Doc_Klueless
Doors and Corners
The Originals.
D&D 2E Huh. AD&D 2e is my favorite D&D
- Thread starter Doc_Klueless
- Start date
Yes, and that art was terrible. A bunch of featureless and incomplete drawings compared to nice oil paintings in the original releases.
Willie the Duck
Hero
AD&D 2nd Edition always felt to me to be rife with possibility. All the options. All the optional material from mid-late 1e in the core book. Character customization. XP rules which could* allow you to play epic quest adventures like LotR or the Dragonlance modules without worrying about collecting loot along the way. *emphasis on could, everything was optional and make-it-what-you-will
Yet, the implied scale was bounded -- the artwork depicted a (pretty female* cleric providing first aid to a) warrior having lost a battle to a single giant or a party very proud of the 10-12' (+tail) dragon they had killed and hung up on a tree and the milk-crate sized chest of treasure they had recovered. *Elmore being highly influential to this tone.
Mind you, the mechanics were nearly unchanged from 1E. For all the possible character customization possible, unless the DM was pulling their punches; you really still wanted characters in plate; using longswords, lances, and longbows; not relying on non-weapon proficiencies*; and fighting every fight with the same BX/AD&D dungeoncrawler tactics** you used before. Playing swashbucklers and shirtless barbarians and custom-made priests for each deity*** and the guy who specialized in the awl pike was for when the DM was also playing in that mode.
*which could be worse than doing nothing at all (trying to catch a thrown weapon with Juggling) to simply not to be relied upon (to survive in the wilderness you did not want the survival nwp, you wanted to have had sufficient rations).
**stay in dungeon corridors (because the backline is unprotected in the wilderness with no zone-of-control rules) and overwhelm opponents with fighters and henchmen (because a fair fight is not in your favor).
***until later supplements started making OP versions of those.
Overall, these days I think I prefer a BX/parts of BECM game (or game inspired by such) for actual play. Both AD&Ds have just too much extraneous minutia and patches-that-became-sacred-cows (different dice for opening stuck doors vs lifting gates, percentile strength, charts of nwp costs and score derivation, etc.) that I slowly have realized don't actually add anything to the game for me. However, for a good old re-read for nostalgia's sake, nothing's better than breaking out a random 2E book and just letting the memories wash over me.
Yet, the implied scale was bounded -- the artwork depicted a (pretty female* cleric providing first aid to a) warrior having lost a battle to a single giant or a party very proud of the 10-12' (+tail) dragon they had killed and hung up on a tree and the milk-crate sized chest of treasure they had recovered. *Elmore being highly influential to this tone.
Mind you, the mechanics were nearly unchanged from 1E. For all the possible character customization possible, unless the DM was pulling their punches; you really still wanted characters in plate; using longswords, lances, and longbows; not relying on non-weapon proficiencies*; and fighting every fight with the same BX/AD&D dungeoncrawler tactics** you used before. Playing swashbucklers and shirtless barbarians and custom-made priests for each deity*** and the guy who specialized in the awl pike was for when the DM was also playing in that mode.
*which could be worse than doing nothing at all (trying to catch a thrown weapon with Juggling) to simply not to be relied upon (to survive in the wilderness you did not want the survival nwp, you wanted to have had sufficient rations).
**stay in dungeon corridors (because the backline is unprotected in the wilderness with no zone-of-control rules) and overwhelm opponents with fighters and henchmen (because a fair fight is not in your favor).
***until later supplements started making OP versions of those.
Overall, these days I think I prefer a BX/parts of BECM game (or game inspired by such) for actual play. Both AD&Ds have just too much extraneous minutia and patches-that-became-sacred-cows (different dice for opening stuck doors vs lifting gates, percentile strength, charts of nwp costs and score derivation, etc.) that I slowly have realized don't actually add anything to the game for me. However, for a good old re-read for nostalgia's sake, nothing's better than breaking out a random 2E book and just letting the memories wash over me.
Doc_Klueless
Doors and Corners
Sacrosanct
Legend
It's clear of the financial situation of TSR by the time of those reprints. Worst art of any edition (OD&D gets a pass).
While it was meant to be backwards compatible, I think the differences were a bit more than that. The classes were restructured, thief skill % was completely different, KITs, the bard was nothing like in 1e, spell schools and specialization, the DMG cut a ton of rules out that was in the 1e DMG, etc.
Thagdal
Explorer
I play/DM a mix of first and second that I just call early edition. I really liked the bulk of changes, and improved organization but I love the feel of the original class variants (i.e. druid, illusionist) which I felt was lost with second edition.
I'd never stop using many of the tables/text in first ED DMG for any edition though.
I'd never stop using many of the tables/text in first ED DMG for any edition though.
my pleasure
though i can not fathom why your yum would be the edition-ness of 2E rather than its qualities. Im calling it 1.75E so yar boo sucks
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
one of the good things about 2E is it has such a huge line of supplements, and the flavor from that era just resonates more with me than the flavor under WOTC. So when I switched back to 2E, I could run all these settings and modules (including things like the historical reference books). There is just a massive library of stuff
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