Why all the Second Edition Haters?

[beaver1024]

I think many people seem to have selective memories about 2e days. I'm definately in the category of 2e hater. Here's some of the things I remember from the bad old days.

1) Terribly broken and unbalanced rules. 3e has a lot of unbalanced elements but this is no where near the abomination that is 2e. Additionally there were parts of 2e that confusing and plain stupid. It made my job so hard as DM to try to balance the various broken elements that I grew to hate DMing such a broken system.

2) The fluff material in various source books were extremely patronising in the vain of the various "oh elves are the most wonderful overpowered munchkin race in the world but they're a rare and dying race so it's ok for them to be overpowered" :\ . Also the way the materials changed the names of some monsters into more socially palatable names (Devils and Demons anyone)?

3) The horrid business practices that threatened and prevented fans from creating materials based on the AD&D rules engine like adventures, campaign worlds, NPCs etc etc.

 

[teitan]

Y'know my favourite permutation of DnD isn't OD&D, 1e, 2e or even 3e... let alone 3.5. It's Arcana Unearthed, man is that a great book or what? It mixes the best aspects of all the editions in many ways. It puts the DM back in the game, possesses consistent and balanced rules and has a sense of wonder to it that is similar in flavour to 1E.

Jason

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The only rules from 2ed that I miss are those for specialty priests - the 3e domain system just doesn't have as much flavor.

The kits were a cool concept, but not a lot of attention was spent on play balance. The character concepts from Mongoose Publishing's Quintessential series fit the niche fairly well, though some are a bit broken none are quite as bad as some of the excesses that were prevalent in the kits. (Complete Elf anyone?)

And the settings were pretty cool. While I am not a fan of Forgotten Realms many of the others were very nice indeed, with my favorite being the often neglected Birthright, followed by Ravenloft. (This last at least seems to have survived the translation from 2ed to 3e.)

The Auld Grump

 

[David Howery]

well, my whole gaming life was during the 1E and 2E eras, so I can't comment on their merits vs. 3E. I don't remember anything I really hated about 2E vs. 1E.. in fact, it seemed to be a lot more organized than 1E. In the end, though, 1E and 2E came to the same end: too many friggin' optional rulebooks (which I dutifully bought most of). I do regard the 2E era as having seen some of the most creative campaign source material ever; Realms, Ravenloft, AQ.. classics all.
I've never had a chance to play 3E, although I did buy the core books. There are things I like (streamlined, organized, much better AC system) and things I don't (combat seems too damn complicated, way too much encouragment for multiclassing and min/maxing type of play). Granted, I haven't played it, and these are just the impressions it left on me....

 

[Starglim]

Two words: swimming rate.

I was a competitive swimmer. I know how fast humans swim. The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide got it right first time (and I do mean the first time anyone wrote a rule for such a thing). Then in the 2e Player's Handbook, the author just wrote down some rule that bubbled out of his brain, he got it wrong, nobody cared enough to catch it, and that was what I read when I flicked through the new edition. It encapsulated the difference for me: 1e was written with love of the game, 2e was written for page count.

 

[Orius]

Before I get into this thread, Ill state the reasons that I think are behind it:

1. Imbalance. This comes from several things. One, most of the PHBR suppliments were freelanced, and unconnected. So they weren't balanced with each other, which caused problems as time went on. Two, I've heard that a certain amount of frontloading was encouraged, that is good abilities were given to kits near 1st level, because while 2e was set up with 20 levels, most people only played to about level 10 or so. And finally there was Player's Option which had good ideas, but was easily abused.

2. Clunkiness. 2e really didn't try to streamline the clutter that had built up in D&D over the previous 15 years. It had proficiencies, psionics, kits and whatnot tacked onto a system that had stuff tacked on all over during the days of 1e. There was no one universal mechanic like d20, there where d20 rolls that were good high, and d20 rolls that were good low, and sometimes the two could get confusing. Once again, Player's Option made things worse by adding more clunkiness.

3. T$R attitudes. This is when TSR started throwing lawsuits at people for posting stuff on the Net. That naturally did not help people's opinion of the game. Also, I've heard TSR was more interested in attracting new players than keeping long time players. This alienated people who'd been around since early 1e or earlier, and stuff like promoting FR over Greyhawk probably didn't help either. And of course, there was Lorraine (need I say anything else?)

I think that sums up most of it.

 

[Orius]

1. Fighters were the most incredibly useless things.

I blame that on weapon specialization. Originally that was supposed to be for single-classed fighters only, which was good. But it was quickly given to multi-class fighters, then paladins and rangers, and then opened to all classes in PO. That was a mistake, given that specialization was the only advantage the ordinary fighter actually had.

 

[Orius]

Y'know, I don't want to think too hard about it, but I strongly suspect that I'd never run 2E again even if I had no access to any other ruleset for D&D. I think that playing 3E by memory and making up whatever I can't remember would still work better than 2E.
Playing 2E, that I could do if the campaign really interests me, but if I am deciding the system, that decision isn't going to be 2E.

I'd agree. As I DM, I prefer 3e because it's easier to work with. I'd use material from my 2e library, but update the stuff to 3e. If I play 2e, it'll either be with another DM, or because I'm playing a computer game like BG.

 

[RFisher]

I have some fond memories of 2e, but much, much less than I have for 1e, classic Traveller, Warhammer FRP, GURPS, Rolemaster, Hârnmaster, & 3e.

I only played three 2e campaigns. One was a part time supplement to the weekly game of GURPS or whatever. Another was online & in anticipation of 3e.

So, 2e was a very, very small part of my roleplaying life.

 

[Orius]

Oh, reading over these threads reminded me of something else: the utter lameness of the multi-classing/dual-classing rules. Dual-classing is probably one of the dumbest ideas ever in RPGs, certainly the dumbest idea ever to hit D&D. I don't know what the hell Cook was thinking when he put that in.

For those of you who never experienced it, this is how dual-classing worked. It was kind of like curent multi-classing rules, but with some really asinine restrictions. First of all, you had to have a 15 in the stat most important to your first class, and a 17 in the stat most important for your next class. Second, you couldn't use your abilities from your first class once you dualed until you reached the XP total you had in your first class, otherwise you would lose a lot of XPs. And you had stupid stuff like switching THAC0s, i.e., a former fighter dualed to a wizard could only use the THAC0 of a wizard, and forget that he had better combat training under his belt. This also applied to saves. And last, you could never EVER back to your original class.