I've figured it out.

[Voadam]

When the 2e PH came out we all got them and used them. I particularly liked that attacks and saves were in it.

We didn't convert the two assassins or the two drow or two grugach elves in the party though. We just used the 1e stuff on assassins and those two races. Material was very compatible from 1e to 2e to basic D&D and we had no problems mixing and matching stuff.

The 2e xp was better than 1e, otherwise I used the 1e DMG after copying out that 2e chart.

The 2e monster folio stuff was better with actual descriptions for monsters unlike a lot of 1e stuff, but for a long time I still only had and used my 1e MM, FF, and MMII.

3e requrired learning everything from scratch and not using old stuff straight anymore. But I still like it a lot and it is all I play now.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm an oddity.

I quite playing whan 1st ed AD&D came out

I started with D&D (or OD&D as it seems to be known nowadays), and then more or less dropped out of the D&Dverse for other rpgs until 3e came out. At that point, due to a move and trying to set up a new game group, I found it was far easier to come up with a D&D group again than anything else.

I played a couple individual sessions of AD&D 1 and 2 in between, but that was very rare. RuneQuest and Ars Magica held my real interest. Basically in those days, D&D was something to make fun of. **shurg** Different times, different ways.

Same here, more or less. I lost interest in D&D before 2e came out, because I didn't like 1e. Or all kinds of D&Disms inherent in every edition, for that matter. I came back to 3e because the rules were so much better, and the system allowed for so much flexibility.

But frankly, I'm starting to feel constrained by some of the exact same D&Disms again. Oh, sure, I'm playing a mostly by-the-book 3.5 Eberron game, and having tons of fun. But my eye is really wandering to other games these days, particularly non-D&D d20 games, which is now my preferred game system.

Like Wombat, I used to be a bit of a D&D hatah in those days, and gleefully made fun of D&D along with the rest of the latte set rpg.net kinda guys. I've now realized that was a pretty immature "phase" I was going through, and now I'm a d20 defender on rpg.net, when I bother going over there at all.

 

[TerraDave]

We play what's new, and if what's new stays unchanged for more than 5 years, we start leaving it, or at the least dabbling with other games. It's not evil, nor sacrilege - it's matter of fact.

I am also not so sure about this, and not becuase I have played 10,000 games of OD&D

Where is your fact or facts?

Continuing with the speculation: People do switch games and systems, but they can do that with or without a new edition. And a new edition won't necassarily stop that, though I guess new campaign settings or games with similar mechanics (ala D20) can keep them from wondering too far.

now back to some facts: both 1st and 2nd edition did have major revisions (Unearthed Arcana and the Options books) that where not so well recieved. And 2nd edition seemed to coincide with a veritable flury of new popular games--Vampire, Shadow Run, Cyberpunk, Ars Magica, many others--and it didn't seem to hurt their market share.

 

[MetalBard]

I started with 2nd edition, so I really wouldn't know about the drop-off. I do know that when I started with 2e, I had a hard time figuring out what the main rulebooks were and how to learn the rules. This sort of confusion seems less likely with 3rd edition.

 

[Garnfellow]

In my experience, 2e was a serious and unqualified improvement over 1e. I had a lot of fun with 1e, and continue to have great fondness for that system. But mechanically, it was always a bizarre patchwork of weird little subsystems, many of which were broken, and toward the end of 1e the rules had grown overly complex and unwieldy. I also hated -- HATED -- that ole party-line mentality that the one and only way to play D&D was TSR’s Official (tm) way.

By the mid-eighties, several alternate RPG engines had sprung up that were mechanically much superior to 1e. I was very close to porting my existing campaign over to GURPS when 2e hit. And I thought Second Edition was so good that I didn’t look at GURPS again for almost ten years. Zeb Cook and company did a marvelous job of streamlining and consolidated the AD&D morass. And I loved the new, refreshing attitude supporting house rules.

Were there some changes I didn’t like? Sure, but (as with 3e) it seemed like about 90% of the changes were for the better. On the whole, the second edition PH, DMG, and Monstrous Compendium were all good, solid books.

However, I think when most people say they hate Second Edition, they don’t necessarily mean they hate the game engine itself: I think they often mean they hate the way TSR was run or the way Second Edition was implemented during the late eighties and early nineties.

For example, I think those three excellent core books were then followed by a series of terrible (or, at best, inconsistent) splatbooks filled with uninspired and often broken rules. You thought Sword and Fist was pretty bad? Let me tell you, it is nowhere near as bad as the Complete Fighter. I can still remember how disappointed I was when I finally got a chance to read that book.

And for whatever reason (maybe influenced by the Marvel’s Secret Wars and DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths), the TSR designers chose a very ham-handed way to introduce 2nd Edition rules to Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. They went for huge, cataclysmic in-game events to justify the new rules, events that significantly changed both settings, and maybe not always for the better. A lot of these continuity changes drove long-time fans nuts, which is unfortunate since they were probably unnecessary. Instead of just re-statting those Scarlet Brotherhood monks as 2e fighters with an appropriate kit, TSR had to have all monks killed off in one big purge. (OK, I’m only slightly exaggerating here.)

To compound this initial blunder, TSR kept jerking around support for its official settings, adding new lines, dropping old lines, reinstating lines. This really ticked off those gamers who tried to follow one or more of these settings.

So, while I think the 2nd Edition game engine itself was a darn good one, and while there were many outstanding supplements released during the 2e period, inconsistent quality (probably resulting from pushing out too many products) and vacillating support for the official settings turned off a lot of loyal fans.

 

[ragboy]

So now I'm flumoxxed. Where are all these people who decry 2e as the worst thing since the Bubonic plague?
Could it be that the 2e haters are, indeed a vocal minority?

Nah. They're all clustered over at Dragonsfoot.org...

I've played since the D&D boxed sets, took a break and was away from gaming with 2e hit, but came back into it and got a lot of the books. I really liked the explosion of creativity in various campaigns: Al'Qadim, Planescape, Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc, but I never liked the rules much. Seemed like a kluge on top of a cludge. I was again away from gaming when 3e hit, but bought the new version instantly. I was really pleased, and though I haven't bought 3.5, I use the SRD and couldn't be happier.

I think there are other factors to consider:

- The system was rebuilt from the ground, up.
- They kept most of the things that made the game fun to start with
- The core ruleset is available and adaptable to various genres and thousands of developers.

 

[der_kluge]

So, if I'm to get the gist of this thread it is this:

that, Diaglo notwithstanding, most people agree that 2nd edition was an improvement over 1st edition, and happily ported to it. And that most people agree that 3rd edition is an improvement over 2nd edition, and by proxy, an improvement over 1st.

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

If those rules aren't as good as 3e, why go back? What do they hope to capture by playing an earlier edition of the game that they can't do with the 3e rules? I'm baffled by this.

 

[freebfrost]

Well, I went from OD&D to 1st edition (thinking that they were the same thing actually...), then converted over from one 1st edition campaign right into a 2nd edition one. Then I got the opportunity to playtest 3E and my group converted over our 2nd edition game to a 3E one from one session to the next.

3.5 was pretty much the same - we ended a 3E game, and the next one was 3.5.

IMO each iteration is better than the last. So, from my perspective, it is a no-brainer to adopt the newer set of rules. I'm sure that if 4E felt differently, I would react otherwise, but for me and my group we think each one is better than the last. (And some of my players were around in my first group in 1980...)

As far as going back to previous editions to play, I have to echo the sentiments of some of the other posts here - why go back to what I feel is *less* of a game. Not that older editions are bad in their own right.

After all, if I really want to I can play Madden 97 on my Sega Genesis, but having played Madden 2005 on the Xbox, would I *really* want to?

 

[Henry]

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

Realistically speaking, define "so many." We're talking thousands in a hobby of millions. If about two years ago, the Hackmaster Guide sold something like 25,000 copies, and the players' guide 35,000 (Mark Plemmons' figures from the Hackmaster forums, going strictly from memory), then you might have anywhere from 25,000 to (generous guesstimate) under 100,000 people switching to AD&D or similar systems, where WotC is reporting sales figures to millions of repeat customers. An individual title might do 50,000 or so, but the total volume of repeat customers is pretty large in comparison.

This is not to disparage AD&D, nor any AD&D-similar products; far from it - I'm trying to put this in perspective from a realistic point of view.

If those rules aren't as good as 3e, why go back? What do they hope to capture by playing an earlier edition of the game that they can't do with the 3e rules? I'm baffled by this.

Remember my cell phone analogy from a previous thread? There's something to be said for directness of purpose, and the "put large amounts of detailed rules and power in the hands of the the players" game design ideals of 3E is not that of older editions "Give the players freedom, but don't nail it all down." I don't enjoy most anime, but then I understand that anime's style of storytelling is not mine.

 

[Rel]

most people agree that 2nd edition was an improvement over 1st edition, and happily ported to it. And that most people agree that 3rd edition is an improvement over 2nd edition, and by proxy, an improvement over 1st.

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

You're missing a bit of logic here:

"Most people agree that 3rd edition is an improvement over 2nd edition..." - I think you're right about this part.

"Whey then, do so many people want to switch..." - I think you're wrong about this part. Most people DON'T want to switch to something else. I'd say that many if not most of the people who DIDN'T think that 3E was an improvement over 2E are the ones who want to switch to something else. Regardless, most people don't want to switch but the ones who do are a rather vocal minority.

This perception is fueled by the "no news is good news" concept. After all, how often do people feel compelled to post a thread called, "I'm SO satisfied with 3E!" when the opposite happens all the time.