D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[cbwjm]

I'd heard about the problems with those loose leaf binders. Something that would have easily been solved by someone thinking for just a few seconds and realising that each monster really required a single sheet of paper

 

[Zardnaar]

May I ask about your house rules? I'm always looking for interesting options.

BAB over THACO humans get a floating +1 and bonus WP and NWP.

 

[Gorg]

I'd heard about the problems with those loose leaf binders. Something that would have easily been solved by someone thinking for just a few seconds and realising that each monster really required a single sheet of paper

That would have made sense, tho.... I'm just glad they came to their senses, and re-released the MC as the MM in book form. All expansions after that were soft cover books.

Not as convenient, I suppose, as a one shop stop- with all pages in one really big binder. But still, They don't get ripped out, jumbled together, etc. And when some over enthusiastic LARPer (or a klutz) knocks it off the table, it doesn't bust wide open and scatter pages everywhere. Ask me how I know!

 

[Orius]

one of the criticisms of the whole MC series was that, in spite of the loose leaf paper and binder format, you still couldn't put the assorted sets into alphabetical order because so many of the sheets had different monsters on each side, and newer sets coming out wouldn't always fit in order. An odd thing that occurred to me a while back is that with the advent of DTRPG and the availability of practically every MC set on it in PDF, if you really wanted to, you could print them all out, one monster to a page, and put every single one in alphabetical order. It would be a huge expense in paper and ink and you'd need about 8 big binders to hold them all, but it could be done...

Yup, that's very much a possibility. I suggested the very thing on Dragonsfoot a few years ago, get all the MCs on DriveThru and custom print them out to be properly alphabetical. DriveThru doesn't have everything yet though, the softcover MCs are still mostly missing unfortunately.

And that still leaves out stuff from modules, Dragon, Dungeon, etc, though the MC Annuals collected some of that stuff.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd heard about the problems with those loose leaf binders. Something that would have easily been solved by someone thinking for just a few seconds and realising that each monster really required a single sheet of paper

The real problem is just that they aren't durable. If you open and close your MC a few 100 times, the pages all fall out. Obviously you can go through and tediously glue on those reinforcers, but that also covers some of the text, and it is a lot of work. They also take up 5x more space than hardbound books. It was just overall a failed experiment. Clever idea, but it was really more of a 'solution in search of a problem' than anything else. I mean, 1e had in its entire run 3 main monster books (MM, FF, MM2). It just isn't that hard to remember what is in each and look stuff up if you cannot quite remember. Given the mentioned issues with ordering the MC pages, it really is not any improvement.

 

[Voadam]

Yup, that's very much a possibility. I suggested the very thing on Dragonsfoot a few years ago, get all the MCs on DriveThru and custom print them out to be properly alphabetical. DriveThru doesn't have everything yet though, the softcover MCs are still mostly missing unfortunately.

And that still leaves out stuff from modules, Dragon, Dungeon, etc, though the MC Annuals collected some of that stuff.

DriveThru has a lot.

I believe they are missing the Planescape MCs and two of the annuals but have everything else.

 

[Alzrius]

I believe they are missing the Planescape MCs and two of the annuals but have everything else.

Well, it's not technically a volume of the Monstrous Compendium books, but they still don't have Blood Spawn: Creatures of Light and Shadow (which was a Birthright monster book that was only released as a free PDF on WotC's website after the line folded). I'm still holding out hope that it will be put up with a POD option someday.

 

[Voadam]

2e was great. My group all preordered the PH out of a comic book discount add I found and we adopted it as our base system shortly thereafter just keeping 1eisms like assassins and elven subraces out of the 1e PH and Unearthed Arcana for our continuing campaign.

The 2e PH had THAC0 and saves in the PH so the players could look that stuff up themselves instead of saying "I rolled a 12, does that hit?" and the DM figuring it out because all those charts were in the 1e DMG hidden from players. So I felt the 2e PH was functionally great.

It also took the nonweapon proficiency system we had been using from Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and made it a full generic system so you could have abilities relevant for other contexts.

I used my 1e DMG and monster manuals throughout that era, but the monster expansions my friends got had lots of cool descriptive elements, I was quite taken with the outer planes monstrous compendium and its introduction of the Blood War.

I was also a big fan of the DMing philosophy in the original Ravenloft campaign set and ran a lot of stuff in the setting.

 

[Voadam]

Well, it's not technically a volume of the Monstrous Compendium books, but they still don't have Blood Spawn: Creatures of Light and Shadow (which was a Birthright monster book that was only released as a free PDF on WotC's website after the line folded). I'm still holding out hope that it will be put up with a POD option someday.

I also have a Savage Coast Monstrous Compendium RTF from WotC from that free stuff era as well (2e Mystara Red Steel setting) which I do not see on DriveThru.

 

[Orius]

DriveThru has a lot.

I believe they are missing the Planescape MCs and two of the annuals but have everything else.

The Planescape MCs are a pretty big hole though. Sure they have MC8, but the XP values in there are massively inflated. The second Planescape MC isn't as important, but the other two have a very solid collection of extraplanar monsters which fills in 2e's core gap. And unless one was quitely added somewhere, they only have the first Annual. The Annuals are all good for core 2e and have a good variety of monsters.

I also have a Savage Coast Monstrous Compendium RTF from WotC from that free stuff era as well (2e Mystara Red Steel setting) which I do not see on DriveThru.

I don't know what WotC has done with some of the old free material thry used to have for 2e. Some of the Birthright stuff they put over on DriveThru recently, but I'm not sure about the rest. Some of that stuff was in plain text or rtf originally too, so that complicates things. The Savage Coast stuff is over on Pandius though, and converted to pdf from the original rtf files. That includes the MC.