i liked ravenloft.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1138556I'm not actually familiar with AD&D 2e (though I played in a regular game once upon a time, and I actually have the PHB ... somewhere around here). How was that line of reasoning ever even supposed to make sense?

Look at the average 5e adventuring party.

For AD&D I give humans +1 STR +1 CON since they're the biggest race (bigger than half orcs - and Orcs only average STR 12 per 1e AD&D DMG), combined with no-limits access to all the classes they are the most popular, indeed all the PCs IMC are human currently. Their NPC companions are a bunch of humans and a recently de-stasised quarter-demoness (her grandfather was Fraz-Urb'luu).

2e is basically a house-ruled version of AD&D. You either like it or you don't. Here are some negatives in my humble opinion.

For all intents and purposes, there are no racial level limits. For such limits to matter, they have to hit where it hurts, which is in the sweet spot, say levels 5 to 8 or so. No character ever reached a level limit during my years of 2e (1989 to 1994).

Fighters have weapon specialization, which essentially means that each player who has a fighter has a magic sword permanently grafted to the character (except for the occasional oddball who specializes in morningstar). Why the long sword? The best magic weapons are swords. Also, in 1e few DMs enforce weapon space, which leads to long sword being over-powered and over-used. If I remember correctly, weapon space wasn't even a part of 2e. In most dungeon situations, the long sword cannot be used due to spacing issues -- the spear and short sword are superior choices. But 2e is far removed from wargaming, so forget all that. But you can take pottery as a non-weapon proficiency.

The cleric is replaced by the "specialty priest" which is a character class that is totally disassociated from reality -- the game at this point is feeding on its own internal, threadbare mythology. Each specialty priest is its own character class, some very weak, some over-powered. What role do they play in the party? I don't think anyone really knows.

The thief character's special abilities get a pool of points to choose from. This puts too much emphasis on number-crunching and min/maxing, something that became central to 3e. I think everyone just ignores picking pockets and puts the points in find traps or open locks.

The illusionist was totally nerfed. I remember when playing 2e I would sometimes pull out my 1e PHB from storage and lovingly gaze at the description of the 1e illusionist. So simple, yet so elegant.

The 2e DMG is fairly worthless, in stark contrast to the 1e DMG, the greatest RPG book ever published. I came back to AD&D 1e in 2008. 12 years later I am still reading it. The exact same book I bought in March of 1980. It sits on my bookshelf next to the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Plato.

No demons or devils. No assassins or half-orcs. Mothers from Heck won't let us have them.

Dragons and giants are overpowered. I never used them in 2e. Ever.

Instead of a Monster Manual, we got loose sheets to put in binders. That worked out really well.

Non-weapon proficiencies are inconsistent with a class-based system. You can select pottery and engineering as proficiencies. Seriously, your character can build epic castles, which requires the equivalent of an engineer's degree, while pottery could be learned at a community college night class. So why can't he have spell-casting or fighting as a non-weapon proficiency? More to the point, why in the world is this character risking his life as an adventurer? It doesn't make any sense. Secondary skills work much better, and emphasizes the point that they are secondary skills with only very minor effects.

The 2e version of Deities & Demigods tried to make deities more God-like (not god-like) by removing their hit points and giving them Jesus-like avatars. They failed to understand that god-like beings are for the most part contestable by high-level characters and are nothing like God or Satan in Christianity, the closest equivalent of which in AD&D are the good and evil alignments. "Gods" in AD&D are what in modern theology would be called angels and demons, who commonly interact with the protagonists in stories.

I remember x.p. for class-based activities like casting spells, completing objectives and such. This lead me away from x.p. for gold. I remember the party abandoning piles of gold coins and gems and thinking to myself, "This isn't right".

No weapons vs. armor table. But at least you could take pottery as a non-weapon proficiency. I remember when they released a preview of 2e and that was one of the selling points.

Nothing was wrong with ad&d 2E. I still play it today with only the
PHB for rules. Love it. Same with 1E and B/X. Great games in their own right. Way better than anything else made in the last 20 years.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1138486XP for gold is a good short-hand and starting place but with stumbling blocks built in once the game moves away from that starting place.

The first stumbling block with it is when it is taken too literally instead of as a conceit:  It's supposed to be a way to measure difficulty that gives feedback to the players inside the conceits of the game that their characters would know.  That is, if the party finds what to them looks like good treasure, the characters have a good reason for wanting to get out.  For lack of a better phrase, this is a "social contract" with the group where the GM agrees to include treasure roughly inline with the risk and the players know that this is a running counter on their success so far without having to explicitly talk about it all the time or play dumb "Merchants and Merchandise" tricks to try to inflate the number.  If either side backs away from the conceit, then "gold for XP" isn't working anymore, because the contract is void.  You need something else to replace it.  Or at least a conversation about exactly which game everyone thinks they are playing.

The second stumbling block is when the money economy is changed from the default assumptions:  This block is more subtle, because depending on the exact changes, the group may or may not be able to salvage "money for XP".  The work to salvage it may or may not be worth the effort.  For example, if the group is quite happy with the main conceit and willing to play it, but "all that gold floating around" is messing with their immersion or the advancement rate is too fast or too slow--you can fix that by switching to a silver economy or changing the gold rate to XP conversion or any number of such simple adjustments.  It amounts to the same idea, just in a setting with a different idea of what "gold" means to an individual.  And in some cases, combined with a few "quest XP" additions, can even make a good hybrid.  For example, switch to a silver economy, give treasure 1/10 of the old values accordingly, but continue to award "coins for XP" on the gold standard.  It's still a counter, it still works just as before, but the money is a lot less important in the scheme of things.  Not a bad way to slow advancement, if that is what you want.  

However, if it gets more involved, then it becomes one of those square peg in a round hole situations where the group has essentially nullified the whole idea of the in-game counter being money.  In that case, better to realize that and switch to something else.

I don't really need to add reduced XP for Gold when I already hand out enough XP for actual achievements and such, which tend to make up around half of all XP gained (maybe less in battle-heavy seasons, or more in more skill-test driven sessions). Basically any time that characters achieve something they get XP: finding a trail after searching an area for clues, rescuing someone, talk an NPC into helping them (or letting them pass, etc.), tracking someone undetected, overcoming obstacles (like traps or physical challenges), successfully setting up an ambush or battle strategy, complete a mission objective (per objective, plus extra on full mission completion), etc.

Handing discretionary XP also allows me to give out as little or as much XP as I want without having to rely on a middleman that's already its own reward by virtue of being treasure. Treasure can be used to buy up healing potions to survive future adventures to gain more XP and treasure, or buy wagons and horses to haul more treasure, pay retainers to help PCs haul treasure, buy magic weapons to kill monsters that give XP (on top of achievement XP) and have treasure, and eventually buy fortified buildings with intricately locked rooms to store all their treasure, etc. Handing XP for treasure is like double dipping on a feedback loop.

Quote from: Shasarak;1138535Yes, I also played through the abandoned Dragon treasure adventure too (although I think mine was the earlier ADnD version).

Of course looking back at the rules limiting you to going up one level at a time and all the weeks of training that your characters were supposed to do should have stopped my teenage hijinx but alas there was not even a proto rules lawyer in our group.

Yeah, I didn't know about that type of rules until MUCH later. But by the time I did I had already discovered achievement XP, which made more sense than treasure XP anyways. So I never looked back. I never did try the rules requiring training to level up, but I think they were optional.

What was wrong with 2e was that it is simply too lovely for our fallen age. Early 2000s is a good time to depart the stage and watch the coming of the deluge.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1138625I never did try the rules requiring training to level up, but I think they were optional.

Train-to-level was standard in 1e but not in BX/BECMI. I'm using it in my 1e game now more as a way to get PCs to seek out interesting people and become more involved in the campaign milieu; I reduced cost to 150gp/week but finding an (eg) MU high enough level to train you after a few levels becomes quite daunting, and some of the prospects rather dubious...

I started with 2E, but eventually discovered 1E. While 2E was clearer and well-organized, it now seemed like bland uncooked spaghetti packed neatly in the box compared with 1E's hot, tangled mess of delicious pasta, sauce and meatballs.

Edit: typos

The problem with 2e is being very clearly illustrated in this thread.  It was HIGHLY modular.  A lot of stuff people are complaining about were either optional rules, splatbooks that extended the line, or rules that were moved from core to optional.

That's not to say there aren't problems but I think the fact that it is almost impossible to get anyone to agree on what 2e actually is is probably the biggest issue.

Quote from: KingCheops;1138720The problem with 2e is being very clearly illustrated in this thread.  It was HIGHLY modular.  A lot of stuff people are complaining about were either optional rules, splatbooks that extended the line, or rules that were moved from core to optional.

That's not to say there aren't problems but I think the fact that it is almost impossible to get anyone to agree on what 2e actually is is probably the biggest issue.

I agree that 2e as such didn't have a very strong core identity. It tends to come over rather like watered down 1e. Unlike 1e it no longer really knows what it's for and what it wants to be. But it's clearly not a generic system; mechanically it is still based on 1e which had a strong focus (albeit 1e not as strong as OD&D, which was far clearer on how eg Megadungeon/Underworld and Wilderness adventuring work).

Quote from: S'mon;1138802I agree that 2e as such didn't have a very strong core identity. It tends to come over rather like watered down 1e. Unlike 1e it no longer really knows what it's for and what it wants to be. But it's clearly not a generic system; mechanically it is still based on 1e which had a strong focus (albeit 1e not as strong as OD&D, which was far clearer on how eg Megadungeon/Underworld and Wilderness adventuring work).

Modular =/= generic. 2e was both modular and specific. The modularity was oriented around "D&D fantasy", which had long since become its own distinct genre, and a small range of variations thereof.

Quote from: KingCheops;1138720The problem with 2e is being very clearly illustrated in this thread.  It was HIGHLY modular.  A lot of stuff people are complaining about were either optional rules, splatbooks that extended the line, or rules that were moved from core to optional.

Actually, I think what's being illustrated in this thread is that most of the criticisms about 2e are basically that it was different to 1e.  As someone that went from BECMI to 2e (and never played 1e), a lot of those criticisms kinda just blow past me... like the lack of devils/demons/assassins or half-orcs.  It's like... "meh?"  You can't really miss something you never had.

Quote from: Tyberious Funk;1139044Actually, I think what's being illustrated in this thread is that most of the criticisms about 2e are basically that it was different to 1e.  As someone that went from BECMI to 2e (and never played 1e), a lot of those criticisms kinda just blow past me... like the lack of devils/demons/assassins or half-orcs.  It's like... "meh?"  You can't really miss something you never had.

Yes.  I think you have a good point; that if you had not played 1E, 2E would have looked like a great big playground full of toys.  1E was such a big hit; that people sometimes forget that people played D&D in the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s without any exposure to 1E.

Some people played D&D for decades, or else didn't start playing until 2E; without any exposure to 1E.  That was a thing.

Quote from: Razor 007;1139049Some people played D&D for decades, or else didn't start playing until 2E; without any exposure to 1E.  That was a thing.

Like I said... I went from BECMI to 2e.  We didn't use any of the more advanced BECMI rules... since it was only the DM that even had rulebooks past Basic, we didn't even know some of them existed.  So moving to 2e seemed amazing.  New races, classes, weapons, armor, spells, proficiencies... you could play a dwarven cleric instead of just a 'dwarf', or an elven magic-user instead of an elf, or whatever.  And the books had full colour artwork (not just on the cover).

I remember reading a few Dragon Magazines at the time, and 1e grognards were bitching like crazy.  It goes to show you that edition wars have existed for a very long time.  But to me, having not played 1e... their complaints seemed trivial.  In retrospect, I think it helps to understand younger players.  The edition you start with becomes your frame of reference for everything else.  5e (apparently) bought in a lot of new players... they'll forever define their D&D experiences through that particular edition.