What were the design goals of 2nd edition?

[Dragonhelm]

Given the various 2e campaign settings and the material released for them compared in general to the editions before or since in that respect, I have to assume that they really chose to emphasize world-building and a massively increased level of detail and flavor text into the game.

I was new to AD&D when 2nd edition was out. I remember thinking how neat it was that one game system could be used to play in a variety of worlds. That's kind of a "well, duh" statement now, but to my new-to-D&D eyes, this was just the neatest thing. And look at the variety of game settings we could use those rules in!

I've heard a lot of criticism towards 2e, and some of it has merit. However, 2e will always hold a special place in my heart due to the settings and world-building. It is my hope that WotC will look towards what made each prior edition successful and incorporate those ideas in future products.

 

[TerraDave]

(Mr Mona, your postings here are always appreciated)

As touched on by others, removing Gary Gygax's name from the book was a motivation...and a pretty easy to reach design goal! (the various claims and counter claims between Mr Gygax and TSR were never settled until WotC bought TSR).

As for the other "goals"...ah the irony.

Clean up the rules? Sure, but still leave THACO, different ways to listen and sneak, several different d20 based roles, all those polearms..the list goes on and on...

Consolidate the game? Sure, then release more supplements, and more disparate supplements, then have ever been released, before or since

Make it mother and apple pie friendly? Here, an unambigous victory, all the style and edge taken right out of the core rules!

Story time? To their credit, the core stuff didn't do too much of this, but otherwise the success of DL cast a long shadow. There was a big ramp up in flavour text, everyone became a novelist, and most of what came out...not so great (with some exceptions)...and its hard not to believe that the crunchy side didn't suffer.

But the biggest irony? I ran 2E for years, and we still had a lot of fun

 

[TerraDave]

Reading the blog post reminded of probably the biggest problem in 2E: cognative dissonance.

2E was still mostly 1E (and, it was backwards compatible, that is to its credit). So it really was a combat oriented game about fighting monsters and getting treasure. But it was also confused. For years, articles in Dragon had criticized the excesses of the game and encourage less monty haul and more role-playing. This is fine. But then this got incorporated into the commentary and attitude of 2E itself in a way that just didn't really make sense.

Part of this, I think, is that the people doing it really weren't into it. D'Z' Cook himself has written that he was sort of bored with mainstream fantasy, and many people involved with the game didn't play it, felt it was outdated, etc (the 25aniversary box set and 30th aniversary book touch on a little of this). It was liked they were burned out on traditional D&D fantasy role-playing, but felt this burden to do these rules, so they could get paid.

 

[Xyxox]

I'm seeing a lot of speculation.

Why not let the 2E PHB speak for itself?

Why a Second Edition?

Before answering that question, let‘s define what the second edition of the AD&D game is and is not.

This second edition of the AD&D game is a lot different from the first edition. The presentation of the game has been cleaned up. The rules are reorganized, clarified, and streamlined. Where necessary, things that
didn’t work have been fixed. Things that did work haven‘t been changed.

The second edition of the AD&D game is not a statement of what any one person thinks the game should be. It is the result of more than three years of discussion, thought, consultation, review, and playtesting.


Now to the question of ”Why a second edition’l” The AD&D game evolved over the course of 16 years. During that time, the game grew tremendously through play. Changes and improvements (and a few mistakes) were made. These were published in subsequent volumes. By 1988, the game consisted of 12 hardcover rule books. It was physically and intellectually unwieldy (but still a lot of fun). The time was right to reorganize and recombine all that information into a manageable package. That package is the second edition.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Some notes on design goals and philosophies from "The Game Wizards" in DRAGON #121 (the follow-up to the infamous "Who Dies?" column):

"TSR's attitude about 'official' rules has changed. You know and I know that people create variants and house rules for use with the AD&D game. Trying to demand that they play only the 'official' rules is pointless. That's why we're planning on marking rules in the core set as "Standard," "Tournament," and "Optional." Stnadard rules are the absolute minimum you need to play something that is passably identifiable as the AD&D game--the races, character classes, attack rolls, etc. Tournament rules add the rules that will be normally used in any TSR-sponsored tournament. After all, in a tournament, you should be reasonably certain that you will be playing the same game as your neighbor, a useful thing to ensure fairness at a convention. Best of all, for all you tinkerers out there, the Optional rules allow you to make the game yours, filling your game with as much richness and detail as you want--weapon-based armor-class modifiers, create-your-own character classes, spell-casting times, proficiencies, casting components, and more. Optional rules are just that: if you don't like 'em, you don't use 'em.

...After the core rules, there will be additional rule books (perhaps softcover books to allow us to keep the price down, or three-ring binders, or--again, the plan is not settled.) These are all optional books. If you have the core rules, you have the complete game. The optional books might include expansion books for the different character classes (for the fighter, cleric, and others I mentioned in the previous article); thus, the fighter would exist in the core rules, but a Fighter Book would introduce lots of details about fighting, strange weapons, subclasses, and other things that no one has even thought of yet. It might even include an incredibly detailed expansion of the combat rules. But it would all be intended for those players who particularly like fighters. If you didn't want an ultra-realistic combat system (I don't!), you wouldn't have to use this optional book.

...One of the big issues of the Second Edition is compatibility. It's not my intention to force you to throw away your old rulebooks and rush out to buy the Second Edition. You want to be able to pick up the Second Edition rules and use them in your campaign without having to make extensive changes first. That is a perfectly fair demand on your part. For TSR, imagine the result if a novice game bought the Second Edition and a module like Ravenloft II. The rule book is Second Edition, but the module isn't. We can't expect a novice to instantly realize the difference. If the rule book and the module didn't agree, imagine his frustration! All TSR has done is lose a new player to the game, a service done to no one.
Now, 100% compatability is just not possible. There are things that must be fixed. There are inevitable improvements and new ideas. These things are going to prevent Second Edition from being 100% compatible. Just what percent compatability we wind up with, I can't say. Indeed, the need to keep things compatible results in us not making some changes that would only confuse the issue. Take the armor class numbering system. To many players, it does not make sense that the worst armor classes have the highest numbers, and it would seem simple to change it. However, reversing the order of the armor class numbers would invalidate every AD&D game campaign and product in existence. For compataibility's sake, it is better to make no change, since this change is not worth the trouble it will cause. (Emphasis added.)

...A second design standard (the first was compatability--Transcriptionist) of the Second Edition is to increase the flexibility of the game. Done right, with Optional and Tournament rules, you can play the game according to your tastes and styles. The AD&D game can be as simple or as complex as you desire.

(Not a design goal, but a clarification--Transcriptionist) The question of "image" that came up [with the assassin] had nothing to do with any kind of religious pressure, as some of you mistakenly thought. Sorry, it's much more mundane - a lot of potential players have been turned off by bad experiences with uncontrolled assassins destroying parties, campaigns, and fun for everyone else. No fun at all.

...I anticipate that many out there will mix parts of First and Second Edition together to get the game they want (along with a healthy dose of DRAGON magazine articles and other ideas). Do this! Have fun and use your own creativity. At any rate, rest assured that as far as TSR is concerned, anything you liked in First Edition is legal in Second Edition. If you liked First Edition bards, they're legal. if you liked monks, they're legal. Ultimately, there will be people out there who will be playing Version 1.0, Version 1.5, Version 2.0, and probably even Version 2.3 of the AD&D game. Perhaps we should figure out some type of numbering system like that used on computer programs!

 

[Eryndur]

I remember my 2e years as being extremely fun. 2e -- from 89 to 99 -- exactly overlaid my years in high school and college (with a year added on either end). It will always be the D&D of my adolescence.

Earlier, we played 1e and BD&D extensively, and every one of us transplanted whole to 2e. Now granted, when this transition occurred, we were all of 14 years old.

I think age in general has a great deal to do with the enjoyment of any game. My friends and I were not interested in game balance, mechanical subsystems, metaplot, rules bloat, or power creep. And it wasn't even as if we were aware of those things but chose to ignore them. We didn't even know that the terms existed, much less what they meant.

For example, THAC0 made perfect sense to us. We never questioned its strangeness, and indeed we were never aware that it was strange. It was just the rules. When BAB appeared in 3e, it was easy for me to look back in hindsight at THAC0 and view it with disdain. The simple elegance of BAB was so self-evident, it was one of those *slaps forehead* moments. But hell if my 14 year-old self could have thought of that when THAC0 was predominant.

But least of all amongst our tribulations was the awareness of (and subsequent striving for) balance. It just didn't matter. Concept was the all-important factor when choosing class and race. Yes, like everyone else in the world playing at the time, when we got our grubby hands on the Complete Book of Elves, we all wanted desperately to play the bladesinger kit. So one of us did, and he was super-cool, and rampaged through combat, and the rest of the group said "neat-o!" when he did something awesome. But the rest of the party members were cool, too, even though they were (in hindsight, mind) severely underpowered.

This attitude stemmed from the whole "ignorance is bliss" thing. Once again, being young and naive, we didn't view the bladesinger as overpowered, and the product of power creep over the years. It was just cool. Full stop. It didn't stop other players from wanting to play a plain old fighter, I can assure you.

We were also blissfully unaware of corporate machinations at TSR. What did we care? We worshipped Gygax as the creator of the game and the author of some of our favorite adventures and supplements from 1e, and that's where it ended. We knew he had left TSR only because none of the 2e products had his name on them. It certainly didn't sour us on the game, though. To use an extreme (yet true) example: we had just as much fun playing the 2e FR Avatar Trilogy of adventures (Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep) as we did playing the 1e Temple of Elemental Evil (by Gygax). Yes, you read that correctly.

Our enjoyment of the Avatar Trilogy came primarily from our youthful naivete, of course. I'm sure that if I attempted to run that for my present-day group (all consisting of 30-somethings), we would recoil in horror like everyone else.

All this is not me trying to find an excuse for 2e's shortcomings in game design and motivations. Viewed through the prism of adulthood, extensive play of 3e, 4e, and a multitude of other games, it is easy to see the faults in 2e. I'm sure adults playing 2e back in the 90's found the faults easily, as well. But I wasn't an adult at the time. If I put myself into the mindset of what it was like to play 2e, one word comes to mind: fun.

 

[an_idol_mind]

2nd edition's goals seemed to change as the game went on. On a corporate level, I'm sure some of the decision to make a new edition came as a result of wanting to get Gygax out of the picture. However, I doubt the designers themselves shared that goal. The core books seemed set out with three goals in mind: clarify the rules, incorporate popular supplementary rules (such as non-weapon proficiencies) into the core, and purge the objectionable material such as assassins and half-orcs.

That last bit got ditched pretty early on as rules supplements returned the missing elements with varying levels of success. When WotC took over, demons, devils, and assassins were all mentioned freely again.

With just the core books, I think 2nd edition accomplished the goals of consolidating and clarifying the game. However, the PHBR series quickly bloated the game to levels far beyond what 1st edition had reached. By then, the goal seemed to be about changing the AD&D game to fit almost any fantasy vision, even if doing so meant turning the rules into a Frankenstein monster of patchwork systems.

Eventually, the glut of campaign settings also led to a glut of novels, which I think further influenced the evolution of the system. While many people complained loudly about earth-shattering events and super NPCs, they seemed popular enough to influence design decisions. Powerful NPCs and linear, plot-driven adventures became the standard. Somewhere along the line, AD&D had changed from being about exploration and danger and into an interactive novel. Furthermore, continuity in campaign settings became huge -- just look at how quickly the Dark Sun setting changed, or how hard it was to stay current with the Forgotten Realms.

I don't think the issue with 2nd edition was that there were no design goals. I think the problem was that those goals shifted constantly. pre-2nd edition AD&D was pretty much defined by the dungeon crawl, while the parallel D&D line had specific tiers of adventure laid out with appropriate support for each level. 3rd edition had a "return to the dungeon" design to it, and 3.5 signaled a change in the type of support WotC gave. 4th edition arguably has the clearest of directions, with deliberate holes left in the core rules with the intention of filling them in later. 2nd edition, however, had constantly changing design goals which often directly contradicted what the AD&D system was intended to do.

 

[Umbran]

What were the design goals the developers of 2nd edition were using?

I am thoroughly unconvinced that the developers at the time worked with formalized, unified, overall goals. I think the goals, then, varied depending on which developer you'd be talking about. Bit of a mish-mosh. And I think that shows in the final product.

 

[billd91]

The way I understand, it was largely to clean up, compile, and revise the 1e rules. Basically, get rid of the stuff that didn't work, add stuff from books like UA which worked, and change the rules to reflect how people were playing the game in general. At least, Cook's forward to the 2e PHB seems to indicate that.

Indeed. This is mentioned directly in at least 2 offerings in the Dragon at the time, one by Gygax in 1985 and another by Steven Winter (an editor) in 1987. Cleaning up the multi-book bloat was a definite design goal, and not one that is, I believe, invalidated by the fact that 2nd edition eventually became the poster child for book bloat. That just says to me that there's a viable strategy in putting out material and circling back around every so often to rework into a new edition and that the original design goals for the 2nd edition core were't the same as the design goals for ongoing support.

Notice that Gygax was involved back in 1985. Things turned out differently from his original expectations since he was gone from TSR by the time 2nd edition was released and there is no jester subclass for the bard, no savant, and no mystic. But the claim that 2nd edition was done to either spite him to cut him off simply doesn't bear up.

 

[Erik Mona]

I hope no one is reading my earlier post as a suggestion that 2nd edition was fueled to spite Gary Gygax. Indeed, there is ample evidence in Dragon editorials and the like that Gygax was working on a second edition of the game around the time of his ouster.

What I _DO_ mean to suggest is that the idea that Gary Gygax was a good writer, module designer, or fantasist was simply alien to the corporate culture at TSR, which clearly vilified him as a matter of course. I think the idea that Gygax's prose and somewhat wandering style was a FEATURE of first edition is a fan-driven idea. I do not think this was seen as a feature of 1e from the people who ousted Gary and the folks they employed and adapted into their groupthink.

I'm sure that there were some exceptions to this, but I was shocked by the regular, almost knee-jerk disrespect and disdain the "old timers" and even "medium-old-timers" still at TSR when I joined the RPGA staff in 1999 held for Gary Gygax.

Some of that stemmed from the fact that Gary could be a tyrant back in the "glory days," but my impression was that running down "Gygaxian" writing was part of the corporate culture that came over from Wisconsin. From my wild-eyed "fan made good" perspective, it seemed like you either bought into this party line or kept your mouth shut.

I'm sure that the folks who wrote 2nd edition gleefully removed many of the 20-cent words Gygax used, all in an effort to "make the game more accessible," which was clearly one of the design goals of second edition.

"Making the game more accessible" can be read as code for "making the prose less Gygaxian."