Pathfinder 2E On the Differences Between 1e and 2e (Not all AD&D Is the Same)

lowkey13 · Dec 5, 2018

*Deleted by user*

Ralif Redhammer · Dec 5, 2018

When 2e came out, my gaming group was pretty excited. We were also young, all of about 12 years old or so and only having been gaming for three years. And also completely unaware of the behind-the-scenes occurrences of the new edition. I definitely remember an interim period where we were using part 1e and part 2e, before all the core rulebooks were out, with little difficulty.

We were pretty unfazed by the removal of the monk, half-orc, and the conversions of demons & devils to Tanari’ri and Baatezu. Heck, the former would all eventually reappear, and the lore expansion on the Tanari’ri and Baatezu that would come in 2e made it worth the nonsense, by my book.

If I had to pick a personal Golden Age, until 5e came along, I would’ve easily picked the early 2e era.

lowkey13 · Dec 5, 2018

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 · Dec 5, 2018

*Deleted by user*

Richards · Dec 5, 2018

If so, then I'm not most people. I played AD&D 1e in my teens, switched to 2e when it came out, then likewise to 3.0 and 3.5, but I've been happy staying with 3.5. (So much so, that despite hearing good things about 5e the only thing that would get me to switch would be the loss of my entire gaming group, who are likewise all happy with 3e - and that's only because it would likely be easier to find a new group playing 5e than 3.5 nowadays.)

I suppose it doesn't hurt that I probably have enough 3.5 material to last me the rest of my natural gaming life.

Johnathan

Ralif Redhammer · Dec 5, 2018

Oh, definitely. Golden ages are as much a product of the person as the actual temporal time and space.

But at the same time, now seems such a renaissance in gaming that I label it a second golden age. It’s easier than ever to game, the quality of said gaming is greater, even if the quantity is not (even with a weekly group and a twice-a-month group, it still is less than it was when I was a teenager and could practically game daily). There's so much going on now and such a cultural energy to it.

Plus, the kind of things going on right now are things we couldn't even have imagined back in the day. The idea that people would watch D&D as entertainment! Taking it back to 2e, I remember talking to my gaming group, with the surety of a young 20-something about how boring it is to watch a game, rather than play, and that heck, people watching a game was sure way to jinx it and ensure that it was an "off" session.

lowkey13 said:
See, I think a lot of what constitutes a personal Golden Age has to do with the time you are playing.

From what you wrote, you were entering some prime gaming years (that period of time from 12-20, or so, when you have all the time in the world, a good circle of friends, and endless creativity and enthusiasm for the new).

GreyLord · Dec 6, 2018

lowkey13 said:
See, I think a lot of what constitutes a personal Golden Age has to do with the time you are playing.

From what you wrote, you were entering some prime gaming years (that period of time from 12-20, or so, when you have all the time in the world, a good circle of friends, and endless creativity and enthusiasm for the new).

Whereas I was leaving my prime gaming years during the introduction of 2e, and so it was, and will always be, anathema to me.

I'd say my golden years of Gaming personally was no where close to my teen years. That time was probably the same as the golden age of gaming in general for D&D (though one may say now is the Silver Age of Gaming for D&D). That period was probably between 1983-1986 or thereabouts.

I DID appreciated a few things from 2e. I liked that THAC0 was changed into a more mathematical idea where you could always figure out what the THAC0 was without having to either memorize a much larger table or look it up.

Bard's, in my opinion, were actually overpowered (vice what the OP stated) in 2e. They could do all a Rogue could do (with spells of Knock and Invisibility and Improved Invisibility and other items, covered all the niches) plus a LOT of what the Wizard could do but gained levels faster up until 13th level and 7th level spells kicked in for the Wizard...Bards had a LOT going for them.

All in all, I think I liked some things for 2e, but typically stayed with 1e rules (so...yes...Gold for XP...though it was still an option for 2e).

I did love (though many would call it incredibly broken) the class creation table in the 2e DMG.

D&D 2e and TSR made a LOT of money at the time (100 million dollar industry in the early 90s)...but D&D itself was on a continual decline after the mid-80s. 2e momentarily held off the demons that were coming to bay and sink it into oblivion, but only for another decade.

3e brought it back to life, but never could resurrect the corpse to the levels that it existed two decades earlier...but 5e has done some wonders in bringing it back to at least 2e levels of popularity (I wouldn't say it is as popular as 1e yet, but I could see it being as popular as 2e...even if it isn't making as much money as 2e did during the EARLY 90s...YET [it may in the near future and it definitely is doing better than when everything collapsed and TSR was going bankrupt]).

JeffB · Dec 9, 2018

I am a die hard Gary fanboy. Love the man. Miss him dearly. I grew up playing in the late 70s when G1 was new.

That said-

I think Zeb did a fine job on the core 2E books. Though he doesn't have the wonderful author's voice Gary had in the rulebooks*, I think his version reads far better than 3, 4, or 5E, which all bore me to tears, and I never use for anything more than a rules reference** I also think ultimately it's a more playable edition than 1st, despite it's warts (some it introduced, some that were leftovers).

* His adventure writing and his non D&D output are fantastic reading

**For 3E and 5E I use the various websites or the 5E basic rules so I don't even have to reference the books most of the time. I just don't enjoy reading for fun any of the WOTC versions.

Lanefan · Dec 10, 2018

When 2e came out our crew saw some of it as simply catching up to changes we'd already made to 1e (e.g. relaxed race-class level limits, no xp for gp thus slower advancement, Bards as a core class), some of it as complete garbage (e.g. all the stuff removed to assuage the moralists - we kept the lot) and a few bits of it as worth looking further into in hopes of adopting them into our existing game (e.g. a bunch of spells). So we carried on with our modified 1e, stealing good ideas from other systems wherever they appeared.

As 2e went on and ever more splats and expansions came out we mostly ignored it other than the published settings, a few of which were quite inspirational; and the spell compendia, which were really useful.

Nemesis Destiny · Dec 11, 2018

lowkey13 said:
Building on my earlier comment, I wonder if that's the same for most people?

That their "favorite" edition is the one that they played during their teenage years?

Most people? Can't speak to that. For me, certainly not the case.

2e hit right in my "gaming prime" - loads of free time, age of discovery, people to play with - but it's not my preferred edition. I like it, I remember it {mostly} fondly, but as a game it doesn't push the buttons the way 4e does, for me.

And I was super optimistic going in to 3.x - what a disappointment that turned out to be (for me - hold your fire). Took me a while to realize it, and then longer to figure out *why* that was the case, but if I had to "go back" I wouldn't pick this in a thousand years.

But I've always been a forward-looker. The currency of Nostalgia has a poor exchange rate for me. That's probably a big reason why 5e doesn't appeal to me, and why 4e did (and still does).

You make a very good point about 1e vs 2e though. They are very different, if not in rules, then certainly in assumptions, and tone. The funny part is, the 2e books really downplayed that difference, especially in the foreword. Telling players that it's nothing more than a "cleaned up version of the rules that integrates what experienced groups are already doing" does a great disservice to some of the more fundamental changes that came with it. Sure, the rules may be largely compatible, but the stated goals of play certainly were not. In fairness, the tools were largely still there to run 2e as you would 1e, especially if you had all the 1e books still, but without them, you would also be missing the guidance to play it as intended, so those tools seemed out of place, or lacking in context.

I played a fair bit of 1e as a youngster, but didn't read any of the books, as I didn't own them. I bought and read the heck out of the 2e books, and so I had this odd disconnect with the way people I later played 2e with were doing it, and what the book was saying. The book promised all these wonderful adventures full of story and character, but I mostly had railroady meta-plots, murder-hobo dungeon crawls, or pseudo-medieval Shadowrun PvP festivals. Even after finding a game that offered what the book promised, I didn't understand why the experiences were so different, especially considering many of the players were the same. That realization would not come until many, many years and several editions later.