Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Ultimately, this is all going to come down to various personal opinions about what people liked/didn't like about the 2E era, so I'm not sure how useful that discussion's going to be. But what the hell.
I came into D&D during Second Edition, and while it may just be that nostalgia on my part, I remember loving it intensely. To be fair, I rarely got to actually play in a group - I was simply too young, and didn't know enough people, meaning that usually I had to coax people to play, while being the DM myself, and it never lasted very long - but I still bought the books at a fairly prodigious rate.
Mostly it was because I loved the settings and world development, especially in an interconnected set of campaign world, since that meant a sourcebook for one campaign could conceivably impact another.
I liked reading Van Richten's treatises on the nature of various monsters in Ravenloft. I liked learning the history of the Sorcerer-Kings on Athas. I liked reading the two-part series of adventures that took you from Castle Spulzeer in the Realms to the domain of Agarath in Ravenloft, or how Orcus was coming back to life in Dead Gods (which even had interludes of fiction for the reader) and what his plan was.
Looking around, I found that Second Edition did this in a way that D&D never had, before or since. First Edition tended to begin at the dungeon entrance, end at the last room, and be near-totally devoid of anything not directly related to the wider world, or even why your characters would be there in the first place. Likewise, Third Edition had so thoroughly embraced the "toolbox to build your own world" mentality that existing campaigns and pre-made storylines were thoroughly abandoned - there was no setting anymore, just puzzle pieces that could be rearranged to form whatever picture you wanted to see.
Was Second Edition actually good gaming? I don't know - I didn't start getting a dedicated group together until college, which was right when Third Edition came out and it was what everybody used - but it was very interesting and highly entertaining, at least for me; I was a good customer, buying stuff for myriad campaign settings regularly. I wanted a holistic world (multiverse, actually) to dig into, and loved that they provided that for me.
I missed it when that went away, and miss it still. A lot of other companies have stepped up, and they've done a pretty good job filling that particular void (Golarion gets more interesting with each passing month) but nothing's quite like the halcyon days of Second Edition's D&D multiverse.
I came into D&D during Second Edition, and while it may just be that nostalgia on my part, I remember loving it intensely. To be fair, I rarely got to actually play in a group - I was simply too young, and didn't know enough people, meaning that usually I had to coax people to play, while being the DM myself, and it never lasted very long - but I still bought the books at a fairly prodigious rate.
Mostly it was because I loved the settings and world development, especially in an interconnected set of campaign world, since that meant a sourcebook for one campaign could conceivably impact another.
I liked reading Van Richten's treatises on the nature of various monsters in Ravenloft. I liked learning the history of the Sorcerer-Kings on Athas. I liked reading the two-part series of adventures that took you from Castle Spulzeer in the Realms to the domain of Agarath in Ravenloft, or how Orcus was coming back to life in Dead Gods (which even had interludes of fiction for the reader) and what his plan was.
Looking around, I found that Second Edition did this in a way that D&D never had, before or since. First Edition tended to begin at the dungeon entrance, end at the last room, and be near-totally devoid of anything not directly related to the wider world, or even why your characters would be there in the first place. Likewise, Third Edition had so thoroughly embraced the "toolbox to build your own world" mentality that existing campaigns and pre-made storylines were thoroughly abandoned - there was no setting anymore, just puzzle pieces that could be rearranged to form whatever picture you wanted to see.
Was Second Edition actually good gaming? I don't know - I didn't start getting a dedicated group together until college, which was right when Third Edition came out and it was what everybody used - but it was very interesting and highly entertaining, at least for me; I was a good customer, buying stuff for myriad campaign settings regularly. I wanted a holistic world (multiverse, actually) to dig into, and loved that they provided that for me.
I missed it when that went away, and miss it still. A lot of other companies have stepped up, and they've done a pretty good job filling that particular void (Golarion gets more interesting with each passing month) but nothing's quite like the halcyon days of Second Edition's D&D multiverse.
