General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
In many of these discussions on this board, we talk about how things were done old-school/back in the day.
However, I've noticed that when people say this, they refer either to OD&D or 1st edition AD&D. Conversely, both 3e and 4e are considered "modern/new school". For example, the thread talking about game lethality seems to a discussion between how stuff was done in 1e/Od&D vs 3e vs 4e.
So what about 2nd edition though? Doesn't 2nd edition have its own type of feel?
To me old-school is pre 3.X. I don't think amny people will agree with me, but in my view D&D changed a lot between those editions. I don't think the change form 3.X to 4E was nearly as wide, though.
The way that I ran 2nd edition for a while felt old-school... it was very much a free-form, sandbox type of game.
That said I don't think that the system was an old-school system, especially once class kits, racial splatbooks, Skills & Powers and Combat & Tactics are factored in.
Yeah, it does. More than any other edition, it emphasises story and setting. It has the most altruistic PCs, insofar as anyone who goes into the homes of sentient beings and kills and robs them can be said to be altruistic. It has by far the slowest level progression.
It's the Tolkien edition. Or, more appropriately, the Dragonlance edition. Setting, epic adventure and 'altruism'.
I don't consider 2e to be old school, though the rules aren't that different from 1e, the feel is very different imo. In 2e the DM was expected to 'fight' the rules much more, to maintain story, though many people probably played it just like 1e.
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Last edited by Doug McCrae; 29th June 2009 at 01:19 PM..
It does have its own type of feel, but I consider all of 2e to be "old school."
Pre-PO it was an unbalanced mess of class-based rules thrown together. But you know what? It was plenty fun and had some of the greatest settings ever to grace our hobby.
Post-PO it was an unbalanced mess of point-buy rules thrown together. And the above still pretty much applied.
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It's the Tolkien edition. Or, more appropriately, the Dragonlance edition. Setting, epic adventure and 'altruism'.
I don't consider 2e to be old school, though the rules aren't that different from 1e, the feel is very different imo. In 2e the DM was expected to 'fight' the rules much more, to maintain story, though many people probably played it just like 1e.
I feel the opposite. ad&d2 specifically had some edgy settings (darksun, planescape), but the rules were definitely old school compared to its contemporaries.
PO and a&d2 itself felt like patches to me. It was fundamentally the same system.
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Last edited by lutecius; 29th June 2009 at 04:40 PM..
Since 2e came out, I've often mixed the two versions of AD&D... many disagree, but for me they are essentially the same game. The PO stuff, on the other hand, modified quite a bit the system.
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2E is certainly one of the older editions but it doesn't quite fit the whole "old school feel". It was the first edition to include elements such as story focus and in-game rewards for such by the RAW. This presentation style is more what I would call "proto" new school, in that these types of ideas gained strength in 2E and had inluence on 3E and 4E. It was also a setting/fluff wonderland providing more descriptive/ecological detail into monsters than any edition before or since.
(O)D&D and perhaps AD&D1E and Basic D&D are old school. 2E is something like a lost edition and the skills/options/powers/etc stuff is more like an unauthorized playtest done on the customer's dime.
(O)D&D and perhaps AD&D1E and Basic D&D are old school. 2E is something like a lost edition and the skills/options/powers/etc stuff is more like an unauthorized playtest done on the customer's dime.
The funny thing about the PO series was it highlighted how, shall we say, unbalanced certain kits and specialty priests were. I remember trying to figure out the point value for the specialty priests of Mystra et al rom Faiths & Avatars (greatest campaign specific supplement EVER) and being shocked at how high the point value was, especially for Mystra's priests..
To answer my own question, I started playing with 1e and became a DM in 2e so 2e to me is "old school"
For me (especially pre-PO) the game is extremely similar to 1E and thus old school
I've used this comparison before. 2E is to 1E what 3.5 was to 3E; the same game tweaked slightly. I lump things together as follows - 1E and 2E, 3E and 3.X, 4E.
PO is just a bizarre mutation of 2E. I pretty much ignore it
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Anything pre-3e is "Old School" to me, and I started gaming in 1976.
All classes have their own XP tracks, THAC0, dozens of extra rules, no skills (except as late optional rule) or other bonuses (what later became Feats), the massive multi-planar situation, Greyhawk still around (and Forgotten Realms falls into that category for me), emphasis on dungeons -- all of these things scream "old school" to me.
But then again, I pretty much left D&D when it became "1st edition", except for spot checks, so my views should be taken with a grain of salt.
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I never thought of 2E as old school, probably because it was the edition I began playing the game with. It also just feels very different in tone, though I suppose the mechanics are similar to 1E.
1E settings and adventures feel very minimalist, in terms of why the PCs were there, what impact their adventures had, etc. 2E, by contrast, was the golden age of fluff in D&D, because it wove very strong narratives across everything; adventures, settings, even sourcebooks all helped create a very strong and cohesive feel for the various campaign settings (and the holistic meta-setting) of the game.
I liked that a lot, and was sad to lose that in 3E, though the much better mechanics helped me view it as a trade-off.
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Mechanically, I'd say absolutely. It's extremely faithful to and compatible with AD&D 1e.
I think it moved away from oldschool-style supplements, though. Its overall flavor wasn't old-school at all.
-O
This.
2e occupies a liminal space between old school and new school, IMHO.
RC
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2e occupies a liminal space between old school and new school, IMHO.
RC
That's pretty much the way I see it too. It's transitional. The rules are somewhat tidied up, the philosophy at the publisher different, the entire atmosphere is changing around AD&D at this point. It's got a foot in old school's camp, but that's about it.
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