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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 9679491" data-attributes="member: 10738">I was very much a 2nd edition AD&D fan. I have fond memories of puzzling out 1E, then referring to B/X to solve mysteries such as initiative and turn actions/order. I survived the attack charts when Dragon Magazine produced a Combat Wheel which my group used religiously to figure out attack rolls. Then around 84ish I pretty much had abandoned AD&D for Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest, Dragonquest and Palladium Fantasy. I didn't pick AD&D up again until my new college group convinced me to do so in late 89.What I realize now is that the problem with AD&D 2nd edition was not related to the rules at all; it's superior in design and more clearly written in every conceivable way. I retconned in the demons & devils, and restated them for the 2E approach. No issues there. The problem with AD&D 2E (in retrospect) was that I quickly came to see all of the brown cover Player's Handbook Resource books as critical components of the game: the Fighter's book had all of the much better proficiency rules for weapons and combat styles, for  example. The Priest's book had all of the different domains. The wizard's book expanded the schools of magic, the rogues had their own book too that was somehow less useful overall. The kits (precursors to prestige classes or today's subclassses) became essential to my game table, and as such we needed every one of what ended up being like 16 books, plus the other blue cover DM resources and also the lovely green cover historical resources. That ended up being a lot of books.Another issue with AD&D 2E is recollecting can be difficult not just because the game itself was really distributed over dozens of resource books, but also because the first wave of monstrous compendiums were all three-ring-bound format, which means that the only feasible way to collect them now is to try and find the later re-releases that gave up the loose leaf format for normal books. Because of the way that monsters were distributed, it means you can't really get the optimal collection of monster manuals with just the core hardcover that came out later on; you still need the Planescape Appendix for the baatezu and tanar'ri, and probably half a dozen other compendiums to collect all your preferred beasts. It gets messy.So the top complaint I have about AD&D 2E is that it is, unfortunately, very messy and strewn with rules over dozens of tomes that I definitely considered "critical" back in the day, and while I could totally run 2E as-is with just the core three books today, it wouldn't feel at all like the 2E I ran from 1989 to 2000. AD&D 1E, by contrast, at least only really requires maybe 8 books at the most to get to "fully playable." That said....I just can't do 1E, either, because my window of nostalgia for it was tinged with a severe amount of general confusion; I would need the B/X tomes (preferable Otus) to run that edition the way I actually did when I was around age 10-13 before other better designed systems yanked my attention away from it.(EDIT: don't even get me started on the Player's Option books! Their best trait was you could use them instead of all the brown books. Their worst trait was an incredibly bizarre, ill conceived point buy system that for the time seemed weird but innovative. Today, when I look at the Player's Option books all they make me do is appreciate what 3rd edition accomplished even more).</blockquote>

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