What was 2E like?

arminius · May 09, 2015, 10:53:04 AM

For what it's worth, Shannon Appelcline writes that the GMing guidelines in the 2e DMG were meant to be more extensive but they ran out of space and put them into another book: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16887/DMGR1-Campaign-Sourcebook-and-Catacomb-Guide-2e?manufacturers_id=44&it=1&filters=0_2150_0_0_40040

That doesn't explain why that editorial decision was made--why they de-prioritized that material in favor of other stuff. I still think it may because the idea of making your own adventures had itself become deemphasized.

Bedrockbrendan · May 09, 2015, 11:42:20 AM

Quote from: Arminius;830685For what it's worth, Shannon Appelcline writes that the GMing guidelines in the 2e DMG were meant to be more extensive but they ran out of space and put them into another book: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16887/DMGR1-Campaign-Sourcebook-and-Catacomb-Guide-2e?manufacturers_id=44&it=1&filters=0_2150_0_0_40040

That doesn't explain why that editorial decision was made--why they de-prioritized that material in favor of other stuff. I still think it may because the idea of making your own adventures had itself become deemphasized.

I remember quite liking the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide

RandallS · May 09, 2015, 12:00:42 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830326I went over the 1e DMG last night due to this thread, and found it was pretty lacking in adventure structure guidelines too. Wilderness encounter tables and random dungeon rules, but no guide to how to put encounters together into an adventure. It's better than the 2e DMG, but not much better, IMO.

Adventure design as a series of encounters was really never covered by TSR D&D as I recall. TSR D&D instructions were more for what would now be called "sandbox campaigns". I guess they assumed if you wanted a "story"-oriented adventure instead a location-oriented adventure, you'd just buy one of theirs. To be honest, since I never had any interest in the "story"-oriented style of play, I never missed the lack of advice for designing encounters around a specific group of characters and connecting them together in an adventure. In fact, 3.x's assumption that this would be the default style of play was one of the things that first told me 3.x was likely not designed for my style of play.

artikid · May 09, 2015, 02:04:01 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830481How much of early RPGs realized the kinds of nuts and bolts about adventure structures that we do today though? It seems to me that Gygax was running with what worked, and didn't explicitly understand that a dungeon was a way to structure an adventure that was very easy for a new DM to understand.
And when 2e came around, the writers didn't realize that importance.

Not so sure about that... Basic rules by Moldvay/Cook already have that kind of awareness, at least for dungeon adventures.
And that was in 1981, a good 8 years before 2e was published.
1984 saw the publication of BECMI, (though mostly a retread of B/X) and was arguably one of TSR's best-seller.
The editorial choices made on the 2e DMG have no excuses IMHO.

arminius · May 09, 2015, 02:32:21 PM

Just a quick note, confirmation of the story that Jacquays' work was originally planned for the DMG: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=59661&sid=05fe769dc557ebb24974bda180605387&start=60#p1341898

Again, why it was shunted off to another book instead of cutting other stuff is anyone's guess. Could be they wanted to sell two books instead of just one but it sounds like they failed to get widespread buy-in. Using the faux leather cover trade dress surely didn't convey "core book".

Aos · May 09, 2015, 03:01:03 PM

Quote from: artikid;830706Not so sure about that... Basic rules by Moldvay/Cook already have that kind of awareness, at least for dungeon adventures.
And that was in 1981, a good 8 years before 2e was published.
1984 saw the publication of BECMI, (though mostly a retread of B/X) and was arguably one of TSR's best-seller.
The editorial choices made on the 2e DMG have no excuses IMHO.

The Gentleman's Game (B/X) has some good stuff for outdoors, too.

Ratman_tf · May 09, 2015, 06:27:47 PM

Quote from: Arminius;830709Just a quick note, confirmation of the story that Jacquays' work was originally planned for the DMG: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=59661&sid=05fe769dc557ebb24974bda180605387&start=60#p1341898

Again, why it was shunted off to another book instead of cutting other stuff is anyone's guess. Could be they wanted to sell two books instead of just one but it sounds like they failed to get widespread buy-in. Using the faux leather cover trade dress surely didn't convey "core book".

QuoteI wrote to spec, someone's else's sections apparently ran long

From the post you linked by Jacquay. Seems like a space issue.

arminius · May 09, 2015, 07:07:43 PM

Yes, but why wasn't the other stuff edited down or shunted into another book? At some point the decision was made to prioritize one vs the other. I've seen comments even that the DMG repeated material from the PHB. (True?)

Ratman_tf · May 09, 2015, 10:58:41 PM

Quote from: Arminius;830733Yes, but why wasn't the other stuff edited down or shunted into another book? At some point the decision was made to prioritize one vs the other. I've seen comments even that the DMG repeated material from the PHB. (True?)

I can't think of anything that got repeated, but I don't have my books handy today to make sure.

Bobloblah · May 10, 2015, 09:14:16 AM

Some topics are covered in both places, but the material presented isn't identical, if I recall correctly.

Gabriel2 · May 10, 2015, 10:25:11 AM

It's not identical. The version in the DMG is more of a summary/reminder.

RPGPundit · May 15, 2015, 01:16:07 AM

Quote from: Matt;830564Yeah, that's overthinking sitting around with your friends and rolling dice and laughing about unforeseen consequences.

Indeed it is!

danskmacabre · May 15, 2015, 01:29:46 AM

I mostly ran ADnD, but remember getting DnD 2e and seeing that it had the Skill system added.

Ironically, seeing the skill system in 2e and running it for a while, which wasn't a terrible attempt at putting skills in DnD, is what moved me onto other Fantasy RPGs, such as Runequest and Rolemaster, which did a much better job of handling skills.

I didn't really go back to DnD until many years later with Pathfinder and more recently DnD 5E.

RPGPundit · May 15, 2015, 03:45:04 AM

In hindsight (though it didn't really seem that way at the time), when compared to later editions, the differences between 2e and 1e from a mechanics perspective were pretty minimal.

Of course, the real difference was in terms of things like style, attitude, and corporate (mis-)management.

James Gillen · May 15, 2015, 08:33:41 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;831624In hindsight (though it didn't really seem that way at the time), when compared to later editions, the differences between 2e and 1e from a mechanics perspective were pretty minimal.

Of course, the real difference was in terms of things like style, attitude, and corporate (mis-)management.

Indeed.

jg