D&D 2E On AD&D 2E
- Thread starter Reynard
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teitan
Legend
Both covers are Easley.
Jahydin
Hero
AD&D 2E was the edition I started with in grade school, so will always be special to me.
Now that I've gotten to deep dive into all the editions, I think it sits in a weird space between 1 and 3. It wants so badly to tell heroic tales like the novels, but uses the exact "made for dungeon crawling with random heroes" rules as before. What you get is a game that feels pretty clunky and relies heavily on GMs "greasing the wheels" to get things going. Or a "too young to care about doing it right" attitude that I had when playing it, so maybe only used 40% rules correctly.
Castles and Crusades is currently the game that runs the closest to how I was running my AD&D games anyways, so using that at the moment. But I still have quite a few 2e books, because the artwork is the most "D&D" D&D has ever been IMO, haha.
Now that I've gotten to deep dive into all the editions, I think it sits in a weird space between 1 and 3. It wants so badly to tell heroic tales like the novels, but uses the exact "made for dungeon crawling with random heroes" rules as before. What you get is a game that feels pretty clunky and relies heavily on GMs "greasing the wheels" to get things going. Or a "too young to care about doing it right" attitude that I had when playing it, so maybe only used 40% rules correctly.
Castles and Crusades is currently the game that runs the closest to how I was running my AD&D games anyways, so using that at the moment. But I still have quite a few 2e books, because the artwork is the most "D&D" D&D has ever been IMO, haha.
deganawida
Hero
Yeah, C&C feels to me like how 2e was actually played, at least in memory, than my re-read of the ugly 2e PHB revealed.
Same here. I like 2Es artwork the best of any edition.
Kai Lord
Hero
Matt Colville's comment that 5E rules are like "oatmeal" is spot on. And I just don't find any joy in reading the instructions on the back of a packet of oatmeal.
Kai Lord
Hero
I would vote 1E. Because while you do lose Brom and DiTerlizzi you gain Otus, Dee, and Willingham (among others) and still keep Elmore, Caldwell, Easley, Parkinson and Holloway and all at their peak no less.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Because of my own play history, I tend to think of 1e and 2e as a continuum.
Kai Lord
Hero
Yeah. I think for me since I'm primarily a Dragonlance guy I consider AD&D to be one single edition from 1977 up to about 1994 or so. The Revised 2.5 AD&D Rulebooks (with Combat & Tactics/Skills & Powers) and Dragonlance SAGA rules which all kicked in around the same time feel like a departure to me.
deganawida
Hero
I would agree with that (even though I liked the SAGA rules).
Kai Lord
Hero
I never used them but loved the cover art and (like we've discussed previously in this thread) they were still fun to read.
ValamirCleaver
Jäger aus Kurpfalz
Kai Lord
Hero
Most definitely! Hence the "among others" of which they are at the top of the list.
I always thought that the 2E Players Options Books, at least Combat and Tactics (as well as Alternity) were the predecessors of 3E. In hindsight, those books were a good indication of what D&D was to become.
teitan
Legend
How I started was finding the old stuff or my friends finding the old stuff at yard sales, we didn't have book stores so we had 0e and 1e stuff so for me art wise it is the oldest D&D guys like Otus, Holloway, Tramp, Sutherland, Dee, Willingham and when I got into 2e finally I really liked Easley & Elmore but D'iterlizzi had that quirkiness the old guys had. Easley & Elmore were all sorts of refined. Easley had a lot of energy to his work too. I loved the other guys too but it was with 2e that fantasy in general really moved into a generic, vanilla space and that space was AD&D2e. Fiction, video games, artwork. It all started to take on that same feel, sort of like how all Lord of the Rings art now is very much inspired by the movies and is samey outside of a few artists. Early D&D still had that variety of fantasy art styles going on. While the game didn't really support these variety of game styles with the magic system being married to arcane/divine split since the earliest days, the artwork really did punch it up there.
You could sit a piece by Otus, Holloway and Dee beside each other and have three wildly different approaches to fantasy but each was grounded in its own reality. Easley, Elmore all had this "these are the same world" feel to them which helped unify the game and also sell 2e, especially, as that tool kit game they wanted to push. Forgotten Realms art looked like the Realms, Dragonlance looked like Dragonlance etc. You even had disparate styles of artists on Planescape but they all felt like Planescape. It was a benefit and a curse of sorts because D&D became so... vanilla because the art was so goooood. Then 2e core just got UGLY with the revision.
But for me, those older artists are still what makes D&D. Erol Otus evil sorcerors and cultists are what evil sorcerors and cultists look like to me. Holloway's adventurers are adventurers. That's part of why I like DCC so much, the artists capture that feeling as much as the rules do.
You could sit a piece by Otus, Holloway and Dee beside each other and have three wildly different approaches to fantasy but each was grounded in its own reality. Easley, Elmore all had this "these are the same world" feel to them which helped unify the game and also sell 2e, especially, as that tool kit game they wanted to push. Forgotten Realms art looked like the Realms, Dragonlance looked like Dragonlance etc. You even had disparate styles of artists on Planescape but they all felt like Planescape. It was a benefit and a curse of sorts because D&D became so... vanilla because the art was so goooood. Then 2e core just got UGLY with the revision.
But for me, those older artists are still what makes D&D. Erol Otus evil sorcerors and cultists are what evil sorcerors and cultists look like to me. Holloway's adventurers are adventurers. That's part of why I like DCC so much, the artists capture that feeling as much as the rules do.
ValamirCleaver
Jäger aus Kurpfalz
teitan
Legend
Yes I know them. The Hildebrandts are the 70s and 80s. They predate the movies. But just about everything you find in stores looks like the films. Lee and Howe we’re concept artists for the films. I know these so I’m trying to figure out why you’re responding to me with them? They’re great artists. Still doesn’t change all the art since that isn’t them that is LOTR related looks like their work.
Kai Lord
Hero
Your post is a great example of why I can love Otus, Sutherland, Trampier, et al just as much as Elmore, Caldwell, Parkinson, and Easley despite the latter four being arguably technically more accomplished illustrators.
With Elmore or Caldwell paintings I look at them and can easily think I want to be that guy, rescue that girl, or live on that countryside. But with Otus and Sutherland and the others they're so good at injecting that deep sense of dread and fear of the bizarre unknown, which in turn adds a compelling sense of adventure, conflict and stakes to those worlds that I otherwise want to vicariously inhabit and whose NPC's I want to meet, fight alongside, or rescue.
1E just had that perfect blend of all of those elements IMO.
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Kai Lord
Hero
One of my very favorite RPG illustrators. Not just for D&D but also Star Frontiers and Paranoia.
I did read your full post, but I think this quote sums it up. We just started playing 2E again last Sunday after 22 years and my friend and I who used to play together back then thought, eh we'll wing it at first, it'll come back to us, it did somewhat but it was rough at points. The other player who has only played 5E is somewhat confused. I just started reading the PHB over the last few days and I'm astounded how much I forgot, how many rules we probably never used to begin with, how much we probably had wrong, and how different the game truly is from 3E forward. It really is a different game.
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