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Somehow I skipped it, going straight from 1E to 3.5E, many years later.

Was it good? I’m familiar with the settings (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planesacape, etc) so there’s no need to go into those. I’m specifically looking for feedback concerning the system itself.

The style of play I’m interested in is low-level with the classic races and classes. Imagine one part Game of Thrones, one part Middle Earth, and a dash of Skyrim.

Are there any 2E retro-clones? A google search turned up “Myth and Magic” and “For Gold and Glory” but both of the websites are 404 (what happened there?)

At this point, I’m thinking of hacking Stars Without Number or using 3.5 E6. Is it worth finding a used copy of the 2E rules on Ebay? Is there a legal PDF for sale? Or should I look for another system?

Edit: By "another system" I'm specifically looking for an OSR retroclone, not Runequest, Gurps, Hero, etc.

The system is a very natural progression from 1e, largely just cleaned up and streamlined. I grew up playing with the 2e Player's Handbook and 1e DM's Guide. Ultimately they were about 90% compatible. The system was perhaps the best supported gameline of all time. The options were endless, but nothing was essential to the game beyond the core books. There was perhaps a greater focus on games taking place outside of dungeons than the previous games. Most of my issues with it in comparison to !e are aesthetic in nature (the game was essentially bowdlerized to distance itself from the Satanic Panic of the 80s).

There was, essentially, a "2.5 edition" later on, with the Players Option & Skills & Powers books. Id abandoned D&D by that point so never really explored them. The something-Handbook books were a mixed bag, some exceptional, most at least decent. Kits added a lot of flavour w/o bogging the game down in a hundred classes/prestige classes.

2e was "my" edition. As in, I played the shit out of it when it was live.
In fact, I lost a huge chunk of my rpg stuff in various moves, but have been replacing some stuff. And I bought a 2e PHB and DMG at my local gaming shop, used but in very good condition (glossy covers, little to no wear) for 8 buck apiece. I had to settle on the 2nd printing (black cover) Monstrous Manual tho, but the content aren't different, like the black cover PHB and DMG.
Anyway.

System. Uses THACO. I will probably convert it to ascending because it's super easy to do. Subtract THACO from 20, subtract AC from 20. Done.
6 saves instead of the three. non-weapon proficiencies are optional, but highly supported by the rulebooks, and not a tack-on. HP are very low, 1 dice at 1st level. Probably a good idea to let characters have the max possible instead of rolling the die at 1st level. And probably use some kind of "death's door" option.

The system can get pretty clunky if you include the brown cover options books. Piling on kits and psionics and crap. Just keep an eye on it and include them only if you're serious about using them.

I'm currently brewing up a 2nd ed campaign based on young adult fantasy, taking inspiration from Prydain Chronicles, The Hobbit, Dark Crystal, Willow, that kind of feel. Hopefully I'll get a group together soon to run it.

My personal opinion is that 2nd ed is the sweet spot for complexity, but like I said, that's probably because it was the edition I played the most.

More or less 1st edition but edited so things were in the right place and easier to find.  Added non-weapon specialization (skills, basically) from Oriental Adventures so you could customize your PC. Let thieves decide which skills to emphasize rather than all be the same at every level.  Allowed various schools of magic so you could specialize as a wizard. But if you knew 1st Ed., there was really nothing very different or new to learn.

Never seen or played 3rd+ so can't compare to those versions.

Myth and Magic I believe had pre-orders of a print version, then never delivered. Consequently everyone hates them.

2E 'core' is just a cleaned up 1E with stuff from all the supplements piled into the core - skills, weapon specializations, ability checks, higher level limits for demihumans. Core-only doesn't have the in-practice simplicity of 1E or the build madness of 2E, but is more customizeable than the former and more balanced than the latter. If you like huge piles of optional crap it totally has you covered as well (enough sourcebooks and you can build anything).

Disjointed, bland, finicky, and broken mostly.  I often joke that the people who wrote it obviously didn't play D&D.  Really, I'd point the finger at a corporate mandate over ruling the good judgement of otherwise good game designers.  It needed to clean up more things and not make new bloody messes in others.  Just like every other new edition of every other game.

Not that there weren't good bits in there but it didn't go far enough in some places and went too far in others.  My favorite iteration of D&D is XXVc. which is a science fiction variant that actually cleaned up many things in many places.

My big beefs are that they kept the first edition weapon damages while ditching the weapon verses armor table.  I'd prefer weapon damage by size and usage specific traits that give you a reason to use the weapons the way they were used but that's probably asking too much.  At least some pole arms did get a trip or snag ability if I remember right.

Longbows became insane super weapons (2d4 + Strength bonus twice a round in the most extreme case) and elves were simply better than everyone else (Infravision, +1 with long bows and longswords, silent movement and hiding bonuses.  Weapon speed was changed into an initiative modifier, I think that was an attempt at weapon balance but give me the 1e sequence any day.

Really, they at least needed to make all pole arms 1d12 damage, light crossbows 1d10, and heavy crossbows 1d12.  If you keep long bows at 1d6 they could be 1d8 and 1d10 though.

They probably should have given first level wizards bonus spells like clerics while they were at it.

Non-weapon proficiencies should have been stat % rather than d20 roll under.  You can do it the other way but personally I'd like the diminishing returns drop at higher levels somehow.

They should have thrown humans a bone.  Because it's really the game where nobody plays humans because they're just worse than everyone else.  Since they're single class traditionally in D&D I'd have given them a +1 to the most important thing in their class, to hit for fighters, to first level spells for magic-users and clerics (I'm always in favor of more spells for first level magic-users) +5% to one thieves ability (maybe pick pockets as many started out as street urchins).  Level limits and percentage experience bonuses should have been ditched out of hand.

For all that a singularly superior game to third or fourth edition.

Nobody ever played elves in my games...it was pretty humanocentric...thus the statement above is shown to be hyperbolic opinion.

In any case, if I were to play now I'd use 1st as I gave away 2nd in the mid-90s.

It's hyperbolic opinion that elves got +1 to hit with long bows and long swords, infravision, bonuses to hide in shadows and move silently and were able to play multiple classes at the same time?  While humans only got unlimited advancement at the point when the game system was only handing out a couple extra hp per level?  More spells for magic users sure but in second edition everyone else is basically maxed out by the time level limits kick in.

I'm not saying you weren't having fun.  But even without The Complete Book of Elves.  Elves were pretty broken.

Quote from: David Johansen;829544It's hyperbolic opinion that elves got +1 to hit with long bows and long swords, infravision, bonuses to hide in shadows and move silently and were able to play multiple classes at the same time?  While humans only got unlimited advancement at the point when the game system was only handing out a couple extra hp per level?  More spells for magic users sure but in second edition everyone else is basically maxed out by the time level limits kick in.

I'm not saying you weren't having fun.  But even without The Complete Book of Elves.  Elves were pretty broken.

But that is basically the same as 1e right.... especially if you use the UA level limits or try to actually work out a non gamist reason why they exist...

2e was a brave experiment that ultimately failed due to the pressures of fans.

The idea was to pare 1e back to a streamlined core system where emphasis was put on role play over mechanical variation.

This is most obvious in the class model. AD&D had boomed in terms of class mechanics with UA and with all the various psuedo offical Dragon magazine classes. 2e tried to strip this back to just 4 classes with all the subclasses and hybrids rolled out as options but they bottled it.
At the start 2e made the assertion that a barbarian was just a fighter from a less technological culture (norse, celtic, Mongol whatever) compared to the Euro medieval norm. They followed the same logic for ninja, samurai, illusionists, assassins, etc. And kits were added as a way of providing roleplay based detail without massive rules bloat.
However, they didn't have the courage to drop paladins, rangers or druids and later renaged on some of the progress they made.

The idea is excellent but fans want vast muber of classes all with their own mechanical variants so it was probably doomed.

Outside of this they did simplify and clean up the system and the organisation but its 95% AD&D.
THACO is just a way to remove the use of a look up table with a straight roll vs a target recorded on the players charcter sheet. Ascending AC is a much better fix for this.
It removed a load of stuff most people never used, weapon vs armour (faulted as it was expressed as AC not actual armour type), demi human level limits (make sense as a gamist way to promote humans as a the dominant species but make no sense either in play, where few groups progress to levels where the limits work, or in world building where immortal and naturally magical elves are limited in level to a human with 2 years adventuring experience), psionics, etc but never really did a good job of filling the gaps the lack of these rules opened up.

2e introduced the rule book treadmill that UA had hinted at with the Complete series. Now the early ones are great and differentiating classes based on roleplay not mechanics (early Kits get an extra weapon proficiency and a roleplay based reaction modifier or similar - a bit like backgrounds in 5e, but they don't get a whole new set of mechanics with different bells and whistles). Later ones got outof hand and made the error they were trying to fix, due tot eh demand of fans for new mechanics for certain classes.

2e finally jumped the shark with Skills and Powers, (aka 2.5e). A great idea with possibly the worst implementaion of any RPG idea in the history of stuff.


So +s
Kits
Thief skills
Priests (so much more sensible than AD&D Clerics)
Early focus on roleplay over more rules bloat

-s
Wasn't radical enough
Didn't tackle some of the Elephants that still litter the room today (from HP to class and racial balance and beyond)
Was eventually seduced by the Dark Side and commerical profit

I guess I agree with jibba.

2e is essentially "my" D&D. It's more or less a cleaned-up 1e that then expanded more or less uncontrolledly. I like kits, allthough some were unbalanced.

You can pick up the free Myth & Magic Starter kits on rpgnow and the pdf of the full Players Guides.  The printed PG book was finally shipped to almost all backers recently so there are physical copies floating around on the secondary market.  The full GMG art free pdf was released to backers.  I do not know if it is available to the general public.

As to For Gold & Glory the retroclone:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/justen-brown/for-gold-glory/ebook/product-21832476.html

Cheers

2e is the Williams era D&D and not the 2e that Gygax was working on before everything fell apart. That said. It was possibly a better approach than Gary's proposed retooling. But we will never know.  2e was the D&D game that I had a tiny little contribution to due to knowing various folk at TSR at the time.

The big boon was that it was 98% compatible with AD&D. Just some tweaks here and there like THAC0. Or cosmetic changes like renaming the outer planes beings. The other boon to players was that 2e gradually threw wide the doors to play more and more unusual races and the class/kit system allowed for customization without so much excess.

The 2e DMG also had the "Create your own class" rules. Which up till then only BX had enjoyed from the Dragon Magazine article.

Play-wise it played nearly exactly like AD&D. Spells, combat, monsters, etc. A little faster in some respects because there was slightly less mechanics to deal with.

The expansion books were exactly that. Not essential despite what some will to this day rant and cry. All sorts of options that could liven up gameplay. Or be totally ignored. Pretty much every class got a handbook.

This is also the edition where Psionics came to the fore and got vastly more fleshed out.

2e was great because it redid the Bard into an actual viable character class. One that retained its awesomeness through every edition since, except for 4E, which sucked on all levels.

Quote from: Aglondir;829508Was it good? I'm familiar with the settings (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planesacape, etc) so there's no need to go into those. I'm specifically looking for feedback concerning the system itself.

The 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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3959/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-the-shock-of-polymorph).)

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.

It is like magic and fairies and rainbows and gumdrops and dragons that'll actually kick all y'all's asses and unicorns...! It is my favoritezes edition everz!

It's filled with settings and ecologies and tour guides and needless histories and fanfic Mary Sue adventure logs and umpteen compendia of magic spells and pretty art with infinite aqua net hairspray and huge breaks from dungeons into paladins and princesses and bureaucracy and thieves guilds and math magic and playing a goblin in a reverse dungeon siege and tables and table and more tables!

It's my shiny. :o

im noticing a runing theme here of people basing a large part of there opinion on the high numbers of class options on both sides. You dont see that much for 3e although i suppose that falls under the standard wha i dont like new books with new content complaints.

Something i fell needs special mention is the going back on initial plans for clases, for 3e prestige classes were meant to be built around organisations or campaigns , this of course was prety much imidently abandoned and we are all the better for it. Thats not to say such prestige classes are bad but specialtys are also good.

The moment Classes stop being treated as Classes and start being treated as specialized occupations is the downfall of any edition of D&D.

90% like 1st edition AD&D, but stick to the three core books because practically all the rest is crap.

PS: the DMG was mostly inane stuff IMHO, probably the worst DMG in the history of D&D

Quote from: TristramEvans;829589The moment Classes stop being treated as Classes and start being treated as specialized occupations is the downfall of any edition of D&D.

Yeah. That's what kits, backgrounds, subclasses and so on Are for.

Quote from: Opaopajr;829584It is like magic and fairies and rainbows and gumdrops and dragons that'll actually kick all y'all's asses and unicorns...! It is my favoritezes edition everz!

It's filled with settings and ecologies and tour guides and needless histories and fanfic Mary Sue adventure logs and umpteen compendia of magic spells and pretty art with infinite aqua net hairspray and huge breaks from dungeons into paladins and princesses and bureaucracy and thieves guilds and math magic and playing a goblin in a reverse dungeon siege and tables and table and more tables!

It's my shiny. :o

Well put! :):cheerleader:

It only really went to poo after Player's Option or so. The earlier sourcebooks have heaps of good stuff.

Complete Fighter: kits, weapons, awesome rules for combat manuevers - trips, disarms, called shots. And yay rules for perception checks :)

Complete Wizard: the spells are mostly filler, but it has some excellent campaign material stuff in here, from wizard organisations to wizard diseases.

Complete Psionics: people love this or hate this, but its at least interesting. They balance psi better than 1E by making it a character class (a few characters still get 'wild talents', but more limited), and its substantially different to magic (unlike 3E, where you just get ectoplasm-flavoured fireballs).

Complete Thief: again, good campaign ideas and material. The kits are skills are pretty good, not too unbalanced here. Thief equipment is kinda interesting too.

Complete Priest: eeh its OK. Downpowers the cleric a bit, mostly RP stuff you didn't need.

Complete Bard: adds a whole new dimension to bards, since a bard kits switches out maybe half a core bard's class features or so, and sometimes allows different races or multiclass combinations.

Complete Ranger: mostly forgettable and meh (Rangers could already take fighter kits, for instance) although the 'demi-ranger' rules let you make halfling Explorers and such so are handy.

Complete Barbarian: superfluous and cheesy.

The race books are kind of where it starts to jump the shark, maybe you do want to avoid those, since that's where it suddenly becomes OK to add kits to multiclass characters (which had been helpful in balancing single- and multi-class characters previously), and since the power creep of those kits was way up (e.g. the Dwarf Champion for fighter/cleric or the Elf Bladesinger for fighter/mages).

Priest's Handbook is actually awesome, however the specialty priests do need some powering up but that's fairly easy to do.

For the Player's Options books, Combat & Tactics present better versions of the maneuver etc rules from Fighter's, and makes some Nice changes to weapons etc.

PO material really should've been labeled DM Eyes Only. That said — and trust me, I've built my share of twinkie munchkins from it — I think a lot of people overstate the issue. If you read thoroughly the caveats, and everyone in the party runs from the same bonkers pool of tools, it works itself out as a different game tone rather than broken. Nothing as egregious as I've seen from WotC.

For example, that Priest using Weapon Mastery with all those Class CP points? Only for one weapon ever, pre-selected at lvl 1, and only becomes available around lvl 5. All those other Class CPs (180)? They only roll over to NWPs, nowhere else. All those "unneeded" Major/Minor Spheres sacrificed? Yeah, that starts to hurt in higher levels.

If Birthright taught me anything it is that spells above 3rd are definitely some of the more eyebrow raising ones. Clever use of 1st thru 3rd, applause, but that higher stuff, wow. (And I'm one who is personally unimpressed with Stoneskin — pff, lasts a round if that, every attack strips a skin, successful or not — so keep that in mind when replying to me on that one.)

But it's all explicitly optional! Turn as much, or as little, of it on as you want. (And backhand the little rules lawyer snot who dares mewls otherwise.) Yay!

PS: The Weapons v. Armor table is blue box optional inside the 2e DMG. Yup, your old toys come back to play in 2e, if you want 'em. And in a handy, dandy cleaner reference format, too!
:p

The historical "green books" (eg.: Age of Heroes, A Mighty Fortress) are my favorite things to come out of 2e. I still look for them as reference material for whichever RPG I'm running.

I find them surprisingly well done. I mean, sure, Google and Wikipedia exist but it's really nice to have all that material in one book put together under the context of "gaming".

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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3959/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-the-shock-of-polymorph).)

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 agree. One of its chief strengths is the setting line.

Its 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.

I think part of it is they shifted a lot of that kind of content to the blue book line. There were a couple of key GM advice books in the blue books (I remember the Campaign Sourcebook and Cartography Guide being pretty useful, as was the guide to Villains). Once I had those, it was easier to get my footing as a new GM.

EDIT: That should read Campaign Source Book and Catacomb Guide.

2E?

Pretty much like AD&D without a soul.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;8296172E?

Pretty much like AD&D without a soul.

It traded it in for spirit!

"We got spirit, yes we do! We got spirit, how 'bout you!"
:cheerleader: :highkicks:

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;829615EDIT: That should read Campaign Source Book and Catacomb Guide.

aww you had me all excited about geography for a moment there

Some of my most favorite d&d memories are from 2e.  It's weird, there's things I love about the edition- streamlined, the kits- and things that drive me bonkers- the kits...

2e was probably the edition that got most played for us.  It was also a turning point edition for me personally.  It was the first time where characters started to feel more superheroic.

Quote from: tuypo1;829621aww you had me all excited about geography for a moment there

I think there was some stuff on geography in there (or it was in the Creative Campaigning book). There was also The Castle Guide, The Arms and Equipment Guide, The Complete Book of Villains, and Monster Mythology in that line.

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.  :D

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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3959/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-the-shock-of-polymorph).)

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 (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past.html) 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 (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past.html) 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 (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past.html) 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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/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.

Quote from: Opaopajr;829618It traded it in for spirit!

"We got spirit, yes we do! We got spirit, how 'bout you!"
:cheerleader: :highkicks:

Best. Response. Possible.

Quote from: The_Shadow;829701I 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.

Aesthetically, 2nd edition will always be "D&D" to me.

Quote from: The_Shadow;829701I 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.

I enjoy the aesthetic and the rem-faire vibe. I do think that they could have given more advice on dungeon making though.

Where 2E clicked for me was the Van Richten books with the monster hunts. Prior to that I was kind of floundering for adventure designs.

Some 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.

Quote from: jibbajibba;829695Tactics 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

To make comparing monster attacks easier, here's a breakdown that P&P had already done over on DF (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1522771#p1522771) (apologize for the formatting - I can't get the table to line up right regardless of what I do in the post)

THACO vs HD

MonsterHD  1E    2E   OSRIC    LL/AEC   S&W complete   OD&D   Holmes

1 HD           19     19     19          19         18                  19        19
1+ HD   18   19    18         18         18                  18        18
2 HD           16     19     18          18         17                  17        18
3 HD           16     17     17          17         16                  17        17
4 HD           15     17     16          16         15                  15        15
5 HD           15     15     15          15         14                  14        14

What constitutes a noticeable variance is subjective of course.  For me, the difference between 1E and 2E is wide enough that it matters.  In 2E, a Hobgoblin is better than an orc because of 1 extra hit point, but not really better in combat.  A lizard man or brigand's war dog is significantly better in 1E.  2E just felt...easier.  Less challenging in some ways.

In other ways 2E was harder.  In 1E, a non-intelligent creature made non-physical saves (spells, etc.) at half their actual hit dice.  

Our opinions on the worthiness of the 1E surprise rolls differs, but I stand by my experience that it changed the game in a big way.

You mention specialization - the way multiple attacks were done (1E if you had 3/2 attacks, your 2-attack round was round 1 and following odd rounds, in 2E it was round 2 and following even rounds) also made a big difference.  1E's rule about fighter-types with multiple attack routines automatically going first in a round was a difference maker.  Especially in sword-versus-spell situations.

Actually sword-verses-spell is probably a big part of where I think 2E's cumulative weight of changes made a lasting impact.  So many of those discarded rules actually helped fighters against spell casters.

Weapon Vs AC Type?  Look at the adjustments against AC Type 10.  M-Us were even glassier cannons in 1E.

Adding weapon speeds to initiative rolls?  Definitely hurt the fighter with the heavier weapons, as opposed to the M-Us that cast spells with a CT of 3 or less quite often.

All of this little stuff adds up to someone who is more of an adventure gamer than an RPGA-style roleplayer.  *To me* it feels like 1E and 2E are "mostly identical" in the same way that Britney Spears' cover of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was "mostly identical" to the Rolling Stones version, since it had the same lyrics and most of the notes.

I'd say the common wisdom that the games' rules are 90% identical is pretty close to correct.  For me, the problem is in that 10%, and also the non-rules stuff.  

The non-rules stuff includes things like writing style, tone, advice, feel, et cetera.  All very subjective, but it's a pretty common opinion that 2e's presentation is bland and lifeless compared to 1e, and also common for people to prefer the inclusion of advice on how to run a game, explore a dungeon, etc. that exists in 1e.

The rules differences tend to be less obvious, but where 2e made a change, I usually either found that change to be neither here nor there, or I found it to be detrimental.  For example, 2e changed the rules for initiative.  In 2e's favor, the rules are clearer than the mess of the 1e initiative rules, but I also find them less desirable since they introduced some side effects I don't like (specifically the way 2e handles casting times and weapon speeds and how that affects casting in melee).  I also didn't like the change to surprise.  And the list goes on.

Truth be told, I have a visceral rejection of 2e. I've tried to overcome it with reason ("...eh, 2e isn't that bad -- it's mostly 1e, just not as cool..."), but it's no use; I've come to embrace my dislike of 2e. I think I'd almost rather play 3e. And that's weird, because 2e is undeniably more like 1e than 3e is. But maybe that's the problem: it's the profanation of something good that so offends me. The fact that 2e is so similar to 1e makes that worse, not better. 2e is 1e with all the life and soul and vitality and beauty sucked out of it. You can still see 1e in there, sorta, and you can even trick yourself into thinking it's still alive. And it's not dead, but it's not alive, either. It's common, mindless undead. It's the soulless, reeking husk of real AD&D, shambling along in a sort of sick parody of the genuine article. Disgusting.

(IMO, of course... :))

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.

And this is why I tell people writing RPGs to put in a "What is an RPG" paragraph at the start and more importantly a "How to DM" section somewhere. Or at least lots of "how to" examples throughout.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;829731I'd say the common wisdom that the games' rules are 90% identical is pretty close to correct.  For me, the problem is in that 10%, and also the non-rules stuff.  

The non-rules stuff includes things like writing style, tone, advice, feel, et cetera.  All very subjective, but it's a pretty common opinion that 2e's presentation is bland and lifeless compared to 1e, and also common for people to prefer the inclusion of advice on how to run a game, explore a dungeon, etc. that exists in 1e.

The rules differences tend to be less obvious, but where 2e made a change, I usually either found that change to be neither here nor there, or I found it to be detrimental.  For example, 2e changed the rules for initiative.  In 2e's favor, the rules are clearer than the mess of the 1e initiative rules, but I also find them less desirable since they introduced some side effects I don't like (specifically the way 2e handles casting times and weapon speeds and how that affects casting in melee).  I also didn't like the change to surprise.  And the list goes on.

Truth be told, I have a visceral rejection of 2e. I've tried to overcome it with reason ("...eh, 2e isn't that bad -- it's mostly 1e, just not as cool..."), but it's no use; I've come to embrace my dislike of 2e. I think I'd almost rather play 3e. And that's weird, because 2e is undeniably more like 1e than 3e is. But maybe that's the problem: it's the profanation of something good that so offends me. The fact that 2e is so similar to 1e makes that worse, not better. 2e is 1e with all the life and soul and vitality and beauty sucked out of it. You can still see 1e in there, sorta, and you can even trick yourself into thinking it's still alive. And it's not dead, but it's not alive, either. It's common, mindless undead. It's the soulless, reeking husk of real AD&D, shambling along in a sort of sick parody of the genuine article. Disgusting.

(IMO, of course... :))

Ah, PJ.  I thought you had moved on to bigger and better things like OD&D?  Oh wait, I mean C&C...  :p

One of the great things about 2e was.

Options. Tons and tons and tons of options and more importantly. Ways to customize and personalize your character and class. 5e in some small ways harkens back to that. But could have gone hog wild like 2e.

People may malign Skills & Powers. But take a good look at it. TSR gave the players a huge toolbox to tinker, create and personalize races and classes endlessly.

Quote from: Teazia;829747Ah, PJ.  I thought you had moved on to bigger and better things...

These days, I basically run three games: Original D&D, AD&D (1e), and variations of BRP/RQ -- depends what I'm after.

Also, FWIW, my post up there should be taken with a big smiley and as being slathered with hyperbole.  I have my opinions and preferences (which have probably grown more defined over the years), but I don't mind there being a lot of different options and people liking different things.  It's all fun and games, after all.

Initiative in 2e is one of my favorite things about it, it is so easy and yet alternately flexible.

There's one core initiative for 2e and it is as easy as it can be, about Tunnels and Trolls easy:

GM quietly decides NPCs action beforehand (avoiding GM temptation to metagame). PCs declare their intended actions beforehand (avoiding PCs temptation to metagame). PCs roll a d10 for their side, opponents roll a d10 for their side and compare. (That's all the dice mechanics right there.) Repeat at the start of each round (thus Fog of War).

It is Group Initiative, Group Modifier. That's it.

The two optional methods are Group Initiative, Individual Modifier (it's almost as fast as the first one,) and Individual Initiative, Individual Modifier. That last one makes people groan because people often defaulted to it regardless, and it really works best in very small skirmishes and duels.

All three methods are readily available to switch up with the GM as they see fit — or hold fast to one only. And they are surprisingly fluid between them as long as you keep an eye to combat size. Even within a large battle shrinking down to a lone duel, it works the switch ups like a prize workhorse. After very many RPG systems, it's hard for me to find one that comes close to both that simplicity and optional flexibility.

Granted, like any toolbox, turn everything on all the time willy nilly and you're going to get system overload and crash. Seen it time and again. You need a focused GM to avoid letting the system options master them, I think.

Most of my formative gaming was with 2E. At the time, I enjoyed all the flexibility granted by the innumerable splats. By the time I got hold of it, I knew a little of what I was doing, so I never missed the "How to GM" section (the lack of it makes me think they knew they were selling to an audience familiar with earlier version, though this does not excuse not adding it). I found it a lot easier to navigate than AD&D. However, I'm not sure how easy I'd have found anything had I not come to 2E through B/X and 1E. Looking at the rules now, I find them just as big a turn off as I do 1E, but that's only because I'm into very simple systems now.

2e is the game that drove me to quit D&D for several years.  I started with it after kits were already well out, so core-only was never how I pictured 2e, although I can see that making for a very different game.  And kits, at least in the groups where I saw them in the wild as a new player, were in no possible light balanced against each other.  Victory went to the players with the widest selection of books to shop from, and who took the most care when doing so.

But, a consequence of that was that I never dove into the back end, so it's quite likely I'm missing some of what you could do with it in principle.

That's a good criticism, player mastery of optional material (including splats) can really snow over GMs and their tables. Not the only game to suffer that, but an easy one to notice it. Technically a user issue, especially due to how much text space was repeatedly dedicated to stating "GMs, this is your game, check first before allowing it," but such a recurring one that it makes a strong argument against toolboxes in general.

The 'less is more' aesthetic really has a corollary grasp on the human capacity limits to accessorizing.

Quote from: Opaopajr;829771Not the only game to suffer that...

Oh, 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 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 (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/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 (http://theangrygm.com/every-adventures-a-dungeon/), 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!

Quote from: Haffrung;8298302E 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.

Wholeheartedly agree with this. I felt like that was implied by the supporting materials.

Your commentary of 3/4E seems accurate--the dungeon is less of a holistic environment, and more of a series of linear, linked pieces (especially in the case of 4E, which I felt was something of a "mission-based" system). This, too, seems to be result of how the system is presented, same as 2E. Pretty sure some will assert you can dungeoncrawl with 4E just as easily as any of the others. I can't, because I didn't play it long enough to justify a comparison.

Quote from: Aos;829845Many people rejoiced at the release of 2e; hobos, felons and escaped mental patients had a game of their own, at last.

I thought that was Shadowrun.

JG

Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

I think 2E is better written than 1E and would rather play or run it. However, if you already own 1E but don't own 2E, I don't see a reason you can't run the type of campaign you mentioned in your post with your 1E books.

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

The issue is many of us were just GMing for the first time when 2E came out, so we had no point of reference or road map. A seasoned GM doesn't need the DMG to tell him or her what to do. Someone who has just started running adventures, needs some kind of advice there. I loved 2E, but the DMG was sorely lacking in that respect.

Even if you are running FG&G or M&M as 2e simulacrums (or even OSRIC), Its still worthwhile to pick up a copy of the 2e Monstrous Manual.  Its probably the best 2e book (along with the collected Spells/Magic Items/Van Richten Guides and the Complete Necromancer) and the best 2e core book.  The Simulacrums do not have the depth or breadth in monster selection.

The 2e MM was available for >$10 shipped on Fleabay in the past, not sure about prices now.  Note that the cloth binding in the book fails, but the stitched packets are very durable.  One can PVA/Elmer glue the entire block of the book to the spine if need be.

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

I guess we've gotta ask OG about that...

It's interesting how only now (or in the last 3-4 years) there's a modest reappraisal of 2e. For a long time it was the edition that everyone agreed to ignore. Which was always stupid, as it's a perfectly functional edition.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;829782But 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 can see that, actually.  I'm reminded I played in a 3e Greyhawk game up until about 5th or 6th level (people were just starting to ask the GM about prestige classes), when the GM said **** it and went back to AD&D (1e in this case I think).  It was a fun game!  And I think not having every possible character concept open to players as a fully supported mechanical choice helps with world building and flavor.

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

Book 3 of the original brown (later white) box D&D gave a lot of information about how to run the game (designing dungeons, running dungeons, running wilderness exploration). It may not have been written up in the user-friendly form that later gamers came to expect but the information was there -- the GM was not expected to already know it.

Quote from: Matt;829822Folks like the incoherent mess that is Gary Gygax's writing...leaves that much more open to interpretation!

It is not incoherent actually. Its just tons of data you might or might use at some point but might never. Which was the point. The organization is actually fairly straightforward. One topic tends to flow into another, building on what has been shown up till then.

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

Nice try. But you failed miserably your spot check. Lets see, a 69: Roll every die within 30 feet for wandering damage.

What was said was that the DMG was useful for garnering ideas on HOW to DM when you know jack nothing at all. And it was useful for generating ideas on the fly when you are stumped or just want to do something totally random and roll with it.

Another thing the DMG does is it allows for simple dungeon and hex crawl solo and DM-less play.

Here is a starting area map generated using the 1e DMG

(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2037004_md.png)

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

I learned without a DMG. The Holmes basic book is incredibly evocative, but it's terrible at teaching you how to actually run (or even play) D&D. So I backwards engineered how to create a dungeon based on the sample dungeon in the book, and on B1 that came in the boxed set. Add the imagination of a 10-year-old and Bob's your uncle.

It does seem odd that people who learned from the 1E DMG should be upset that people who tried to learn from the 2E DMG might have had a tougher time. But expressing vicarious disappointment on behalf of others is a time-honoured tactic of edition warriors.

Quote from: Haffrung;830008I learned without a DMG. The Holmes basic book is incredibly evocative, but it's terrible at teaching you how to actually run (or even play) D&D. So I backwards engineered how to create a dungeon based on the sample dungeon in the book, and on B1 that came in the boxed set. Add the imagination of a 10-year-old and Bob's your uncle.

It does seem odd that people who learned from the 1E DMG should be upset that people who tried to learn from the 2E DMG might have had a tougher time. But expressing vicarious disappointment on behalf of others is a time-honoured tactic of edition warriors.

In practice what I saw was a lot of failed experiments from people the first few years of play. Eventually folks in my group cobbled together an understanding of how to run a game (pieced from various sources that included 1E material and the blue books). But I knew a guy who literally tried to map out every square inch of his campaign world in a way that was completely ungameable (and I mean every square inch). He just didn't know what to do and he misunderstood something one of the books seemed to be suggesting (the guy had stacks of maps but nothing to tie them together). He figured out the problem and found a way to run several long term successful campaigns. But those first few outings when people didn't know what they were doing were brutal sometimes.

Quote from: Haffrung;830008I learned without a DMG. The Holmes basic book is incredibly evocative, but it's terrible at teaching you how to actually run (or even play) D&D. So I backwards engineered how to create a dungeon based on the sample dungeon in the book, and on B1 that came in the boxed set. Add the imagination of a 10-year-old and Bob's your uncle.

It does seem odd that people who learned from the 1E DMG should be upset that people who tried to learn from the 2E DMG might have had a tougher time. But expressing vicarious disappointment on behalf of others is a time-honoured tactic of edition warriors.

Yeah, Holmes and the B/X books was where I first learned to DM. I played with just those as rulebooks for 3 years before getting the AD&D set. The 1E DMG had a ton of useful extra stuff, but nothing critical to designing and running adventures that I didn't already have from B/X.

There is seriously a LOT of awesome, how to create adventure stuff in Moldvay and in very few pages. I still think its the best bang for the page count of any single D&D rulebook.

Quote from: Haffrung;830008I learned without a DMG. The Holmes basic book is incredibly evocative, but it's terrible at teaching you how to actually run (or even play) D&D. So I backwards engineered how to create a dungeon based on the sample dungeon in the book, and on B1 that came in the boxed set. Add the imagination of a 10-year-old and Bob's your uncle.

Um... Apparently you missed the fact that B1 (And B2 as well) starts off with about 4 pages of "How to DM" pointers and advice.

QuoteBeginning Dungeon Masters who are not familiar with the game often ask the most common first question, "Exactly how do you referee the game?" The answer is that there is no single best way - different DM's have different styles, just as individual players do. However, there are certain guidelines which are important to follow . . .

QuoteFirst, it is crucial to keep in mind that this is a game based on player interaction and player choice. The game generally follows the course of the player's actions—if not always their plans! As moderator, you present an ever-changing situation as it occurs (sort of like an unfolding story, or even a movie, if you like to think in those terms), and the players respond pretty much as they desire.

QuoteSecond, a good DM remains "above the battle" and does not attempt to influence player actions or channel the activity in a particular direction. The Dungeon Master should do everything possible to assist players in their quest without actually providing important information unless the players themselves discover it or put the pieces of a puzzling problem together through deduction or questioning, or a combination of the two.

And so on before even getting to the modules background.

The back of the module has DM tools for making NPCs.

2E is absolutely intended to have a different playstyle to 1E. Character and story vs. high-lethality dungeon-based. You could blame in on "Zeb" Cook being part drama major as well as a wargamer and the influence of stuff like e.g. Dragonlance, or just that D&D at the time was THE roleplaying game - so it had to cater to not just the people who were enthralled by Gygax's vision of what RPGs were, but also function as a generic fantasy game for people who typically came to fantasy via a background of fantasy novels and/or movies and who wanted something like that. In practice it also made an attempt to cater to the rules lawyer crowd in the supplements, despite the disavowals of this in the original core books (Zeb may have written the PHB, but he's really a minority opinion, as evidenced by how many 18s your average FR NPC has).

I'm doubting 2E will ever have a major revival since TBH unlike AD&D, its rules never quite synched up with what it wanted to do. The people who liked it at the time, if they're not off having families or otherwise have quit gaming, are diaspora'd into any number of other systems from 3E to GURPS to story-games, or in the patched-up 'big tent' that is 5E.

Quote from: jgants;829850The 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.

The Monstrous Compendium was the loose leaf version. A neat idea, but not very practical. I remember putting those page reinforcement things on each sheet to keep them from tearing, and doubling the thickness of the pages where they met the binder! :eek:

The Monstrous Manual was in the conventional book format, when TSR realized the Compendium system wasn't working out so well.

QuoteSetting-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.

The settings were the gold. One could use another system nowadays, but back then, there was no OGL and no retroclones. And for me, since I'm quite comfortable with 2e, I don't even need a retroclone. Just a few houserules.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830149The Monstrous Compendium was the loose leaf version. A neat idea, but not very practical.

You know, I actually think the concept was immensely practical. The execution, however, was poor. It was hampered by poor quality paper whose holes tore through, and poor planning in terms of what monsters appeared where, such that, not long after release, you couldn't add new creatures without some of them being out of order.

I've redone a similar binder off my laser printer on high-quality paper, and it's extremely useful at the table.

EDIT: Like many others in this thread, I also did my heaviest stint of playing during AD&D 2nd, and there was a lot to recommend it as an edition: the PHB, the Monstrous Manual, the Player's Handbook Reference line, the Dungeon Master's Reference line (several of which should've actually constituted the otherwise lousy 2nd edition DMG), the Historical Reference line, and, of course, the capstone of the edition, the settings! There was serious gold in a lot of the setting material that was published.

Even in an area where AD&D 2nd edition sucked compared to BECMI and AD&D, modules, there were still some gems: Night Below, Dead Gods, the Gates of Firestorm Peak, City of Skulls, Night of the Walking Dead, Under a Dark Fist... yeah, a high proportion were junk, but not all.

Back in the day, I bought some of those hole-punch reinforcements and put those on all the pages.  More recently, I bought sheet protectors and put all the pages in those.

I recommend the sheet protector route.  It saves wear and tear on the pages themselves and also prevents wear to the binder rings.  If you want to use a page, you just slip it out of the sheet protector.

After years of use, the bound book version is nicer on the shelf and looks neater, but the looseleaf binder version is much more useful to running a prepared game.

Quote from: Bobloblah;830256You know, I actually think the concept was immensely practical. The execution, however, was poor.

I've always thought a three-ring binder monster "book" could work very well.  I'd make it 5.5" x 8.5", instead of the larger size.  And I'd enforce the "one monster per page" rule, with one page being a double-sided page.  For most monsters, one side of the page would be full-sized art, and the other side would be stats and description.  If you enforced that "one double sided page per monster entry" rule, there wouldn't be any issue with inserting monster entries into the proper place, using whatever organizational approach you prefer.

Quote...a high proportion were junk, but not all.

The 2e-era products that I found worthwhile included some of the green HR books (especially the earlier ones like Vikings and Celts) and the Return to the Tomb of Horrors, which wasn't bad at all (and included a reproduction of the original monochrome module).

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;830275I've always thought a three-ring binder monster "book" could work very well.  I'd make it 5.5" x 8.5", instead of the larger size.  And I'd enforce the "one monster per page" rule, with one page being a double-sided page.  For most monsters, one side of the page would be full-sized art, and the other side would be stats and description.

Lol, reminds me a bit of the old Safari Cards:)  Actually, a rolodex of monsters would be pretty cool.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;829882The issue is many of us were just GMing for the first time when 2E came out, so we had no point of reference or road map. A seasoned GM doesn't need the DMG to tell him or her what to do. Someone who has just started running adventures, needs some kind of advice there. I loved 2E, but the DMG was sorely lacking in that respect.

I was introduced to AD&D through 2E and the DMG helped me learn to run a game. I was introduced via First Quest and picked up the black books and never had an issue learning to run the game.

Quote from: Ulairi;830287I was introduced to AD&D through 2E and the DMG helped me learn to run a game. I was introduced via First Quest and picked up the black books and never had an issue learning to run the game.

I am sure plenty of people found the 2E DMG perfectly fine. I'm sure some people just got it for whatever reason or didn't need very basic aspects of roleplaying explained to them. I just remember struggling my first couple of years GMing and when I went back and re-read the 2E DMG, it was pretty obvious why it was (it was just missing a long content you would expect it to contain on the fundamentals----like what a campaign is, how to create a setting, how to deal with particular adventure structures, etc). And my experience as far from unique at the time. There was still a lot of good stuff in there if you already knew the basics (all kinds of stuff on encounter, npcs, etc). Again, I love 2E, but I have no illusions about the DMG. the 1E and 3E DMGs are much better at giving new GMs something to hang their hat on in my view.

Now once I picked up the blue books I was fine.

Quote from: Omega;830015Um... Apparently you missed the fact that B1 (And B2 as well) starts off with about 4 pages of "How to DM" pointers and advice.

And so on before even getting to the modules background.

The back of the module has DM tools for making NPCs.

Yes, it had general advice. But so did the 2E DMG, and every other DM book released for every edition of the game. Compared to the 1E DMG (which is what the discussion was about), the Holmes Basic book offered very little practical content for a new DM to use to move forward with the game after playing out the sample adventure and B1. Almost nothing about designing dungeons, creating settlements, or creating campaigns. As a guide for someone completely new to DMing D&D, the Holmes Basic was probably the worst starting point. If you have a better candidate for worst, I'd like to hear it.

Quote from: Bobloblah;830256You know, I actually think the concept was immensely practical. The execution, however, was poor. It was hampered by poor quality paper whose holes tore through, and poor planning in terms of what monsters appeared where, such that, not long after release, you couldn't add new creatures without some of them being out of order.

I've redone a similar binder off my laser printer on high-quality paper, and it's extremely useful at the table.

If the monsters had been done 1 per physical page and on slightly better paper it would have been really awesome.

Quote from: Bobloblah;830256Even in an area where AD&D 2nd edition sucked compared to BECMI and AD&D, modules, there were still some gems: Night Below, Dead Gods, the Gates of Firestorm Peak, City of Skulls, Night of the Walking Dead, Under a Dark Fist... yeah, a high proportion were junk, but not all.

I stopped buying modules about the time the Dragonlance modules came out. (It was not a coincidence) I've been thinking about getting some of the 2nd ed modules, but they just don't get the review attention as the 1st ed stuff. (For good reason, I think.)

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830289I am sure plenty of people found the 2E DMG perfectly fine. I'm sure some people just got it for whatever reason or didn't need very basic aspects of roleplaying explained to them. I just remember struggling my first couple of years GMing and when I went back and re-read the 2E DMG, it was pretty obvious why it was (it was just missing a long content you would expect it to contain on the fundamentals----like what a campaign is, how to create a setting, how to deal with particular adventure structures, etc). And my experience as far from unique at the time. There was still a lot of good stuff in there if you already knew the basics (all kinds of stuff on encounter, npcs, etc). Again, I love 2E, but I have no illusions about the DMG. the 1E and 3E DMGs are much better at giving new GMs something to hang their hat on in my view.

Now once I picked up the blue books I was fine.

I 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.

I actually think B/X and BEC of BECMI were probably the best in terms of teaching you how to actually run (and play) the game. The AD&D DMG was a great resource, but Gygax was a lousy writer, all those who fell in love with his prose notwithstanding.

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.

My reaction couldn't be more opposite from this. It is pretty subjective though (though I think it is unfair to say its just a bunch of encounter tables and random dungeon rules, there is a lot more to it than just those things). But for me the 1E DMG was incredibly eye opening once I read the thing. It is geared more towards dungeons and exploration, creating and mapping  a campaign setting. I find if you read the whole thing, it is pretty useful for those things (it won't give you adventures structured around encounters like the 3E DMG does, but that wasn't one of its goals). What I would have liked to see in the 2E DMG, since there were other approaches to adventure structure emerging, was an overview that included how to do the stuff in the 1E DMG but also showed how to do the stuff they hinted at in the 2E DMG. As it was, there really wasn't much of anything. You could read it and have no idea what a campaign is, or how to go about designing a and mapping a setting.

The key for me is being specific about adventure prep and adventure structure is so helpful for many of us. I may be an outlier, but I really need to understand each step of the process before I feel comfortable and I like fairly explicit instructions, guidelines and advice. Adventure structure too is very important. By adventure structure I don't mean, module structure. I mean how you put the thing together and run it. So the advice from the 1E DMG for me would address exploration adventure structure. I felt with the 2E DMG there was a lot of specific advice for aspects of play but nothing to tie it all together for me (whereas the 1E DMG tied it all together, I read that and felt like I could easily prep and run an adventure in the style it talks about). Even if it hadn't been the same as the 1E style of play, if it at least said, here is how you build a setting and adventures for the kind of play we are talking about, that would have been fine. I just really needed something to hang my hat on as a GM, some guideline for getting a campaign off the ground (I did eventually find it in the blue books).

Quote from: Bobloblah;830335I actually think B/X and BEC of BECMI were probably the best in terms of teaching you how to actually run (and play) the game. The AD&D DMG was a great resource, but Gygax was a lousy writer, all those who fell in love with his prose notwithstanding.

I like the white box. But this is also a case where it very specifically and simply covers the basics. I would even agree that it is probably better in a lot of ways than the 1E DMG because it really gets into the nuts and bolt basics. If you read the 1E DMG or the white box, they both are useful to someone who has never gamed before. When you read the 2E DMG, it feels like it carries a lot of assumptions that it never gets into (like it was written for people who already read the 1E DMG).

Quote from: Matt;829872Amazing how many RPGers need the DMG to tell them how to play D&D the right way.  Wonder what they did before there was a DMG...sit in a room and roll up characters and then go home?

OD&D included a lot of specific instructions for how to run a campaign.

If you're asking how people played D&D before OD&D was published, the answer is: They were playing with the people who invented the game.

It does carry assumptions. By 1989 in the USA you'd have to have been very sheltered to not know about D&D and RPGs in general. And by then video game RPGs were becoming old hat, with already distinctive schools of structure (JRPG v. USARPG -- or linear v. sandbox). Remember, that's the year Phantasy Star II was released on the Genesis/Mega Drive, 16-bit was well on its way. Might & Magic II was already out, as were Bard's Tale, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Wizardry, Ultima, Y's...

Such structures and their variety were seemingly ubiquitous. Well, at least to me and my neck of the woods (and note, I came back to the States back in 1985 from a literal wasteland). What served me far more at that time was getting the game out of the dungeon and personalizing the world. Dungeons were not special or new or motivating to me and my peers at this time — video games already did it better than most pre-teen sucky GMs, and they managed the bookkeeping, too.

That meant focusing on things like aesthetics, i.e. on spell books or potions, or a discussion on how different levels of setting magic will change gameplay. Ideas about the verisimilitude and logic behind taxes and functioning societies helped think about setting first (versus the OOC game perspective of "make 'em lose loot before they power up too fast and 'beat' the game, besides that's what adventurers do."). A frank discussion on what makes an encounter (hint: a meaningful challenge, not necessarily gold or gore) and how combat and loot are not the "end all, be all"; the sheer XP options alone unfettered my game from the already stale structure of "off to the next room to grind some more!"

With that context, I ended up not missing anything in the 2e DMG. It served my time to my needs in an era already becoming jaded to routine. When I came back to 1e DMG and its delightful purple prose as an adult it was enlightening in some respects. But it was mostly for the passion, not for some old hat game structures that I grew up saturated in.

Kids may have missed a lot of backstory along the way, but remember, they grow up saturated as a product of their time. It's the reason why they end up fixing the smart phone, tablets, and smart TVs. (Or in my age, opening the child-proof medicine bottles and programing the VCR.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;830365It does carry assumptions. By 1989 in the USA you'd have to have been very sheltered to not know about D&D and RPGs in general. And by then video game RPGs were becoming old hat, with already distinctive schools of structure (JRPG v. USARPG -- or linear v. sandbox). Remember, that's the year Phantasy Star II was released on the Genesis/Mega Drive, 16-bit was well on its way. Might & Magic II was already out, as were Bard's Tale, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Wizardry, Ultima, Y's...

Such structures and their variety were seemingly ubiquitous. Well, at least to me and my neck of the woods (and note, I came back to the States back in 1985 from a literal wasteland). What served me far more at that time was getting the game out of the dungeon and personalizing the world. Dungeons were not special or new or motivating to me and my peers at this time — video games already did it better than most pre-teen sucky GMs, and they managed the bookkeeping, too.

That meant focusing on things like aesthetics, i.e. on spell books or potions, or a discussion on how different levels of setting magic will change gameplay. Ideas about the verisimilitude and logic behind taxes and functioning societies helped think about setting first (versus the OOC game perspective of "make 'em lose loot before they power up too fast and 'beat' the game, besides that's what adventurers do."). A frank discussion on what makes an encounter (hint: a meaningful challenge, not necessarily gold or gore) and how combat and loot are not the "end all, be all"; the sheer XP options alone unfettered my game from the already stale structure of "off to the next room to grind some more!"

With that context, I ended up not missing anything in the 2e DMG. It served my time to my needs in an era already becoming jaded to routine. When I came back to 1e DMG and its delightful purple prose as an adult it was enlightening in some respects. But it was mostly for the passion, not for some old hat game structures that I grew up saturated in.

Kids may have missed a lot of backstory along the way, but remember, they grow up saturated as a product of their time. It's the reason why they end up fixing the smart phone, tablets, and smart TVs. (Or in my age, opening the child-proof medicine bottles and programing the VCR.)

My experience was very different from yours. Yes, we were all aware of D&D by the time 2E came out but that awareness didn't impart a knowledge about how to run or manage a game. I started playing in 1986, but was quite young and absorbed very little of the formal rules. When 2E came out, me and a group of friends became very serious about playing, but we were all going on very vague notions of how games were supposed to be run. Granted there was something in the air, but for us at that age, it didn't really translate into anything meaningful. So when I started running my own games, I was really searching all over for how to structure the things and how to organize my prep. I eventually did arrive at something that worked for me based on what I was able to glean from the blue books, various modules, dungeon, dragon and what other people in my group were trying at the time. My point about something like the 1E DMG is it is very specific in terms of offering up a blue print. That may have been old hat for you at the time, it may not have been the only way to run a game, but at least it was something.

I'm not saying the 1E DMG has all the answers. I am saying the 1E and 3E DMGs were good at helping people just taking on the responsibilities of GMing for the first time, while the 2E DMG wasn't. And again I say this as someone who would rather play 2e. But that book had noticeable gaps that you really can't assume new players coming to the hobby (or just new GMs) are going to have.

I still remember my significantly older brother trying to run me through 1e once I showed interest in RPGs. He's of peer age to everyone here whose childhood was affected by OD&D. First thing he did was start me at the entrance of the dungeon and the lure of treasure, and danger!, below — first thing I said was I go back outside, seal it up, and go back to town.

It's still my go to response when thrown mise en scene into a dungeon. Certain structures carry no magic anymore for plenty of people. 2e DMG helped me bring the logic of setting magic back, the reason to play in the first place back. You have to sell the wanting to do something, and then follow its own logical creation, before you bother with the manner of execution.

For me, even young, it was Inspiration>Realization>Execution. I can forgive a lot in execution. I can tolerate some incoherence. I cannot forgive uninspired. I wasn't alone in that.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830371I still remember my significantly older brother trying to run me through 1e once I showed interest in RPGs. He's of peer age to everyone here whose childhood was affected by OD&D. First thing he did was start me at the entrance of the dungeon and the lure of treasure, and danger!, below — first thing I said was I go back outside, seal it up, and go back to town.

It's still my go to response when thrown mise en scene into a dungeon. Certain structures carry no magic anymore for plenty of people. 2e DMG helped me bring the logic of setting magic back, the reason to play in the first place back. You have to sell the wanting to do something, and then follow its own logical creation, before you bother with the manner of execution.

For me, even young, it was Inspiration>Realization>Execution. I can forgive a lot in execution. I can tolerate some incoherence. I cannot forgive uninspired. I wasn't alone in that.

I am not trying to defend the dungeon as the one true way. If you like adventuring in the city and don't like dungeons, that is cool (I am generally more inclined toward intrigue and investigations than dungeons myself). But what new GMs need is guidance on how to prepare, structure adventures, etc. I don't feel the 2E DMG succeeded in supplying any starting structure to help the new GM. This wouldn't have had to have been a repeat of the 1E DMG. It could have just been an overview of the different adventure structures and styles at the time, with some advice on realizing them. All I am saying is you can read through the 2E DMG and not find any information on the nuts and bolts of world building, adventure design, etc. That is a big shortcoming in my view. I won't deny it has some really great tools in it. It isn't a bad book. I just think the DMG for dungeons and dragons needs to have some basic information so new GMs know what their options are (and while dungeons are not for everyone, I think given the game's association with them, expecting some basic info on dungeon building is reasonable).

I have no opinion on the 2e DMG. Nothing about it left much of an impression. But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

Quote from: Haffrung;830292As a guide for someone completely new to DMing D&D, the Holmes Basic was probably the worst starting point. If you have a better candidate for worst, I'd like to hear it.

2e Gamma World. Its got alot of great advice. But its mostly mechanical. Whereas the B/BX advice is mostly personal. TSR should have played up that the two really compliment eachother.

Quote from: TristramEvans;830376I have no opinion on the 2e DMG. Nothing about it left much of an impression. But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

What parts? 1e's DMG while sometimes overly verbose. Did not seem to have anything gratuitous? At worst they hawk their own wares in it. But even that is only in like 3 spots. Minis, Modules, and I think the Geomorphs?

Quote from: TristramEvans;830376I have no opinion on the 2e DMG. Nothing about it left much of an impression. But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

As a rules reference at the table, yes it is. As a resource for campaign and adventure prep, it is a treasure.

Quote from: TristramEvans;830376I have no opinion on the 2e DMG. Nothing about it left much of an impression. But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

As much as I enjoy 1e DMG, I readily admit that its exaltation is gratuitous to me as well. I also have a similar opinion when I finally got my chance to sit and read CoC d20 DMG. It seemed like obvious advice to me, in the same way the "what is a role playing game, and what are these funny things we roll called dice?" chapter.

Maybe I read too much, or played too many video games, or heeded my art teachers, or aided by eclectic tastes... Whatever it is, I have a very hard time stripping myself down to that Ur-state to empathize where it all seems foreign and new. It feels to me like technical writing on not even how to make a sandwich but how to hold it, bite it, and chew. There's a lot of received knowledge there that I don't even bother challenging because it seems apparent.

That's my personal empathetic failing, I know (and I try really hard nowadays to be nicer). I can only trust what another's experience is unquestioningly. But, I also have to be honest, I slip into being that smart-ass kid that looks askance at other peers who aren't getting (what I feel are) the basics.
:(

Dungeon Magazine was where the good 2e adventures were.  There are several threads here and there on this topic.  Great stuff!

Quote from: TristramEvans;830376I have no opinion on the 2e DMG. Nothing about it left much of an impression. But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

I own it for purely historical value. And whimsy: there's some quirky and funny stuff in there.

Quote from: TristramEvans;830376But I've never understood the gratuitous exaltation in some corners for the 1e DMG. Its pretty crappy.

This comment reads like one of those bad film critiques of Star Wars (https://books.google.com/books?id=QuQCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA71&dq=%22george+lucas%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OO_FVLH3EonyoATh2IG4DA&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAjge#v=onepage&q&f=false)...1st edition DMG is the best RPG book ever, sorry.

Quote from: Brad;830466This comment reads like one of those bad film critiques of Star Wars (https://books.google.com/books?id=QuQCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA71&dq=%22george+lucas%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OO_FVLH3EonyoATh2IG4DA&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAjge#v=onepage&q&f=false)...1st edition DMG is the best RPG book ever, sorry.

Gord the Rogue is a better RPG book than Gygax DMG. But seriously, there are at least a dozen better RPG books on my shelf at the moment. DMG at best is a on inspirational mess of poorly edited stream of consciousness with the occasional $40 word thrown in as Gygax tries to make himself sound intellectual while discussing elves and hobbits.

The genius of the writing in 1e is that it mirrors the writing in bad fantasy fiction.  It's genre emulation pure and simple.  Gary gets out there and tells fourteen year old geeks that they're smart and imaginative and then gives them a book that scratches that corner of their ego.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830374I am not trying to defend the dungeon as the one true way. If you like adventuring in the city and don't like dungeons, that is cool (I am generally more inclined toward intrigue and investigations than dungeons myself). But what new GMs need is guidance on how to prepare, structure adventures, etc. I don't feel the 2E DMG succeeded in supplying any starting structure to help the new GM. This wouldn't have had to have been a repeat of the 1E DMG. It could have just been an overview of the different adventure structures and styles at the time, with some advice on realizing them. All I am saying is you can read through the 2E DMG and not find any information on the nuts and bolts of world building, adventure design, etc. That is a big shortcoming in my view. I won't deny it has some really great tools in it. It isn't a bad book. I just think the DMG for dungeons and dragons needs to have some basic information so new GMs know what their options are (and while dungeons are not for everyone, I think given the game's association with them, expecting some basic info on dungeon building is reasonable).

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Quote from: Matt;830467DMG at best is a on inspirational mess of poorly edited stream of consciousness with the occasional $40 word thrown in as Gygax tries to make himself sound intellectual while discussing elves and hobbits.

"Inspirational"

What's more important for an RPG book than that?

How 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.

At the time of 2e I think there was already a widespread, explicit rejection of dungeons as being "hack and slash", but the only widespread idea that people had to replace them was the railroaded adventure. This in spite of the fact that what we would call sandbox tools were already available. I can't explain that other than to suggest it may have been related to the marketing of "modules", which were rarely substantial enough to support a sandbox. You need more of a regional focus for that. (I don't know how the settings for 2e were presented in relation to the modules.)

From reading this thread, since I was way outside the D&D mainstream at the time, I wonder if the lack of adventure prep and campaign management advice was in any way related to a belief that groups should or would be dependent on published adventures.

Quote from: Brad;830477"Inspirational"

What's more important for an RPG book than that?

Coherence

Quote from: Matt;830496Coherence

Although unintentional, I find the sections of the DMG that needed better editing (like initiative) to be feature, not bug.  Since every DM immediately had to make their first command decision about how to handle that, everyone immediately become accustomed to making command decisions.  And no group handled things exactly the same.  Again, feature, not bug.  

I love "what exactly is the DMG saying here, and what was EGG's intent?" discussions as much as the next guy - participate in them all the time.  But that's a related activity to RPG playing, not integral to playing RPGs.

I know that so many people still in the RPG hobby are drawn to the idea of crisp uniformity, where all the players know exactly how things will be handled because the game is written like a programming manual, and in theory the basic guts of the game are the same everywhere.  

Let them have it.  I want my 1E DMG that inspires me to sit down and do the prep for the sandbox campaign.  The programming manual simply fails in that regard, for me.

And the 2E DMG neither inspired me to create my own work, nor produced a crisp game.  It really was the laodicean edition.  Although TSR did pump out a lot of product so that people wouldn't have to create their own work.  So, I guess it was true to itself in that regard.

Quote from: Arminius;830494At the time of 2e I think there was already a widespread, explicit rejection of dungeons as being "hack and slash", but the only widespread idea that people had to replace them was the railroaded adventure. This in spite of the fact that what we would call sandbox tools were already available. I can't explain that other than to suggest it may have been related to the marketing of "modules", which were rarely substantial enough to support a sandbox. You need more of a regional focus for that. (I don't know how the settings for 2e were presented in relation to the modules.)

From reading this thread, since I was way outside the D&D mainstream at the time, I wonder if the lack of adventure prep and campaign management advice was in any way related to a belief that groups should or would be dependent on published adventures.

I can only speak for my gaming group but I didn't encounter any kind of hostility to the dungeon itself. What I encountered were a bunch of different people (myself included) basically trained under very different GMs, who then went about cobbling our own style together based on what our respective preferred lines were (so I was really into ravenloft and that affected a lot of how I ran games, but another friend of mine used a combo of 1E and 2E books--not out of preference but because those are simply what he had at the time) and was much more into running exploration type games. I didn't really get a sense of judgment in our group until after white wolf got huge and a lot of the TSR material seemed to change tone (though it is possible I am misremembering).

Modules did end up being an important tool for us. I basically modeled by first few campaigns on Feast of Goblyns and other modules like that.

Quote from: Matt;830496Coherence

Do you mean coherence in the GNS sense or just in the sense of wanting it to be clearly organized?

Quote from: EOTB;830506Although unintentional, I find the sections of the DMG that needed better editing (like initiative) to be feature, not bug.  Since every DM immediately had to make their first command decision about how to handle that, everyone immediately become accustomed to making command decisions.  And no group handled things exactly the same.  Again, feature, not bug.  

I love "what exactly is the DMG saying here, and what was EGG's intent?" discussions as much as the next guy - participate in them all the time.  But that's a related activity to RPG playing, not integral to playing RPGs.

I know that so many people still in the RPG hobby are drawn to the idea of crisp uniformity, where all the players know exactly how things will be handled because the game is written like a programming manual, and in theory the basic guts of the game are the same everywhere.  

Let them have it.  I want my 1E DMG that inspires me to sit down and do the prep for the sandbox campaign.  The programming manual simply fails in that regard, for me.

And the 2E DMG neither inspired me to create my own work, nor produced a crisp game.  It really was the laodicean edition.  Although TSR did pump out a lot of product so that people wouldn't have to create their own work.  So, I guess it was true to itself in that regard.

That's what I said up the thread re: interpretation of Gygax.

Quote from: bedrockbrendan;830509do you mean coherence in the gns sense or just in the sense of wanting it to be clearly organized?

gns = wtf?

Quote from: Matt;830533gns = wtf?

This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830539This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

Yeah, that's overthinking sitting around with your friends and rolling dice and laughing about unforeseen consequences.

Quote from: Arminius;830494At the time of 2e I think there was already a widespread, explicit rejection of dungeons as being "hack and slash", but the only widespread idea that people had to replace them was the railroaded adventure. This in spite of the fact that what we would call sandbox tools were already available. I can't explain that other than to suggest it may have been related to the marketing of "modules", which were rarely substantial enough to support a sandbox. You need more of a regional focus for that. (I don't know how the settings for 2e were presented in relation to the modules.)

From reading this thread, since I was way outside the D&D mainstream at the time, I wonder if the lack of adventure prep and campaign management advice was in any way related to a belief that groups should or would be dependent on published adventures.

We rarely if ever ran published adventures, a few from White Dwarf perhaps, we just imagined ourselves as the characters we had created and in that context spending all the time in a dungeon felt unrealistic. We were self taught no guiding DM to show us how it was done so we drew inspiration from the knights of the round table, Wizard of Earthsea, Robin Hood, Conan, Fafhard and the Grey Mouser etc etc very few dungeons in those settings so dungeons quickly became an occasional sojourn and logically from a IC perspective a bloody dangerous idea. Why enter an unchartered dungeon with no obvious means of exit in search of hypothetical gold when the city is full of rich merchants? If you are goodly and just why spend your time searching for treasure and personal gain when you can improve the world and make things better by fighting the obvious enemies that are oppressing folks rather than the imagined ones that might lurk in dark places under the earth?

This was long before 2e came out and I feel that the shift in focus from Wargame to Roleplaying game which was D&Ds magical touch made that this type of evolution of the game inevitable.

Yes, groups did get out of the dungeon on their own, and both mechanics and GMing advice for what we'd call now call sandbox-style play were present from the start.

I think, though, that dungeons predominated in the early days of actual play, because they were easy to for individual DMs to create and manage. In the meantime, published adventures became a fixture. By the time people tired of dungeons, the campaign sandbox had been forgotten and so the reaction was more modules, instead of a presentation of methods of campaign development & management.

I may be right or wrong about that but I'm talking about the practices of writers and publishers, in relation to what people have said re: the 2e DMG. I'm not talking about particular groups, least of all those which started well before 2e.

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.

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

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. :)

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.

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".

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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

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

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

Indeed it is!

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.

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.

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