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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2065456" data-attributes="member: 10201">Has no resemblance to any of my experiences, or those of people i knew. One group of about 4 college-age guys didn't switch. But 3 of the four of them were playing in my 2nd ed game at the same time. Every other group i knew switched, and happily. Most grandfathered existing characters; a few created all new characters, or wrapped up their existing campaign and then switched--but generally within a year or so. Personally, i switched as quickly as i could read the new books, more or less, and happily incorporated the Complete... books. So, that was a game with [quick mental math] 3 years of weekly, 8+hr, sessions, and at least half-a-dozen players and 3x as many characters, that got converted, and ran for 4.5 more years--2 of the characters even lasted from the very beginning to the very end. I can't speak for others, of course, but from my POV, AD&D2 fixed a lot of my problems with AD&D1: the skill system, as broken as it is in hindsight, was awesome at the time; stripping the classes down to 4 (then 5) core classes, with variants on that base, was a great structure to work from; psionics were finally a proper part of the system, and fun to play and balanced; the spheres system for priests rocked; and the vastly-expanded monster entries, with lots of cool info on behavior/habitat/etc. was a godsend--it was like having a mini Ecology of... article for every single monster!This is not to say that AD&D2 was a panacea. We still had houserules, but only a couple major ones, which were holdovers from AD&D1 (attack priority, wounds, and alignment were the big ones)--and which i'd have to implement in D&D3E, too, because they *still* haven't been fixed. And we had fewer houserules than with AD&D1, because AD&D2 addressed a couple of the "problem" areas. Also, we were never strictly AD&D2, in that monks and a couple of classes from Dragon (sentinel, scribe, others) were retained. But we kept the same characters, adjusting them to the new rules as they came out (so, frex, the psionic characters used AD&D1 psionics until The Complete Psionics Handbook came out). Also, to be clear, we only used the first 5 Complete... books (fighter, thief, cleric, wizard, psionics), because the dwarves book was blah, the elves book was totally broken, and so i don't think i even looked at any of the others after that (until i was playing in a game, a few years later, that used several others). As for D&D3E: if i hadn't already stopped playing D&D, that would've driven me away. I played in a game for 2.5yrs, and the more familiar i got with the system, the more i found to dislike. It doesn't fix a single thing that i thought was broken enough to merit houserules for AD&D1/2, dumped some stuff i really loved (monster descriptions, frex), and generally moved in the opposite direction that the change from AD&D1 to AD&D2 did. And it's not the D20 System aspects that bug me--i love Spycraft, the only flaw with Arcana Unearthed is that combat is the same as D&D3E, and even Everquest D20 looks like it'd be fun to play. I really don't think the changes from AD&D1 to AD&D2 were significant enough to "fundamentally change the way people play"--but those from AD&D2 to D&D3E certainly were.I think it's not that people--even the hypothetical vocal minority--hate AD&D2 more than AD&D1, it's just more recent, and had more supplements that people disliked. If anything, they hate that AD&D2 wasn't more dislike AD&D1--that it wasn't a bigger upgrade. At least, that's what i get from people i talk to in meatspace.Yep, i'd say that's at least a significant part of it. Of course, while D&D3E is more internally consistent, for those of us that don't like the game it consistently supports, that's not much of a consolation. So i prefer AD&D2 because it gives me some support for the style of game i like--moreso than earlier or later iterations of D&D--even if it's a mish-mash of a game; while D&D3E is a very consistent game--consistently not the sort of game i want to play. Or, to put it another way, if you love chicken and can't stand beef, even a McDonald's McChicken sandwich is better than the best steak a 4-star restaurant can give you. As to the topic of the thread, which i've addressed fairly obliquely: i think your observation is wrong, so any theory to explain it will, inherently, be false.</blockquote>

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