D&D 2E On AD&D 2E

[Mark Hope]

One reason I like TORG: Eternity is that the GM is supposed to outright tell the players what the opposition's defensive stats are, so they can make informed decisions on what to do and what resources to use. The way I see it is that while the PC does not exactly know "The DN to maneuver the pixie is 12, but intimidate is only 7" they would know "That pixie is quick as heck but it looks really nervous so it scares easy."

TORG!!!!!

 

[Enrahim2]

1e & 2e will explicitly say "bonus" or "penalty". When ever I hear someone say that descending AC & THAC0 are too difficult, I assume that the individual is horrible at math and they are unable to handle addition or subtraction with negative numbers. There were even character sheets that either had a Target AC to Hit chart to fill in for each AC from 10 to -10 and/or a Weapon Combat chart to write the adjusted THAC0 for each the character's weapons.

Yes, and even that chart strongly indicate that the players are supposed to know the AC, as that is how charts are usualy referenced - look at the header and get the interesting number below. If the intention had been for AC to be hidden, the chart would have been inverted, with roll result on top, and AC hit below..

After all this all came from a competative wargame inspired table, and in those War games it go without saying that all stats of troops in the conflict is open information. I guess that intuition got lost somewhere along the line due to power hungry DMs..

 

[Voadam]

1e & 2e will explicitly say "bonus" or "penalty". When ever I hear someone say that descending AC & THAC0 are too difficult, I assume that the individual is horrible at math and they are unable to handle addition or subtraction with negative numbers. There were even character sheets that either had a Target AC to Hit chart to fill in for each AC from 10 to -10 and/or a Weapon Combat chart to write the adjusted THAC0 for each the character's weapons.

Yes, and even that chart strongly indicate that the players are supposed to know the AC, as that is how charts are usualy referenced - look at the header and get the interesting number below. If the intention had been for AC to be hidden, the chart would have been inverted, with roll result on top, and AC hit below..

After all this all came from a competative wargame inspired table, and in those War games it go without saying that all stats of troops in the conflict is open information. I guess that intuition got lost somewhere along the line due to power hungry DMs..

In 1e the charts were not in the PH, they were in the DMG which according to the DMG players were specifically not supposed to look in.

The 1e DM screen had the to hit chart on the DM side, not on the player facing side.

If the person reading the chart is supposed to know the AC, that is consistent with only the DM knowing the AC.

The 1e sheets with THACO on them were a later 1e product and represented a shift from how things were in the core 1e books, as was 2e having THACO info in the PH.

For some of us around at the time it was a welcome shift.

From my reading of the 1e DMG I took it as advising a fog of war type of atmosphere where the ideal is for players to make realistic decisions based on the descriptions, with misdirections and mistakes and mysteries and explorations to find out stuff being a big part of the game. It was a move from wargame sides playing against each other under defined rules to lets see how as an explorer you handle the new surprises I came up with this week.

 

[Enrahim2]

In 1e the charts were not in the PH, they were in the DMG which according to the DMG players were specifically not supposed to look in.

The 1e DM screen had the to hit chart on the DM side, not on the player facing side.

If the person reading the chart is supposed to know the AC, that is consistent with only the DM knowing the AC.

The 1e sheets with THACO on them were a later 1e product and represented a shift from how things were in the core 1e books, as was 2e having THACO info in the PH.

For some of us around at the time it was a welcome shift.

From my reading of the 1e DMG I took it as advising a fog of war type of atmosphere where the ideal is for players to make realistic decisions based on the descriptions, with misdirections and mistakes and mysteries and explorations to find out stuff being a big part of the game. It was a move from wargame sides playing against each other under defined rules to lets see how as an explorer you handle the new surprises I came up with this week.

This is an interesting fact I was not aware of. But that still mean that the basic process is that someone knowing AC looks up the target number and compare with the roll. That is, you never have anyone converting a rolled number to an AC.

Offloading the lookup to the players by providing the table to them hence also require the DM to share the AC, for the system as a whole to work smothly as intended. Doing just one, and not the other is what causes friction.

(But this definitely makes it clearer where the idea that AC should be hidden come from, as the players never really needed to know. Without the tables, that number is sort of meaningless anyway)

 

[R_J_K75]

Is anyone aware of a website for 2E like 5Etools that has tools to help DMs prep adventures? I have the old core rules but they're not very ideal for some things. Im looking for a monster/NPC generator that prints out the truncated stat blocks like those found in adventures at the time. Spell and magical item descriptions I can cut and paste into a word doc would be great too. I'm surprised at how little there is online for this edition.

 

[Enrahim2]

Is anyone aware of a website for 2E like 5Etools that has tools to help DMs prep adventures? I have the old core rules but they're not very ideal for some things. Im looking for a monster/NPC generator that prints out the truncated stat blocks like those found in adventures at the time. Spell and magical item descriptions I can cut and paste into a word doc would be great too. I'm surprised at how little there is online for this edition.

Beyond the current user base, and the state of internet during the 2ed era, there is one big reason there is much more tooling available online for 3ed and 5ed. One word: OGL.

 

[R_J_K75]

Beyond the current user base, and the state of internet during the 2ed era, there is one big reason there is much more tooling available online for 3ed and 5ed. One word: OGL.

I see

 

[Voadam]

Is anyone aware of a website for 2E like 5Etools that has tools to help DMs prep adventures? I have the old core rules but they're not very ideal for some things. Im looking for a monster/NPC generator that prints out the truncated stat blocks like those found in adventures at the time. Spell and magical item descriptions I can cut and paste into a word doc would be great too. I'm surprised at how little there is online for this edition.

The CDs have word files for the PH, DMG, Tome of Magic, and most of the Complete series so you should be able to copy and paste spell and magic item descriptions.

I never got the core rules set itself but I got the CD with the word files and found them great for my purposes.

The PDFs that DriveThru sells have variable PDF quality for these purposes. There is a big variability in the quality of the OCR scans, and a few have no OCR at all.

 

[R_J_K75]

The CDs have word files for the PH, DMG, Tome of Magic, and most of the Complete series so you should be able to copy and paste spell and magic item descriptions.

I never got the core rules set itself but I got the CD with the word files and found them great for my purposes.

I'll have to look at the CDs again. I had forgotten about the word files.

The core rules PC gen isn't bad, but I wish it would print out a little more, or less info on certain things. I haven't used the program since probably about 2000 so my memory could be a bit off, or I just knew 2E so well at the time, but the PC print out sheets I remember being different; more customizable, limited the need to look up stuff at the table. There were 2 patches for the program that I can't get to install on my computer anymore and I think this has something to do with the lack of functionality I remembered. My friend says the patches were just to add errata and clean up some of the text the program printed out. I'm not sure l agree.

 

[PHATsakk43]

My biggest problem with Core Rules 2.0 is that it wasn't continued with support.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the program as it is, it's just that WotC has zero interest in providing updates to it. At this point, there isn't really any reason why pretty much all of AD&D (1 & 2E) isn't plugged into the program.
I've tried recently to mess around under the hood a bit to see if I could tweek the program a bit for modern machines. The fixed aspect ratio is another problem, but it's nothing other than a minor inconvenience.
Again, Core Rules 2.0 is probably the best table top game master assistance program ever made. It's far superior to what is out for 5E currently IMHO.