I love 2e. We played it throughout the entire 90's and only stopped when I sold all my crap when 3e came out. "I'll never need all this old stuff again' I said. Chump.

I've spent the last five years rebuilding most of that collection. I strongly feel like I "finished" 2e and have made my peace with that and so have little desire to run it at this point though I guess I would if somebody asked. I like having all my old books back though.

Quote from: Raven;829633I love 2e. We played it throughout the entire 90's and only stopped when I sold all my crap when 3e came out. "I'll never need all this old stuff again' I said. Chump.

I did the same thing except I waited about five years into 3E. Worst decision I ever made with my gaming material. I ended up slowly buying it all again on ebay and amazon over the next few years.

The funny thing is that I did the exact same thing with my 1e books because I was pumped for 2e.  

Quote from: Justin Alexander;829578The system is virtually identical to 1st Edition. The exceptions basically boil down to:

1. THAC0, which is only a light tweaking on the 1E combat charts while being easier to use,

2. A few high profile shifts in the classes (bards are fixed to work like a normal class, assassins don't exist, etc.)

3. A handful of robust optional modules to expand the system, the most notable of which is the proficiency system (which, AFAICT, was used by virtually everybody playing the game).

In terms of the core rulebooks, the big shifts are in tone and the absence of the glorious mess of campaign building resources that Gygax crammed into the original DMG.

(And by tone I don't just mean changing the names of demons and devils. I mean that 2E generally reduced the fantastical elements of the game. In one notable example, an example using a roc instead becomes an example using a crow.)

Where 2E starts finding an identity of its own is the supplements: The addition of kits through the Complete Handbooks were pretty omnipresent in the campaigns I saw in the early '90s. The Player's Option Books became a de facto 2.5 in the mid-'90s, notably adding a lot of the combat mechanics that would later be refined into 3rd Edition.

I think the divide between people who say it is nearly identical to 1st edition, and those who don't (like me), might come down to how much of the 1st edition one-off rules were actually used at the table.

I find combat, especially, is different enough between 1E and 2E as written that you can't really use the same tactics in both.

1) Surprise is no longer the difference between the surprise rolls in number of segments of surprise.  In 1E, if you're fighting a creature that can surprise on a roll of 1-4 that is potentially a huge number of segments for bad things to happen to you.  In 2E, this was reduced to winning surprise being 1 round of attacks.  In 1E, maximizing your ability to surprise and minimizing your chance to be surprised is probably one of the biggest factors to tilting the dice in your favor (and thus survival).

2) Monsters with hit dice lower than 5 were hosed in 2E in terms of the roll needed to hit.  2E went with THACO that become 1 better with each additional hit die.  The hit charts for monsters in the 1E DMG are much more favorable at low hit dice.  Good, bad or indifferent, this made big changes to low-level play where most people probably spent their time.

3) The TSR Code of Ethics completely gutted swords and sorcery themes being used in the content, and turned the materials being published after the core set into Roleplaying Romances and Redemptions.  If you made all your own material then this was moot, but most of the 2E games I saw back then used TSR stuff.

There are a ton of other elements that changed.

I think what is really accurate to say, is that 2E took 90% of the elements from 1st edition, like puzzle pieces, and recombined them into a game that looked similar from arm's length, but encouraged very different tactics, and also very different styles of roleplaying.  If you already roleplayed this way in 1E, or if combat was stripped of all the detail rules, then 2E would seem pretty seamless with 1E and most likely an improvement.  

I wasn't in the latter camp

I'm one of those who found it bland and corporate, even if the TSR of that day was also able to put out scores and scores of supplements where you could always find something cool.  But when I compare it to 3E and Pathfinder, and I see all the "This non-human can't be this class" or "Humans can't multiclass, unless of course they're Bards, and that really means you have to take multiple classes in succession, and you can't do it more than once, unless you're a Bard, which is half of why they had to overhaul that whole thing", and I see all the splat stuff- especially kits -I realize that 3E was giving all the options that 2E was supposed to be giving, but didn't.

But then I like 3E/PF, which on this site makes me weird.

JG

To me a Pathfinder is a model of Nissan. Apparently it's a knockoff of one of the later versions of AD&D. Weird.

I had issues with 2e. Its why I'm not still playing it to this day.

I have entirely different issues with 3e. Its why I played in one game then never touched the system again.

Quote from: James Gillen;829687I'm one of those who found it bland and corporate, even if the TSR of that day was also able to put out scores and scores of supplements where you could always find something cool.  But when I compare it to 3E and Pathfinder, and I see all the "This non-human can't be this class" or "Humans can't multiclass, unless of course they're Bards, and that really means you have to take multiple classes in succession, and you can't do it more than once, unless you're a Bard, which is half of why they had to overhaul that whole thing", and I see all the splat stuff- especially kits -I realize that 3E was giving all the options that 2E was supposed to be giving, but didn't.

But then I like 3E/PF, which on this site makes me weird.

JG

Um ... this
"This non-human can't be this class" or "Humans can't multiclass, unless of course they're Bards, and that really means you have to take multiple classes in succession, and you can't do it more than once, unless you're a Bard, which is half of why they had to overhaul that whole thing"

Is all from 1e.

If you like multiclassing then Skills and Powers actually allows you to design a class that takes part of anythign you can think of and combine them. As I said up post great idea really really badly executed. But this site take its and makes it playable - http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/classless/

Quote from: EOTB;829647I think the divide between people who say it is nearly identical to 1st edition, and those who don't (like me), might come down to how much of the 1st edition one-off rules were actually used at the table.

I find combat, especially, is different enough between 1E and 2E as written that you can't really use the same tactics in both.

1) Surprise is no longer the difference between the surprise rolls in number of segments of surprise.  In 1E, if you're fighting a creature that can surprise on a roll of 1-4 that is potentially a huge number of segments for bad things to happen to you.  In 2E, this was reduced to winning surprise being 1 round of attacks.  In 1E, maximizing your ability to surprise and minimizing your chance to be surprised is probably one of the biggest factors to tilting the dice in your favor (and thus survival).

2) Monsters with hit dice lower than 5 were hosed in 2E in terms of the roll needed to hit.  2E went with THACO that become 1 better with each additional hit die.  The hit charts for monsters in the 1E DMG are much more favorable at low hit dice.  Good, bad or indifferent, this made big changes to low-level play where most people probably spent their time.

3) The TSR Code of Ethics completely gutted swords and sorcery themes being used in the content, and turned the materials being published after the core set into Roleplaying Romances and Redemptions.  If you made all your own material then this was moot, but most of the 2E games I saw back then used TSR stuff.

There are a ton of other elements that changed.

I think what is really accurate to say, is that 2E took 90% of the elements from 1st edition, like puzzle pieces, and recombined them into a game that looked similar from arm's length, but encouraged very different tactics, and also very different styles of roleplaying.  If you already roleplayed this way in 1E, or if combat was stripped of all the detail rules, then 2E would seem pretty seamless with 1E and most likely an improvement.  

I wasn't in the latter camp

Tactics are strange things. I think a game has failed when you adopt game tactics in combats rather than adopting in world tactics that work and allow the game to abstract them into play.

Suprise was a difference for sure but no reason you weren't able to just use the AD&D rule if you like (suprise in 2e was agianst a d10 remember). Furthermore I think the AD&D rule isn't terribly good as a rule in any case.
The monster to hit isn't very far out at all and if I recall the hit tabel jumped in 2 HD increments live fighter levels so in fact odd hit diced creatures might even be a little stronger so I think there is some exaggeration there (please feel free to cite the actual differences).
The main difference in 2e is Specialisation. Now if you played 1e without UA that is a game changer. If you used UA then in fact 2e dials it down a notch as you can't double specialise at 1st level.

The initiative system in 2e is much cleaner though expressed in an overly complex way (a bit like Thaco); d10+ dex bonus + weapon speed (or spell casting time) - lowest goes first is great and it also allows you to much better space additional attacks although again that is not actually clearly stated, but we generally placed additional attacks at Weapon Speed increments.

The code of ethics made no difference to us at all as we never used any pregen content.
The 2e DMG is awful, but largely redundant so .. meh.
We continued to use 1e Magic item tables and the various spell lists from 1e Greyhawk in particular becuase of their Vancian colour

For me, all the goodness of 2e is the settings.

My OD&D is stripped down for speed and purpose so I can't imagine why
I'd return to 2e (or even 1e really). If I had a group that really wanted to play 2e, I'd probably lean them to Castles & Crusades instead.

I kind of like the default, Ren-Faire, humanocentric feel of 2e, with its attempt at making the setting more important, whether home-made or store-bought, and its down playing of the dungeon in favor of a whole-world "simulation". It can feel cheesy but was a viable approach at the time.

Quote from: Matt;829688To me a Pathfinder is a model of Nissan. Apparently it's a knockoff of one of the later versions of AD&D. Weird.

a word of warning anybody that tries to tell you pathfinder is backwards compatible with 3e is a filthy liar

Quote from: EOTB;8296473) The TSR Code of Ethics completely gutted swords and sorcery themes being used in the content, and turned the materials being published after the core set into Roleplaying Romances and Redemptions.  If you made all your own material then this was moot, but most of the 2E games I saw back then used TSR stuff.

oh wow

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;829615Its chief weakness is the DMG, which has a lot of useful stuff but you can read it front to back and have zero idea of how to run or prep a campaign. When I first started playing 2E, the GMs who still had the 1E material seemed a lot less confused about how to run a game. When I went and read the first edition DMG I saw why.

When 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.

Quote from: tuypo1;829711a word of warning anybody that tries to tell you pathfinder is backwards compatible with 3e is a filthy liar

If you say so. I find using Pathfinder stuff in my 3.5 game is no more difficult than using 1E stuff in me 2E campaign. (And I used the 1E Monster Manual for something like 5 years before finally getting a Monstrous Manual.)

Much like the 3.0 -> 3.5 transition, I find the only thing that actually causes problems at the table are the handful of skills which had their names changed.

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.

I 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.