D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Remember that those encounter tables are inclusive of the 1977 book.

Yeah, I know. Just throw a Nilbog at the party, let's get down to the fun!

 

[Orius]

Totally agreed on the FF, though there's a lot of chaff in with the wheat. The weirdness quotient and originality is high, and of course the art adds wonderful flavor.

The 1977 MM has a lot of original stuff, but is also stuffed with junk in places (like the excessive dinosaur list), and has dubious stats and editing, stuff like the damage for a lot of creatures seeming to be written for OD&D rather than AD&D, and notoriously unclear/unexplained stuff like how demonic spell-like abilities are meant to work.

I think GAS has a point about the 1993 Monstrous Manual in terms of it being a well-curated list of core monsters with fewer issues than the 1977 one.

Of the 3 1e monster books, the FF can be pretty hit or miss. Still, it's good overall, and there's a good amount of the material that eventually made its way into 2e and even beyond. The original MM has the standard staples of the game, and while the dinosaur list is a bit excessive, it's probably the result of toy dinosaurs being relatively easy to obtain and use in the game's formative years. The other problems are kind of a general 1e problem from Gary having written the books separately and sort of creating the rule set as he went along.

2e's MM is one of the best core monster books ever produced for D&D, though there are a few small issues. First and foremost is the lack of standard random encounter tables. Some of the entries should have been skipped like the monsters from the Psionics Handbook that required said handbook to run in the first place or the inadequate entries for demons and devils. Those could have been cut to make space for the tables. Also some of the entries on the big group tables like Birds, Mammals, Insects, etc that were fantastic rather than real world animals or scaled up version of such should have had their own entries or skipped for space. Otherwise, it's an excellent resource.

Speaking of the FF, there's a well-done solo campaign journal on Dragonsfoot where user Xabloyan runs an Appendix P adventuring party through an Appendix A solo dungeon, and he uses the FF encounter tables, so those monsters show up a lot.

That CJ is here. Using Appendix A from the 1e or even 5e DMG is a good way to brush up on the rules. And doing a solo game in a total funhouse dungeon is fine by me, since a lot of it involves practicing running the game.

 

[AnderNGmx]

It was lots of fun. Lots of fun with friends.