AD&D 2E Do you consider the Handbooks canon?

[sevenbastard]

I love the Complete Fighters and Complete Thiefs handbook. They changed the way I looked at the game and pushed me to more low magic settings. Both are full of great ideas but when I DM 2e now I just allow the PHB.

 

[overgeeked]

Purely optional.

 

[Retreater]

Optional. With the exception of Psionics, which was core to my 2e experience.

 

[Parmandur]

That's like asking if I consider a certain cookbook part of the Food Network Culinary Universe: a cookbook is a tool to guide in making something, not Scripture.

 

[Blue]

At the time we had no experience with having a choice about something published. They published more rules, then those were the rules. Dragon mag was different, we could ask about that. But books that came out were true. Heck, the main DM I played with for AD&D and AD&D 2nd even had a whole issue because they came out with an FR sourcebook detailing I think an ogre kingdom in an area not previously detailed, and it's existence messed up things in the campaign but it was still published and therefore true. When the DM doesn't even consider not including newly published lore because it impacts a campaign-in-play, we really just never even considered that a published book could be anything but canon.

(Side note: this wasn't the first time new lore messed things up. The time before was when a character connected themselves to Moonshae lore in their backstory, and then later the date for that event came out and she suddenly had to become a older woman (which was probably 30s for us back then as teenagers).)

 

[Fenris-77]

2e taught me how unimportant game balance really is compared to earnest modeling of the setting.

I didn't mean balance in a CR way, but balance in more of bad design kind of way. There is also too much content that won't all fit into the same setting without making a mockery of the word setting. The handbooks are a good place to get a few new ingredients, not a place to tip in the whole cupboard.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't mean balance in a CR way, but balance in more of bad design kind of way. There is also too much content that won't all fit into the same setting without making a mockery of the word setting. The handbooks are a good place to get a few new ingredients, not a place to tip in the whole cupboard.

Of course you don't use it all at once, because it's not all going to be relevant to any given campaign. Just like the rules for warlocks aren't relevant if your game doesn't include any (PC or NPC), or how none of us use every official monster in our games.

And "bad design" is subjective

 

[VashVet]

Very heartening to see so much love for the 2e Psionics Handbook here. I adored that book but figured most actively loathed psionics in D&D.

 

[Fenris-77]

Of course you don't use it all at once, because it's not all going to be relevant to any given campaign. Just like the rules for warlocks aren't relevant if your game doesn't include any (PC or NPC), or how none of us use every official monster in our games.

Using every monster is a drop in the bucket compared to using all the handbook material. My point is that it's too varied to all apply to any one single setting.

And "bad design" is subjective

Sometimes. Sometimes not.

 

[Koloth]

Canon but optional. From The Complete Psionics Handbook, page 6 - How does this fit in my Campaign? "Remember, everything in this book is optional; none of it is part of the core of the AD&D game."