Quote from: Age of Fable;393211She sent me this poem this morning:


4th edition has no heart.
World of Darkness thinks it's art.
WFRP is all blood and axes,
3.5's like doing taxes.
One's too short, the next too dense,
The third's just right, but makes no sense.
On the whole, dear friends, it's best
To give up and play HeroQuest.

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Shut up, we're playing AD&D
The beer is in the fridge

Quote from: Benoist;393050Having a clone for every single variant of the D&D game out there is getting a bit tired, in my opinion.

Yeah, it gets old quick, but I'm all for it. When it comes to retro-clones, the more the merrier, as long as they're free of course.

If this was Serious Business, I can see how glut would be a Bad Thing. If the authors are seriously thinking of selling it in game stores, for cold, hard cash, I suspect that's a good, sure-fire recipe for heartbreak. But free PDFs on the intarwebz? Go crazy.

Having a retro-clone of 2e is like having a Cadillac Cimmaron enthusiast's club.

Quote from: The Butcher;393249If the authors are seriously thinking of selling it in game stores, for cold, hard cash, I suspect that's a good, sure-fire recipe for heartbreak. But free PDFs on the intarwebz? Go crazy.

Yeah; no argument from me on that.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;393057dammit we need more clones for Dragons of Underearth and TFT already

I thought about a TFT retro-clone a long time ago...



BUT Dark City Games seem to have a pretty good handle on it. Plus I always assumed SJG would go ballistic. (although why they haven't done it themselves is beyond me...I'd reintroduce the ol' pocket box games in a heartbeat, but they seem to be too ate up with those horrible Munchkin ______ games to do anything else...)

Most amusing! But probably only a small number of people would get the reference.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;393254Having a retro-clone of 2e is like having a Cadillac Cimmaron enthusiast's club.

Well, excuse me, Mr. I-was-playing-1e-when-you-kids-were-in-diapers, but some of us happen to have been introduced to the hobby at the heyday of 2e, and feel the same sentimental attachment to 2e's whitewashed take on D&D, that you express towards 1e's dense and pretentious prose, or the LBB's crappy art or whatever pushes your "this is D&D" button. :mad:

To be honest, I'm no huge fan of AD&D 2e myself. It may well be the weakest edition of D&D, but that's kind of like saying "Fellowship of the Ring is the weakest book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy" or "A Voyage to Sfänamoe is the weakest Clark Ashton Smith tale". In fact, I don't think weakest is the right term. Least awesome, maybe?

Quote from: The Butcher;393321To be honest, I'm no huge fan of AD&D 2e myself. It may well be the weakest edition of D&D, but that's kind of like saying "Fellowship of the Ring is the weakest book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy" or "A Voyage to Sfänamoe is the weakest Clark Ashton Smith tale". In fact, I don't think weakest is the right term. Least awesome, maybe?

I often wonder about this; many of the problems people have with 2E seem to have waaaay more to do with various pieces of splat that they disliked, rather than the game itself. Not to start a flamewar, but I played 1E, and I really did think 2E was generally an improvement.

Quote from: Bobloblah;393331I often wonder about this; many of the problems people have with 2E seem to have waaaay more to do with various pieces of splat that they disliked, rather than the game itself. Not to start a flamewar, but I played 1E, and I really did think 2E was generally an improvement.

Speaking strictly for myself, I generally dislike the Bowdlerisation of (A)D&D that took place in the early 2e era. It seems TSR was intent on dispelling the "bad publicity" of (A)D&D and sell it as a "family friendly" game. No "demons" or "devils" or "assassins", for example.

Also, (A)D&D trying to pass itself off as a high fantasy (or worse, "romantic fantasy") RPG comes across as a strange beast indeed.

I don't consider any of this a deal-breaker (especially as these elements were slowly reintroduced as the 2e product line grew), but some people were/are fairly irked, and I can vaguely relate to that. However, AD&D 2e is one of my favorite editions of the game, and possibly the one I've played the most.

Quote from: The Butcher;393321Well, excuse me, Mr. I-was-playing-1e-when-you-kids-were-in-diapers, but some of us happen to have been introduced to the hobby at the heyday of 2e, and feel the same sentimental attachment to 2e's whitewashed take on D&D, that you express towards 1e's dense and pretentious prose, or the LBB's crappy art or whatever pushes your "this is D&D" button. :mad:

LOL  

Sorry man, that just made me chuckle.  Yeah, I tend to come off like that a lot, the "Cadillac Cimmaron" comment was just a joke.

QuoteTo be honest, I'm no huge fan of AD&D 2e myself. It may well be the weakest edition of D&D, but that's kind of like saying "Fellowship of the Ring is the weakest book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy" or "A Voyage to Sfänamoe is the weakest Clark Ashton Smith tale". In fact, I don't think weakest is the right term. Least awesome, maybe?

I would actually play 2e long before I'd play later versions.  Can't say I care much for the adventures in it but there we go.

I like 2e to the degree that it resembles 1e.    I agree with DungeonDelver that I'd rather play 2e than 3e or 4e.  

My personal rating of 2e at the low end of the TSR D&D scale is a combination of things.  A big one was the presentation and prose of the core books.  I bought them and tried to like them, but there was just no getting around my sense of disappointment.  They seemed dry and soulless, in comparison to 1e.  (That was especially true of the 2e DMG.  I remember thinking "what the hell -- where is all the cool stuff?)  I also didn't care for most of the changes and excisions. As more and more 2e product was released, my hopes for something cool and good (e.g. good adventures) were always dashed.  I didn't like the direction they went with adventures.  Some of the high-fantasy style art wasn't too bad, but it dominated and I got sick of it, and also associated it with my disappointment in 2e products.  I didn't like the direction the splats went, either.  Basically, despite the core of the game being very similar to 1e, I didn't like any of the directions that 2e went with adventures, with art/presentation, with rules changes, with rules additions, et cetera.  I gave up on it.

(Note that some of my criticism/experience with 2e could also be applied to late 1e products.)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;393340LOL  

Sorry man, that just made me chuckle.  Yeah, I tend to come off like that a lot, the "Cadillac Cimmaron" comment was just a joke.

That was the idea.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;393340I would actually play 2e long before I'd play later versions.  Can't say I care much for the adventures in it but there we go.

Yeah, most adventures were crap. Dragon Mountain was pretty cool, though.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;393354My personal rating of 2e at the low end of the TSR D&D scale is a combination of things.

Your peeves with 2e sound a lot like my own. The difference being that, having been introduced to the game in the days of 2e, my immediate alternative was the D&D RC (all too often looked down by AD&D 2e fans), and the local heartbreaker.

I discovered AD&D 1e only a few years ago, though I've never played it (and in fact I suspect it reads better than it plays). Nonetheless, I enjoy the prose and I love the aesthetics.

When it comes to running a game, though, I still default to the D&D RC, though I steal stuff from all over. I love the S&W spell lists, and the AD&D 1e classes (I'd love to stat-out Rangers, Bards, Assassins and Illusionists in the D&D RC "proto-prestige class" approach used for Paladins and Druids).

These threads always make me want to run D&D. It's like a bad habit I just can't shake. Well, back to work now...

That's a pretty solid Dorothy Parker impression! Kudos!

Thanks!

Anyway, I mostly missed out on 2nd edition, but I have the impression that the distinctive feature of it was the settings and kits, not the core rules. So wouldn't expansions for OSRIC work better?