I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (and role-playing games in general) with the black box with the big red dragon in the early 1990s. I continued playing Basic D&D for a few years before getting into AD&D Revised 2nd Edition, which I played for a few more years before jumping into the Third Edition hype train. Having neither played nor payed attention to D&D (or any other RPG) in fifteen years or more —after I got tired of D&D v3.5 and my friends didn't want to play GURPS or the other games I was interested— I got the RPG bug again and started running a game of 5th edition.
But before that I have been reading and watching videos about the OSR for the last three years. One thing I noticed from my immersion into this niche I missed of retroclones and OSR is how much more popular the 1st edition of Advanced D&D is compared to the 2nd edition. The only 2nd edition clone of which I am aware is For Gold & Glory, and it doesn't seem very popular.
So, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
Differences between the editions:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/22548/what-are-the-major-differences-between-add-1st-edition-add-2nd-edition
Reason why people like 1E more than 2E
-Dragonsfoot is 1E
-Older gamers started on 1E and it brings back nostalgia
-1E had less options than 2E being more streamlined
All being said, the two editions are fungible, not much of a difference frankly.
I think 2e is when D&D shifted from Beer & pretzles style Dungeons and Dragons, and more structured storytelling. I mean, it's not a bright line. Dragonlance (for example) preceeded 2nd, but it was the ruleset when the shift was reaching it's height. That makes it the edition that falls outside the OSR rubric of "How Gary ran it."
There's a few of us here that love 2nd ed. It's my favorite edition of D&D.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on April 09, 2023, 11:06:09 PM
All being said, the two editions are fungible, not much of a difference frankly.
Yep. Up until 3rd, the game was still running on the same foundation. You could run a 2e module with 1e AD&D rules, or Basic, etc. with just some minor tweaking.
The settings were good for 2E and made it fun, just take them down to 1E or just use 2E, it wasn't a huge change like 3E, 4E or 5E.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on April 09, 2023, 11:06:09 PM
Dragonsfoot is 1E
I didn't know of this ... group of people. Very entertaining. I got to share this with one of my players, he is like Dragonsfoot but for D&D v3.5. Even though he had not been playing RPG for longer than I had, it was hard to convince him to try out 5th edition with me. And thanks for the link!
Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 09, 2023, 11:34:17 PM
There's a few of us here that love 2nd ed. It's my favorite edition of D&D.
Even after more than fifteen years since I last played D&D v3.5, I am still burned out of that edition, I am considering to try to convince my players to switch from 5th edition to AD&D 2nd Ed. I started the campaign with the Lost Mine of Phandelver, but moved and adapted it to 1368 DR.
Look at Castles and Crusades by Trolllord Games.
Its 2E reskinned. If you look at their core books, they are modernized versions of the 1E AD&D books, its worth going to their website to see how they did the art.
Classes included:
Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Knight, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, and the Assassin
When 2e came out, I thought it was a step in the right direction. It wasn't as much fun as 1e but it had the potential to replace the bloat with a more streamlined approach: just a few character classes, with options to customize the classes, a more distinct difference between magic and the divine, a simple skills system, and so forth. If they had kept going in that direction, it would (I think) have become more fun than AD&D. But they chose not to, and since 2e never became what I wanted 1e to become, and 1e was more fun for me anyway, I just went back to 1e.
I started with 1e and loved it. Played several times per week for decades, and still play to this day. The question is, why would I drop the game I love and play Cook's 2e rewrite? Or Basic, 3e, 4e or 5e? I like the specific features of 1e. There were plenty of changes implemented in 2e. Not interested.
AD&D1e is more popular than 2e for the same reason
Classic Traveller is still remembered fondly: it's incomplete, and
that's a good thing (https://www.thevikinghatgm.com/2021/02/ct-books-1-3-you-fill-in-blanks.html).
Quotean incomplete system is better than a complete one. If a system is complete, then when read it evokes nothing in the mind - nothing more than is written. If a system is incomplete, then the reader fills in the gaps with their own imagination. For example, in AD&D1e the description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era. Is this a saxon thane in the line against Viking invaders? The Viking invaders themselves? A lamellar-clad model for the terracotta warriors of Qin? French heavy infantry at Agincourt? A young squire daring to seek out and fight a werewolf? The girl fighting the jabberwocky? A bronze-clad warrior of Sparta? A daring Amazon of the Crimea, firing her bow from her horse at Greek invaders? An Iron Age warrior of Kush? A samurai? It doesn't say. You fill in the blanks! If it were more complete, you could not do this.
That, plus 2e brought in the splatbooks. Fuck that.
1e has the evocative Gygaxian prose that seems to open up worlds of wonder. 2e has a tone that is both bland and often paternalistic. 1e has half orcs, assassins, demons & devils. 2e has Angry Mothers From Heck.
OSRIC is the only AD&D 1E clone. All those other ones are various flavours of OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI, or RC.
AD&D has by and far more DM tools than 2e.
I think in part it might be that TSR tossed Gary out on his ass. People didn't like that. I could very well be wrong, but Gary had a lot of fans and that whole fiasco happened right before 2E. I believe fans not moving to 2E due to loyalty is part of it. Also, 2E wasn't necessary except for TSR making money.
AD&D 1e ran from late 1970s through 1989–an entire decade when it was king as the game transitioned from the 3 LBB to the various hardbacks. By the time 2e came around, the competitors were legion and most of the big boys were in second and later editions. Nostalgia is big because 1e was the game everyone played, at least for a time if not most of the time.
The early 1990s also saw an economic downturn, and the key distinguishing features of 2e were the splatbooks and all of the settings, not the rules themselves. A few years into the 1990s also saw the juggernaut of Magic the Gathering steamroll roleplaying in general, and Vampire became the hot rpg. I think all of the buzz around D&D evaporated and it simply became the leading rpg among a crowded field.
I actually still kind of prefer 2E, but I think 2E got rid of a lot of things and went in directions that weren't the greatest ways to go. Baseline 2E is also kind of flat compared to baseline 1E in terms of flavor (where 2E tends to shine is the worlds). And I think 2E is sometimes running away from being a game and too focused on story (I don't think it's all bad, I recently ran Book of Crypts again, and I think there is a place for that kind of adventure, but the problem too many of the modules and too much of the advice became overly dense story structures that weren't only constraining on player choice, they were much harder to run than the earlier modules (and the text could get very long winded in places making it hard to find things on the fly: I am fine with lengthy background material that you read between sessions but for something like a module where you are running it live, brevity is pretty important IMO).
I know for me, I started on 1E as a player, but didn't become a GM until the first year the 2E books came out. So I learned to GM under 2E. It wasn't until I went back to the 1E DMG and other old D&D books after I got a little tired of 3E and the d20 boom that I recognized the value of the full 1E material. One thing I will also say for the 1E core books: they had a voice. People will obviously have different reactions to Gary Gygax's personality and writing style, but I still find the DMG very entertaining to read. It doesn't get dull. Can anyone say that about the 2E DMG, the 3E, etc? I don't know about anyone else, but reading a DMG in any other edition (or even a PHB) is just something I do out of a duty to learn the system. It isn't something I necessarily enjoy (it isn't torture either but its can get dull and it feels time consuming). The 1E DMG on the other hand is very enjoyable to read because it has wit, it is conversational in tone, Gary has a quirky style and way of writing that I find compelling. The other editions are all extremely dry reads in comparison.
The funny thing is the systems are pretty similar. We used to include things from the 1E PHB in our 2E campaigns, and I still used a lot of the AD&D books in my 2E campaigns.
I started playing with AD&D (Holmes really but that's another issue) but quickly switched to Stormbringer and Champions. When I finally got around to DMing a long running game, I used 2e. In fact, I thought 2e was so superior that I gave away many of the AD&D books because I thought no one would ever want to use them again.
But now, decades later, I don't even have a copy of 2e books. What I found, especially in the contexts of "old school" gaming is that AD&D is closer to the roots of fantasy than 2e. It formed a more grounded starting point. What I've seen over the years is that as D&D has changed it has gradually stopped trying to emulate classic fantasy and is just trying to emulate the fantasy of the previous editions. Not just in the art but in the rules and background.
Because of this, AD&D is a better starting point to add rules to, rather than try to get a more recent edition and add the fantasy flavor back in.
All that being said, I only play OD&D now because the hit dice system in that game is mechanically superior to any that have come since.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on April 10, 2023, 04:31:50 AM
AD&D1e is more popular than 2e for the same reason Classic Traveller is still remembered fondly: it's incomplete, and that's a good thing (https://www.thevikinghatgm.com/2021/02/ct-books-1-3-you-fill-in-blanks.html).
Quotean incomplete system is better than a complete one. If a system is complete, then when read it evokes nothing in the mind - nothing more than is written. If a system is incomplete, then the reader fills in the gaps with their own imagination. For example, in AD&D1e the description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era. Is this a saxon thane in the line against Viking invaders? The Viking invaders themselves? A lamellar-clad model for the terracotta warriors of Qin? French heavy infantry at Agincourt? A young squire daring to seek out and fight a werewolf? The girl fighting the jabberwocky? A bronze-clad warrior of Sparta? A daring Amazon of the Crimea, firing her bow from her horse at Greek invaders? An Iron Age warrior of Kush? A samurai? It doesn't say. You fill in the blanks! If it were more complete, you could not do this.
That, plus 2e brought in the splatbooks. Fuck that.
I think that's a false dichotomy. You can create a system that gives a fair amount of structure without also limiting your creativity. What I find useful is a system which is designed as a series of guidelines to speed up your own creation process. Sure, you could always make up your own stuff from scratch, but having the framework already in place is a nice time saver.
I had the opposite problem. There's this very simple toolkit that I think is more or less perfect for what I want to do, but I'm paralyzed by the amount of choice and, since there's nobody else interested in playing, I can't really muster the effort to do much with it. I wrote a handful of blog posts converting stuff from other games to it to showcase the flexibility, but that's it.
I started with Moldvay/Cook B/X and quickly moved into AD&D, though we kept playing BECMI as well. I still have all my AD&D hardcovers; I even have extras of a couple that were so used they fell apart. By the time 2e dropped, I was in college and it was interesting that the slightly older players there preferred 1e, but the younger guys were playing 2e because it was the new thing in stores and there was no Internet yet I guess.
But I never liked 2e much for a variety of reasons. It was definitely more bland in tone. They removed my favorite villains, devils & demons, later replacing them as tanarr'i and baatezu. For that reason alone, 2e is worth skipping. Then they did weird things like the hole-punched monster books and Monstrous Compendium supplements that were supposed to go in binders. They added "kits" for character classes, which I hate. Splat books and setting books got out of control. They replaced my beloved Greyhawk as the "official" world with the utterly forgettable Forgotten Realms, which included (gasp) good drow.
They produced Planescape, which might be my least favorite take on the D&D multiverse ever created. From the lame writing to the awful DiTerlizzi art, I despise that stuff with every fiber of my being. Indeed, 2e effectively drove me away from D&D (we mostly played MERP in the 90s) and I never went back to official versions of the game, though I got into the OSR scene starting in 2016. To me, it set D&D down the path of churning out bland, commercialized fantasy gaming content for the masses and veered away from the niche wonder of the game's first decade.
I've got a number of specific issues with 2e. Elf supremacy, elves are just too damn good even before the Complete Book of Elves came along. Custom,composite longbows with sheaf arrows. Longbows were already the best weapon in the game, they didn't need or deserve a damage boost and the ability to add in the Strength damage bonus. Specialist magic-users get an extra spell at first level and generalists don't. Magic-users in general needed a boost but the specialist bonus spell thing is just unfair. One thing Castles and Crusades got right is that magic-users should get bonus spells just like Clerics do. Nonweapon proficiencies should have been on the same scale as thieves skills (they did this in XXVc.) as is most adventurers are better at things like smithing or baking than they are at their adventuring speciality. I like the 2e proficiency system okay and The Complete Book of Fighters makes it better.
There are some things that probably should have been done in 2e like ditiching level limits. I'm not clear enough on weapon speed and initiative in 2e but I think it should have been more like 1e, giving an extra attack if your weapon speed was twice your foe's instead of just adding to initiative. Don't get me wrong,1e initiative is a mess but I like things like spears and polearms automatically attacking first when charged. 2e didn't think through the weapon verses armour table's effect on the game when they replaced it with a damage type verses armour table. In the end they just continued the situation where a long sword and long bow were the ultimate weapons and everything else was trash. I'd have to dig into the fighter who specializes in darts a little bit. It's a problem in both editions if I remember right but the long bow's range and the custom bow rule make it less of a thing in 2e.
I did like the 2e version of weapon specialization. It throws the fighter a bone without giving them the outrageous double specialization from Unearthed Arcana. The 2e Bard and Barbarian were better implemented than 1e though IRRC the Barbarian wasn't in the PHB.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 10, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
What I've seen over the years is that as D&D has changed it has gradually stopped trying to emulate classic fantasy and is just trying to emulate the fantasy of the previous editions. Not just in the art but in the rules and background.
Bingo. I've been saying for a long while now that D&D is its own subgenre of fantasy, and doesn't really do anything else well. Personally, I think this starts all that way back with OD&D, but it's only become more the case in every successive edition, and solidified in a big way during 2nd and 3rd edition. I'd largely blame that on the proliferation of D&D novels between the late 80s and early 00s, starting with Dragonlance, but moreso with the Drizzt and Elminster novels. It think those really locked in what the D&D world was like in the public conscious.
Thanks for all the answers!
I have been bugged by this question since I learned about all the people returning to older editions of D&D and I couldn't understand why 1st edition got so much more love than 2nd edition of Advanced D&D. As I said, I missed the whole run of AD&D 1st Ed. and, thus, I didn't have a reference to comprehend the reason.
It looks one reason doesn't take over as the main one. And I guess that is the case for most people who choose not to move to a new edition of any RPG.
In my corner of the world (and of the internet), when 3rd Ed. came out, I don't remember many people who were playing AD&D 2nd Ed. rejecting Third Edition and staying behind. My anecdotal evidence, based off of my memory of the turn of the millennium, is that no tears were shed for 2nd Ed. and people moved to the 3rd with confidence. So, if nobody (or very few people) cared enough about 2nd Ed. back in the day, why would they return to it 20 years later?
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on April 10, 2023, 04:31:50 AM
AD&D1e is more popular than 2e for the same reason Classic Traveller is still remembered fondly: it's incomplete, and that's a good thing (https://www.thevikinghatgm.com/2021/02/ct-books-1-3-you-fill-in-blanks.html).
That is a very interesting point. And it made me wonder if my own favorite little games are my favorites because they are all incomplete, having been cancelled before their authors could iron them out due to poor sales. I see what they could be with own work and not what they are.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 10, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
What I've seen over the years is that as D&D has changed it has gradually stopped trying to emulate classic fantasy and is just trying to emulate the fantasy of the previous editions.
It seems to me you described 5th edition. But that was bond to happen when D&D accumulated a vast mythos with all the settings from AD&D and forward. But is it necessarily a bad thing? It is certainly not conductive to play any kind of fantasy other than the D&D-kind of fantasy, but there's some good bits inside D&D fantasy, even if some people may be tired of it after playing it for 30 years.
Quote from: zer0th on April 10, 2023, 09:42:22 AMIt seems to me you described 5th edition. But that was bound to happen when D&D accumulated a vast mythos with all the settings from AD&D and forward. But is it necessarily a bad thing? It is certainly not conductive to play any kind of fantasy other than the D&D-kind of fantasy, but there's some good bits inside D&D fantasy, even if some people may be tired of it after playing it for 30 years.
What that does is create a divide among players. Players who use the official settings are well served but those trying to create their own setting have to undo lots of D&Disms to make it work.
So the question becomes, how many people come to D&D because of the game versus how many because they like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance?
While I personally prefer the presentation/feel of 1e and *reading* Gygax's 1e, it's far easier to teach players from the 2e books. I also favor the modular fashion many of the rules are presented in, which to be fair are generally 1e house rules or Dragon rules added and clarified. Seriously, just try to teach someone how to run a combat from the 1e initiative explanation.
Usually I just end up running 2e, with weapon speed/casting times and a couple of tweaks to crits and gold = XP. Ultimately they're nearly identical in terms of actual functionality, so the wars of 1e/2e are pointless.
I have only played AD&D 1st edition. Never tried 2nd edition so that is my reason (lazy as it is) for liking 1st edition.
Quote from: zer0th on April 09, 2023, 10:53:15 PM
So, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
My obviously subjective answer:
1e has better D&D rules. 1e has more colorful and rich prose that I enjoy. (2e is *clearer* in its presentation of rules, but as I mentioned, where the rules differ I almost always prefer the 1e version). 2e took some good concepts and produced rules for them, but the implementation was often poor and unimaginative and...boring. Specialist wizards are a good example. Great concept, but a dry, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all boring implementation. The 1e illusionist subclass is a far better example of how such a concept should be handled. 1e has great, classic adventures that all the other editions constantly re-hash in lesser forms. (One exception is 2e's
Return to the Tomb of Horrors. That's a great adventure, and incorporates the unchanged original adventure into a larger whole.)
Also, when 2e came out I switched over to it. I remember sitting at my dining room table, going through the new 2e rulebooks and desperately trying to like them with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I mean, just look at the 1e
Dungeon Masters Guide compared to the 2e DMG. But I soldiered on. Then I started buying adventures and other supplements. Every time I was like, "this looks potentially cool," and every time I was disappointed. Eventually I realized that TSR was taking the game in a direction that I didn't want to follow. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it. Like I said, I *wanted* to like it and I tried to make it work for me...but it just didn't. So that experience colors my perception of 2e.
FWIW, my preference for 1e isn't because of nostalgia or because I started with 1e. I started with original D&D (in the form the the Holmes Basic set). And I've played all the TSR editions, and a lot of 3.0. When 3.5 came out I evaluated what I wanted to do. I didn't want to keep going around the edition carousel with 3.5. Looked at various systems: C&C, True20, Pathfinder, Savage Words, etc. It was at this point that I decided to just run my favorite D&D rules. So I started running original D&D and 1e AD&D, and that's where I've stayed every since. I took a brief look at 4e and decided it wasn't for me. Same for 5e: took a brief look and saw nothing that made me want to switch. I'm completely uninterested in 6e or whatever label they'll put on the next one.
Quote from: zer0th on April 10, 2023, 09:42:22 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 10, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
What I've seen over the years is that as D&D has changed it has gradually stopped trying to emulate classic fantasy and is just trying to emulate the fantasy of the previous editions.
It seems to me you described 5th edition. But that was bond to happen when D&D accumulated a vast mythos with all the settings from AD&D and forward. But is it necessarily a bad thing? It is certainly not conductive to play any kind of fantasy other than the D&D-kind of fantasy, but there's some good bits inside D&D fantasy, even if some people may be tired of it after playing it for 30 years.
Not only is it not just 5th edition, it isn't even just D&D. FantasyCraft, Fantasy AGE, Pathfinder, The Dark Eye, Warhammer -- hell, even properties that originate from outside the tabletop gaming world like Dragon Age, Goblin Slayer, or the Elder Scrolls... I'd call all of them "D&D Fantasy". However, I do agree that there's a charm to "D&D Fantasy" which OSR folks sometimes forget about. A lot of the tropes of the genre (colorful races, professional adventurers, dungeons, readily available spells, potions and magic items), they're all things that exist because they're useful for making fun roleplaying games. As maligned as the "kitchen sink" approach to fantasy is, it makes DM-ing a lot easier since you can pretty much chuck in anything you can think of.
Honestly, I think that for a light-hearted, beer-and-pretzels type of game, "D&D Fantasy" is probably pretty close to the optimal genre, and the proof for that is in just how prolific it is. I just don't buy the assertion that D&D hasn't always been that kind of game. Different editions tune up or down just how common magic-items are, or how deadly the game is, but the implied setting assumptions of every edition of D&D are basically the same.
I think it's because 1E is easier to run for DMS than later editions. Though man Gygax onetruwayism and contradictions have not aged well.
You can't play an Assassin because killing other brings for money is evil. Yet taking money to clear out the evil orcs is fine.
Elves have an ability to find secret doors as an racial ability except not really if you follow the rules on Page 20 of the DMG ( not sure of the exact page) where he goes on an unwanted semi-rant on how even Elves have actively search for them despite what is written in the PHB.
The Monk oh my fucking God what was he thinking. If you ever asked yourself why no one played or still don't play them read up on the class. No bonus to high Dex to AC, 2D4 hp, starting AC of 10. I can just imagine his thought processes. " people are going to want to play Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, I could allow them to do that ....naahhh". The class is only redeemed by a Dragon magazine article 57 or 75 not sure.
The line of bulshit about poison. If as a developer you hate the use of poison why include it in the rules. By the book if you're actively seen using poison there is a base percentage chance of being attacked by those around you who see it. So if one arm Charlie and Kevin the kid street urchin see you using it they will drop everything they are doing and attack you.
Just the micromanaging control freak asshole vibe from the rules. So much info that should have been in the PHB is in the DMG because of Gygax reasons and feels.
I enjoy 1E and am currently a player in a game and may run one yet too many look back on 1E with Rose coloured glasses they spray painted completely back.
Quote from: Abraxus on April 10, 2023, 10:48:14 AM
I think it's because 1E is easier to run for DMS than later editions. Though man Gygax onetruwayism and contradictions have not aged well.
You can't play an Assassin because killing other brings for money is evil. Yet taking money to clear out the evil orcs is fine.
Elves have an ability to find secret doors as an racial ability except not really if you follow the rules on Page 20 of the DMG ( not sure of the exact page) where he goes on an unwanted semi-rant on how even Elves have actively search for them despite what is written in the PHB.
The Monk oh my fucking God what was he thinking. If you ever asked yourself why no one played or still don't play them read up on the class. No bonus to high Dex to AC, 2D4 hp, starting AC of 10. I can just imagine his thought processes. " people are going to want to play Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, I could allow them to do that ....naahhh". The class is only redeemed by a Dragon magazine article 57 or 75 not sure.
Just the micromanaging control freak asshole vibe from the rules. So much info that should have been in the PHB is in the DMG because of Gygax reasons and feels.
I enjoy 1E and am currently a player in a game and may run one yet too many look back on 1E with Rose coloured glasses they spray painted completely back.
Gygax never liked psionics or monks, they didn't fit the setting. There wasn't an incentive to make monks viable. I personally hate Monks in a D&D setting and don't use them as NPC's or groups. If a player wants to play one, thats ok, but I'm doing nothing for the monk from a story perspective.
I don't care if he liked them or not. It's absolutely no excuse or counter argument for terrible game design. And no because it's Gygax he does not get a free pass for it in my book. Absolutely non-negotiable or up for any form of debate. I'm tired of that excuse of " well Gary hated it it ". It's no oneexcuse or counter argument no matter how many times the grognards bring it up.
Either don't include such rules, classes etc or make a better job designing them instead of that shitty excuse of a class in the PHB. Running it by raw is essentially having the play commit suicide. No one plays ten because either they want a real challenge even if they have terrible time doing so. Or the did not read the class completely and did not recognize their mistake
AD&D1e is just better, at least before unearthed arcana.
Dude, I'm just listing a reasoning.
If you don't like something, rework it. Personally, I've never liked the monk, so I don't care about them, they don't fit a medieval European setting at all. They might as well have dropped Indian Brave as a character class.
The 1E ruleset was partially a cash grab by putting out more expensive books and to get rid of Arneson as a rights holder. A fair bit of 1E was rushed. And lets not forget, this was some of the first RPG's being written. Its not as if these guys had a roadmap to use. They were breaking new ground in game design. Do you think they'd use the negative armor class after looking at increasing armor class, no they would not.
I dispute the premise, I think? How do we know that AD&D 1e is more popular than AD&D 2e?
I'll grant that if someone wants to build an OSR game off of an AD&D (instead of off of B/X or whatever), then they are more likely to tune it into AD&D 1e as their reference. But does that speak to the popularity of people playing AD&D? Remember that 1e and 2e were also the same game in a way that other editions haven't really managed. 3.0 and 3.5 were the same game, but 3.0 is very small and everything got reprinted except a couple wacky things. By contrast both 1e and 2e are very large games, with a good amount of splat material, and both have classes only available in their respective systems. I suspect I'd find a similar number of games that run AD&D as a cohesive entity that they have selected sections of 1e and 2e from, versus games that strictly are running AD&D 1e.
Minor aside, but I freaking love the monk. Of course we bump up the hit dice (to d8) and house rule that they do get Dex bonuses to AC, etc. I also loved Oriental Adventures for the most part and wish somebody would do an OSR version of it. And make it as politically incorrect as freaking possible. In other words, make it like a real Asian would make it, with all the crazy shit from folklore turned up to 11, not some sanitized white guilt game.
Incidentally, according to Matt Finch, the assassin class was initially supposed to be neutral in alignment, not evil. Not having the LBB or supplements, I'll defer on others regarding that. But, combining these things, I've allowed players to make ninja assassins for our Swords & Wizardry game. It works because my homebrew setting has Asian-derived cultures and because ninja, like monks, are just badass.
Quote from: Persimmon on April 10, 2023, 02:03:28 PM
I also loved Oriental Adventures for the most part and wish somebody would do an OSR version of it. And make it as politically incorrect as freaking possible. In other words, make it like a real Asian would make it, with all the crazy shit from folklore turned up to 11, not some sanitized white guilt game.
Psssh, the bestest
Oriental Adventures would be done by a fat white guy with a katana who taught himself Japanese so he could watch anime. That's the one I want, that one will have some goddamned badass ninjas, I tell you whut.
Quote from: Venka on April 10, 2023, 01:38:16 PM
I dispute the premise, I think? How do we know that AD&D 1e is more popular than AD&D 2e?
It's obviously a guess because we can't quantify it for sure, but the online community certainly shows a huge bias for 1e games over 2e games. Granted, maybe the 2e players just aren't talking about it online, but the margin seems pretty big for those that are. It does seem like 2e is picking up a little more steam than I've seen in the past, though.
That said, to your later point, it's entirely possible that people are playing 1e with a bunch of house rules that make it far closer to 2e, and it's not like they're that far apart rules-wise to begin with.
Well I personally revel in 1e. Monks, Assassins, Bards, Psionics, 1/2 Orcs, Multi- and Dual- Classes, Nine Alignments, Weapon vs AC, look-up tables, and Gygax. Especially Gygax. Yes, TSR fired Gygax pre-2e, then appointed Cook to write it. They stopped publishing Greyhawk for years and put F Realms in its place. Even if for some reason I wasn't upset about Gygax being fired, I still had no incentive to buy 2e precisely because it wasn't written by Gygax.
It may be a threadjack, but to me the sweet spot on all this is Hackmaster 4e—the first Hackmaster—which is essentially an AD&D 3e if Gygax had retaken control of TSR in the early 1990's and doubled down on the vibe of 1e plus a plethora of houserules floating around the TSR offices and home games.
Yeah, Hackmaster 4e is silly in parts and over the top with some of its charts and such, but I think it is still at its core a next iteration of AD&D that captures what 1e meant to all of us.
I really want to join a group that plays Hackmaster 4e. Over the top or not, it appears to have what 2e AD&D didn't.
When I see people talking about Gygax's "poor game design" I have to laugh. This motherfucker was out there on the forefront of gaming for years. It's like criticizing the guy who invented the wheel because it didn't have spokes in it so it was a poor design.
Let me tell you something about AD&D 1e. Back in 1981 when I started playing, D&D (basic and advanced) were the most available games. It was a niche hobby and if you told someone you played D&D they didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, and they thought that you either were a computer nerd, or in a Satanic cult. Usually the latter. And I'm not talking about some Podunk town, I'm talking about New York City. So D&D was the gateway.
I got in through Moldvay/Cook B/X which made learning the rules a lot easier since all the concepts were in a 32-page rulebook and not spread out over 500 pages of the Player's Handbook and DMG. And oh man, the rules were a mess. But it forced us to THINK, to adapt. We were a breed of our own. We house ruled the fuck out of that game. Every DM had a binder full of Dragon articles and self made rules that they put into their own games. We took the weighty tomes that Gygax made for us and we made whole universes.
Those were the days of high adventure!
Then came 2nd edition. And at the time I thought it was a good thing because they codified the rules better and gave player's more options. There were a lot of rules in 1st ed. but we mostly ignored them. These rules were in your face. I was buying the splatbooks like crazy so players could have more options. At first there was one for every class and then even the subclasses got them (Complete book of Ninjas, Necromancers, Paladins), then every race got one. Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years.
For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired. Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?
Snagged this doc off the net, for those who would be interested in a four-page item-by-item list of differences between 1e and 2e:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z3QfPF9TbCoWL7YqWNjjQcdwDpNd6jix/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z3QfPF9TbCoWL7YqWNjjQcdwDpNd6jix/view?usp=sharing)
Does anyone play AD&D 1e with some of the splatbooks for 2e?
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 10, 2023, 02:36:03 PM
Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years.
For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired. Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?
You know it sounds like 2.5e (the "Players Option") series killed it for you. I bought all of those books, ran one game with them, and then just banned them because they were bullshit. Well, the two ones that were splatty were bullshit, as they were the ones letting you subdivide STR into "stuff that helps you" and "stuff that doesn't" and allowing you to maximize the former for the cost of minimizing of the latter, and the ones allowing you to do form really strange high level spells. I never allowed those books into the long running campaign I had during that whole time, and after that one experiment with them, I just dropped them. The third book had rules for miniatures and stuff, that eventually got gutted and turned into third.
2.5 was a bad edition I'd have a hard time defending. 2.0- or a synergy of 2e and 1e- I think is defensible to this day, though I totally understand if the weight of the splats eventually became annoying.
Quote from: GamerforHire on April 10, 2023, 02:47:36 PM
Does anyone play AD&D 1e with some of the splatbooks for 2e?
I know someone who does. I also know someone who says he playes 3e with the 2e races. I know a lot of weird people.
Quote from: Baron on April 10, 2023, 02:35:31 PM
I really want to join a group that plays Hackmaster 4e. Over the top or not, it appears to have what 2e AD&D didn't.
We just bolted a bunch of Hackmaster stuff onto our 1e. Hell, I still use some of that material for my Swords & Wizardry game. Also lots of good monsters in the various Hacklopedias that never appeared in other versions of D&D so they're certainly worth getting if you can find them at a reasonable cost.
Quote from: Venka on April 10, 2023, 02:50:21 PM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 10, 2023, 02:36:03 PM
Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years.
For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired. Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?
You know it sounds like 2.5e (the "Players Option") series killed it for you. I bought all of those books, ran one game with them, and then just banned them because they were bullshit. Well, the two ones that were splatty were bullshit, as they were the ones letting you subdivide STR into "stuff that helps you" and "stuff that doesn't" and allowing you to maximize the former for the cost of minimizing of the latter, and the ones allowing you to do form really strange high level spells. I never allowed those books into the long running campaign I had during that whole time, and after that one experiment with them, I just dropped them. The third book had rules for miniatures and stuff, that eventually got gutted and turned into third.
2.5 was a bad edition I'd have a hard time defending. 2.0- or a synergy of 2e and 1e- I think is defensible to this day, though I totally understand if the weight of the splats eventually became annoying.
I would play 2e again if someone else ran it. A good DM can make any system work.
1e's DMG and PH were poorly organized and indexed. DMs would often be highly challenged to find "that one rule" in a book or Dragon magazine during a game session. Worse, many rules were poorly presented.
For example, the AD&D 1e initiative and combat system allowed tactical depth. The problem was that nobody's understanding of this subsystem matched anyone else's. Finally, in the 2000s, a guy made a PDF that compiled all of the rules and provided an example combat session conducted under 1e rules as written. In my perspective, this has been the best presentation of 1e's actual initiative and combat system. Based on the PDF having 239 footnotes, I think it's fair to say that most gamers did not want to play that way. https://idiscepolidellamanticora.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/addict.pdf
In the 1e days, non-weapon proficiencies for classes that did not already have them was a point of interest for many groups.
Gygax was pushed out by the company he founded, TSR.
AD&D 2e was a post-Gygax production that was intended to settle the combat rules, add non-weapon proficiencies, and appeal to a wider market.
1e had a politically incorrect grittiness and openness to many play styles. 1e was Gygax's work of art, his masterpiece, beautiful, terrible, thrilling, maddening, and, if you will, magical. 2e had the flair of a corporate product.
Quote from: overstory on April 16, 2023, 02:28:31 PM
For example, the AD&D 1e initiative and combat system allowed tactical depth. The problem was that nobody's understanding of this subsystem matched anyone else's. Finally, in the 2000s, a guy made a PDF that compiled all of the rules and provided an example combat session conducted under 1e rules as written. In my perspective, this has been the best presentation of 1e's actual initiative and combat system. Based on the PDF having 239 footnotes, I think it's fair to say that most gamers did not want to play that way. https://idiscepolidellamanticora.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/addict.pdf
The PDF 100% makes my skin crawl. Obviously, no one reading the PHB and DMG would run initiative anywhere close to this. The most infuriating part is that the game is built to run in segments, but many of the rules were written by people who didn't seem to know this.
Reading the example section, you can clearly see how many of the AD&D details actually add depth and combat choices, but are also in some cases completely psychotic and disgusting. It's clear that a cleaned up version of this could be incredibly deep and good, were a game designed around it, rather than this initiative system being hurled, weeping pustules and grasping tentacles and all, at an unsuspecting game system, as appears to have happened.
I always say that my favorites are the 1e DMG, the 2e MM and... my own PHB (used to be 5e but gladly I'm over that now).
2e is bowdlerized, it has a significant change in tone, but overall I find it much better organized then the 1e PHB.
So, liking 1e, in addition to the DMG, must have been flavor: the creativity, Gygaxian prose, etc.
Agreed about the 2e splats, but I didn't think you were supposed to use them all at once.
1E felt like Gary was writing for equals and despite what Gary said it had so many subsystems nobody used it felt built to hack so it became comfortable to run.
2E felt like they were writing to teens and the illustrations and blue highlight colors just emphasized that impression. Also it felt better organized which sort of discouraged hacking the system.
Late to the party, but my hot take on this is this...
1e is more popular due to nostalgia and all the grognards being from that era.
2e "fans" probably come into the hobby around the time that 2e came out (like me), and were never privy to the whole drama behind Gygax being kicked out of his own company, so had no reason to hate TSR or avoid buying newer products. And in my experience at least, 2e-stans were less likely to be slavishly bound to older editions of D&D and more apt to try out other games, so we moved on to other systems eventually, and picked up more recent editions of D&D later on rather than insist on sticking with 2e forever, so there wasn't the same kind of market for 2e retroclones when the OSR became a thing that there was for 1e retroclones, because the 2e audience was not obsessed with old D&D.
I do miss the class and race splat books and campaign settings, though. Not the Player Options stuff, though, that's around the time 2e started to go downhill. And I was the target audience for that kind of stuff, but I thought that Player's Options was so poorly implemented I never used it, and ended up trying to create my own version of it instead, cuz I liked the basic idea behind buying up class features and such. But RAW it was so poorly balanced and messy, like that rushed that thing to market without testing it out.
I'm not really a D&D guy (Runequest and Rolemaster were games I ran back in the day) but 2nd edition is the only D&D that I have some nostalgia for since another GM used that. We did have some good campaigns, but I always thought some of the rules were a bit wonky. Of course no game is perfect. For a good while we were in a large city on the western coast of some continent (one of the big ones, Grayhawk?) looking for some....hidden dragons or something? (No crouching tigers though) Anyone know this one?
Quote from: Baron on April 10, 2023, 02:43:29 PM
Snagged this doc off the net, for those who would be interested in a four-page item-by-item list of differences between 1e and 2e:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z3QfPF9TbCoWL7YqWNjjQcdwDpNd6jix/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z3QfPF9TbCoWL7YqWNjjQcdwDpNd6jix/view?usp=sharing)
That's a handy list. Thank you.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 10, 2023, 09:15:25 AM
I had the opposite problem. There's this very simple toolkit that I think is more or less perfect for what I want to do, but I'm paralyzed by the amount of choice
Remove the choice. Roll the dice. Hexcrawl.
I think it's probably because 1e was the edition of D&D when D&D was at its most popular, at least until recently. There may well be more people who stopped playing 1e before 1989 than started playing 2e through its entire run. 2e was the edition that was running when TSR went bankrupt.
So if you have people coming back to the game they used to play, it would be 1e. And if they play an edition, it's likely to be the first version they played, or the one that is currently in print.
Quote from: VisionStorm on April 16, 2023, 09:47:41 PM
Late to the party, but my hot take on this is this...
1e is more popular due to nostalgia and all the grognards being from that era.
Your bias is showing again. I skipped 2E for the exact opposite of the reason you list: About the time when 2E came out was when I got a little irritated with the way D&D worked and went off and explored other systems in earnest. I'd dabbled before that. It took all that time during the 2E run to learn that there were things about D&D I really liked better. Objectively.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 10, 2023, 02:36:03 PM
When I see people talking about Gygax's "poor game design" I have to laugh. This motherfucker was out there on the forefront of gaming for years. It's like criticizing the guy who invented the wheel because it didn't have spokes in it so it was a poor design.
For me, he is a good game designer. His organizational skills leave a lot to be desired.
His games are still very playable and fun.
Quote from: zer0thSo, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
Because it's objectively better in every way that really matters. ;D
Quote from: Chainsaw on April 17, 2023, 12:04:15 PM
Quote from: zer0thSo, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
Because it's objectively better in every way that really matters. ;D
This.
Quote from: Chainsaw on April 17, 2023, 12:04:15 PM
Quote from: zer0thSo, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
Because it's objectively better in every way that really matters. ;D
Better at being Gygaxian D&D, at least. :) I think VisionStorm has the right of it and those of us who prefer what 2nd Edition was trying to accomplish have drifted towards systems that actually
meet those goals, leaving AD&D to those who want the game as envisioned by Gygax.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on April 17, 2023, 01:30:41 PM
Quote from: Chainsaw on April 17, 2023, 12:04:15 PM
Quote from: zer0thSo, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?
Because it's objectively better in every way that really matters. ;D
Better at being Gygaxian D&D, at least. :) I think VisionStorm has the right of it and those of us who prefer what 2nd Edition was trying to accomplish have drifted towards systems that actually meet those goals, leaving AD&D to those who want the game as envisioned by Gygax.
Have to agree. As someone who never played either game during their heyday, I look at both editions of AD&D and inevitably think there's some other game I could be playing that brings all the positives, with fewer of the annoyances. Between the two of them, 1e at least has that cache of having been written by Gygax, so maybe it's worth playing just as a historical curiosity. Though as tons of people have pointed out, AD&D1e isn't actually how Gygax played the game at his own table.
The only thing 2e has going for it (for me at least) is the settings. But I could more easily run them with any of a dozen OSR game I have at my disposal.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 17, 2023, 08:56:35 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on April 16, 2023, 09:47:41 PM
Late to the party, but my hot take on this is this...
1e is more popular due to nostalgia and all the grognards being from that era.
Your bias is showing again. I skipped 2E for the exact opposite of the reason you list: About the time when 2E came out was when I got a little irritated with the way D&D worked and went off and explored other systems in earnest. I'd dabbled before that. It took all that time during the 2E run to learn that there were things about D&D I really liked better. Objectively.
I was kinda trolling anyway. But this is basically a D&D edition preference thread, which basically ties to edition wars--
everyone's bias is showing. I'm just showing bias against the prevailing side on this thread.
Everyone's experiences and history with the game are also different. So not everyone's circumstances are going to align with what I said. I was just speaking in generalities based on my basic impressions of what I've anecdotally noticed.
I remember the usenet edition wars of the mid -90's, and I had predicted 1E would be more popular than 2E in the long run. 2E was only more popular at the time because it was the current edition. Some reasons why I thought that then:
First, a lot of people who were playing 2E literally told me it was because it was the current edition. Maybe not the majority, but I'd say for at least 30% that was their first reason they'd list right out of the gates. That's just those who would admit it, or those for whom it was a top reason. As soon as there was a 3E, of course they were going to jump ship.
Second, was while you could find instances of 2E actually making a rule simpler, there were too many instances where straight up bad design was justified under the banner of simplicity.
Take the ranger class, for example. It's not like Rangers getting a d8 hit points instead of d10, and 2 HD at first level instead of 1 were brain-breaking ideas. This change wasn't about making the Ranger simpler. It was about making the Ranger more uniform. It's one thing if nuance is traded off for ease of play. At least there'd be some benefit gained for what was lost. That wasn't the case here. And going by the opinions I hear from D&D players since, the ranger has never been cool again in any edition after. 2E killed the ranger.
Another example of what I would call false simplicity is the obsession with making everything as generic and formulaic as possible. Like spell lists. In 1E Magic-Users and Illusionists had their own separate spell lists. In 2E these are all swilled together, and then when you go to play an Illusionist, you have to weed out from the master list those spells in forbidden schools of magic while also noting which are within your specialty school. That was definitely not simpler than having your own dedicated list. The benefit there was having a generic formula for creating other types of specialist wizards. It was only simpler for the designer who can now claim they're offering 8 specialty wizards without having to do any real design work. It's more work for the end user.
These are just a couple of obvious examples. But this design mindset permeates the whole in ways that are a lot more subtle since for the most part the mechanical differences between the two games are subtle.
But a third reason that I didn't fully appreciate nearly 30 years ago but I do now is that the most significant difference between the two editions is the difference in their mission statements. For 1E, the aim was to provide the most fun for the most people for the longest amount of time possible. For 2E, it was to streamline and incorporate what people were already doing. And some gamers might disagree that 1E is fun just like I disagree that 2E is streamlined. But it is still the case that 1E's mission is forward-looking and visionary. 2E was all about looking back and trying to optimize what had been. And I think that makes all the difference in the world in general, but especially when the thing we're talking about is a game fueled by imagination.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2023, 09:14:27 AM
Another example of what I would call false simplicity is the obsession with making everything as generic and formulaic as possible. Like spell lists. In 1E Magic-Users and Illusionists had their own separate spell lists. In 2E these are all swilled together, and then when you go to play an Illusionist, you have to weed out from the master list those spells in forbidden schools of magic while also noting which are within your specialty school. That was definitely not simpler than having your own dedicated list. The benefit there was having a generic formula for creating other types of specialist wizards. It was only simpler for the designer who can now claim they're offering 8 specialty wizards without having to do any real design work. It's more work for the end user.
This is one of the biggest reasons I hated 2nd edition...that and what they did to the druid. Remove all flavor in the name of uniformity. Throw in statements like "anyone can be an assassin, it's a mindset not a class" and dumping half-orcs for whatever reason, they really went high fantasy. That said, if you treat 2nd like you're supposed to just play Forgotten Realms, then okay, it works pretty well. But it's definitely not the right game for Greyhawk, Blackmoor, or any of the swords and sorcery/pulp stuff D&D started with.
But of course when it came out we all moved to 2nd. I actually like the layout of the original PHB, and I really like how they handled the Bard. But then you get the DMG which could have easily been rolled into an appendix of the PHB instead of being a separate book. The differentiation between player and DM was watered down quite a bit in 2nd, and by 3rd I think the DM lost most of the mystique present in AD&D, and that's unfortunate.