I've figured it out.

[coyote6]

I had stopped playing (A)D&D by then; I stopped right around the time 1e's Dungeoneer or Wilderness (whichever was first) Survival Guide came out. I remember seeing the book, but never bought it.

By the time 2e came out, I'd been playing Champions, Stormbringer, & other stuff for a while, and had no interest in D&D. Until I found this guy named Noah's website . . .

 

[S'mon]

We kept playing 1e & incorporated some 2e rules - 2e rules changed very little, about the same as 3.5's changes from 3e. In both cases I bought the new PHB but kept my old DMG. 2e was nothing to get excited about, especially as a lot of cool stuff - demons, assassins, prostitute tables - was removed.

 

[Philip]

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?

I don't think so. 2e hate grows on you.

I switched merrily myself, but over time became so disillusioned by the quality of the new supplements and the limitations of the system that I slowly started to dislike it more and more. By the time the Skills and Powers etc. came out, almost none of our group bought them and we never used the rules. We found 2e already difficult enough to adjucate with rules from the Fighter's Handbook and the like. The growth of house rules and the constant neccesity for DM intervention concerning matters of game rules became a chore.

When 3e came along, a majority of the things we learned to hate were solved in an elegant manner. So we switched merrily. When I switch to 4e I think I can already imagine a few things I would hate about 3e.

 

[Staffan]

I never played 1e (well, once at a convention), and I started playing D&D at about the same time the 2e things were released (I had played other, Swedish, RPGs before that). 2nd ed's main strength weren't the rules, they were the wonderful settings that sprang from the minds of TSR's designers: Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, and so on (I'm sure Birthright, Ravenloft, et al, were good too, but I never got into those).

I have no nostalgia for things like the Complete Warrior's Handbook or Skills & Powers, but I do sorely miss Dark Sun and Planescape.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I continued playing 1E until my life circumstances made gaming problematic, then I quit. This was in 1992. I was very unhappy with the monster manual purge and the fact that the game was being made politically correct and palatable to kids and parents. I started in 6th grade and had no problem with the contents of the books, so I resented it at the time. That was what I hated most about the 2E era. I also didn't care for FR or Drow double scimitar wielding rangers.

DM

 

[diaglo]

when 2edADnD came out we:

continued to play the campaign we had been playing for years.

we converted some of the material from the new releases to OD&D.

and then a short time later we stopped playing D&D due to life interrupting.

sure, i was sick and tired of buying stuff. but it wasn't 2edADnD that killed the gaming. it was life. new jobs, marriage, kids, mortgages, travel, moving, death, etc...

on avg we played 3-4hr/session; 5 sessions/week; 50 weeks/year; for 10+ years... (just a little shy of 11 years really).

2edADnD saw some conversion in our campaign early due to the Dragon hints and flyers and stuff mentioned at Cons before it was released en masse.

i continued to buy, convert, and play the computer games for years. and also talk to my buddies about D&D.

but i didn't get back into a face to face game until life settled down. and i found a group where i was living. that was 2000. i was also curious after reading rumors and seeing people playtest just what the new edition would be like. so i gave it a go... i still am.

although, i'm still not very impressed with any of the old stuff being painted newly and given a different name.

 

[Silver Moon]

When 2E came out most of the players in my group were in no financial position to re-invest in a new bunch of books so we stuck with 1E. My wife and I went to a lot of conventions at the time, so we were able to get the core 2E books for ourselves as prizes, in order to use them at conventions. I still get a lot of mileage out of one of those books, the massively thick Monster Conpendium, as it has a nice full-color picture of each monster with all the monsters in one volume rather than three or more books (like in 1E or 3E). That book comes in handy to find a quick visual aid when I'm DMing with youth.

 

[diaglo]

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...

that is almost word for word from the 1989 Preview pamphlet T$R released on the changes for 2edADnD.

iirc, they sent those out with Dragon and Dungeon magazine at the time and at game/hobby stores... but i could be wrong and just picked one up from a Con.

the www.tsr.com site used to have that Preview as a free download. it may still be there, but i haven't looked for it recently.

 

[Gez]

I never played D&D before 3e. I would never have played D&D without 3e.

 

[DragonLancer]

I love 2nd edition, and in some ways prefer it over 3.x edition. But when 3.0 was released we changed over after about 3 months (time to finish the campaign we were in). It took about the same time to shift to 3.5 when that came out.

I could quite happily go back to 2nd edition, though I've been playing 3.x for so long now that it might be difficult to do.