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

[Dausuul]

No worries. The demand for your card was based strictly on your opinion of the MM cover BTW

That's okay, it's already been revoked and torn up. I was put on probation when I adopted 3E right away, and when I made an equally rapid switch to 4E, that was it. They sent a team of thief-acrobats after me.

 

[Greg K]

The 2E core assumption of the game tone is still the one I prefer - and while I generally think 3E was a vast improvement mechanically (some of which we were already using for years, like AoOs), I house-ruled 3e to keep a lot of 2e tone - esp. specialty priests which is the best part of 2E.

Same here. I prefer most of the mechanical changes of 3e (many of which were in my feedback to the pre-3e questionaire). However, I disliked the whole "whole back to the dungeon", how both clerics and wizard specialists were handled, and the heavy focus on prestige classes.


Despite my love for the streamlined mechanics of 3e, 2e had a lot going for it in. I liked the settings and would have preferred the following elements had been carried over: specialty priests, the changes to wizards specialists from later supplements, the concept of kits (which, imo, would have been handled better under 3e mechanics), weapon groups, the PO: Combat and Tactics: Critical resolution, and many of the mechanics from PO: Spells and Power.

That all said, the 2e changes did not go far enough for me to stay. It still suffered from many of the clunky patchwork elements that I already disliked in 1e. 2e simply delayed my leaving ADND for other fantasy games like Fantasy Hero, GURPS, Rolemaster and some Ars Magica.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That's okay, it's already been revoked and torn up. I was put on probation when I adopted 3E right away, and when I made an equally rapid switch to 4E, that was it. They sent a team of thief-acrobats after me.

Highly doubtful. The grognard hit squad wouldn't include UA pansies. You would have been taken out by a team of clerics, magic users, and fighting men.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Really? I had memories of tanari and baatezu being in the original Monstrous Compendium. Colour me corrected.

They were not in the original two volume Monstrous Compendium. It wasn't until MC8 the Outer Planes Index that they first appeared, but it was three hole punched so it could be inserted at the end.

 

[Dausuul]

Highly doubtful. The grognard hit squad wouldn't include UA pansies. You would have been taken out by a team of clerics, magic users, and fighting men.

Nah, that's the A-team. They only call out those guys for people who don't laugh when you say the word "gazebo."

 

[Piratecat]

When I went back and played a 2e game a year or so after the 3e rules launched, the only thing that drove me nuts was the use of proficiencies instead of skills. We loved 2e and had an absurd amount of fun playing it, clunky bits and all.

 

[Herschel]

I still feel 2E was the superior overall edition. It cleaned up some things while still maintaining the essential charm of the game while also actually encouraging house rules and flexibility in still using 1E stuff (Demons, etc.) via easy conversion.

I like a lot of 4E too and have already implemented some concepts in to my 2E campaign and we'll be trying a full 4E game in the New Year, but 2E will likely always be my favorite for its scenery, "realism" and flexibility.

 

[C_M2008]

2e was what started me in D&D, one of my favourite editions of the 3 that I've played(I missed the 1e boat). It was very simple to use, but could do most anything I needed it to do. If I could change saving throws that would probably be my sole change. I'll probably run a 2e campaign after the 4e one I'm running is finished.

 

[Mallus]

i had a theory that overall the core rules were good, and people had a problem with the direction TSR took the game while 2e was out, and people merged their dislike of all of that into a general overall "2e sucked."

My screen-name is Mallus and I loved 2e.

2e was the mechanical underpinning for my most successful campaign ever, which was "core" in the sense it didn't use much, if anything, from the splatbooks (a number of which were quite good, IMNSHO), and totally not-core, in that it contained a metric ton of material my friends and I made up whole cloth.

re: the nomenclature thing: yes, I thought renaming demons/devils and removing the assassin (in name only) was pointless. On the other hand, I don't get bothered by things so easily fixed . Demons were the main antagonists in my longest-running 2e campaign, and there was this charmingly not-nice NPC assassin named Mercy...

re: the "flavor" thing: my primary influence for D&D isn't D&D itself. It's literature, and to a lesser extent, film and television. So I don't care if the core rule books are flavorful, or soulful, or whatever. I can, and enjoy adding that stuff myself. 2e read fine to me, and the campaign I built using it was simply chock-full of (mostly appropriated) creative, gonzo fantasy.

re: the splatbook issue: some were bad. Many were very good (why hello Complete Bards Handbook). Caveat emptor and all that...

re: the setting-proliferation issue: from a completely non-business standpoint this was a wonderful thing. You has a several high-quality setting lines that demonstrated how versatile D&D was, and reflected how diversely gamers had been playing the game all along.

re: I loved 2e priests (in the strictly Platonic sense). Specifically, I loved specialty priests, which led to the 17 different mechanically-distinct priests classes in my homebrew (I was younger then, with a lot more free time...).

 

[Stoat]

I started playing right when 2E came out, and I ran it off and on up until 3.0 launched. I've got a lot of fond memories of it.

Since I didn't have a whole lot of 1E books, I never missed Gygax's prose.

I hated that the Devils and Demons were missing, but MC8 put 'em back in. I just ignored the new names.

IMO, the core ruleset plays pretty well. NWP's are clunky, and the game gets wonky somewhere north of 10th level, but the basic mechanics are straightforward, flexible, and presented in a very easy to grasp style.

I think its interesting to note that most folks who don't like 2E came up from 1E and primarily dislike the "tone" of the game and the fact that Demons, Devils, Assassins and Half-Orcs were removed. I don't see many folks griping about the game mechanics themselves.

Given the number of folks who missed the Assassin, I'm surprised nobody owns up to missing the Monk.