No Second Edition Love?

[Ranger REG]

Yeah, ok 2E Is a mish mash, and some of the kits are totally un-wieldy, but as systems go its far better than 1E (sorry but Gary just... it seemed too sexist, and YOU MUST PLAY IT MY WAY) for my liking.

That's because 2e is a "refinement" of 1e.

3E and its "revisons" (a way of ripping more cash out of you guys, sorry but its true) is soulless, there are rules for everything, and it seemed to leave no room for imagination or the DM to make decisions, and as for the ability scores...

While I agree that the revision "came out prematurely" ... hehehehe ... it did make some improvement to the game. But I held out until 2005 have finally arrived before making the switch to 3.5e, which I am satisfied

Not so with 2e Revised and the companion Player's Option books.

Most of the new players have come from the Hack and slash PC games like Diablo, Dungeon over roleplaying, I bet a hell of a lot of old schoolers have returned back to their roots....

You state like we're barbarian roleplayers. :\

But at the end of the day, the rules are just rules, change them if you want, use whatever system you like, its the characters that matter who they are, what they do and how they do it. The system is totally irrelevant, I've made the same character for every system (bar 3.5) and others and who they are is the same it just the numbers that change.

I bet you can't make a master horseman with an inherent low Dex in 2e.

Like I stated before, don't miss NWP system and THAC0 (even though it is permanently imprinted in my brain). Also, don't miss the 2e Revised PHB with a very short allowed multiclass combination list for elves.

 

[molonel]

2nd Edition killed the game for me. I have fond, fond memories of 1st Edition and the books are on my shelves right now as reference and story material. I can count the 2nd Edition materials I own on one hand. 2nd Edition AD&D invented the term "rules creep." The folks who like it generally don't like it because of the elegance of the core rules, but rather because they took the game and made it their own. They often had 3-inch thick three-ring binders full of their house rules, and the resulting game often looked nothing like a core-rules only 2nd Edition game. I stopped playing D&D for 2nd Edition, and only returned after 3rd Edition came out.

 

[dcas]

Yeah, ok 2E Is a mish mash, and some of the kits are totally un-wieldy, but as systems go its far better than 1E (sorry but Gary just... it seemed too sexist, and YOU MUST PLAY IT MY WAY) for my liking.

One might argue that 2e is more "sexist" than 1e, since 2e uses "he" everywhere as a third person singular pronoun, whereas 1e is careful to use "he or she." Sure, female PCs can't be as strong as male PCs, but that's not sexism, it's reality.

I agree that 1e adventures are the best. The rest I'm not sure about.

 

[eyebeams]

Some observations:

1) I have met far more people who played 2e RAW than 1E RAW, by which I mean I have *never* met anyone who ran 1e RAW, ever. I know that these people exist, but when people hold forth on 1e's superiority they often really mean 1E without the official surprise, initiative, tactical movement, unarmed combat or armour type rules. And of course, everybody adopted THAC0, which was ported into 2e anyway. Maybe 2e's core systems were inferior to a version of 1e that you lobotomized and stitched back together, but in those cases, the credit doesn;t belong to 1e. It belongs to the "surgeon."

2) 2e suited the fashions of the time, which were geared to highly standardized game systems, exemplified by GURPS. In fact, if you read Dragon Magazine or were paying attention to general scuttlebutt at the time, gamers *constantly* complained about confusing powergaming combos and strange exceptions interfering with their games. There was a very strong movement to add some point-based schemes to the game (and these eventually made it into the DMG in a limited way) and a real hatred of oddball classes. Much of the community felt stung over Unearthed Arcana's new classes and races.

3) This is going to ruffle some feathers, but the fact is that this is a 3e-based community drawn in large part by WotC marketing, and part of WotC's strategy was to encourage as much dislike of the old edition as possible. It's sound marketing to try and disrupt the remaining 2e player network, since it recruited players without having any strong presence as consumers. In other words, the company wanted to you pay some money and play 3e instead of game with an existing 2e group that hadn't bought anything since '94. This community is a legacy of that strategy.

4) The last point is simple enough: 2e went for a decade or so without any major updates. If TSR provided adventure support for a few concentrated lines and came out with 2.5e in 1995 I have a feeling that sentiments would be much different.

 

[RFisher]

Regarding the 2e ranger: There had been a sentiment among the gamers I knew (& as I recall, in letters to Dragon) that rangers with plate-mail & shield was encouraged by the 1e rules but didn't fit the class. Many of the changes to rangers in 2e seemed to directly address that idea by giving players good reasons for their rangers not to wear plate-mail & use a shield. I & my circle didn't know about Dritz. We didn't read many TSR novels.

I can't confirm or deny any connection between Dritz & the 2e ranger, but I can say that the changes seem perfectly natural (whether we agreed with them or not) to us absent any knowledge of Dritz.

the nonsense fluff about accepting subpar characters in the PHB, disavowing super characters in the DMG

An ironic thing is that 2e gave a friend of mine a name (min/maxing) for one of his favorite aspects of the hobby. It gave him the anti-min/maxing point-of-view to argue against. It encouraged him in exactly what it was trying to discourage. Then, eventually, Skills & Powers came along to give him the tools to go hog wild.

Could 1E have survived 25 years unchanged in its core (like Monopoly)?

It survived a dozen years. There was still demand for the 1e PHB even as the 2e PHB was being released. Not just from people who didn't know 2e was coming, but from distributors.

Kenzer is selling essentially the same system today. Although admittedly there are other things in Kenzer's advantage. But if the 1e books were still in print & the extras in HM in a separate supplement, I'd think that'd get at least some of the sales that HM has.

It couldn't have survived if the company tried to put all its eggs in 1e's basket, but failing that sort of idiocy, I don't see any reason it couldn't have.

 

[dcas]

Regarding the 2e ranger: There had been a sentiment among the gamers I knew (& as I recall, in letters to Dragon) that rangers with plate-mail & shield was encouraged by the 1e rules but didn't fit the class. Many of the changes to rangers in 2e seemed to directly address that idea by giving players good reasons for their rangers not to wear plate-mail & use a shield. I & my circle didn't know about Dritz. We didn't read many TSR novels.

I can't confirm or deny any connection between Dritz & the 2e ranger, but I can say that the changes seem perfectly natural (whether we agreed with them or not) to us absent any knowledge of Dritz.

I agree as far as plate mail & shield is concerned, but where did the 2-weapon fighting come from? Since 2e got rid of the barbarian, why not simply give rangers the same Dex bonuses as barbarians (as long as they're wearing light armor), and nix the 2-weapon nonsense? That's why I thought the 2e ranger was retconned to fit with Driz'zt (in 1e drow could fight with 2 weapons, in 2e, not).

 

[tzor]

The last point is simple enough: 2e went for a decade or so without any major updates. If TSR provided adventure support for a few concentrated lines and came out with 2.5e in 1995 I have a feeling that sentiments would be much different.

Say what? The only reason why there wasn't a 2.5E was because no one thought of the label. Second edition changed far more radically than 3E ever did and not just once, but twice.

The first major change was the invention of the "Kit" in the complete books. Now everyone wanted characters with kits to them, because in general a having a kit was more powerful than not having a kit. This was a radical change to the games I played in and I know I used to joke about calling it either 2.5 or 2A.

The second major change prior to the fall of 2E was the options series, both DM options and player options. These were radical changes to the rules of 2E, once again, well beyond the cosmetic changes that form the difference between 3E and 3.5E.

Personally I think that 3E is a better product than 2E, but there are things in 2E that I really like, especially if you have to create a character for a con. I wouldn't mind playing either 1E or 2E at a convention. Actually I think DM(GM)/Players are more important than the system or the edition.

 

[eyebeams]

Say what? The only reason why there wasn't a 2.5E was because no one thought of the label. Second edition changed far more radically than 3E ever did and not just once, but twice.

The first major change was the invention of the "Kit" in the complete books. Now everyone wanted characters with kits to them, because in general a having a kit was more powerful than not having a kit. This was a radical change to the games I played in and I know I used to joke about calling it either 2.5 or 2A.

The second major change prior to the fall of 2E was the options series, both DM options and player options. These were radical changes to the rules of 2E, once again, well beyond the cosmetic changes that form the difference between 3E and 3.5E.

It wasn't a change. It was a set of optional rules. And they *were* optional. I don't recall kits ever becoming standard in published NPC stats, for instance. Compare to 3.5e, where edition changes did become the standard for all subsequent products. That's not a new edition.

Ultimately, I think 2e's main problem was that it was, well, too quintessentially D&D. People like to talk all about how they want meat and potatos fantasy, but they're actually talking about a form of fantasy gaming and fiction that comes *after* D&D. AD&D1e was a gonzo mashup ot pulp sword and sorcery with enough Tolkien for mass appeal. 3e is the post internet revolution dungeonpunk system that borrows from card game and computer game mechanics.

2e? 2e was the system that actually strove to be a standardized version of D&D, based on the fantasy fiction that came out of D&D and the fundamentals of what was considered D&D's particular identity as a system. It ultimately didn't push anything forward, but it fulfilled expectations.

In fact, I think that if 3e's rules had come out in '95 before net-based promotion and the explosion of the fantasy genre into computer games it would have been the most reviled edition of the game ever.

 

[RFisher]

I agree as far as plate mail & shield is concerned, but where did the 2-weapon fighting come from? Since 2e got rid of the barbarian, why not simply give rangers the same Dex bonuses as barbarians (as long as they're wearing light armor), and nix the 2-weapon nonsense? That's why I thought the 2e ranger was retconned to fit with Driz'zt (in 1e drow could fight with 2 weapons, in 2e, not).

<shrug> Encouraging two weapon fighting to discourage shield use made sense to us. Especially since the only fighters (paladins, rangers, or cavaliers) in our games that didn't use shields were those that used two-weapon fighting. (We never had a barbarian PC.) Our reaction was along the lines of, "Ah! That was a clever way to tweak an existing rule to get the desired effect."

OK, there was the one PC of mine that double-specialized in two-handed sword simply because I had grown tired of longswords. Of course, he eventually lost a hand...

 

[Greg K]

Say what? The only reason why there wasn't a 2.5E was because no one thought of the label. Second edition changed far more radically than 3E ever did and not just once, but twice.

The first major change was the invention of the "Kit" in the complete books. Now everyone wanted characters with kits to them, because in general a having a kit was more powerful than not having a kit. This was a radical change to the games I played in and I know I used to joke about calling it either 2.5 or 2A.

With regards to everyone taking kits for power, I don't know anybody that took it for that reason. Everyone tht I had played with took the kits, because kits helped mirror the concept by tailoring proficiency choices or tweaks. Then again, we were aware of overpowered kits and used houserules to fix or ban them.

Personally I think that 3E is a better product than 2E, but there are things in 2E that I really like, especially if you have to create a character for a con. I wouldn't mind playing either 1E or 2E at a convention. Actually I think DM(GM)/Players are more important than the system or the edition.

They are more important in that sucky DMs or players will ruin any game. However, there are many games that I will not play due to the system regardless of the quality of the DM and players.