I like this guy; he's my kind of guy:

Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or

Good article

2nd edition is still the one that I consider "real D&D"...sorry, think they keep trying to fix something that "ain't broke".

jharris wrote on Jan 25^th, 2011 at 6:09am:

2nd edition is still the one that I consider "real D&D"...sorry, think they keep trying to fix something that "ain't broke".

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's what I consider "real D&D," but it's definitely what I've played the most.  I did a lot of plain ol' Dungeons & Dragons, but probably 80% of the gaming I've done in my life has been 2nd edition.

On that note, if anyone's down for some 2E, let me know.

Yeah, if you had to pick an edition as the crowning achievement of D&D, AD&D 2e would take the medal.

Adam wrote on Jan 25^th, 2011 at 7:22pm:

Yeah, if you had to pick an edition as the crowning achievement of D&D, AD&D 2e would take the medal.

I agree.  It's bronze is right up there on the podium with 1e's gold and 0e's silver.    8-)

I do like 2nd edition, but the only dm that I ever played under didn't really run any games past level 6 or so.  Our rogues might have gotten up to level 8 or 9.  And its not because he would kill us off, he would get bored and run something else.

Red Priest wrote on Jan 25^th, 2011 at 11:51pm:

Adam wrote on Jan 25th, 2011 at 7:22pm: Yeah, if you had to pick an edition as the crowning achievement of D&D, AD&D 2e would take the medal. I agree.  It's bronze is right up there on the podium with 1e's gold and 0e's silver.    8-)

1st edition is super awesome, but 2nd wins for nostalgia.  0e is like a totally different game.  I still remember the first time I read the 1e Player's Handbook and thought, "I can pick a class AND a race?  HECK YES."

Also, 2nd edition brought us Planescape & Dark Sun.  Spelljammer's pretty cool, too, despite its goofiness.  2nd Edition campaign settings:  Awwwww yeeeeahhhh

don't forget Ravenloft...I mean seriously.  And the Temple of Elemental Evil is still hands down one of the best adventures EVER.  2e.  Definitely down for a 2e game if someone is looking to put one together.

jharris wrote on Jan 25^th, 2011 at 6:09am:

2nd edition is still the one that I consider "real D&D"...sorry, think they keep trying to fix something that "ain't broke".

Yeah 2nd ed wasnt broke unless you were trying to play a balanced cooperative game. House cats killing 1st level characters. uneven level progressions (at 2600 xp rouges will pwn fighters.) Lob-sided effectiveness of characters (after 7th level or go wizard or go home)

The early years were innovative and were a product of those times. It was the era before power-gamers when you could look at a fighter's character sheet and pretty much know if you had to watch their rolls (there were ten times as many 18/00 as 18/01~18/09 combined.)

2nd could only sustain itself with the goodwill of each player and the DM. Nobody cared though, you were just happy to be playing. Woe was the day for ongoing campaigns when the wizard hit 7th level and could merely polymorph any NPC into a newt...yes yes they got better...well sometimes.

OD&D and 1st ed are where I spent most of my game time. For the most part 2nd was a seamless extension of 1st (thaco pfft whatever just roll the 20.) I liked the basic and expert sets a great deal. When the PHB came out wow. I saved lunch money for 2 weeks to buy the Monster manual when it came out... I read it for hours every night for 6 months.

Still just like Tic-tack-toe lost its luster when I discovered it was a forced draw, 2nd ed was ruined for me by a string of bad experiences with the pre-power gamers known as min maxers. Its sad that they now inhabit almost every corner of the rp world. The meta game of making characters who could out stat any difficulty but with no real sense of place in the fictional world soured me a bunch.

Not that it means anything, but time was that a DM who simply tried to kill the characters was frowned upon. It seems that players who try to build characters just to overcome scenarios are doing the same thing in reverse though its not nearly as stigmatized.

The current Ed of the games gives a nod to this adversarial type of play ceding non-combat abilities to the RP lovers (sure whatever you want as long as it doesnt effect combat) and allowing or even requiring a focus crunch-wise on conflict resolution abilities. The current ed is a reaction to the gaming environment and is a product of it.

The golden era of gaming for me was late first ed. Before the cartoon and the "uni" action figures. It was like your favorite band just before they were played every 64 min on the radio and the cool guy in homeroom "always liked them." For as much fun as 2nd was, it became the sickbed of the game until 3rd was released. 2nd ed seemed to announce the transition from D&D as the game to D&D the business product. Once that threshold was crossed it could never go back.

I think in the echo chamber of modern gamers we all long for the nostalgia and the "wow thats cool" of earlier editions but we are inherently more sophisticated players than we were then. As experienced players of a wide variety of games and game systems we would be hard pressed to look at the 2nd ed rules and not think them dated, subject to abuse and in need of streamlining and/or modification in some way. (Criticals, fumbles and encumbrance fans to one side of the room spell component, psionics and dual class humans to the other.)

The beauty of 2nd ed was not in the rules, it was in the players imagination, in the gaming environment, it was the time we had with friends confronting impossible and fantastic foes. 

So much of D&D's worth is dependent not only on the quality of the DM and the setting but on the quality of you fellow gamers in the group. After all is said and done my current group (sorry for the break guys things will settle down soon I hope) might have provided some of the greatest game moments I can recall. Given that, I have to put the edition we are using as one of the best facilitators for D&D ever....even if folks consider it a marketing tool to grab video-gamers.  I think we all know our way around a joystick these days.

jharris wrote on Jan 26^th, 2011 at 5:24am:

don't forget Ravenloft...I mean seriously.  And the Temple of Elemental Evil is still hands down one of the best adventures EVER.  2e.  Definitely down for a 2e game if someone is looking to put one together.

Village of Hommlet (played by me maybe 10 times over the years)  was released 1979ish? I remember I was well into high school when the temple came out....I was disgruntled at the price....try and get one now... :-[

hewhorocks wrote on Jan 26^th, 2011 at 6:11am:

The beauty of 2nd ed was not in the rules, it was in the players imagination, in the gaming environment, it was the time we had with friends confronting impossible and fantastic foes.

so true...
i wish i had more time to devote to my 2e campaign. i have some great players in it. when you cant play often it really effects the vibe of the game.

hewhorocks wrote on Jan 26^th, 2011 at 6:11am:

The beauty of 2nd ed was not in the rules, it was in the players imagination, in the gaming environment, it was the time we had with friends confronting impossible and fantastic foes.

I agree with this completely.  RPGs in general are fun only when you have a creative, active, and involved group.  The systems do not sustain themselves.  That's what board games are for.

One's favorite system is the one he or she is most comfortable playing in, whether it's due to ease of understanding or just practice.  People complain about 4th edition for taking the RP out of RPG, but that really is up to the DM and the players.  You can run a 4th edition session with no combat and all role-playing if you want - it's really only the combat that's affected by the rule system, and as we all know (and as I was reading in the 2nd edition PHB last night, coincidentally), combat is only a small part of gaming.  Those who believe that 4th edition robs the table of role-playing need to take a step back and re-examine what Dungeons and Dragons is all about.  The bulk of a solid RPG campaign is the storytelling and problem-solving; these things are not affected by the grid.

Frankly, I'm a big fan of crunch.  I'm also a bit of a masochist when it comes to rules, and I get a weird sort of satisfaction out of knowing arcane rules and exceptions, looking things up in tables, and so on.  I think that's why I dig 1e and 2e, but it's also how I learned gaming.  That's just me, though.  I appreciate what 4th edition has done for gaming, and I do to some extent enjoy running encounters in 4th edition.  I also think Final Fantasy Tactics is awesome, so there you go.  But again, it's what happens between encounters that sets RPGs apart from war and strategy games, and this same thing is the one constant in all editions of (A)D&D.

So let's all join hands and sing harmoniously about what our hobby is all about, i.e. NOT our preferred to-hit mechanic, or whether AC should go up or down as it improves.


And FWIW, THAC0 is not hard to understand.  :P

beyonder wrote on Jan 26^th, 2011 at 2:27pm:

hewhorocks wrote on Jan 26th, 2011 at 6:11am: The beauty of 2nd ed was not in the rules, it was in the players imagination, in the gaming environment, it was the time we had with friends confronting impossible and fantastic foes. I agree with this completely.  RPGs in general are fun only when you have a creative, active, and involved group.  The systems do not sustain themselves.  That's what board games are for. One's favorite system is the one he or she is most comfortable playing in, whether it's due to ease of understanding or just practice.  People complain about 4th edition for taking the RP out of RPG, but that really is up to the DM and the players.  You can run a 4th edition session with no combat and all role-playing if you want - it's really only the combat that's affected by the rule system, and as we all know (and as I was reading in the 2nd edition PHB last night, coincidentally), combat is only a small part of gaming.  Those who believe that 4th edition robs the table of role-playing need to take a step back and re-examine what Dungeons and Dragons is all about.  The bulk of a solid RPG campaign is the storytelling and problem-solving; these things are not affected by the grid. Frankly, I'm a big fan of crunch.  I'm also a bit of a masochist when it comes to rules, and I get a weird sort of satisfaction out of knowing arcane rules and exceptions, looking things up in tables, and so on.  I think that's why I dig 1e and 2e, but it's also how I learned gaming.  That's just me, though.  I appreciate what 4th edition has done for gaming, and I do to some extent enjoy running encounters in 4th edition.  I also think Final Fantasy Tactics is awesome, so there you go.  But again, it's what happens between encounters that sets RPGs apart from war and strategy games, and this same thing is the one constant in all editions of (A)D&D. So let's all join hands and sing harmoniously about what our hobby is all about, i.e. NOT our preferred to-hit mechanic, or whether AC should go up or down as it improves. And FWIW, THAC0 is not hard to understand.  :P

I agree with this entire statement.  Especially the last line.

don't get me wrong, I loved 1e (and even the old school red box), and even lamented that TSR was just trying to steal my hard earned allowance to get me to buy 2e books all over again (heck I already had a PH, why should I get another)...but I soon fell in love with all of the options that my gaming group could add to our game, and all of the stories we could now tell.  I think that any RPG is only as good as the players and the DM involved, if the group  is all about conquering the universe with players that all have 18/00 strength or a DM that is hellbent on killing off the group, 2e sucks.  But if you have a group that is trying to create an epic story with ups and downs, great victories and dramatic tragedy, then 2e was the bomb.  Rules are just a means to the end...and I never thought there was a need to reinvent the wheel when it has always rolled so well for me.

Yessiree, 2e is good stuff.  I was reading the PHB last night.  Proficiencies: optional!  Limit on max spells/level: optional!  Spell components: optional!

Options, options, options!

I've always felt that part of the true spirit of D&D is, "If you don't like it, don't use it."  AD&D made this official.  Later editions strayed from this principle, to which I say, "Booooooo - hiss!"


Edit: Isn't encumbrance optional in 2e, too?  I think it might be.  Someone help me out here.

everything in 2e was optional...like it should be, I always felt like my gaming groups (especially games I DM'ed) were more about telling a cool story and creating an epic adventure than about the rules.  Odd comparison, but it's kind of like the Matrix, we had rules (gravity etc) but they were always a little more flexible...If the story got better because you were carrying too much shit, then encumbrance played a part, if not, we kind of looked the other way.  Remember people, this is FANTASY.  we're not trying to recreate some historic fiction here. 

Well  in really every RPG every mechanic is "optional" Heck I remember arguing with my friends dad (a WWII tank commander) that tanks defended better than what some rules said....House rule for the win.

Some rules are harder to extract than others though. Sometimes the rules lend a certain feel to the game (see ARMS LAW.) One thing about more recent game development trend is the elegance of games. In the day theives abilities seemed like they were borrowed from another game, as was grappling, psionics and a large number of rules. The D20 revolution certainly made the rules seem less arcane....though in truth lots of folks prided themselves at knowing the grappling rules by heart.

hewhorocks wrote on Jan 29^th, 2011 at 11:05pm:

Well in really every RPG every mechanic is "optional"

That's true...  what I'm saying, though, is that having rules marked "Optional" in a core rulebook speaks volumes about the game's design philosophy.  The designer acknowledges that not all rules are always appropriate, whereas house rules are generally implemented because of a flaw in the ruleset or the result of a truly unique situation at the table.  AD&D 2e (and, admittedly, other systems as well) is *intended* to be played significantly differently from table to table, as opposed to *inevitably* played significantly differently from table to table as a result of necessity and/or player/DM frustration.

inb4 "AD&D 2e has flaws and often/always requires houserules; here is/are an/some example/examples:"

OMG 2e Thief skills were off the chain! Talk about one of the most customizable classes ever! With the percentage buy system, no two rogues were alike. Absolutely loved it :)