AD&D 2nd Edition Players & Fans Unite!

[Ulrick]

Who cares about AD&D 2nd Edition? I do.

But it seems hard to find other 2e fans out there.

There's a pretty strong 2e group on Facebook., and there's a great little community on Google+, yet there are days when I like we're scattered to the four winds.

Let's changed that.

AD&D 2e players aren't "the lost generation of D&D." We didn't lose war. We just caught between TSR's slow decline and the rise of 3e. 2e worked for us, Thac0 and all.

One of the things I like best about 2e was how the rules were organized. They'd been streamlined from 1e. Players could find the combat tables and saving throws in the Player's Handbook, making leveling up easier (in 1e they were found in the DMG). Non-Weapon Proficiencies were also found in the PHB or you can use Secondary Skills--neither were required, both are optional depending on your game.

So, if you're a 2e fan, post here and tell everybody what you liked best about AD&D Second Edition.


Tell everybody what was going on in the decade between the end of 1e and rise of 3e, and the cool stuff people may have missed.

 

[DMZ2112]

I think the proficiency system had more going for it than most of us realized when, cheering, we adopted D&D3's highly granular skill and feat systems.

Similarly, I think many of us breathed a misguided sigh of relief when D&D3 introduced the concept of Challenge Rating.

In general, I think AD&D2 was doing a pretty damn good job of being D&D when D&D3 came along and convinced us that D&D was something different.

 

[the Jester]

Overall, I'm not too hot on 2e- but the one place (IMHO) where it excelled far beyond any other version of D&D was in specialty priests.

Assuming that the dm was willing to do the work and flesh out his pantheon (and assuming you kept a critical eye on published material), 2e specialty priests were so damned awesome that there's just no comparing the cleric to them.

 

[billd91]

2e is still my 2nd favorite edition of D&D - right behind Pathfinder. Part of why I liked it that much was because it was so compatible with the edition that came before it. It really was, at its fundamentals, a clean-up of all of the disparate stuff added to 1e over the years. We played a lot of Oriental Adventures and Al-Qadim with the 2e rules.

 

[TerraDave]

Specialty priests where a big part of my game, both in terms of player characters and implications for the wider game world. We also did a lot with the various option books, as unbalanced and wonky as they seem in hindsight.

I liked that 2E was approached as very open, flexible system--even if the mechanics didn't always support that vision. Through 3E and 4E there has been a tendency to focus more and more on certain kinds of playstyles. I hope 5E restores that more open feeling. But without THACO. Don't miss that.

 

[Agamon]

I hated 2e at it's end. I had given up on D&D 2 weeks before 3e was announced due to my dislike, only coming back once I heard what WotC was doing with the game. Then, the exact same thing happened with 3e at it's end.

I came to realise that it wasn't the actual game I hated, it was system bloat. So I've now come to really appreciate the good of each edition and see system bloat, regardless of system, to be the true evil.

So, while I'm not a big 2e fan, I like what it does well, and I am a big fan of a lot of the setting material.

 

[TerraDave]

.. Part of why I liked it that much was because it was so compatible with the edition that came before it. It really was, at its fundamentals, a clean-up of all of the disparate stuff added to 1e over the years. We played a lot of Oriental Adventures and Al-Qadim with the 2e rules.

2E rules--with whatever official or unofficial modifications--and 1E adventures produced many of my best gaming memories.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

2E remains as my favorite D&D edition. I hope the final version of DnD Next manages to overcome it, because I long for a game that is able to do the same things, but also uses ascending AC and no THAC0.

 

[Luce]

2e is my favorite edition. I like the sentiment that the rules are "only guidelines" and the sense of encouragement to make the game your own ("Add, create, expand, extrapolate"). I know that this can be controversial topic, but personally I enjoyed the opacity of rules. By that I mean that certain things/rules were solely in the DM's domain and the players have to either discover them through play (such as how much it cost to get hirelings) or never have to worry about because it is handled by the DM (treasure, encounter tables, potion mix results). This allows IME the players to focus more on their characters and make in game decisions based on limited knowledge.
I enjoy the sense of wander invoked by this edition. Magic items are not easily created,(in fact each permanent one is an adventure in itself) and not everything is easily replicated. Finding an unbreakable sword or hand axe that allows you to float on sea waves feels unique and precious.
As others have stated some very fine and interesting settings own their beginning to the 2e era. And I happen to like fluff.
The diety specific spells, specialty priests and the spell rarity system are all ways that make spell-casters unique and distinguishable from one another. That is you can have two different Earth Powers worshiping priest in the party and both to feel distinct in play (while still contributing to the party's success).

 

[Nagol]

Overall, I'm not too hot on 2e- but the one place (IMHO) where it excelled far beyond any other version of D&D was in specialty priests.

Assuming that the dm was willing to do the work and flesh out his pantheon (and assuming you kept a critical eye on published material), 2e specialty priests were so damned awesome that there's just no comparing the cleric to them.

It was a heck of a lot of work though for limited value inside the campaign. My campaign worlds typically have a few pantheons (~3 the players can choose from) -- I remember the weeks putting together the domain lists, special powers etc. then trying to eyeball balance just so the players would have a informed set of choices for character creation.