I think I lucked out on more GMs who ran the system and table with a firmer hand than otherwise. Watching Organized Play and the word "Official" and "RAW" get used to batter other tables into submission, especially post-WotC, really cemented my view on the need for strong GM management. Even loose games, like WW's oWoD claimed to be, could not resist the system mastery bullying if they did not stand up against it.

Made me abandon pursuing gaming Nirvana through mechanics tout de suite.

Quote from: Saladman;829776Oh, absolutely.  What I initially liked about 3e when it released was that it was a nice clean base game, with none of that power-gaming nonsense like 2e had.  Yeah...  :rolleyes:

Still, the nostalgia for 2e (and not just in this thread, but overall)... surprise isn't quite the right word, because clearly people played the game, but their experience must have been different from mine.  Either they got in earlier than I did, or they had the system mastery to make the splatbooks work for them.

I was playing 2E pretty much right when it came out, so there was that (and my group uniformly rejected the skills and powers books when they did come out). The brown books were fairly easy to manage in my experience (much easier than later complete books under 3E) because they were predominantly flavor text with a handful of abilities and kits were something you overlaid on a character (so you didn't have that class dipping problem that happened a lot during 3E). There were problems in system, and we've had discussions here where people have pointed out some of the major issues. I think at the time, there was more a spirit of the GM clamping down on anything that seemed too overpowered, so at the tables I played at, when something like that did arise there was just a general consensus that it was obviously not the intention of the designers so it was disallowed (I am sure experiences around this varied tremendously).

But I think the big thing with 2E was the setting material and flavor. For me it really worked and helped keep me inspired. I just had a lot of really good gaming in those years running Ravenloft. I had less fun running Ravenloft under 3E. I believed this to be simple nostalgia for some time (I figured I just had my best gaming years when I was young and had more time with my friends). But when I ran ravenloft using 2E several years back, it was the feel and tone I had remembered (but could never quite get with 3E).

I should point out, initially when I was preparing my 2E Ravenloft game it was with the intent of having a laugh. I remembered it being an ungainly system and saw 3E as a clear improvement, as natural progress. I was very surprised by my experience going back to it. Yes it had some clunky elements I would change, but it was eye opening and I realized that there was a lot to be gleaned from older editions of the game. Certain things just worked better for me in how I run and play an RPG.

That said I should also say my reaction was not the universal reaction at my table. I had one player whose negative feelings toward 2E only strengthened by playing it again, for example.

Quote from: Saladman;829776Oh, absolutely.  What I initially liked about 3e when it released was that it was a nice clean base game, with none of that power-gaming nonsense like 2e had.  Yeah...  :rolleyes:

Still, the nostalgia for 2e (and not just in this thread, but overall)... surprise isn't quite the right word, because clearly people played the game, but their experience must have been different from mine.  Either they got in earlier than I did, or they had the system mastery to make the splatbooks work for them.

The first few completes with kits are really fairly balanced.
The Myrmidon gets Build fires, knowledge of armies, the peasant hero gets +reaction with peasants and the folk in his region will hide him, the Riddlemaster can have a second chance or a DM clue to solve a puzzle, etc  The usual format is an addition NWP + a reaction bonus and some knowledge about a certain type of thing, noble houses, armies, religion etc. They really look like 5e Backgrounds pared down a tad.
They start to get carried away when they veer from their intention. The intention was to reduce bloat. You can have a pirate, an assasin, a spy, a merchant, a hermit, a ninja, whatever with the base 4 classes with no additional skills. No special attacks, no polymorphing into a tree at 5th level, no additional ac, or Hit points or special ways to commune with eagles. Trouble is players love mechanically different classes and races cos they love to min/max. They don't want multiclassing because it enables them to build their ideal PC they want multiclassing becuase they think it will give them a mechanical advantage in play.

Quote from: Saladman;829776Oh, absolutely.  What I initially liked about 3e when it released was that it was a nice clean base game, with none of that power-gaming nonsense like 2e had.  Yeah...  :rolleyes:

Still, the nostalgia for 2e (and not just in this thread, but overall)... surprise isn't quite the right word, because clearly people played the game, but their experience must have been different from mine.  Either they got in earlier than I did, or they had the system mastery to make the splatbooks work for them.

Or like me, they used only the 2E core books. Our group has its roots in the early days of D&D, when only DMs bought books. I have a tough time getting my players to buy or read even the PHB. Most have no idea what a 'build' is, so no splatbooks at our table.

Probably the best campaign I ever ran was 2E using just the core books and the Night Below boxed set.

I've seen mentioned in this thread a few times that folks have sold off all their 2e stuff with the coming of 3e.  I have a friend who did the same thing.  I wonder how many other did the same and regretted it.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;829718When I went back and looked at the 2E DMG a couple years ago I was actually shocked to discover that it had essentially gutted the description of fundamental dungeoncrawling procedures. In the late '80s, BECMI was still providing that guidance for a lot of people, but if you came into gaming after 1995 you were no longer receiving decent instruction in the core gameplay that had made D&D so popular.

3E improved on the 2E DMG marginally, but 4E basically removed the dungeoncrawling procedures completely.

If you understand the importance of game structures in creating effective GMs, the realization that TSR and WotC have been fundamentally failing to teach new GMs the most basic of game structures for essentially an entire generation explains a lot.

Yep. I think the problem is that in the dark ages of pre-internet, ideas about adventure construction moved much more slowly, and it didn't help that TSR was in that "Scooby Doo" time period. Anyway, it's not the specific dungeon structure, but any structure for the new GM to get a grip on.

2e started moving away from dungeons, but didn't offer anything to replace them.

Quote from: Teazia;829727Some AD&D folks prefer a "best of AD&D" core: 1e DMG, 2e PHB and 2e MM.  The 2e PHB has some advantages over the 1e and the 2e MM is over the 1e as well.  The 2e MM random encounter charts are in one the of MC Anuals though, so there is that.

I'm currently stealing from every edition except 5th, as I don't have that one yet. (100+ bucks is competing for my Warmachine and X-Wing dollars right now)
I'm using the Moldvay Basic stat modifiers, as I think the 2e stat mod system encourages (sometimes requires) really high stats. And I'm using the Bard performace ability from Pathfinder instead of the 2e bard's performance ability, because I like the idea of bards having more effects for their performances.
I'm considering using a flatter homebrew version of the 3rd-PF advancement system with stats and feats and stuff, but I want to be careful about power creep.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;829719I think the key difference is the 1E DMG is very explicit not just about how to run and plan dungeons but about how to run everything in a campaign. It might not have been everyone's cup of tea but the value was it gave new GMs something to hang their hat on. Granted a lot of people had moved away from the 1E approach by 2E (there was a real mixture of campaign and adventure strutures floating around when I started player). But the 2E DMG replaced it with nothing. There was literally nothing there to tell you how to play at all (they could have for example offered an overview of different approaches, but they didn't even do that). They also don't tell you anything about world building.

And I like 2E a lot. However the DMG and a lack of any real guidance on campaigns was a huge negative for it.

Expecting ANY book to compare to the 1e DMG is wrong. Just wrong. Nothing comes close. And my experience with AD&D started with UA and 2e. The only thing good to come out of the 2e DMG was the Class Creation System. I used that one alot.

I really don't see what some people like so much about the 1e DMG.  I liked my 2e DMG just fine.  It had the magic items, treasure charts, and XP guidelines.  The attack and save matrixes were in the PHB where they should always have been in the first place.

Quote from: Gabriel2;829820I really don't see what some people like so much about the 1e DMG.  I liked my 2e DMG just fine.  It had the magic items, treasure charts, and XP guidelines.  The attack and save matrixes were in the PHB where they should always have been in the first place.

Folks like the incoherent mess that is Gary Gygax's writing...leaves that much more open to interpretation!

Quote from: Justin Alexander;829718When I went back and looked at the 2E DMG a couple years ago I was actually shocked to discover that it had essentially gutted the description of fundamental dungeoncrawling procedures. In the late '80s, BECMI was still providing that guidance for a lot of people, but if you came into gaming after 1995 you were no longer receiving decent instruction in the core gameplay that had made D&D so popular.

3E improved on the 2E DMG marginally, but 4E basically removed the dungeoncrawling procedures completely.

2E was supported largely by wide-ranging, scripted campaigns. Exploring dungeons was regarded as anachronistic.

3E and 4E both focused on a return to the dungeon (a mistake in the case of 4E,  as the system is ill-suited to dungeoncrawling), but it was no longer the dungeon as an operational challenge, but the dungeon as a series of discrete encounters. Both editions included all kinds of advice and tools for crafting encounters - CL/EXP budgets, the features of the room, environmental effects, tactics. But the designers, and most of the players, had stopped thinking in terms of the dungeon as a design element in itself, and of exploration and overcoming challenges outside the set-piece encounter as worthwhile elements of the game.

Quote from: Gabriel2;829820I really don't see what some people like so much about the 1e DMG.  I liked my 2e DMG just fine.  It had the magic items, treasure charts, and XP guidelines.  The attack and save matrixes were in the PHB where they should always have been in the first place.

The 1E DMG's language inspired.  It made you want to game, and build worlds, and spin off into uncharted territory.  It also had a lot of tables and charts that were inspirational on their own.

The 2E DMG was an incomplete book because TSR wanted to split the original content into 2 books - the DMG and the Campaigns and Catacombs Guide.  So the DMG covered only portions of the same material (not considering things moved to the PHB), and went for lowest level possible in term of reading level.  It was a book written that 12 year-olds wouldn't need a dictionary to use.

It was functional.  But DM's need inspiration, and in this aspect it fully failed.

Many people rejoiced at the release of 2e; hobos, felons and escaped mental patients had a game of their own, at last.

BECMI was "my" version of D&D (the one I played the most), but 2e was definitely my version of AD&D.

I found, and still find, Gygax's writing to be an awful, incoherent mess. I don't particularly care for 1e because of it. I particularly hated the UA book, so I was very glad almost nothing from it came into 2e.

I liked the writing style of 2e; it was the cleaned up, professional version of AD&D.

For the player's handbook, the races and classes were much better organized in 2e. It also had the advantage of having a bard class that made sense and removed the redundant and of limited use assassin class. I also thought the half-orc was no great loss (though I would have preferred they get rid of the half-elf too). 2e actually bothered to put stuff like combat rules in the player's book so they knew how the game played.

The DMG for 2e, however, kind of sucked. Organizationally it was fine, but it was not inspiring, didn't include nearly enough information on how to actually DM, and was kind of a waste of space / money.

The Monster Manuals for 2e had a bad publishing format (the loose-leaf pages) but the actual monster entries are the best ever produced for the game.

Setting-wise, 2e wins hands-down over every other edition. It has more settings and ideas for settings than you could ever use in five lifetimes. My main complaint on 2e's setting would be the lack of an official 2e Oriental Adventures.

I played 2E and still used the 1E DMG for inspiration. How wild is that!