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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Quixote" data-source="post: 4545822" data-attributes="member: 694">Now my group by and large played AD&D 2e after we had done with and discarded the D&D Basic Set.  We (like many younger gamers, I suppose) thought that Basic ---> Advanced, and never even knew that it was a separate game that went onto Expert &c.So we grew up with 2e.  Certainly, at the time, lots of "1e-isms" still dominated the AD&D-playing culture, but we just kind of dismissed them as archaisms which were of no use to us modern-day gamers.  "What are these 'magic-users' you speak of?  Do you happen to mean 'mages,' old-timer?"  After a while, though, I really started to feel the lack of certain character options, like half-orcs and monks and barbarians, that ought to have been retained in 2e.  We got half-orcs back in a Complete Book of Humanoids, and barbarians in a Complete Book of Barbarians, and we even sort of got assassins back in the Complete Book of Ninjas, which served as our "Oriental Adventures" rulebook throughout the 2e years.  But an official 2e monk didn't come along until very late in the game (The Scarlett Brotherhood of Greyhawk supplement, from 1999!), so in order to have kung-fu kickin' monastics in our 2e games, we actually had to go dig up a 1e PHB.  I did so, and my impressions were... mixed.Mainly, it was a whole lot of snickering and "WTF?" reactions to the black and white cartoony art, the arcane and arbitrary rules, the flowery prose, and the odd race and class advancements.  Demihuman level limits were mind-bogglingly lower in 2e than 1e; certain human classes (assassins, druids, monks) had level caps for no apparent reason; and then there was the crazy business with monks and rangers starting off at 2 hit dice, and "prestige" bards.  (It wasn't until much, much later that I learned that all of these quirks were simply holdovers from OD&D and the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements, but I still thank my lucky stars that I grew up in the 2e era, so that I can be nostalgic about some clean and sensible rules!)  We ported the 1e monk into our 2e games, and in order to surpass the level 17 experience cap, we looked to the only analogue we knew: hierophant druids.  So we just added some rules for grandmaster monks above level 17, and we were quite happy with our second edition game that used all the 2e core stuff, plus 2e ninjas, and 1e monks and half-orcs.  And we were happy that way for short couple of years: those were the best campaigns of our young gaming lives.  The rules-bogged 3e games that followed them just never came close.  3e got me so fed up with the "rules heavy" style that I switched to the Cyclopedia, but that's another story.</blockquote>

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