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

[R_J_K75]

I love reading everyone's stories about playing these old editions...

Keep those stories coming, ya'll.

I ran a dwarven thief out of the Complete Book of Dwarves with the Locksmith kit. He was a safe cracker for a thieves guild, his name was the Box Man. I took a bunch of NWP like stone masonry, engineering, etc. We came across a locked town gate. As far I can remember the town wasn't large and the gate wasn't manned, or if it was only one or two guards. At first the DM was pretty adamant that we could get in. Once I plead my case that I was a locksmith and engineer and all it would take to take down the gate was remove a few key stones then he relented and we were in pretty quickly. I remember telling him that's like saying Bob Vila...(err Norm Abrams) wouldn't find a load bearing wall in an episode of This Old House.

 

[R_J_K75]

My copies are all the revised black border books. I don't know what happened to the blue border ones. I will say I much prefer the hardcover MM. That 3 ring binder setup was terrible.

I liked the loose leaf concept because you could just pull out the ones needed for an adventure. Though after the hardback came out I used that one more as it was a very good collection of monsters for the game.

 

[billd91]

I liked the loose leaf concept because you could just pull out the ones needed for an adventure. Though after the hardback came out I used that one more as it was a very good collection of monsters for the game.

Yeah, I think it was one of those things that seems like a great concept, but the material execution really isn't there. The pages just couldn't be durable enough for the idea to be viable in the long term.

 

[R_J_K75]

Yeah, I think it was one of those things that seems like a great concept, but the material execution really isn't there. The pages just couldn't be durable enough for the idea to be viable in the long term.

I remember it costing me quite a bit of money to buy the sheet protectors, but Im really glad I did now as they've held up extremely well.

Speaking of the 2E monster manuals, they are hands down the best when it comes to fluff and background.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One of the things I liked about kits was that, for thieves, it enabled you to quickly specialize. Where previously the only thing a thief was consistently good at was climbing walls at early levels, you could use kits to get an edge and actually be semi-competent at something without having to wait until higher levels.

I ran a dwarven thief out of the Complete Book of Dwarves with the Locksmith kit. He was a safe cracker for a thieves guild, his name was the Box Man. I took a bunch of NWP like stone masonry, engineering, etc.

 

[Reynard]

Speaking of the 2E monster manuals, they are hands down the best when it comes to fluff and background.

This, for sure. I go back to it all the time, no matter the edition.

 

[Azzy]

While I started in BECMI and quickly moved to 1e, 2e is the edition that I played the most of out of any edition (5e will likely surpass that, though). With 2e, my group and I imported stuff from 1e and houseruled quite a bit. While I loved it, after being introduced to other RPGs, I began to see how clunky it was and became dissatisfied. and eventually stopped playing until the advent of 3e.

 

[David Howery]

Kits were one way getting back some of the classes lost from 1E. Missing the samurai from OA? There was a kit for it. Barbarian? Cavalier? Acrobat? Kits could do them all.

 

[Mepher]

My group started with 1st Edition but we moved to a 1E/2E hybrid in 89. We kept the Barbarian and Thief/Acrobat from 1E UA for a couple years. I still reference the 1E DMs guide to this day. I DM'd 2E until about 4 years ago when we switched to 5E. As a DM I have never liked 5E and as a group we finally decided this week to return to 2E once the world heals up and we get back to the table. It's just a better fit for our play style.

While D&D might be seeing growth never seen before in players, 2E was definitely the golden era for creativity. Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Planescape, and Spelljammer were huge successes. Both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms were in production with FR seeing huge expansions.

The bloat came in the end with the endless Complete Books and beyond. Some of it was decent, most of it cannot have been playtested. A lot of garbage came in the end as they were pushing towards 3E.

2nd Edition with hand picked/limited content from the Player's Option + Complete books is an amazing game and definitely fills our needs.

 

[digitalelf]

I liked it so much, I went back to playing it after getting sick of 3rd edition/Pathfinder RPG back in 2012!