No Second Edition Love?

[Retreater]

I have a lot of good memories of 2nd edition AD&D. I remember buying the PHB back in 1990. It was my introduction to the game, as I had never played Basic or 1st edition.

There are reasons why 2E gets little love these days, most of which have already been mentioned in this thread.

First, it doesn't have as much of a nostalgiac factor as Basic or 1st edition has. Nor does it have the current excitement of the present 3.5 system. So it suffers from a middle child syndrome that respect.

Second, I think a number of people are bitter about it. Some see it as the time when D&D "sold out." They cut out demons and devils to appease their critics. Some releases had any quantiable purpose or audience. This lead to...

Third, TSR went under, and a number of people blame 2E for this, whether right or wrong. D&D lost a lot of fans during this time period, but the mechanics of 2E could hardly be the blame for everything that went wrong in the company.

There are certain things I still like about 2E. I loved the Monster Manual (probably the best single tome about monsters for any edition of the game). I liked the flavor of the classes, including ability score prerequisites (it kept bards, paladins, and druids rare character classes, which made having one in your party a very special experience). I liked priests of specific mythoi and the priestly spheres ... it added a deeper context to the class than exists even now. I enjoyed the simplicity of character design and the flow of combat (which didn't require battlemats or miniatures). I even liked demi-humans and class limits as well as the somewhat convoluted multiclassing rules. It seemed to ensure that combinations that worked were the ones that people took.

Please no one take the above statements as a criticism of 3.5. I enjoy 3.5 and play it exclusively these days.

Retreater

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I liked priests of specific mythoi and the priestly spheres ... it added a deeper context to the class than exists even now. I enjoyed the simplicity of character design and the flow of combat (which didn't require battlemats or miniatures). I even liked demi-humans and class limits as well as the somewhat convoluted multiclassing rules. It seemed to ensure that combinations that worked were the ones that people took.
Retreater

I gather a lot of people actually created speciality priests for their settings? My friends and I never bothered. We always used the generic cleric stats that were presented in the PHB, my personal reasoning being that it allowed for access to more spheres than specialty priests did. :|

 

[Seeten]

Not literally. All that means is that the DM is not questioned once the game starts. As long as the players and the DM share the same basic understanding of the rules (ie staying consistant).

If a DM is bad, you just don't use him for a DM again. But then I've never seen a DM miss-use his "ultimate power" but once (and that was caused by one of the guys girl friends standing around drilling holes of hatred at the DM (she hated gaming and anyone that was involved in it). That guy ended up marrying her (some red headed Irish nightmare) and left our group. The DM took back what happened, saying he temporarily snapped.

1e and 2e caused enormously more rules arguments than 3.5. Rules that arent clear, or don't exist, and then DM and players all have their own idea of whats logical.

I've had my swashbuckling fighter told he cant jump, cant fight on stairs, falls down on a boat due to high seas(swashbuckling fighter PIRATE), cant tie knots, cant jump 5' pit traps, and any number of other silly things, because they "werent in the rules" or "Not on your character sheet".

In fact, pretty much every judgement call got an argument, especially if it was against the characters, because it was all arbitrary.

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

I can see that. When we first ran a commerical TSR module (G1), I think the general consensus of ouor group was that it had a whopping lot of treasure. Our DM had actually cut it down drastically, yet we thought we got a huge haul (or monty haul). It was only after the fact did we see how much there was in the original.

The number one treasure sink I saw used was via Raise Dead, etc. spells, I don't know what they cost but I think we were grossly overcharged. Someone or something always seemed to die each adventure. IIRC we once had to use a 100,000gp gem to get someone back; not so easy come, easy go, but maybe that was for a Wish.

In the end we were always pretty hungry for more.

Yeah, I remember playing an adventure (I think it was the one that came with the FRCS boxed set) where our freshly-generated first-level characters had to investigate the underground beneath that tower in Shadowdale the name of which escapes me right now.

The captain of the guard responsible for the tower promised us 1,000 gp each for the completion, plus a generous amount of whatever we could find down there. I was all, "whoa! That'd be enough to buy even plate mail, after just the first adventure!" Needless to say, we'd never actually bought a suit of plate before, since we'd never had the money. The fighters usually got suits off dead enemies by the time they were second, third level.

In retrospect, maybe that was too stingy. But everyone who DMed in our group did it like that, so there never were any complaints.

 

[tx7321]

dcas: "I've never played in any campaign in which the GM was not questioned during the game. No matter what the rules."

Me too. However we keep it to just a little, and only when something odd comes up (since we share the same rules pretty much now; the idea is that the DM wants feedback and his players to be comfortable and to have their say, but all agree (for the sake of the game and having fun) its the DMs final call. We try to keep rules lawyering as completely out of the AD&D experiance as possible (even in the old days visiting players would start this and we'd have to shut them down (backing up our embattled DM). When we first started playing this was very easy since only the DM and the guy he was training had a clue what was going on. It only became a problem when 1/2 the players were also DMs (maybe 3 years into it).

But there seems to be a big difference in this philosophy between 1E and 3E. I think in 3E the players are encouraged to go out and buy all the books, while with 1E only the DM was supposed to get the DMG and MM.

 

[dcas]

But there seems to be a big difference in this philosophy between 1E and 3E. I think in 3E the players are encouraged to go out and buy all the books, while with 1E only the DM was supposed to get the DMG and MM.

I've found among serious gamers that everyone usually has all the books. Casual gamers maybe not. I doubt that it is any different between 1e and 3e in this regard.

 

[Ranger REG]

But there seems to be a big difference in this philosophy between 1E and 3E. I think in 3E the players are encouraged to go out and buy all the books,

That's a philosophy adopted from 2e.

while with 1E only the DM was supposed to get the DMG and MM.

And FF, DSG, WSG, UA, MM2, L&L/De&De, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if players also picked them up. I guess it was a bad thing for a publisher to "encourage" their customers (though I think you chose a softer diplomatic word instead of "push").

 

[dcas]

I agree that 3e empowers players at the expense of the DM, but really, some of the claims made in this thread about 1e ("the DM is like a god" and "the players don't have the books") are exaggerated.

 

[Voadam]

I gather a lot of people actually created speciality priests for their settings? My friends and I never bothered. We always used the generic cleric stats that were presented in the PHB, my personal reasoning being that it allowed for access to more spheres than specialty priests did. :|

I never made up any either. But there were tons to choose from. Complete Priests Handbook, Legends and Lore, Greyhawk Adventures, Forgotten Realms Adventures, Faiths and Avatars, Powers and Pantheons, Demihuman Deities, each had a ton, I think From the Ashes had some, and other sources had a few each.

The priest book was very conservative on their power but other books went the other way.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I never made up any either. But there were tons to choose from. Complete Priests Handbook, Legends and Lore, Greyhawk Adventures, Forgotten Realms Adventures, Faiths and Avatars, Powers and Pantheons, Demihuman Deities, each had a ton, I think From the Ashes had some, and other sources had a few each.

The priest book was very conservative on their power but other books went the other way.

That's funny because the only one I owned was Complete Priests, but I never bothered using them.