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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 3328689" data-attributes="member: 9225">I submit that "feel" was mostly the product of good DMs adapting a poor rules set. Combat is one of the central elements of any edition of D&D. 1e's combat rules were utterly borked, to the extent that most games ignored around half of the rules. If you're having fun with 50% of the combat rules altered or ignored, then *you* deserve the credit, not AD&D1e. Even when you talk about a 1e feel, I have the sense you really mean the spirit of adventures and gaming groups from that period, which were quite good. I personally prefer 1e's visual aesthetic and genre assumptions to any other version of the game. 2e made the game cleave to the high fantasy genre D&D helped reignite, but D&D was originally designed with a grubbier swords and sorcery/science fantasy feel.The funny thing is that these essentials are basically what's in 2e -- and what other posters said made 2e bad for not going far enough. So which is it? Too far, or not far enough?I very much disagree. Just as the credit for 1e really rests on the shoulders of the people who made it work despite its flaws, the blame for 2e rests on the shoulders of people who didn't cooperate with the idea that optional rules were just that. The Complete series was originally written with that modularity in mind, as this was a principle built right into 2e. Note, for example, that proficiencies in 2e are actually an optional system -- the most complex of three suggestions, once of which is the 1e DMG secondary skills system. Virtually every revision outside of class changes are presented this way. If a DM doesn't have the stones to  rule on an option *that is clearly presented as just that*, whose fault is that? Contrast with 1e, which everyone heavily modded but which was designed to be  an official tournament system to standardize play.In both 1e and 2e, the community did the opposite of what the books suggested. This was good for 1e and bad for 2e.</blockquote>

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