What was so bad about the Core 2e rules? Why is it the red-headed stepchild of D&D?

[eyebeams]

Can you give some examples? Not having been a 2e player, I never saw any of that marketing...only the run-up marketing for 3e to lapsed players.

I recall a number of uncomplimentary things said by brand management at the time, and most of all the suggestion that AD&D had alienated/lost players. In fact, AD&D 2nd lasted for over a decade -- about as long as 1e -- and was the top selling RPG for the entire time, with the exception of a brief period right after the release of Vampire: The Masquerade Revised. "Dead as a product line?" Hardly. In the state TSR was in, even success couldn't save them from several cycles of bad corporate decisions. It really isn't AD&D 2nd's fault that TSR had no idea what to do with Dragon Dice, for example. And most gamers have never even *heard* of TSR's internet policies. Much of this is overblown by the medium we're talking in, which is dominated by folks who've been online since the 90s when this all went down.

(In an interesting contrast, consider WotC's failed entry into the top of the RPG tier. Released while the company was growing into a behemoth by folks that are well-respected around her, including cool, with-it management, Everway still underperformed. Just as TSR's failings are not necessarily in lockstep with AD&D, WotC's massive success in the 90s did not infect Everway.)

In short, AD&D 2nd had an excellent run and you'd be hard-pressed to argue that 3e would have aged more gracefully after 12 years.

 

[Gentlegamer]

eyebeams characterization of the late 90s WotC marketing and build up to 3e generally conforms to my memory of that time, as well the actual state of AD&D at the time. AD&D 2nd edition was a very successful RPG (far and away the market leader), and there was really nothing wrong with the core game, which of course, was mostly the core of 1e, as well.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

I Love 2e!

I love 2e. It's what I play to this day. I love specialty priests, specialist wizards, druids, fighters, some kits. It lets us play the game we want. Mostly through familiarity but also it lets us focus on the game and not on what our characters can do.

 

[Orius]

That's not how I recall it at all, but like a lot of people I drifted away from D&D in the 90's. By the time 3e came out, TSR had pissed off the online community and then had ceased to exist, 2e was dead as a product line, and a good chunk of the RPG world was playing other games. So WotC didn't need to manufacture any anti-2e sentiment - people didn't care about 2e anymore. All they had to do was showcase the changes they were making (everything based off a simple d20 roll-high subsystem, etc.), which they did in Dragon (and which enthusists compiled on websites like the original EN World), and that was enough to bring people like me back.

I think that's probably right. I got into D&D around the mid 90's right around the time when things were looking worst for TSR, and I didn't learn about the problems until about 2000 when I started getting active in online D&D communities (first Usenet, then the WotC boards, then finally here). I'd gotten my start in the later days of 2e, but by that time people who'd been gaming since 1e had either grown tired of 2e, or had been alienated by TSR.

WotC then essentially spent the next few years rebuilding the bridges burned by TSR, and doing market research for 3e, seeing if people wanted a new edition, and what people wanted from that edition. I think they handled it very well, and that made 3e successful, along with new ideas like the OGL.

At least that's the impression I get looking back on things with more knowedge of what was going on at the time.

 

[Fifth Element]

Maybe the wording changes just had to happen to make it easier to translate for people just learning a new language and English is one of the harder ones to learn because it always changes so much.

I would dispute that. We don't conjugate verbs, we don't decline nouns, our tones are almost irrelevant when compared to many languages, etc. I'd suggest English's flexibility and lack of hard-and-fast rules make it easier to become conversant in the language than most others.

It probably also makes it harder to master. There are many reasons why English can be difficult to master, such as terribly irregular spelling and an abundance of synonyms with subtle differences in meaning, but "it changes so much" is not one of them.

 

[justanobody]

We don't conjugate verbs,

 

[billd91]

eyebeams characterization of the late 90s WotC marketing and build up to 3e generally conforms to my memory of that time, as well the actual state of AD&D at the time. AD&D 2nd edition was a very successful RPG (far and away the market leader), and there was really nothing wrong with the core game, which of course, was mostly the core of 1e, as well.

There may have been nothing wrong with the core game... aside from it really needing a shot in the arm. A lot of people had stopped playing AD&D in favor of other games and while the fundamentals of 2e were strong, TSR's ability to do anything with it seemed to be petering out. The complete books had extensive coverage to it would be hard to squeeze in really new content, campaign worlds were all over the place and had plenty more they could cover but at the expense of lots of niche products doomed to never gather too much market share.
I think there was plenty of writing on the wall that something needed to be done with 2e. Even TSR started experimenting with new rules with the PO series in order to extend it's life as the flagship product.

 

[Kishin]

Teachers just don't like being wrong and when a teacher is wrong the student is at fault for it and should be punished!

As a teacher, I'm pretty offended by this. Please don't make blanket statements about an entire profession because you a) had a bad experience and b) Enjoy feeling a sense of superiority from it.

A teacher who isn't willing to admit they can in fact, be wrong or not have an answer, is a bad teacher. We're all only human.

Yeah, and what of it?

You realize most newspapers are written at a 6th grade reading level? Most technical manuals (mechanical) barely break an 8th grade level. Written media designed to teach or inform (such as textbooks) are written far lower than its target audience to allow the largest selection of proficient readers (including those with reading/learning disability or ESL-readers). Writing that is academically elite (that is with complex-compound structure or polysyllabic word choice) dramatically limits the available audience for your product. (and remember, TSR was interested in selling their product to the largest available audience).

IMHO, TSR did right by "dumbing down" Gygax's prose to reach a wider available reading audience. Its how a game grows. Sorry if your intellectual superiority is challenged by that.

Yes.

A hundred times yes.

An RPG rulebook is very much a technical manual. Flavorful language can be interspersed, but when you're talking about rules functionality, you absolutely have to speak simply, clearly and precisely.

 

[jdsivyer]

I love 2e. It's what I play to this day. I love specialty priests, specialist wizards, druids, fighters, some kits. It lets us play the game we want. Mostly through familiarity but also it lets us focus on the game and not on what our characters can do.

I've got a soft spot for 2e as well. And, just to go out on a limb, I also am a big fan of many of the concepts introduced in the Player's Option books. When they came out my group and I used the critical hits, the new initiative system (as strange as it looks it worked well with us), spell points, and quite a few other things. Sure, some of the character creation point systems in the S&P book were a bit unbalanced, but some errata and clarifications fixed that pretty quickly.

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah...if I had to choose between 2e and 3e (and I DO like 3e), I'd go for 2e.

 

[Lizard]

I suspect he meant "nouns".

My house, your house, their house, his house, her house, the house yesterday, the house tomorrow... I believe in some languages, you'd need a different form of "house" for some or all of those.