Tell me about 2E's excessive product-necessity

[Orius]

Dark Sun REQUIRED the psionic handbook. All the monsters had psionic abiliteis and there were NO stat blocks for how to use it.

Yeah, well psionics were pretty much integral to DS to begin with. Secondly, didn't the revised DS setting include the PO version of the psionics rules?

 

[Orius]

Back in the days of 2e, I knew a few DMs who wouldn't touch the Complete Book of Elflovers with a ten-foot pole; not only did the flavor text in that book portray elves as being disgustingly perfect in every way, but it also introduced one of the most insanely overpowered class kits of all time: the Bladesinger.

A pity, since the Complete Book of Dwarves was actually quite good.

The Complete series wasn't a complete waste; I know, since I have nearly every one of the books. Man of them had a lot of interesting ideas the DM could use in a campaign. Dwarves was a lot more useful than Elves for evample, it had some very basic table for generating dwarf names, it had rules for mining, rules for designing dwarf strongholds. There was good stuff in that book that I could use even now in 3e. I can't really say the same about Elves.

 

[Orius]

Well, many supplements assumed that you were using the Battlesystem miniature rules. For example, there were several spells in Tome of Magic that refered to the Battlesystem rules. Half of the Castle Guide was new rules for use with Battlesystem.

*nods*

Yeah, Battlesystem was a HUGE offender. IIRC, that was how 2e dropped the ball on mass combat, similar to the 3e fiasco with Chainmail.

 

[johnsemlak]

I love 3.5 to an extreme. IMO, best version of D&D ever.

Now that said, I remember one of 3.0's main selling speech:

"We will not go the same route that TSR did, mainly overflow D&D 3rd Ed with a pletora of books." (paraphrasing)


Ha.

Ha ha.

IMHO it's perhaps not apppropriate to use quotation marks if you are paraphrasing someone's text. It is after all not someone's exact words.

WotC certainly have not had a plethora of D&D books over the years, compared with 2e days.

 

[Azlan]

A bigger problem was multiple incompatible systems, like the Complete Handbook series and the Player's Option series.

Weren't the "Complete Handbook" series 2.0, and the "Player's Options" series 2.5?

 

[Spatula]

I've long heard people complain about how back in the days of AD&D Second Edition, you were often forced to have a multitude of non-core books, since they all referenced material from each other.

I've never heard that complaint myself. Like Psion said, the problem with all the 2E supplements was that there was no coordination between the supplements. Most were written by different freelancers with little to no editorial oversight. There was no guiding design philosophy, the supplements stepped on each other's toes rules-wise, they had different assumptions about power levels, etc. The priest and elf books are the best known offenders, but they weren't the only ones.

 

[Alzrius]

I seem to recall WOTC saying that they believe that one of the reasons TSR went under was because they flooded the market with too many settings. Because of this, WOTC will never be making 3e versions of Planescape, Kara-Tur, Al Quadim, Spelljammer, Birthright, etc.

And to me, this is the reason why TSR needed to be assimilated to survive, not this "product creep" issue. When you need to put 100% effort into a product that will only appeal to 20% of your fan-market, that's going to ultimately lead to a corporation's demise. That's a slightly simplistic way of looking at it, but basically accurate.

The only official settings that WOTC are supporting are Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance (I would mention Greyhawk, but that seems to be more of an RPGA thing).

Well, they are supporting FR, that's true, but DL? I don't think so. They published one book for it (which was written by the people of Sovereign Press anyway) and then handed the entirety of the production and product planning, et al, to Sovereign Press. No WotC input at all (though they retain the rights to the setting).

I'd say supporting FR is all they do (along with very tacit Greyhawk support).

 

[johnsemlak]

It appears WotC will be supporting the Eberron setting, but we'll see.

I do think WotC licsensing settings out is a good idea, let other companies devote their overhead to putting out supplements to DL, Ravenloft, etc.

 

[Dark Jezter]

The Complete series wasn't a complete waste; I know, since I have nearly every one of the books. Man of them had a lot of interesting ideas the DM could use in a campaign. Dwarves was a lot more useful than Elves for evample, it had some very basic table for generating dwarf names, it had rules for mining, rules for designing dwarf strongholds. There was good stuff in that book that I could use even now in 3e. I can't really say the same about Elves.

Amen to that. I still reference The Complete Book of Dwarves every now and then. The Complete Book of Elves, OTOH, collects dust on a shelf.

 

[johnsemlak]

I think the Complete Guide series was quite revoltionary. It was such a different type of sourcebook than had appeared previously--devoted to a single class. I remember poring through the Complete Fighter's Handbook and being impressed by the sort of options offered. It was the first sourcebook really aimed at Player's besides the PHB.