronism when applied to 2e.

Nah, "core rules" started with AD&D 2nd Edition. Take, for example, the "Core Rules" CD-ROM. And this usage was popular with players.

[Falconer]

Fair enough, but not, I think, in the 3e sense that the “Core” consists of PHB/DMG/MM alone. (Of course, 2e didn’t even have a MM, per se, for most of its run.) “Core” in the 2e days just meant anything not setting-specific — i.e., anything under the AD&D banner alone. The 2e Core Rules CD-ROM includes the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monstrous Manual, Arms & Equipment Guide, and Tome of Magic. Later versions also include all four Options books. They also came out with a “Core Rules CD-ROM Expansion” which includes eleven of the Complete books.

Anyway, it’s a minor quibble, and I’m sure lingo varied from table to table. (Hell, we didn’t use tables, either, in those days.)

I definitely think you could emulate the “2e aesthetic” with S&W or any other rule set, especially if you were using the 2e Forgotten Realms plus Planescape support products. But I’ve always said, you can use just about any rule set to create just about any feel, but why not use rule set that already supports the style of game you’re trying to run? In a hobby like ours which is all about creativity, the art you’re looking at is going to go a long way towards firing up your imagination.

[strangebrew]

I think when we'd play 2nd edition there was a feeling that the start of a new campaign was the start of an epic novel. When we would create characters, we would be thinking long-term, assuming this crew would be around from the beginning to the end (and they often were). If a character died, they came back somehow, and that was all part of the ongoing epic tale...they all had greater destinies ahead of them.

I think part of this was due to the heaviness of the character creation rules, with races and sub-races, classes and kits, attribute and weapon data, and soft leather shoes, scabbards and signet rings. After the hour or so of creating characters and putting a lot of thought into them no one wanted them to die, the DM included.
Plus we were like twelve years old and reading Tolkien and that Robert Jordan series.

[Falconer]

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
Coincidence? ;-)

[zeraser]

Sept 17, 2013 22:32:43 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
Coincidence? ;-)

Speaking as a member of Generation Y (but one without the upward mobility required to be a "yuppie"!), I have some pretty big problems with that article, which I first read some days ago. Most of them boil down to the author's choice to locate this generational crisis in the family - an institution which has, by and large, served Generation Y pretty well - rather than global capitalism, an institution that has served Generation Y very poorly in several ways.

(We're getting pretty far afield of the original topic - which I promise to weigh in on as soon as I get a moment to post something that isn't a Marxist screed - but I want to recommend this book, which deals with some of the root causes of the issues described in the link Falconer posted.)

[Falconer]

The whole “you are the protagonist of your own grand epic” thing seemed to me to tie into the stuff we’re talking about. I didn’t really want to go a lot deeper than that.

[rabindranath72]

As I said, we played AD&D 2e not differently from Basic D&D, in terms of "feel" and campaign style. And we used only PHB, DMG and MC1 (later: Monstrous Manual.) And for quite long we didn't bother with all the optional rules either (clearly stated in the PHB and DMG.) So all the "complexity" was simply not there. And the simple fact that I experienced something different, should be proof enough that generalisations about 2e and its supposed "style" are not possible nor useful.
In fact, there is really nothing in the rules to suggest Exaggeration. If anything, this must have been a mindset of the times, and 2e happened to be around at those times. But correlation doesn't imply causation.

[snorri]

Sept 18, 2013 6:27:24 GMT -6 zeraser said:

Sept 17, 2013 22:32:43 GMT -6 Falconer said:

(We're getting pretty far afield of the original topic - which I promise to weigh in on as soon as I get a moment to post something that isn't a Marxist screed - but I want to recommend this book, which deals with some of the root causes of the issues described in the link Falconer posted.)

Happy to see both you love my little SotU and that I'm not the lone marxist on that board

I don't know that much Ad&D2, as I began with the red box. The core books do know differ that much from AD&D. As far as I can see, it's the adds of "2.5" power options and the various kits that gives the miush-mash 2nd era spirit, from that point of view. Rule-lite that is hard precisely because of it.

[inkmeister]

So hard not to criticize that article about Generation Y, but I'll leave that alone.

I think less rules means more room to let the imagination go crazy. When I was introduced to AD&D 2e(what I was told was AD&D) in 1995, we were playing Planescape. And my buddy who ran the games and knew EVERYTHING about Planescape had one little problem. He NEVER had any of the actual rule books. The only D&D product he had was the Planescape box. Some time later my Mom bought him the Monster Manual for Christmas. So we had that to get ideas from. But we played free-form, no paper, no books, no dice. (He didn't even have the funky dice!). No way I would want to go back to that set up, but my point is that the aesthetic of 2e is ALL we had.

For OD&D to do 2E, I think you have to let go of most of the ways that OD&D intrudes into setting. Rather than talking about what to exclude, look at most of OD&D as a bunch of suggestions to build a model campaign. All you really need is the idea of hit points, attacks, saving throws. You can use the magic system or not. You can add some classes or not. Basically I'm saying keep Men & Magic, maybe M&T (selectively), and use your 2E Aesthetic to guide you through what would otherwise be U&W.

I think it would work even better than 2E.

[owlorbs]

It's interesting that there is such an "epic fantasy" perception of 2e since that is not my experience. I nabbed the 2e books immediately when they came out and I couldn't believe how easy they were to understand (I was 15 or so). We had been playing a combination game of Mentzer Basic, 1e and early Dragon magazines. I thought the presentation of the "blue box" optional rules in 2e was amazing. I also didn't realize that all the versions of D&D up to that point were considered different games, we mixed and matched everything without a second thought. However, having really only read the fantasy books of Howard, Leiber and Tolkien at that time in my life, my campaigns were always low magic and gritty.

[rabindranath72]

Sept 18, 2013 9:23:54 GMT -6 owlorbs said:

It's interesting that there is such an "epic fantasy" perception of 2e since that is not my experience. I nabbed the 2e books immediately when they came out and I couldn't believe how easy they were to understand (I was 15 or so). We had been playing a combination game of Mentzer Basic, 1e and early Dragon magazines. I thought the presentation of the "blue box" optional rules in 2e was amazing. I also didn't realize that all the versions of D&D up to that point were considered different games, we mixed and matched everything without a second thought. However, having really only read the fantasy books of Howard, Leiber and Tolkien at that time in my life, my campaigns were always low magic and gritty.

Exactly. The only D&D setting I knew in 1989 was Dragonlance, from having read the Chronicles; and that was hardly epic.
Also the default character generation in 2e is brutal: 3d6 in order; talk about EPIC!

[Stormcrow]

I think this was mentioned earlier, but let us not forget that AD&D 2nd Edition without any options except XP for gold is a heck of a lot like original D&D with the most popular parts of the supplements.

[kesher]

I keep thinking about this thread. Maybe it's because I'm rereading the Dragonlance Chronicles at the moment...

One important feature about this aesthetic (and here I'm stressing the ties to the pop fantasy of the time) is the Ex Machina Characters, by which I mean the all-powerful figures lurking in the background: Elminster, Fizban, Allanon, etc., who could pop in and hand out quests, raise people from the dead, give or take magic items, and so on.

See, I don't the think the "EPIC"ness of the aesthetic has much to do with the 2e rules, but instead the settings that grew up around the rules, inspired by the fantasy lit of the time, some of which TSR itself helped create (see Dragonlance). Which seems to imply that it'd be pretty easy to port the feel into ODD simply by applying things like the Aesthetics of Exaggeration and Ex Machina Characters.

[kesher]

Sept 18, 2013 7:13:40 GMT -6 inkmeister said:

I think less rules means more room to let the imagination go crazy. When I was introduced to AD&D 2e(what I was told was AD&D) in 1995, we were playing Planescape. And my buddy who ran the games and knew EVERYTHING about Planescape had one little problem. He NEVER had any of the actual rule books. The only D&D product he had was the Planescape box. Some time later my Mom bought him the Monster Manual for Christmas. So we had that to get ideas from. But we played free-form, no paper, no books, no dice. (He didn't even have the funky dice!). No way I would want to go back to that set up, but my point is that the aesthetic of 2e is ALL we had.

That's pretty freaking awesome...