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Yeah, I am pretty sure it wasn't ever seen as a ban, but maybe more of a "nod-nod-wink-wink we're writing it this way so when your mom reads it, she won't flip out and tell the Pastor at the church to light up the bonfire," kinda deal.

I seem to recall that a lot of that stuff was soft-added back in through the PHB Handbooks, the brown-cover volumes. Like assassin became a kit or something. I know when someone wanted to play an assassin, I just told them to break out the 1E PHB and do it, we never really sweated the small...

Pretty much....in my own groups back then we all tended to play as we always had, but that often was more good/heroic anyway. In a twist of irony, I recall a game in 1992ish when my group had a guest player. He ran a chaotic evil thief and really aggravated the group, so they tricked him and...

No they didn't prohibit evil as an alignment, they simply provided a lot of context advising against it. It's probably not seen as big a deal today, but in 1989 it was a huge shift to go from 1E which was "anything goes, and the assassin must be evil" to 2E which was "assassin is a thing you can...

Well, you are correct (my intent was not to suggest it was banned, but eschewed/not favored), but the feel and approach of the day felt fairly heavy handed to players who migrated to AD&D 2E from 1st edition or other RPGs. The excision of obviously evil classes and races (for the time) was...

The US has a long history of the current religious/cultural zeitgeist obsessively determining that some form of literature or entertainment must be corrupting in a manner which requires a self-imposed censorship. It seems to be a long-standing tradition that I think stems from the US's...

Good point....yeah I had that module and the PHB/DMG/MM and ran it, never realizing at the time it was not technically compatible.

100% sure. It was a big deal at the time that AD&D 2E explicitly called the idea out and eschewed elements from 1st edition that leaned into the notion of evil PCs. As the game developed some things crept in, such as Ravenloft, with the intent of providing a punishment framework the DM could...

AD&D 2nd Edition, for one. Did it provide rules on evil alignment? Yes. But in reading the PHB and DMG of that edition it was strongly indicated and advised against making evil characters. The idea of "heroic/good as focus" in games goes back to at least 1989, and likely no doubt further back...

All this thread has done oddly is desperately make me want to pull out my old AD&D 1E books and run Keep on the Borderlands again.

The Barbarian Brothers! Deathstalker.....Beast Master.....Krull.....

WotC should just license Dark Sun out to Goodman Games and let them retool it as part of their "Reincarnated Classics" line. I think Goodman Games is the right company to thread this sort of setting into something the fans would like while maybe avoiding the crossfire of contemporary cultural...

Yes totally, and I think the success of the 3PP content for 5E supports the notion that a lot of people want this.

Correct. Very traditional (for better or worse).

The Beginner's Box does exactly this, by paring down the game to three ancestries, 4 classes, and providing prebuilt leveling which makes it a very ideal entry point for new players.

I don't know about this. My grandmother could tell me who Wonder Woman, Hulk and Captain America were, though she might have trouble with Iron Man or Thor. To this day if I am not playing with a dedicated tabletop gamer there is no way they know who Drizzt is. Maybe if Drizzt had thousands of...

Hi....and welcome to the PF2E club! Monster building is a strong point in PF2E. To get a better idea of how to balance it out, follow the encounter design rules in the CRB closely, as its not kidding. Keep in mind that a balanced encounter in PF2E is actually going to be a distinct fair fight...

That could be true, but I wonder how effective ChatGPT would be at emulating the features of a good GM. I bet it can emulate a so-so or bad GM really well, or manage something akin to pick-a-path games with more nuance...but I'll be a bit disturbed if ChatGPT's application could, say, carry on a...

As one who deals with lawyers regularly, that statement would never pass muster even if they wanted to state it.

Technically we have this, in the form of Baldur's gate III, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder CRPGs, Solasta, etc. But a ChatGPT-enabled DM is a long way off, I think.