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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9595171" data-attributes="member: 6799660">AD&D 2nd Edition always felt to me to be rife with possibility. All the options. All the optional material from mid-late 1e in the core book. Character customization. XP rules which could* allow you to play epic quest adventures like LotR or the Dragonlance modules without worrying about collecting loot along the way. *emphasis on could, everything was optional and make-it-what-you-willYet, the implied scale was bounded -- the artwork depicted a (pretty female* cleric providing first aid to a) warrior having lost a battle to a single giant or a party very proud of the 10-12' (+tail) dragon they had killed and hung up on a tree and the milk-crate sized chest of treasure they had recovered. *Elmore being highly influential to this tone.Mind you, the mechanics were nearly unchanged from 1E. For all the possible character customization possible, unless the DM was pulling their punches; you really still wanted characters in plate; using longswords, lances, and longbows; not relying on non-weapon proficiencies*; and fighting every fight with the same BX/AD&D dungeoncrawler tactics** you used before. Playing swashbucklers and shirtless barbarians and custom-made priests for each deity*** and the guy who specialized in the awl pike was for when the DM was also playing in that mode. *which could be worse than doing nothing at all (trying to catch a thrown weapon with Juggling) to simply not to be relied upon (to survive in the wilderness you did not want the survival nwp, you wanted to have had sufficient rations). **stay in dungeon corridors (because the backline is unprotected in the wilderness with no zone-of-control rules) and overwhelm opponents with fighters and henchmen (because a fair fight is not in your favor). ***until later supplements started making OP versions of those.Overall, these days I think I prefer a BX/parts of BECM game (or game inspired by such) for actual play. Both AD&Ds have just too much extraneous minutia and patches-that-became-sacred-cows (different dice for opening stuck doors vs lifting gates, percentile strength, charts of nwp costs and score derivation, etc.) that I slowly have realized don't actually add anything to the game for me. However, for a good old re-read for nostalgia's sake, nothing's better than breaking out a random 2E book and just letting the memories wash over me.</blockquote>

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