I would use the rules.  I would ignore every bit of play advice from the 2e campaign guides, adventures, and articles.

Quote from: Peregrin;453596I would use the rules.  I would ignore every bit of play advice from the 2e campaign guides, adventures, and articles.

That's great advice, actually!

(Yours, I mean, not 2e's...)

Quote from: KenHR;453593There were definitely changes to many classes, but on the whole, the core books simplified the system to reflect how people actually played.

There were some simplifications - 1e's intricate weapon vs. AC charts would be a good example - but I think overall it merely replaced 1e's body of little-used and poorly remembered rules with a different but overall equally fussy and neglected body of ancillary rules.

Quote from: Cole;453598There were some simplifications - 1e's intricate weapon vs. AC charts would be a good example.

Or a "bad" one. I don't know 2e very well but that's one detail where I've seen how it's handled in 2e, and my feeling is, if you're going to use weapon vs. AC, then do it right. Actually, the presentation in Greyhawk was probably best because IIRC it didn't have AD&D 1e's smearing of what AC meant--a given AC was either an armor type + shield, or an armor type w/o shield.

Settembrini (who pops up here sometimes) thinks that 2e is the best presentation of the AD&D rules, at least in the core. I don't know--the nonweapon proficiencies system sounds tacked on and potentially subject to abuse. I've seen "skills" systems in D&D variants that IMO would probably work better, in Palladium, Talislanta, Atlantis/Arcanum, and Shades of Fantasy, not to mention unpublished homebrews.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;453616Settembrini (who pops up here sometimes) thinks that 2e is the best presentation of the AD&D rules, at least in the core. I don't know--the nonweapon proficiencies system sounds tacked on and potentially subject to abuse. I've seen "skills" systems in D&D variants that IMO would probably work better, in Palladium, Talislanta, Atlantis/Arcanum, and Shades of Fantasy, not to mention unpublished homebrews.

I actually like the non weapon proficiencies in 2E. It has been a while, and we just started playing again, so I'd have to look deeper for potential abuse (though I don't ever recall it being a problem when I played 2E in the 90s). One thing I like about it is it is very contained. You roll against your ability score. I love 3E, but sometimes the 1d20 plus a number thing gets out of hand (particularly with skills). When we startted playing 2E again, this was one of the elements I immediately liked.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;453616Or a "bad" one. I don't know 2e very well but that's one detail where I've seen how it's handled in 2e, and my feeling is, if you're going to use weapon vs. AC, then do it right. Actually, the presentation in Greyhawk was probably best because IIRC it didn't have AD&D 1e's smearing of what AC meant--a given AC was either an armor type + shield, or an armor type w/o shield.

I think the 2e numbers were a bit skewed (I think they favored slashing weapons), but the approach - armor vs. type of strike (P/B/S) rather than weapon vs. armor type - wasn't a bad one; I think Harn used the same approach with a different system.  Considering the smearing of AC you mention, it was the best way to go with the system as it stood at the time.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;453616Settembrini (who pops up here sometimes) thinks that 2e is the best presentation of the AD&D rules, at least in the core. I don't know--the nonweapon proficiencies system sounds tacked on and potentially subject to abuse. I've seen "skills" systems in D&D variants that IMO would probably work better, in Palladium, Talislanta, Atlantis/Arcanum, and Shades of Fantasy, not to mention unpublished homebrews.

The core (non-optional) stuff was presented very well, IMO.  NWPs were half-baked and not really "officially" improved until Player's Option, but they were considered an optional rule (though just about everyone who played 2e used them).

I loved 2E, for a long long time. I even liked some of the Optional stuff (but I always considered all that GM's option.)

Yet, I found games that did what I liked better. I think Birthright, was the final nail in the coffin. A wonderful setting, marred by D&Disms. It managed well, was wonderful and interesting, even with AD&D2E, but with a dozen other games I can name. It would have been pitch perfect. I feel much the same with Dark Sun. Although it managed even better with AD&D2E, it might have served a dozen other games as the perfect setting. For TSR/WOTC? They're just "Hey we've got this IP we can throw around..."

Quote from: Cole;453598There were some simplifications - 1e's intricate weapon vs. AC charts would be a good example - but I think overall it merely replaced 1e's body of little-used and poorly remembered rules with a different but overall equally fussy and neglected body of ancillary rules.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;453616Or a "bad" one. I don't know 2e very well but that's one detail where I've seen how it's handled in 2e, and my feeling is, if you're going to use weapon vs. AC, then do it right. Actually, the presentation in Greyhawk was probably best because IIRC it didn't have AD&D 1e's smearing of what AC meant--a given AC was either an armor type + shield, or an armor type w/o shield.

I feel you - when I said "a good example" I should have instead said "an easily recognizable example of a simplification." I didn't mean to say "clearly an improvement in the rules."

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;453616Settembrini (who pops up here sometimes) thinks that 2e is the best presentation of the AD&D rules, at least in the core. I don't know--the nonweapon proficiencies system sounds tacked on and potentially subject to abuse. I've seen "skills" systems in D&D variants that IMO would probably work better, in Palladium, Talislanta, Atlantis/Arcanum, and Shades of Fantasy, not to mention unpublished homebrews.

I am of the opinion that TSR never really published a good presentation of the AD&D rules - as opposed to the any comment on the actual rules per se. I think compared to many other games AD&D 1e and 2e would take the gold and the silver among RPGs for "lowest % of rules body used at the average table."

I have mixed feelings on how well NWP accomplished what they seem to have been written to accomplish. The basic idea of "compare a roll to one of the main attributes of the character," more at home in the Basic line really, isn't such a bad one IMO and relating the specialized capabilities of a NWP skill to the general capabilities of saving makes a certain sense. It could have been done better, though. Given D&D, maybe it would have been better to start out the skills chapter by sketching out the loose skill-sets assumed in the character classes already, and allowing a few specialties for each individual, with a flat bonus.

In my opinion:

The presentation is very good (although I find the illustrations uninspiring).
The rules revision is on balance clumsy.
The supplements and modules early on were execrable.

The general tenor of game culture in the later deluge of product was either delightful or off-putting. The response is often the inverse of one's response to older D&D game culture, but need not be unmixed.

Planescape looks interesting to me in parts -- the parts that are actually interesting depictions of other-planar environments that I might use in play.

Quote from: BenoistIt's not that bad.

I agree, and have enjoyed playing with 2e rules, but "not that bad" is not the test if one considers 1st edition AD&D a gem simply in need of polish.

2e is not a better duck. It's a platypus.

The editing, organization and layout are nice, and the writing has simplicity and clarity over stylish Gygaxian prose -- but OSRIC has those qualities as well. In both, there are here and there some streamlined rules I like. The more I learn about what's changed in 2e, though, the less I like. OSRIC seems to me to demonstrate more understanding of the D&D game.

Quote from: KenHRHonestly, the core books pretty much reflected how AD&D was actually played back then before people started revising their past play history to show they were "old school" or whatever all along.

Ken, try talking about what you know, instead of calling people liars when you don't know us or thing one about how we played back then.

The books reflected different ways in which many people played. TSR solicited, and received, a lot of input from players. The result was a committee-cooked stew of those many, sometimes contradictory, ingredients.

Sometimes the text indicated the effects that some bits might have in combination. Sometimes, the writers gave no indication of grasping consequences.

Quote from: BlackhandWe still play Spelljammer in 2e.

I still have Spelljammer, but recall it as an example of a shift in TSR's material generally that did not sit well with me for the AD&D line.

It's like listening to hours of so called "smooth jazz" radio. That's several things, but only rarely what I call jazz. (Often, it's what the artists themselves called pop.)

Here's the problem: Those of us who weren't being insanely perverse got into AD&D because we liked it. What was on offer in 1989 was sufficiently different from what was on offer in 1979 that "what AD&D is" can mean radically different things -- whether the person making the reference likes or dislikes what's associated with the term.

Quote from: ColeToo much wink-wink railroading, too many piles of padded hackwork books.

Yes, all that really does it in.

The "core rules" are not much more different from 1st ed. than many of the "house rules" that inspired the revision. 2e books and 1e books can compliment each other as sources of material for one's own set of house rules.

The rest of the line too often offered too little of real use to be worth the price, unless one's attitudes were in keeping with the new take on what the game was, how it was played, what it was about.

Even accounting for those attitudes, I am impressed by how much filler people bought. It's almost as if "must buy the cruft" was the defining philosophy of 2e.

DMs apparently had to keep up with rules lawyers and canon lawyers alike.

Quote from: KenHR"Oh man, the new edition sucks," he said, "they took out everything cool from the original books, like the siege rules...they suck now."

Yeah, but that was before the Players Complete Option Handbook of Deep Gnome Artillerists and Certified Public Accountants of the Forgotten Realms. [/joke]

Quote from: Phillip;453632The supplements and modules early on were execrable.

There are exceptions but most of the modules in particular are awful and many are in my opinion basically unusable as written if you're not willing to secretly or overtly force the players' hand as to what they are able to do. But there were a lot of nice adventures to be found in Dungeon magazine, which, often being reader submissions, tended to have the advantage that they had ever been played, unlike most of the 2e modules proper, which I think tended to be written in a detached reverie of wishful thinking about how great it would play out assuming the players made all the ideal choices for the story.

Quote from: Nicephorus;453585When I think back on it. the game design aspects of many of the supplements were terribly unprofessional.  They'd throw out new rules without seeing how they could be manipulated to create broken characters and without thought to how those rules interacted with the rest of the rules.  That describes many of the Dragon articles during 1e and 2e as well.  Good ideas but not enough numbers people.

In the first decade of commercial D&D (1974-1983), there was much of the flavor that comes from being "terribly unprofessional" because the authors were in fact hobbyists writing about far-out stuff they had introduced in their own games.

After that, the 'unprofessional' lack of testing was often due to real professionals, on corporate staff with salaries just cranking out words in their offices to meet quotas. If they actually played D&D for pleasure, they might not want people to think so. Evidence of real enthusiasm and experience got quashed in favor of "not a gamer, a game designer" aloofness.

Aaron Allston was both a player and a pro, and I think there were enough numbers behind The Complete Priest's Handbook. However, his conclusion that the cleric should be made a bit weaker was not popular.

2e had great settings.

I still hunt down 2e setting stuff on eBay.

Quote from: Phillip;453637In the first decade of commercial D&D (1974-1983), there was much of the flavor that comes from being "terribly unprofessional" because the authors were in fact hobbyists writing about far-out stuff they had introduced in their own games.

After that, the 'unprofessional' lack of testing was often due to real professionals, on corporate staff with salaries just cranking out words in their offices to meet quotas. If they actually played D&D for pleasure, they might not want people to think so. Evidence of real enthusiasm and experience got quashed in favor of "not a gamer, a game designer" aloofness.

Aaron Allston was both a player and a pro, and I think there were enough numbers behind The Complete Priest's Handbook. However, his conclusion that the cleric should be made a bit weaker was not popular.

Remember that for the 2e era it was the opinion of management that the staff had best not be playing (A)D&D if they knew what was good for them.

I think the Basic line saw better work overall before its revamp (and rebranding of Mystara as AD&D) due to less oversight over freelances like, for example, Allston, who did great Basic work.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;453617I actually like the non weapon proficiencies in 2E. It has been a while, and we just started playing again, so I'd have to look deeper for potential abuse (though I don't ever recall it being a problem when I played 2E in the 90s). One thing I like about it is it is very contained. You roll against your ability score. I love 3E, but sometimes the 1d20 plus a number thing gets out of hand (particularly with skills). When we startted playing 2E again, this was one of the elements I immediately liked.

I don't recall any specific difference in rules from the non weapon proficiencies in 1E (Survival Guides, Oriental Adventures).

There started to be a difference in attitude toward rules, though. Two temperaments or philosophies came to the fore:

(a) excessive insistence on looking up rules and making dice rolls, and

(b) "railroading illusionism" in which the DM merely pretends to apply rules.

At first glance seemingly opposed, these were often mashed together to create a tiresome mutant that resembled D&D only about as watching "attract mode" resembles actually playing an arcade game.

Quote from: Phillip;453646I don't recall any specific difference in rules from the non weapon proficiencies in 1E (Survival Guides, Oriental Adventures).

Both of those came out after I'd quit D&D, so whatever edition NWPs appeared under, they weren't part of "my" 1e.

I'd have to go back & research both 2e and Rules Compendium's approach to skills but my impression is that neither of them recognized that it was awkward to have one set of skill rules for thieves, and another set of skill rules for everyone else. They also made ability scores too powerful compared to character level.