The mythical ideal of 1E?

[thecasualoblivion]

2e, as a system, is probably overall equal to or better than 1e. It gets a bum rap because of TSR's management and handling of it. I think if most 1e players bothered to check it out again (esp in light of 3e or 4e) they'd be more pleasantly surprised by it than they'd think...

Would you say that a quality AD&D experience could be gained by playing the 2E system while reading the 1E books for flavor at the same time?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I play 1e every Tuesday, pretty much as written. There are a few rules we don't use, but the only house rules are a nat 20 is double damage, surprise just gives a free round of attacks, and we don't use weapon vs ac or the unarmed attack rules. For us the mythical idea is real.

 

[Chainsaw]

Would you say that a quality AD&D experience could be gained by playing the 2E system while reading the 1E books for flavor at the same time?

As someone who played 2E quite a bit and has recently been reading 1E books, I'd say "Yes."

Edit: Of course, upon re-reading my own statement, I don't like how it reads. I think it's probably easier just to play 1E and make a few changes to initiative and some other things.

 

[Darkwolf71]

AD&D 2e was pretty much a cleaned up AD&D 1e minus Gygaxian colloquialisms and an across the board implementation of plain English.

See, for me this was the biggest failure of 2e. I loved the way Gygax wrote the 1e books. It seems to me that each sucsessive edition has been written to a lower level of reading comprehension. 1e assumed you were capable of reading at college levels and as the kid who was always years beyond his peers in that area, I liked that.


Edit:
And a better 1000th post, I could not have made.

 

[Remathilis]

As someone who played 2E quite a bit and has recently been reading 1E books, I'd say "Yes."

Edit: Of course, upon re-reading my own statement, I don't like how it reads. I think it's probably easier just to play 1E and make a few changes to initiative and some other things.

See, I prefer most of 2e's rule changes, so I think it is very possible to play 2e with a 1e mindset (heck, you can use 1e modules as written in it). Then again, without turning this into edition warz, I think 3e and 4e can be played in a 1e style as well. Its all in how you DM and the tone set.

 

[Remathilis]

See, for me this was the biggest failure of 2e. I loved the way Gygax wrote the 1e books. It seems to me that each sucsessive edition has been written to a lower level of reading comprehension. 1e assumed you were capable of reading at college levels and as the kid who was always years beyond his peers in that area, I liked that.

Wonderful if your the kind who likes to read the DMG cover to cover. To me, it was a huge PitA to try and find a specific rule or make sense of it, esp during the game session.

I would've loved a DMG and DMG commentary system; here's the rule, heres GG's thoughts on it. But for the love of Jebus, trying to figure out encumbrance gave me a headache in my eye!

 

[Mark]

The mythical ideal of 1E?


I see many people invoking a mystical ideal of 1E AD&D . . .

Not the same word, fwiw.

 

[darjr]

I drifted away from the hobby shortly after 2e. I will say that I didn't like the 2e books, didn't like most of the art, the layout, the print and font. I'm not to sure about the rules, at the time we really just played a mish mash of 1e and 2e. I don't think I ever made it through the 2e books. I still have them, and even though they didn't get a lot of use, they have almost fallen apart.

It wasn't 2e perse, It was life. It caught up to me about then.

 

[T. Foster]

2E AD&D is, to me, the "inertia" edition of D&D -- TSR knew they had a good thing going, and their primary goal was not to do anything to screw it up too badly. The 2E rules are basically the same as the 1E rules with most of the kinks worked out and rough edges sanded down and with a few very modest "improvements," most of which had already been present as common house-rules for years. If you already were playing AD&D, 2E gives you more of the same, in a bit user-friendlier package.

The problem is, AFAICT 2E offers very little to make the game appeal to those who weren't already playing it -- it's smoother and easier to understand than 1E, but it's also bland and flavorless; the infectious "magic spark" of Gygax's prose and the amateurish but full-of-life art that really draws you in and makes you want to be part of the game is almost entirely absent from 2E, replaced by a level of conservatism and self-referentiality -- you weren't supposed to question the reasoning behind things in the rules or implied setting, you just accepted them because that's how they've always been; likewise innovation and doing things in new or different ways were frowned upon and extrapolation from and accretion on top of the existing rules, structures, and formulae was the expectation (symptomized also by the ever-increasing prevalence of "fluff" over substance -- instead of giving you new and interesting monsters we'll give you a couple pages of fluff about the existing monsters, even though you'll never use any of it in a game).

1E AD&D was vital -- lots of people hate Unearthed Arcana because they think it made too many changes to the fundamentals of the game, but miss out on the fact that the game in those days was vital enough that such changes could be made; 2E OTOH was completely staid and ossified, and only the settings showed any hint of innovation or vitality (but they were all separate and distinct from one another to the point of being essentially separate games -- you couldn't really use a Ravenloft adventure in a Planescape game, or drop your Dark Sun character into a Birthright campaign).

 

[Hussar]

I wouldn't go quite that far T. Foster. After all, look at the changes to clerics. They went from pretty much stock standard "I have plate mail and a mace and I heal people" to the specialty priests that had TONS more flavour. I still like the idea of spheres for clerics as well.

Implementation? Well, there were some problems. heh. Compare Complete Priest to Faiths and Avatars and I think you'll see that.

But, I think the rap that 2e was dry and boring isn't entirely deserved either.