2e.... more flavor than 3e?

[Pants]

2nd ed:

Only the greatest of wizards are capable of creating items. Normal items are not sufficient to hold the great mystical powers involved so special ingredients are required. The scroll must be freshly dried papyrus from the wildest marshes. The ink must be made from water collected from the deepest stretches of the ocean. The quill pen used must be a tail feather plucked from a cockatrice at full moon by a left handed werebat singing 'oompa loompa' .... etc etc.

For me that's the difference between the two versions. 2nd ed has fascinating rule books but a confusing game. 3rd ed has dull rule books but a fascinating game.

Funny you bring that up.

While flavor is nice and all... who is going to go through all of that trouble just to make a scroll. Contrary to popular belief, a scroll is not some epically powerful magical item really worthy of the trouble.

What I found funny about the magic item creation rules of 2e was that it was such a pain in the arse to actually make them... yet, there are +1 weapons just lying around everywhere. I'm all for injecting flavor into the creation rules, but those were just nonsensical.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This is a comment that comes up a lot and one that I'm very curious about...

When I first started playing D&D, I started at the very tail-end of 2e, so I never really got much exposure to it until many years later and that was only to plunder it's settings. So... I never really read many of the 'Player's Options...' or 'Complete Shrub Elf' styled books or... really any of the setting generic material released during 2e. Most of what I was exposed to was setting material.

I'm curious to know if the generic setting 2e books really had more flavor than the generic setting 3e books. I'm sure if we included the campaign settings, 2e would beat 3e down with a shovel, considering that there were, what, 6 settings going at once during the reign of 2e?

I don't think 2e campaigns had better "flavor". Eberron is the first WotC 3e campaign that we've seen, and I happen to think it's flavorful.

I think DMs just had more time (we were younger then... DnD gamers are getting older now) then, due to less real-life constraints, less time making NPCs, and less time making up rules, so they could spend more time campaign and plot building.

From what I recall of 2e, they were always great and fun campaigns ... for about three sessions. Then you found your character couldn't do what you wanted to do and you were never challenged in combat, either - at least some archetypes never were.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I would say both yes and no.

2e had much more inspiring art. It kept the archetypes of 1e intact. And yes, the settings were wonderful. Far more wonderous variety was available. And the maps were bigger and better. Kits undeniably could be unbalancing, but they really provided a lot of flavor.

3e, however, has the iconics, and the core books were coupled with the Greyhawk setting (Though that seems to be increasingly little more than lip service). I do think that the art is a weak point, since very rarely does it bother to tell a story.


In terms of flavor, I think 2e comes out on top, but 3e is not entirely without its merits.

 

[francisca]

Dunno. Didn't play 2e at all. But I can tell you that I've played in some fabulously flavored 3e, 1e, and B/X games, and played in real dogs in each of those systems. I think it has more to do with the DM and players than the ruleset or setting.

 

[der_kluge]

I think 2nd editions rules were more constrained, so you didn't get all the rules supplement books like we have now.

Not until they added kits in 2nd edition could they put out the various splat books on all the classes. Some of which were great, and some of which stunk to high heaven.


With 3rd edition, you have prestige classes (the equivalent to kits, essentially) and feats. So, there is a lot more room for rules expansion. Many 3rd edition books are little more than PrC, Feats, and spells tied around a central theme.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

3e lets players make a lot more choices. In 2e, you picked your class, race, kit, and alignment. From then on the only decision you got to make was skills/non-weapon proficiencies. 3e lays out very real, obtainable, mechanical goals. All of which is a nice way of saying that there's a heck of a lot of rules. And rules take up space in a book.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Monte Cook once noted that when he arrived at WotC, nobody had a game going. Essentially, you had a bunch of quasi-novelists. So there was a bunch of really flavorful stuff, but it didn't always work.

I'm a big fan of Colin McComb for his work on Planescape. But he also wrote The Complete Book of Elves with the Bladesinger kit. Flavorful? You bet! Balanced? No way.

Flavor is nice, but not if it breaks the game.

 

[Bryan898]

I don't think 2e campaigns had better "flavor". Eberron is the first WotC 3e campaign that we've seen, and I happen to think it's flavorful.

Didn't WotC release "Ghostwalk" as well? From what I've heard it definitely has it's own flavor.

As to the 3e vrs 2e flavor debate: IMO it always seemed that 2e was less concerned with rules than books on flavor. 3e seems to go to great lengths to define rules and mechanics within the game. Because 3e takes so much more space for the rules, you have less space available for flavor.

The Monster Manual is a great example of this. In 2e they described the abilities of a monster in a large box of descriptive text. While this probably seemed more flavorful it could be a mess to find out the monster's abilities. 3e on the other hand lists SA in a convenient manner, then describes them seperately and in bold text. The descriptions lack any true flavor for the most part, instead concentrating on the rules. Another example would be the lack of Ecology/ Soceity information on the majority of creatures.

I'd actually agree that 2e has more flavor than 3e in the generic setting books, because 3e concentrates more on the rules needed for a good gaming experience. I like it better that way anyway, they give me a good system and I can create the flavor.

 

[francisca]

Didn't WotC release "Ghostwalk" as well? From what I've heard it definitely has it's own flavor.

It's more of an aftertaste.

 

[werk]

I'm curious to know if the generic setting 2e books really had more flavor than the generic setting 3e books. I'm sure if we included the campaign settings, 2e would beat 3e down with a shovel, considering that there were, what, 6 settings going at once during the reign of 2e?

Sounds like your perspecitve is 2e>3e, and that is clouding your judgement here.

I don't see how that can possibly be true. 2e had some nice stuff but it was so limited compared to 3e. Just compare the number of races and classes, not to mention the size and word-count of the core materials. Add to that all the OGL content and 3e is handing 2e a shovel and shoving it in the trunk before a long drive into the desert (to continue your analogy).

I started in 2e, orange bound hardcovers, playing dragonlance. While I didn't see all the 2e stuff, I did see a lot.

 

[Shemeska]

The Monster Manual is a great example of this. In 2e they described the abilities of a monster in a large box of descriptive text. While this probably seemed more flavorful it could be a mess to find out the monster's abilities. 3e on the other hand lists SA in a convenient manner, then describes them seperately and in bold text. The descriptions lack any true flavor for the most part, instead concentrating on the rules. Another example would be the lack of Ecology/ Soceity information on the majority of creatures.

I'd actually agree that 2e has more flavor than 3e in the generic setting books, because 3e concentrates more on the rules needed for a good gaming experience. I like it better that way anyway, they give me a good system and I can create the flavor.

The 2e monster books are already out there in the desert with the bludgeoned body of the 3e monster books, already putting them in the ground. To continue to use the shovel analogy here.

Really, some of the best flavor text in the various monster manuals in 3e are very nearly a cut and paste job from the 2e material on the same monster. The Slasrath in the 3e Fiend Folio is almost a word for word cut & paste from its 2e source, but the 3e version is shorter and without the in character account of the creature's creation in the laboratory of an Ultroloth.

3e monster books have ecology information and pure flavor text as a seeming afterthought to the rules and listing of abilities. Compare that to the incredibly detailed and much longer and much more in depth ecology information in the 2e monster manuals (especially the later PSMC books, and for the sake of allowing the 3e books light in their shallow grave, we'll keep 'Faces of Evil' out of this for the moment).

3e rules work fine for me, I like them, and from what I understand, 2e rules weren't as balanced etc and the current edition is an upgrade for the most part. But the pendulum has swung too far towards the rules and we're missing out on the soul of the material when the best we're getting of description and flavor text, with rare exception, is a watered down and less detailed version of what we had in 2e.