D&D 2E On AD&D 2E

[Richards]

The 2E Monstrous Manual is still my hands-down favorite single book of monsters from any edition.

Johnathan

 

[James Gasik]

If the pages had been made of sterner stuff, the "trapper keeper" inspired Monstrous Compendium would have been idea; monster gets introduced in a book? Here's a page to add to your Compendium!

Alas, the pages had the consistency of three ply toilet paper, and ripped just by turning the page.

 

[Reynard]

The 2E Monstrous Manual is still my hands-down favorite single book of monsters from any edition.

Johnathan

Absolutely. So good.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Having started running 2E again with a group of mostly 5E players, the biggest thing they have a hard time with is THAC0, even with the chart there. Even me explaining how it works and you can easily convert it to ascending AC etc....

And the way saves work and "skills".

I love the style of 2E. The grit. The flavor. But 3rd ed's changing things to the way things all basically use the same system.... yeah.

After this 2E campaign I may never run 2E old school style again. More a 2E Retro Clone that modernizes things. I'd have to look into it.

Love 2E. I'll play it over any newer version but yeah, the system is past its prime but dang its worth it for the grit and tone

 

[hedgeknight]

On a scale from 1-10, how much do people like THAC0?

"10"
Like 2e, I absolutely love it. It's easy to calculate (up or down).

 

[hedgeknight]

I've never played 2nd Edition (outside of far too many hours with the Baldurs Gate video games) but I have collected and devoured a lot of the books (AD&D 1 also) which I let inform most of my 5e games. I'd love to play AD&D 2, but my current group can just about manage 5th Edition and dumping 2nd edition on them wouldn't fly.

If you want to learn 2e, there are several play-by-post (pbp) forums where 2e games are being run. I'm running a 2e Greyhawk game right now! Loads of fun.

 

[dagger]

A friend of mine asked, rather out of the blue, what edition of D&D I would use for my "last D&D campaign ever" and I answered, without hesitation, 2nd Edition AD&D. I kind of want to examine that a little bit, and thought here would eb a good place.

1. For sure there is a lot of nostalgia involved. While I was a "BECMI kid" -- we started with B and kept going knowing with nothing else for years -- it wasn't until I discovered 2nd Edition that the whole D&D thing blossomed for me. We played a tiny bit of 1E but discovered it so late that 2E was out within 6 months. Suddenly all the impenetrable esoterica of 1E was gone and the game made sense. Moreover, we could use the truly awesome bits of BECMI without any trouble at all, particularly the Domain rules and the War Machine.

2. 2E is so broadly written that it covers almost any subgenre of fantasy you can think of. You can still 1E dungeon crawl with it, but you can also Lord of the Rings with it and Game of Throne with it.

3. THAC0 is not hard. It's subtraction. Stop it.

4. This goes back to 1 above a bit, but my longest running campaign (20 years) started with 2E and even though it went through 3E and 3.5 and even Mutants and Masterminds (when the campaign world advanced to the super hero age) it still had its heart in 2E.

5. I feel like I could bolt any system from any D&D edition or any other game onto 2E and never worry about "balance." I could add advantage/disadvantage and it would work fine. I could include item creation from 3.x. I could, as mentioned, implement the BECMI domain management and mass combat rules. People sing the praises of a integrated core mechanic, but I thing a solid game with disparate systems lends itself to infinite hacking, which is a core tenet of D&D.

6. That Monster Manual is a thing of beauty.

7. There was SO MUCH STUFF for it. I know that wasn't good for TSR, but it was freaking great for my table and campaigns.

Anyway, I just felt like articulating the things I love about 2E. Carry on.

Also THAC0 is just BAB (Base Attack Bonus) that goes down, you can run 1e/2e/3e modules and monsters on the fly. The monster has AC2 in 2e? In 3e its AC is 18.

AC starts at 10 and goes down in 1e/2e and up and 3e. Its easy. I have run 1e using BAB and ascending AC many times.

 

[dagger]

On a scale from 1-10, how much do people like THAC0?

I am fine with it because its just BAB going down.

 

[Mark Hope]

I'm running a 2e campaign that's been going for 40 years this April - started with BX, moved to 1e, then 2e, then 3e, then PF, then back to 2e with accumulated houserules. Now that I've ironed out all my perceived issues with the game, there's no way I'd run anything else? What does another version of D&D have to offer me that my hacked 2e doesn't already have? Nah, this is the system for me when it comes to D&D.

 

[R_J_K75]

If the pages had been made of sterner stuff, the "trapper keeper" inspired Monstrous Compendium would have been idea; monster gets introduced in a book? Here's a page to add to your Compendium!

Alas, the pages had the consistency of three ply toilet paper, and ripped just by turning the page.

Thats why I bought (and still have & use) about 10 cases of sheet protectors and a bunch of 4", 3" and 2" straight 3-ring binders for all of the loose-leaf Monstrous Compendium releases. Out of all the 2E stuff I sold I kept those. I'm still kicking myself selling my softcover copies of the Ravenloft, Planescape and annual MC's. Those were truly the best MM's ever; I was so disappointed when I opened the 3E MM only to find they had severely truncated the individual monster entries.