OSR Why B/X?

[Sacrosanct]

I saw a lot less animosity towards 2e because of demons/devils/assassins/half orcs, and more towards it being the Lorraine Edition. Which was a far greater sin. But even then, I didn't see it very much. Because it was completely backwards compatible, it was just an occasional grumbling, which is to be expected. After all, we were already all mix-matching B/X with 1e for years, so pulling bits of 2e into the game was second nature.

 

[Voadam]

Exactly correct. There was a lot of that. Though there were some that were genuinely angry about TSR "watering down the game" by removing demons and devils (really just renaming) and the assassin and half orcs and so forth, kowtowing to what Jim Ward famously called the Angry Mothers From Heck.

Monstrous Compendium Volume I came out in 89 and had the imp (with a subentry on CE quasits). Their description as devils was fairly limited.

"Imps are beings of a very evil nature who originate on the darkest of evil planes."

"Imps are the errand boys of the powerful evil beings who command the darkest planes."

I believe that was it for any demons and devils until MC appendix volume 8 Outer Planes in 91.

This was contrasted with 1e which had multiple demons and devils in all three of its monster books.

So for the first two years and seven monster books of second edition it looked like demons and devils were gone.

Then they did come back with MC 8 but were renamed to not be called demons and devils and were focused on fighting other evils in the Blood War.

This combined with the late-1e/2e internal guidelines on evil being defeated and more family friendly type tone.

At the very end with WotC you had things like the Book of Hell using the term devils again.

 

[Mannahnin]

I saw a lot less animosity towards 2e because of demons/devils/assassins/half orcs, and more towards it being the Lorraine Edition. Which was a far greater sin. But even then, I didn't see it very much. Because it was completely backwards compatible, it was just an occasional grumbling, which is to be expected. After all, we were already all mix-matching B/X with 1e for years, so pulling bits of 2e into the game was second nature.

I think this is overgeneralizing a bit.

There were certainly lots of folks who happily mingled them, like you and Greylord. I played in a number of convention games like this, where the two were mingled. They were the minority in my experience, but of course our experiences were local.

There were some of us (especially those who were a little younger and didn't have all our house rules for 1E settled) who were relieved to have the more digestible and comprehensible 2E rules, and retained our 1E books for inspirational value while happily switching to 2E.

There were also lots of folks who said "Nah, I have no need for it", especially since (as you point out), TSR made a point of making it mostly reverse compatible. So if someone was happy with 1E they could keep buying supplements and modules for 2E if they wanted and wouldn't need the core books.

There was a smaller chunk of the latter group who was actively angry about it, but there wasn't really edition warring. Especially since the proportion of us who were online at the time (on places like Prodigy, Compuserve, Usenet, and locally-hosted BBS message boards) was MUCH smaller. The real edition wars didn't start until a huge percentage of gamers were online.

 

[Voadam]

more towards it being the Lorraine Edition. Which was a far greater sin.

The big consumer/fan end complaints I had against her was that she was in charge when they were going after all D&D fan sites and making ridiculously overreaching IP claims and threats against fans. That was the first I even really heard her name. That was also when I remember TSR being called T$R. But all that was later in the 2e era.

 

[overgeeked]

Back then we just bought the books and played the game. I had no idea who Lorraine Williams was until after WotC bought TSR and I started digging into the behind the scenes stuff. Man, I miss people just playing the game instead of being hyper-focused on the company and gossip.

We had AD&D and didn’t like the 2E changes, so we stuck with what worked for us. It had nothing to do with anything beyond our table.

 

[Iosue]

At the risk of generalizing too much from my own experience, I think there were many like our group: we started with B/X, but moved onto BECMI. So we were used to readable typeface and Elmore/Easley art. The AD&D books were great, but already felt terribly old-fashioned. So when 2nd Ed. came out, it felt like a natural progression. “Yes, these books fit very nicely in the aesthetic we are used to,” we thought in 13 year old.

 

[Mannahnin]

We know that at best 2E sold about 1/3 of what 1E sold.

Nothing to do with rejection of 2e by 1e fans. More to do with the rising popularity of Vampire/werewolf (which was what most new players of RPGs were into), MtG, and people growing older and having less time to game.

"Nothing" to do with rejection of 2E by 1E fans seems a little hard to support. The factors you cite as alternatives don't seem to line up with the sales chronology. Vampire didn't come out until July 1991, Magic at Gen-Con (August) 1993 and didn't do really big numbers until 1994 (though the 1993 sets did sell out almost instantly, Alpha and Beta together only were about 10mm cards total, and Unlimited's 40mm didn't print until December 1993).

We know the big crash in 1980s D&D sales and the end of the fad was in 1984, and appears to be due to market saturation, with some impact from the Satanic Panic encouraging big box retailers like Sears and JC Penney to drop D&D.

2E's biggest sales year was when it released in 1989, with a big drop in 1990 and a mild uptick in 1991 and 1992. A small dip again in 1993 followed by a mild uptick again in '94 and '95. 1989 sales of the three core books weren't terribly far below 1980 sales of the 1E core three, but 1E's had three huge years in '80-'83, and '79 wasn't that far behind. 2E never really did big numbers after the release year, at least relative to 1E and Basic's high points.

I'm not going to dispute that Magic and White Wolf had some impact on D&D sales, but they definitely weren't part of the picture in 1990 when the big drop happened. People aging out and dropping the hobby has been a thing through the whole history of the game; do you have any particular reason to think 2E's release saw more of that than other times?

Eyeballing Ben's chart of AD&D sales over time it looks like the 1e PH (for example) sold about 1.5mm copies over 10 years ('79-'88), vs the 2e PH around 960k over 10 years ('89-'98). And Ben's missing the entire sales of the PH in its release year, '78. I don't have a lot of hard evidence to support the idea that 1E players rejecting 2E was THE major factor, but I think certainly it was a significant one. Like with the '84 crash, some of the issue was market saturation. Folks who had bought as much game as they needed/wanted and weren't interested in getting on the continual update treadmill with the fanatics like me and you. Whether they rejected it out of acrimony or not, it does seem clear from the numbers that a significant percentage of folks who owned 1E didn't bother picking up 2E.

 

[Voadam]

"Nothing" to do with rejection of 2E by 1E fans seems a little hard to support. The factors you cite as alternatives don't seem to line up with the sales chronology. Vampire didn't come out until July 1991, Magic at Gen-Con (August) 1993 and didn't do really big numbers until 1994 (though the 1993 sets did sell out almost instantly, Alpha and Beta together only were about 10mm cards total, and Unlimited's 40mm didn't print until December 1993).

We know the big crash in 1980s D&D sales and the end of the fad was in 1984, and appears to be due to market saturation, with some impact from the Satanic Panic encouraging big box retailers like Sears and JC Penney to drop D&D.

2E's biggest sales year was when it released in 1989, with a big drop in 1990 and a mild uptick in 1991 and 1992. A small dip again in 1993 followed by a mild uptick again in '94 and '95. 1989 sales of the three core books weren't terribly far below 1980 sales of the 1E core three, but 1E's had three huge years in '80-'83, and '79 wasn't that far behind. 2E never really did big numbers after the release year, at least relative to 1E and Basic's high points.

I'm not going to dispute that Magic and White Wolf had some impact on D&D sales, but they definitely weren't part of the picture in 1990 when the big drop happened. People aging out and dropping the hobby has been a thing through the whole history of the game; do you have any particular reason to think 2E's release saw more of that than other times?

Eyeballing Ben's chart of AD&D sales over time it looks like the 1e PH (for example) sold about 1.5mm copies over 10 years ('79-'88), vs the 2e PH around 960k over 10 years ('89-'98). And Ben's missing the entire sales of the PH in its release year, '78. I don't have a lot of hard evidence to support the idea that 1E players rejecting 2E was THE major factor, but I think certainly it was a significant one. Like with the '84 crash, some of the issue was market saturation. Folks who had bought as much game as they needed/wanted and weren't interested in getting on the continual update treadmill with the fanatics like me and you. Whether they rejected it out of acrimony or not, it does seem clear from the numbers that a significant percentage of folks who owned 1E didn't bother picking up 2E.

While by total sales ever at least a third of 1e people did not pick up the 2e core books, that kind of looks like an effect of the end of the fad and fewer people getting into D&D at all after the fad years, not rejection of 2e. From the initial 2e sale bump that was the second best selling year in all of AD&D it looks an awful lot like a lot of 1e people who were still with the game got the 2e PH, a significant bump over the number of annual new sales of AD&D in the prior 4-5 year period. It is possible there were a big set of entirely new players attracted by the marketing for the new edition, but my bet would be on 1e players picking up the 2e stuff for that all time silver medal AD&D annual sale year.

 

[Mannahnin]

While by total sales ever at least a third of 1e people did not pick up the 2e core books, that kind of looks like an effect of the end of the fad and fewer people getting into D&D at all after the fad years, not rejection of 2e. From the initial 2e sale bump that was the second best selling year in all of AD&D it looks an awful lot like a lot of 1e people who were still with the game got the 2e PH, a significant bump over the number of annual new sales of AD&D in the prior 4-5 year period. It is possible there were a big set of entirely new players attracted by the marketing for the new edition, but my bet would be on 1e players picking up the 2e stuff for that all time silver medal AD&D annual sale year.

Ok. But we've still got around 1.5 million people who already owned a 1E PH when 2E came out, vs. under 300k people buying a 2E PH in its release year, and under a million people buying a 2E PH ever.

Sure, we agree that a lot of 1E players DID get one. But clearly a lot of them didn't, even if we were to assume that ALL 2E PHs were bought by existing 1E players, and discounted brand new players entirely.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Ok. But we've still got around 1.5 million people who already owned a 1E PH when 2E came out, vs. under 300k people buying a 2E PH in its release year, and under a million people buying a 2E PH ever.

Sure, we agree that a lot of 1E players DID get one. But clearly a lot of them didn't, even if we were to assume that ALL 2E PHs were bought by existing 1E players, and discounted brand new players entirely.

Anecdotal, FWIW, but interesting analogy anyway. Myself and my friends all bought the 2e books when they came out. But my older brother and none of his friends did. Why? Because they were finishing up college while we were still in high school. They didn't play as much as we did. They were getting ready for full time jobs and burning the midnight oil to finish degrees and starting families.

I imagine a lot of 1e players were in the same boat, looking at the demographic of players during the 80s.