No Second Edition Love?

[Remathilis]

I read a lot of posts here and elsewhere, and the general "edition war" boils down to 1e vs. 3e.

Where's the second edition love?

2e brought us many useful and important revisions: cleric spheres, a 1st level bard class, customization of thief skills, higher demihuman level limits, Thac0 standard, specialist mages, more class/race options, an excellent ranger class, and some internal consistency about prime requisites.

Plus, it brought us Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, etc.

Yeah, it had some warts (kits) and didn't go nearly far enough in fixing 1e's bugs, but generally the second edition CORE game a well put together system. I mean, if you criticize 2e's archaic features, many of them are holdovers from 1e. If you don't like 2e's progressive rules, you fail to notice they paved the way for 3e. 2e bridged that gap.

So where are the 2e players? The old guard of the 1990's? Where is the love of 2e?

 

[gamecat]

The edition wars sticky has obviously disappeared.

 

[MINI]

I'm working to get some 2e DnD DMs on OpenRPG. If your interested in starting that kind of thing up let me know. I have a method for making sure players have all the books and what not. Email is danjnm_2000@yahoo.com

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Where's the second edition love?

There's isn't as much as for other editions. In fact, according to the post-count at Dragonsfoot, even "classic D&D" (e.g. B/X, BECMI) and C&C generate more traffic than 2E.

So where are the 2e players? The old guard of the 1990's? Where is the love of 2e?

2E never caught on with me. (I moved to BECMI not long after 2E came out.) Still, there are some 2E players at Dragonsfoot. There's a new 2E module released, there, too: Church of the Poisoned Mind.

 

[MerricB]

I read a lot of posts here and elsewhere, and the general "edition war" boils down to 1e vs. 3e.

Where's the second edition love?

2e brought us many useful and important revisions: cleric spheres, a 1st level bard class, customization of thief skills, higher demihuman level limits, Thac0 standard, specialist mages, more class/race options, an excellent ranger class, and some internal consistency about prime requisites.

Some of those are debatable; however, the good bits are normally seen as being incorporated into 3e and still with us.

Plus, it brought us Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, etc.

There's a lot of setting love, but - and here's the important bit - setting love is largely edition independent.

So, the lovers of Planescape just moved their love into 3e, and kept on running Planescape games. Or they used 1e and Planescape...

Cheers!

 

[Mark Hope]

I am hugely fond of all editions of the game, 2e no exception. If you are interested, check out the link in my sig to see some discussions on classic adventures of the 2e era. Jump right on in and share your love...

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Middle children never get the love or attention the oldest and youngest do.

I think stuff tends to boil down to old-and-simple (1e) or new-and-robust (3e). 2e splits the difference and satisfies neither. Not that there isn't a great deal of nostalgia or fondness, especially for the campaign settings.

 

[T. Foster]

I do not like 2E AD&D, and never did. If you catch me in the right (or would that be wrong?) mood I'll tell you why at very great length. But since I'm not in that mood now (and I'm sure the mods here don't want to see it anyway) I'll just let it stand at that.

 

[DaveMage]

2E drove a lot of players away.

I enjoyed it when it was out, but some in my D&D group left the game because of 2E's wildly inconsistent and unbalanaced rules (the Bladesinger was the most insidious in our group).

I loved Planescape 2E, though.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I think in general, most people who preferred 2e to 1e either prefer 3e to both, or moved on to non-D&D systems like World of Darkness or even 'indie' RPGs.

Also, 2e is in an underlying sense the MOST DIFFERENT of the various D&D editions. Although much closer to 1e mechanically, its design philosophy and expected model of play are very different. 2e is by far the least "gamist," to borrow probably the most useful of Forgite terms, edition of D&D - following in the footsteps of Dragonlance, it's strongly about setting and story, with gameplay (and player choice) taking a back seat.

2e was primarily about collaborative storytelling - emphasis very much on the storytelling, not the collaboration. The assumed model of play, based on the modules, the ratio of setting info to crunch, and reports many players I've talked to IRL and online, seems to have been on the DM telling a story (either his own or an adventure writer's) and the players piping in with their characters' lines and generally enjoying the ride.

The emphasis, in practical terms, turned out not to be on 'enjoying.'

Now, in that philosophical sense, I prefer 2e to 1e. As either a DM or a player, I like a strong, game- or GM-driven plot. However, I recognize this is a rare preference among tabletop RPG players. The philosophical innovations of that 2e were rejected by a large majority of existing D&D player's - check Ryan Dancey's stats about the cataclysmic falloff in RPG sales in the wake of 2e's launch, long before either Magic the Gathering or 'Setting-itis' had time to work their oft-cited 'magic' on the fanbase, for details. And unlike 1e and especially Basic D&D, 2e never found a target market for its assumed style of play.

MY biggest problem with 2e, in terms of my personal enjoyment, was that while the default play assumptions changed and the game mechanics were cleaned up and clarified, the rules themselves *didn't really change*. And while 1e's rules are by no means high on my favorites list, they did at least facilitate sandbox roleplay and dungeon crawls, or some combination of the two, fairly well. Strong central narrative control coupled with urban adventuring, tight plotting and wide genre variance? Not so much.

I firmly believe a game intended to play like 2e, with the immense amount of creativity and panache that went into 2e's settings, with strong narrative control for the GM, with wide genre variance, could work. But it couldn't work (as well) with D&D's rules then, and wouldn't with the modern D&D rules now; the mechanics don't mesh at all with the model of play, inevitably creating expectations on both sides of the screen that won't be met by the official material.