I've figured it out.

[Doug McCrae]

I don't hate 2nd ed. I prefer 3.5 to 3.0, 3.0 to 2nd ed and 2nd ed to 1st ed. I still think 1st ed is pretty good though.

 

[Piratecat]

I was the first person to get the first 2e PHB at Boston's Compleat Strategist! We switched the next week, and generally preferred it to 1e. Problems with splaybooks came later, of course, but we found the game to be more fun with 2e. We especially liked the customizable cleric spell lists. Up until we started playtesting 3e back in 1999, we never had much problem with 2e's rules.

Nowadays, going back to play with that ruleset is like drilling teeth without novacaine.

 

[Laman Stahros]

I quit playing 1e not long after Unearthed Arcana came out do to all the crappy rules and atitudes that were coming out of TSR then. When I heard that 2e was out, I looked at it and saw that most of my complaints had been fixed (no more monks, JOY!!!!!), so I played it til 3e came out. 3e fixed more problem areas, but caused a few others (monks, boo!, banned them instantly!!!), been playing 3e ever since.

 

[Breakdaddy]

We resisted for several months, but began a 2e game eventually anyway. We all agreed it wasnt so bad (of course, we were all expecting the worse in the first place, so it didnt live down to our expectations). The later Players Options Books really hosed it down for us, though.

 

[der_kluge]

So now I'm flumoxxed. Where are all these people who decry 2e as the worst thing since the Bubonic plague? According to this, a majority of people who were playing at the time that 2nd edition came out, switched merrily!

Could it be that the 2e haters are, indeed a vocal minority?

 

[loki44]

***

 

[loki44]

When 2nd edition came out, people were involved in their 1st edition games heavily, and having a grand old time.

Not necessarily. In retrospect we had great fun with our 1e games, yet we were always yearning for something more. We were always trying out other systems (Runequest, Rolemaster, Harn, Warhammer, etc...), even creating our own, yet we always returned to our D&D roots, even going through spates of "3d6 in order" purity long after that sort of gaming had become passe. 1e was good, but with typical youthful enthusiasm we assumed there was always something better just around the bend (an "11" on a Spinal Tap scale so to speak). 2e embodied a lot of what we were looking for, and in that respect 2e was successful, in my humble opinion, simply because it encompassed a lot of what many consumers were clamoring for.

2nd edition came out, and removed certain classes, and modified certain things which fundamentally changed the way people were playing their game. So, for example, if you were playing a monk when 2e came out, well, you got screwed, big time. People hated this...

Disagree again. Okay, I never personally liked the monk so I didn't care if it or the assassin, another class I could never quite embrace, was abolished. When we started playing 2e we played, for lack of a better term, "specialty campaigns". We played Lankhmar and Al-Qadim. Neither of those settings suffered from not having a monk character class, and were actually enhanced by many of the new 2e rules. Within that context I would have to say that 2e was a success and we had a lot of fun playing within that system while it lasted. Having said that, I would probably not ever revive a 2e campaign voluntarily. It's like an ex-wife.....some fond memories but not enough to fall back on.

Fast forward 12 years when 3rd edition comes out. Now, almost unanimously, people love this game. Why? Because those original campaigns aren't being run anymore.

Not entirely convinced that 3e/3.5 is nearly unanimously loved. I love "D&D" in the most general sense, and I really like all of its various manifestations for different reasons (too lengthy to go into here). The evolution of the game seems to fit, in my mind, nearly neatly into different broad phases of my life so that each "edition" sort of corresponds naturally (of course this is nothing more than a personal perception not applicable to anyone else). Yet I do agree that the nature of the beast is to "want more" and in that sense whatever is new and fresh will always appear more attractive than that which is tried and true.

 

[Piratecat]

So now I'm flumoxxed. Where are all these people who decry 2e as the worst thing since the Bubonic plague? According to this, a majority of people who were playing at the time that 2nd edition came out, switched merrily!

Sure I did. And I switched merrily again when 3e came out, and I wouldn't go back to 2e now if you paid me. I had great fun at the time, but I think in retrospect that was partially in spite of, not due to, the rules set.

Happily switching to 2e in the 80's and not liking 2e now are by no means mutually exclusive.

 

[Glyfair]

"My group" was pretty hard to define during that time period (several groups of players, different games). We played quite a number of other games, and had been drifting from D&D for quite a while.

When 2nd edition came out we were hoping it would "fix" the things we had problems with in D&D (for example, racial level limits). While there were a few interesting things in the game, it seemed like a number of band-aids added to the D&D system, without fixing anything that was giving us problems. So we pretty much abandoned D&D and moved wholeheartedly into looking for the "perfect" system.

 

[loki44]

Happily switching to 2e in the 80's and not liking 2e now are by no means mutually exclusive.

Yes, I absolutely agree with this statement. And in retrospect I'd have to say that I looked forward to 3e as almost revolutionary, whereas 2e seemed simply like a natural progression from 1e. Not sure if that has more to do with advertising and hype than with actual substance though...