What were the design goals of 2nd edition?

[xechnao]

There are no perfect games, since there are always competing goals.

Unless of course your goal is to model the competition of goals. But this is even more abstract than my usual self

These competing goals create an optimization polygon (the simplest example is usually a triangle*) in which you can put your design.
Designs can be successful at satisfying specific goals, but they can't satisfy them all.

This means there are two ways to "judge" a design:
1) Does it achieve its intended goals?
2) Does it achieve goals you agree with?

The latter is of course a subjective judgment.

Agreed

*) goals might be:
- Playability (how fast can you resolve any given interaction by the rules)
- Simulation (of a particular world/setting)
- Challenging play (for the player, e.g. how much of his brain power does he need to make a good decision?) Need a better word

I would say as far as a rpgame goes we have a function of playability towards specific goals which I would identify them as simulating particular situations. So what I would put in the triangle would be things such as action, drama, life-planning, socializing, being an agent of the empire, corporate career competition, managing a soccer team in Bundesliga (am I spelling this right??), managing your clinic as a pathologist doctor or surgeon...

 

[billd91]

Funnily enough, one series you couldn't run as-written was the giant series; giants got a huge power-up in 2e, which I don't feel (in retrospect) was a good idea.

Cheers!

The difference was about 4 hit dice per giant, so you could still come awfully close. You could play it just about as-is in 3e as well though the difference, in a practical sense, is even stronger. You just adjust the expected level of the PCs upward a bit.

One other factor that affected this particular set of adventures was the redesign of the ranger. Rather than the G-series being a ranger playground and showcase (since they got +1 damage/level against giant-class humanoids), the 2e ranger was left with +4 to hit giants... if he took them as his favored enemy. But then, one of the most criticized changes in 2e compared to 1e that I remember back in the day was the ranger redesign.

 

[Melba Toast]

I think the improvements over 1E are obvious and wisely realized.

My only problems with 2E are the over-emphasis on storytelling at the expense of the dungeon crawl, and the hippy art design.

 

[Stoat]

The difference was about 4 hit dice per giant, so you could still come awfully close. You could play it just about as-is in 3e as well though the difference, in a practical sense, is even stronger. You just adjust the expected level of the PCs upward a bit.

You could also run it using 2E characters and rules and the 1E giant stats.

One of the things that I liked about 1E, 2E and BECMI was that monsters from any of those editions could be used in any of the others with little to no conversion.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think the improvements over 1E are obvious and wisely realized.

My only problems with 2E are the over-emphasis on storytelling at the expense of the dungeon crawl, and the hippy art design.

Ok, storytelling is a bad thing?

funny thing is, i could use some adventures for 2nd edition using 3rd edition stats and characters... i had more problems converting from 3.0 to 3.5 ...

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

As an avid player of most editions of the game, I, of course, don't know what the design goals were, but I can say that BECMI, AD&D 2nd Edition, 3.0 and 3.5 all hit the shelves at about the right time for me as I developed as a gamer and my tastes evolved.

I started with the basic red box, which, for my 12 year old self, was the perfect way to learn the game.

I moved on to AD&D 2nd edition as I entered high school and the focus on story and settings meshed well with my own desire to create huge, sometimes outlandish settings and epic stories.

3rd edition and 3.5 came along after I had matured into adulthood and started a family. Its more "gamey" focus allowed me to run the game with little to no preparation, either "winging it" or running published adventures.

So, I don't know what 2nd Edition's design goals were, but it was the right game for me at the time.

 

[JeffB]

Do you have a link? Also, has anyone invited him over here to talk about the subject?

To answer your questions:

YES (EDIT-page 8 & 9 is where he starts in and talking about the early mods and 2E design)

And

I have not- cannot speak for anyone else

 

[Dragonhelm]

To answer your questions:

YES (EDIT-page 8 & 9 is where he starts in and talking about the early mods and 2E design)

And

I have not- cannot speak for anyone else

Thanks for the info. I have invited him to join in on the discussion.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

So, there were some of the changes. I guess these were Design Goals, and the changes were made to suit these Design Goals, and to make a lot of players happier (they had been sending in correspondence to Dragon via snail-mail for countless years) and so we had 2nd Edition AD&D.

Well there's no denying that there were reasons for the changes being made and that many of them were at the request of players who wanted those changes. Many, perhaps even most of the changes were indeed for the better - 2E is at this point the edition I would most prefer to play or run. But just having reasons for the changes doesn't constitute design goals, which implies examination of not just a given detail but more importantly of the overall. It implies the sort of naval-gazing and elemental restructuring that was done with 3rd Edition. I've long said that the move to 3rd edition did what the move to 2nd edition really should have done.

What was the essence of the game - a question especially important in the light of its rarity and unusal comparison to more traditional games played around a table? In what ways did players use the game and were existing details best supporting them? Were all the details working together as well as they could or were some still interfering with each other? If one change was made in one area was it the best approach or might there be a better way to go about it? I have never seen any of that evidenced in the move to 2nd Edition. One thing I DO see is that it was done with what in hindsight was, I think, an unfortunate choice of limitations - backward compatibility with 1E. I have come to feel that 2E improved on 1E in just about every way, but it could have - and should have been better still out of the gate. The reason it wasn't would be the absence of design goals.

It's not that I particularly BLAME anybody for the absence of design goals though. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time RPG's and D&D in particular was not rife with game designers, just game writers. I do see a difference.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't remember for certain how 2e described Thief skills, but this certainly wasn't the case in the earlier editions, which used similar mechanics.

Even in earlier editions, though, theives were the only characters whom were provided rules for doing such things. AFAIK, there weren't any actual rules for non-thieves doing things like climbing and hiding. If you wanted to determine what chance a non-thief had of climbing something, hiding from somebody, etc — you had to make it up yourself.