D&D 2E The 2E that might have been...

[David Howery]

Having recently acquired a copy of Dragon #103 and read through it, one of the most interesting articles was "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" by EGG himself (one of his last, IIRC), talking about his view of how the second edition of D&D would look like. He anticipated that it would be a 2-3 year effort, and would involve three very large books.
The Monster Manual would be the simplest, as it would be just a blending of the MM, MM2, and FF in alphabetical order, along with worthy new monsters from modules and Dragon. EGG vaguely mentions presenting them by 'where they would be encountered" (outer planes, forests, etc.) instead of alphabetical order (something that strikes me as a bad idea), with a vast index at the end.
The PHB would be another blending of three books; the old PHB, UA, and OA. EGG talks about moving the monk into the OA setting where it really belongs, without saying just how this works. He mentions making the bard a class from the beginning instead of the cumbersome 1E version (something that was done in the real 2E), and having a Jester subclass of it. He mentions (without detail) making a Mystic subclass of cleric and Savant subclass of magic user. Assassins would be relegated to 'optional'.
The new DMG would, like the PHB, be a blending of the old DMG, UA, and OA. Psionics would be gone, long with random encounter and monster XP lists. More details on the outer/inner/elemental planes.
A fourth book would be a revamped DDG or LL (EGG makes no bones about the fact that he hated the name change), which would include the WoG deities.
So, one of the great 'What If" questions for us grognards is "WI EGG had kept control of TSR and went ahead with his 2E plans?".....

 

[Sacrosanct]

The Monster Manual would be the simplest, as it would be just a blending of the MM, MM2, and FF in alphabetical order, along with worthy new monsters from modules and Dragon.

Coincidentally I just finished compiling all the Dragon monsters, and am in the process of combining the MM, MMII, and FF into one book lol (for my own personal use, vanity project. Not gonna share. Can't since I don't own the IP). So I guess I was on the same wavelength of EGG. Although honestly, those ideas aren't a 2nd edition, but the same thing UA was just on steroids (collection of pre-published material into one book to make money). And I'm glad Cook was in charge of 2e design rather than EGG, to be honest, despite my love of 1e. But if EGG was still in charge, based on that text, this is what it would look like in actual photos :

 

[David Howery]

Coincidentally I just finished compiling all the Dragon monsters, and am in the process of combining the MM, MMII, and FF into one book lol (for my own personal use, vanity project. Not gonna share. Can't since I don't own the IP). So I guess I was on the same wavelength of EGG. Although honestly, those ideas aren't a 2nd edition, but the same thing UA was just on steroids (collection of pre-published material into one book to make money). And I'm glad Cook was in charge of 2e design rather than EGG, to be honest, despite my love of 1e. But if EGG was still in charge, based on that text, this is what it would look like in actual photos :

I don't think they'd have put every monster published in Dragon in this theoretical new MM.... just the ones they considered 'worthy' by whatever means. As for the Cook vs. EGG, I'm conflicted. I was annoyed at 2E's caving in to the Satanic Panic and nixing the fiends, assassins, half orcs, etc. I also wanted to see the barbarian and cavalier revamped, not eliminated along with everything from OA (and monks too). OTOH, without more detail, it's hard to say if EGG's Savant and Mystic subclasses would have been worthwhile. And Cook certainly did a masterful job of organizing and clarifying a lot of stuff (something that EGG seemed unable to accomplish)...

 

[Mannahnin]

Having recently acquired a copy of Dragon #103 and read through it, one of the most interesting articles was "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" by EGG himself (one of his last, IIRC), talking about his view of how the second edition of D&D would look like. He anticipated that it would be a 2-3 year effort, and would involve three very large books.
The Monster Manual would be the simplest, as it would be just a blending of the MM, MM2, and FF in alphabetical order, along with worthy new monsters from modules and Dragon. EGG vaguely mentions presenting them by 'where they would be encountered" (outer planes, forests, etc.) instead of alphabetical order (something that strikes me as a bad idea), with a vast index at the end.
The PHB would be another blending of three books; the old PHB, UA, and OA. EGG talks about moving the monk into the OA setting where it really belongs, without saying just how this works. He mentions making the bard a class from the beginning instead of the cumbersome 1E version (something that was done in the real 2E), and having a Jester subclass of it. He mentions (without detail) making a Mystic subclass of cleric and Savant subclass of magic user. Assassins would be relegated to 'optional'.
The new DMG would, like the PHB, be a blending of the old DMG, UA, and OA. Psionics would be gone, long with random encounter and monster XP lists. More details on the outer/inner/elemental planes.
A fourth book would be a revamped DDG or LL (EGG makes no bones about the fact that he hated the name change), which would include the WoG deities.
So, one of the great 'What If" questions for us grognards is "WI EGG had kept control of TSR and went ahead with his 2E plans?".....

Yes, this is something that I've seen discussed recurrently over the dozen or so years I've been reading OSR blogs and forums.

I really think this article of Gary's shows how he had lost vision. There's nothing inspirational in there. Dumping Psionics makes some sense, but keeping marginal classes like Thief-Acrobats and Assassins and adding even more likely useless ones like the Jester and Savant? Pass.

I can understand the desire to keep the game largely the same. Certainly there was a pretty big chunk of the player base which was invested in 1E and had no desire to switch to 2E, particularly with the perception that it had been watered down and kiddified to placate Angry Mothers From Heck, as Jim Ward wrote about in Dragon.

UA was a cash grab to help keep the company afloat, full of reprinted material from Dragon. And while it was popular with players, in some ways the original example of what would come to be known in later editions as a Splat Book, full of intriguing and powerful new options for players (more powerful classes and races! Weapon specialization and DOUBLE specialization! Higher level limits for demihumans! New spells and magic items!), many folks find it of dubious quality. The idea of just folding it into inflated new core books seems a bad one to me. Moldvay/Cook B/X established that editing D&D DOWN into a more compact form could produce a really elegant and enjoyable form of the game. That's more what AD&D needed. Cleanup. Editing. Clearer and shorter explanations. I would have LOVED a clean and simple revision of the 1E group initiative rules.

On the whole I think 2E was better off for being under Zeb Cook's direction rather than Gary's, even though I found the final product disappointing in a lot of ways. Some of that comes down to choices made to placate player write-in feedback and requests (like the bizarre and asinine choice to make 3d6 the default ability score generation method like in OD&D and Basic, while retaining the more stringent higher ability score modifier requirements from AD&D, just a bit simplified). Other elements come down to trying to make the game generic enough to serve both old school and post-Hickman more Narrative-focused players. With the result, for example, that the XP system was busted, without adequate advice to help new DMs ensure a reasonable pace of advancement if they didn't use the optional rules like individual XP or gold for XP. IME 2e WAS more watered down and less-inspired compared to Gary's 1E, though it was MUCH more clearly explained and laid out.

For the most part revisiting Gary's column tends to make me think that his take would have been kind of a worst of all worlds. Certainly the RPGs he produced after leaving TSR (Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys) were famously terrible.

 

[Dioltach]

It sounds like he envisioned a new edition like a new edition of a book: just some tidying up and minor tweaking. Instead, 2E (in my perception) became a move away from S&S and towards the more heroic fantasy of the 1980s.

One of my groups switched from 2e to 3.5 a few years ago, at my urging. For a long time I had to put up with complaints about "I thought you said everything was just rolling a d20?" Until someone mentioned going back to 2E, and it was met with cries of disgust.

 

[ilgatto]

Having recently acquired a copy of Dragon #103 and read through it, one of the most interesting articles was "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" by EGG himself (one of his last, IIRC), talking about his view of how the second edition of D&D would look like. He anticipated that it would be a 2-3 year effort, and would involve three very large books.
The Monster Manual would be the simplest, as it would be just a blending of the MM, MM2, and FF in alphabetical order, along with worthy new monsters from modules and Dragon. EGG vaguely mentions presenting them by 'where they would be encountered" (outer planes, forests, etc.) instead of alphabetical order (something that strikes me as a bad idea), with a vast index at the end.
The PHB would be another blending of three books; the old PHB, UA, and OA. EGG talks about moving the monk into the OA setting where it really belongs, without saying just how this works. He mentions making the bard a class from the beginning instead of the cumbersome 1E version (something that was done in the real 2E), and having a Jester subclass of it. He mentions (without detail) making a Mystic subclass of cleric and Savant subclass of magic user. Assassins would be relegated to 'optional'.
The new DMG would, like the PHB, be a blending of the old DMG, UA, and OA. Psionics would be gone, long with random encounter and monster XP lists. More details on the outer/inner/elemental planes.
A fourth book would be a revamped DDG or LL (EGG makes no bones about the fact that he hated the name change), which would include the WoG deities.
So, one of the great 'What If" questions for us grognards is "WI EGG had kept control of TSR and went ahead with his 2E plans?".....

You have asked an interesting question, which I wouldn't presume to know the answer to. What would EGG have done with AD&D rules-wise? I couldn't begin to guess, not even after reading the article in Dragon 103.
Nor do I really care, to be honest. I've always seen the AD&D rules as something that was handed down from above and with which one had to deal one way or another. I have therefore never understood the desire to change them and I certainly do not think that any of the later editions were the improvements they are often said to be, which includes 2.5E.

What I do know is that much of what was designed by EGG and some of those around him (such as Rob Kuntz and Lenard Lakofka) that wasn't a rule book had a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, a whiff of both distance and incomprehensibility I've always found intriguing. For example, there was a certain atmosphere to his adventure modules that I find hard to describe. Perhaps it was his attempts to present the gentle reader with a basis to work from? Perhaps it was rooted in his love of pulp fantasy? Perhaps it was his professed amazement at tthe notion that people wanted to know about his World of Greyhawk? Perhaps he was just more interested in how things worked rules-wise than that he was a world-builder?

I would therefore have hoped that any AD&D rules publications under his guidance would have continued to be just that - books with rules.
And that his adventures would have continued to be attempts to present players with a framework, a means to an end rather than a fully worked out sandbox, allowing me the freedom to do with as I wanted.

"There is considerable information contained herein, which is descriptive and informative with respect to what the players see and do. Note that this does not mean that you, the Dungeon Master, must surrender your creativity and become a mere script reader. You must supply considerable amounts of material. You will have to make up certain details of areas. There will be actions which are not allowed for here, and you will have to judge whether or not you will permit them. Finally, you can amend and alter monsters and treasures as you see fit, hopefully within the parameters of this module and with an eye towards the whole, but to suit your particular players."

-- Gary Gygax, in: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl (TSR, 1978)

 

[Lanefan]

There's an obscure OSR system called "Adventures Dark and Deep" which took some guesses where EGG's 2e would have gone and put them into book form.

There's a brief summary and review here:

OSR Retrospective: Adventures Dark & Deep

This week it’s Adventures Dark & Deep. It’s not exactly a retroclone but more of a what -if. Adventures Dark & Deep plays the what if game in the sense that what if Gary hadn&#…

theymightbegazebos.blog

 

[SJB]

There's an obscure OSR system called "Adventures Dark and Deep" which took some guesses where EGG's 2e would have gone and put them into book form.

There's a brief summary and review here:

OSR Retrospective: Adventures Dark & Deep

This week it’s Adventures Dark & Deep. It’s not exactly a retroclone but more of a what -if. Adventures Dark & Deep plays the what if game in the sense that what if Gary hadn&#…

theymightbegazebos.blog

It’s still going by the look of it, with a completed Kickstarter supported by c. 600 people in 2021.

Book of Lost Lore & Book of Lost Beasts

Two books with optional rules, character classes and races, magic, and monsters for old-school tabletop fantasy role-playing games.

www.kickstarter.com

 

[Jaeger]

...I've always seen the AD&D rules as something that was handed down from above and with which one had to deal one way or another. ...

One of the big factors with making a 2e was the fact that 1e was released over 3 years MM, then PHB, with the DMG last.

By the time the DMG was released - which had most of the rules putting the game together: MM, and PHB had already been out, and most active groups were already playing D&D using a Holmes/BX MM, PHB mash up...

Because of the way they were released; Basically no-one played AD&D1e RAW. So making a 2nd edition of the specific AD&D1e rules set was a mistake imho.

So what should have been done?

In my opinion; a proper 2e should have been more of a AD&D-B/X cross with the initial simplicity of B/X, and the good bits of the 1e rules added in like the race and class separation. Moving what AD&D tried to do into the B/X spectrum; rather than trying to untangle and keep AD&D's baroque eccentricities. The TSR staff was aware of possibly using Ascending AC at the time of 2e, but ultimately rejected it in favor of backwards compatibility.

For me, 2e should have been something closer to OSE's advanced fantasy; with the race and class separation, and ascending AC.

 

[Orius]

I think Gary was being a bit over ambitious with that column. Either the realities would have sunk in and stuff would have been cut, or his 2e would have been rather bloated with huge expensive books.