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As for the necro, Snarf linked this in the Moldvay Basic post. Just figured it would be good to know that Zeb is going to be at PAGE2 in Philly in Jan. running a B/X game, an OA game, and a 2E game and seats at those tables were still available...

Zeb did the best initiative system ever in 2E and that’s a hill I’ll die on. B/X and BECMI weren’t particularly bad however. Simple and straightforward, just like the system as a whole. 1E however is a complete mess.

It’s an otherwise fairly useless book honestly. However, that section really opened up my pre-stats teenage mind to bell curves and weighting averages. It’s really good stuff, but honestly it’s just like 3-5 pages in an otherwise terrible book.

At least in the edition I'm most familiar with this mechanic, 2E, you could continue to add NWP slots for a +1/slot as you level. To me it made sense. It seems odd that you become better at some non-core ability solely because you increase level in your "profession" so-to-speak. The stuff that...

2E DMG discusses ability checks for things that saving throws aren't applicable. The verbiage in the DMG is identical in the PHB. And while it's in DMGR1, as most know, Jennell Jaquay's first half was originally to be included in the 2E DMG and discusses how to adjudicate things when there is...

Yup, misremembered that the 5 levels of weapon proficiencies were in both the Fighters' handbook and PO:C&T. A lot of stuff is in both, specifically fighting styles and broad and narrow weapon groups, but nothing really added to weapon specialization beyond the PHB rules. Interestingly, the...

So, I dug back through my history to find the stuff I mentioned earlier: An old file that supposedly allows editing of CR2 files from PlanetADND: CR2Edit.zip (download link) I've never gotten this to do anything. A somewhat promising discussion from Fantasy Grounds where someone managed to...

Using the myrmidon kit example, I don’t think that really changes the way anyone should look at a starting adventurer. When I was 22, I was a 2nd class petty officer and running a work center on a nuclear aircraft maintenance group and being a member of reactor watch team and being a lead for...

Yeah, there was definitely something there where it seemed that Gygax had a different idea of what the game was compared with what a lot of the players did. I totally get both sides of the argument. Gygax was really (I think based upon what I’ve read over the years) looking at the published...

I ran a 2E era (game era) campaign in 5E for many years by just converting old stuff on the fly. 5E isn’t my favorite system, but I’ll be damned if it’s not a good balance of crunch and speed. I love to run 2E, but it’s definitely a labor of love. That said, most of the fiddly stuff was...

I found a thread on this or another forum from 2010ish where the author said they had developed an API to use the CR2.0 database but with a more modern front end. Unfortunately, the links were dead. Personally, I’ve fiddled around with the stuff on my old PPC Mac and was able to see more of...

Every race in 2E had a minimum and maximum ability score which the ability scores had to fall within prior to racial ability score modification being applied. Table 7 in the 2E PHB has the core game racial ability requirements. Before a race could be considered, this chart was supposed to be...

I still think the “roll under” mechanic was the superior way to go with skills. DCs simply scale poorly and create way too many impossible situations or zero effort rolls. Not everything should scale with XP. Again, after 3rd level or so, the ability to fly occasionally shouldn’t be...

What is the scope of this work? Did you effectively port the Core Rules database into something else?

B/X still had ability scores and demihumans linked, just instead of the +/- it simply required minimum ability scores. So, your dwarf didn’t get a +1 CON & -1 CHA, the dwarf just had to have a minimum in CON to qualify. 2E probably took this to the extreme, with effectively having “slot...

Fair point. I guess my point was that the species attributes, while not necessarily game breaking—which was implied in the older versions of the game—still were a major factor in how the character was developed and played. Moving a lot of this stuff from something inherent to a species to a...

+3 stat is for the life of a character. Most of that other stuff isn’t particularly useful past 3-5th level. Proficiency bonuses are also likely stacked from the class, or it’s not particularly important for the build. Again, this is actually starting to sound like the Gygaxian argument for...

That was the biggest trait that a species used to provide, making it a generic background trait really makes the choice significantly less impactful compared to previous versions then.

My understanding was that racial traits that affect actual gameplay were eliminated in the current edition. I’ve been relocated to rural Ontario from the US for work (which is also why I no longer have a game; if anyone wants to run a game in Bruce County, please let me know, I schlepped three...

Kinda sorta not really though. OD&D technically had race and class, but only one class for each non-human race. The demihumans also had hit dice that were distinct from the human equivalent, in say the halfling. So that sort of deviates from the class being the driver for HD in the “normal” D&D...