Quote from: Elliot Wilen;454075To me it's most visible in the Elmore illustrations. I'm sure you can find more than one pair of curly-toed shoes and lurex tights. Oh, and cloaks with hoods. Flowing, sparkling hair.

The toning down of morally-ambiguous character & campaign options is another part of it.

Finally, and vaguely, since I'm pretty removed from actual play of 2e, and I haven't read much the modules or Dragon articles from the era...but I have an impression that scenarios also moved further away from "adventurers seeking fortune" toward "white hats saving the world in yet another quest". Of course, this started long before 2e was actually released, as noted in this thread.

Again this seems a bit daft to me. You move from hobbyist illustrations to professional art done by peple that used to make money illustrating fairy tales and kids books so its a bit twee but you simply can't afford Boris, and that is a bad thing because? And the Brom art from Darksun is excellent and the whole Darksun seeting seemed morally grey (I only ran Sanctuary as a setting and only ever played in Ravenloft all the rest of our stuff was home brewed).
This again seems to be one one of those rather daft statements that claims that because assasins were removed as a class the game was 'cleaning itself up for the kids'. As I believe was stated many times an assasin can be any class its just someone that kills for meoney and I certainly played more than my share of downright evil motherfuckers in 2e and the rules never seemed to hold me back.
Wander through dungeons, kill things and take their stuff didn't get replaced with set up a theive's guild in the city of Grafiley and run a long con to get the Prince to arrest the wizard so you can get access to his trove of magic items because the former was morally bankrupt but just because after you have been raiding dungeons 4 times a week for 5 years it gets a bit old (for me it was closer to 1 year but you get the idea).

Quote from: ElfdartI treat 2E the same way I treat all those Dragon articles: something useful in addition to 1E, not in place of it.

Same here. I seem to recall Mr. Cook saying he saw it that way as well. TSR management obviously did not.

I can only wonder at reports of 1st ed. books sitting in TSR warehouses when WotC was looking to buy the company. I worked for a games store, and we kept selling the books until we could get no more from the distributor.

Quote from: jibbajibba;454080As I believe was stated many times an assasin can be any class its just someone that kills for meoney and I certainly played more than my share of downright evil motherfuckers in 2e and the rules never seemed to hold me back.

By the same token, I can have some awesome role playing using any character class from any edition of the game. I can take any character and role play him or her. The rules never seemed to hold me back. So your claim that somehow 2e's schtick is "role playing" seems to be a load of BS.

I got this is how your mom ran her game and she used AD&D2 and you love the game, but I don't think that your personal experience shows anything particular about the game system itself. I can do urban adventures with 3rd ed, as examplified by the published Ptolus (see my dedicated blog). I can do urban adventures with First Ed as well, as examplified by my own Ptolus variant used here in the play-by-posts forums. Now because I can and do that with First and Third ed with success doesn't mean that the focus of these game system itself is urban adventuring. I'm not seeing how 2e is any better in that regard.

Quote from: Benoist;454084By the same token, I can have some awesome role playing using any character class from any edition of the game. I can take any character and role play him or her. The rules never seemed to hold me back. So your claim that somehow 2e's schtick is "role playing" seems to be a load of BS.

I got this is how your mom ran her game and she used AD&D2 and you love the game, but I don't think that your personal experience shows anything particular about the game system itself. I can do urban adventures with 3rd ed, as examplified by the published Ptolus (see my dedicated blog). I can do urban adventures with First Ed as well, as examplified by my own Ptolus variant used here in the play-by-posts forums. Now because I can and do that with First and Third ed with success doesn't mean that the focus of these game system itself is urban adventuring. I'm not seeing how 2e is any better in that regard.

Actually my mum ran a mix of AD&D, 2e and her own variants (all her own races etc) and I never really warmed to her games as I think she did too much prep and it came out a bit dry oh and she had no idea how to make a fight really dynamic But I admired her dedication.

The key to the focus is Kits. If you look at some of the kits in say the complete fighter. The Peasant Hero gets a reaction bonus to poor folks and hints that they would help him out, the Myrmidon gets fire building and a knowledge of military stuff, the Beast Master gets riding and anial handling professiancies. None of these kits have any material mechancial advantage they are all about roleplaying hooks. They are all about how to make a bog standard fighter with one 15 in Strength different from the last foghter with 15 strength. Theya re about avoiding the 1e Taciturn Fighter #6 phenomena. YEs you can do this with imagination of course but the kits give your imagination a bump. In 1e the kits would ahve spawned some daft class in the Beholder or Dragon magazine, the archer that can shoot arrows like machine gun bullets, the Black Priest that can assasinate folks and has loads of theive's skills. Some of these got 'offical' sanctions The Illusionist & Druid, then in UA the Barbarian and the Theif Acrobat, most of them were abandoned for being too broken. Again they weren't about role play they were about mechanical advantages asociated with a type of fighter or a type of wizard or whatever.
In 3e the same thing every slight variation of a class became a new class or a prestige class or whatever. Then the whole game, for a segment of people becomes the system mastery to pick the right combos and feat trees and all that. Then you get 4e and that reliance on mechanical optimisation is the game.

So I stand my my position 2e is the Role Play edition.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;454078I will say, I've had a look at the 2e Monstrous Manual hardcover and it seems like a good update of the 1e Monster Manual, with some nice illustrations and some new monsters. (Not sure if anything was dropped.) Whether it would be a good choice instead of adding the MM II and Fiend Folio, I don't know. I never saw much need for a proliferation of new monsters anyway.

I have never seen it. I got the original 2e ring-binder Monstrous Compendium, and several of the supplemental packs.

My current DM (nominally running 2e, but continually borrowing my 1st ed. books) has the hardbound somewhere. He said that it has all the "good, standard" monsters, none of the "weird ones".

I can hardly think of how many monsters would be too many for me. They are my favorite part of the Arduin Grimoire books. I love the whole three volumes of All the Worlds' Monsters, from the sinister to the silly. Monsters of Myth, the Random Esoteric Creature Generator, even strange 4e versions of familiar critters -- I dig bestiaries!

Quote from: jibbajibba;454091Actually my mum ran a mix of AD&D, 2e and her own variants (all her own races etc) and I never really warmed to her games as I think she did too much prep and it came out a bit dry oh and she had no idea how to make a fight really dynamic But I admired her dedication.

The key to the focus is Kits. If you look at some of the kits in say the complete fighter. The Peasant Hero gets a reaction bonus to poor folks and hints that they would help him out, the Myrmidon gets fire building and a knowledge of military stuff, the Beast Master gets riding and anial handling professiancies. None of these kits have any material mechancial advantage they are all about roleplaying hooks. They are all about how to make a bog standard fighter with one 15 in Strength different from the last foghter with 15 strength. Theya re about avoiding the 1e Taciturn Fighter #6 phenomena. YEs you can do this with imagination of course but the kits give your imagination a bump. In 1e the kits would ahve spawned some daft class in the Beholder or Dragon magazine, the archer that can shoot arrows like machine gun bullets, the Black Priest that can assasinate folks and has loads of theive's skills. Some of these got 'offical' sanctions The Illusionist & Druid, then in UA the Barbarian and the Theif Acrobat, most of them were abandoned for being too broken. Again they weren't about role play they were about mechanical advantages asociated with a type of fighter or a type of wizard or whatever.
In 3e the same thing every slight variation of a class became a new class or a prestige class or whatever. Then the whole game, for a segment of people becomes the system mastery to pick the right combos and feat trees and all that. Then you get 4e and that reliance on mechanical optimisation is the game.

So I stand my my position 2e is the Role Play edition.

I don't agree. For your argument to be valid, you have to have basically kits serving the same kind of role-playing boost function consistently throughout the game. That's just not the case. There are kits whose purpose is to support some alternate play activities or funny side schticks that could amount to "role-playing," maybe, depending on how you look at it, but there are just as many kits that promote optimisation, hybrid schticks and the like, just like 3rd edition's prestige classes.

Besides, to me the whole idea that two fighters with 15 strength are the same characters is just stupid. It's always been dead-on retarded as a shortcut, and it's still retarded today.

Quote from: Benoist;454103I don't agree. For your argument to be valid, you have to have basically kits serving the same kind of role-playing boost function consistently throughout the game. That's just not the case. There are kits whose purpose is to support some alternate play activities or funny side schticks that could amount to "role-playing," maybe, depending on how you look at it, but there are just as many kits that promote optimisation, hybrid schticks and the like, just like 3rd edition's prestige classes.

Besides, to me the whole idea that two fighters with 15 strength are the same characters is just stupid. It's always been dead-on retarded as a shortcut, and it's still retarded today.

I don't think the early kits do that at all. the ones from Fighter, Rogue, Preist, Wizard, Bard and even to a lesser extend Ranger and Paladin are all role play based with the odd exception as I noted like Bladesingers or 3 armed tree rangers.

I have played Bardic Riddlemasters, Myrmidon Warriors, Rogue Spies, Wizard Patricians and none of them have anything like the mechanical advantages of a prestige class, a thief acrobat or a barbarian.

And whilst I would hope that Taciturn Fighter #6 is not a phenomena for you it was for a lot of 1e players and to me links back to the whole promoting your hirelings to PC status like a treadmill of PC fodder going back to the whole don't prepare a backstory for your PC let it develop through play concept.

Quote from: jibbajibba;454080Again this seems a bit daft to me.

I don't know how many times I need to say that 2e was long after I'd stopped playing D&D in any form other than homebrewed games that might as well have been their own system.

I did see Dark Sun at the time, along with all the other settings, and although some of them (DS in particular) look attractive, they struck me as being more hampered than helped by being tied to D&D. Dark Sun, for example, does have beautiful illustrations and some great concepts. I was leafing through one book and saw the undead war beetle, which is a great idea. (Although I'm not sure how practical it was, if you followed the mechanics. The write up made it sound like you'd spend more men & treasure putting one together than you'd save by deploying it against the enemy.) But a similar S&S feel is available elsewhere, e.g. in parts of Talislanta. And while people may laugh at Talislanta's claim of "No elves" (I think it's warranted), Dark Sun just can't get away from elves, dwarves, and halflings.

The renfaire theme isn't in DS, though, it's in the other "core" stuff. As for "professional", while DiTerlizzi is a fine artist (in all sincerity), the stuff I have in mind is Elmore and Easley. Is (a lot of) it bad art, even on the scale of popular illustration? I think it is. (Easley is a better draughtsman, though.) But my reaction on the issue of quality is apart from elements like color scheme, subject, clothing, poses. And what I see is: a lot of oversaturated orange & blue--put a bunch of it stuff up next to romance novels and at a distance, it's the same. What of? Velvet cloak and boot strike-a-posers.

About the actual content of the game, you can trim all you like. The reaction to removing assassin, etc. may have been overblown, but it had a reason behind it. The same applies regarding the shift from "adventurers" to the Brothers Hildebrandt & Terry Brooks saving the world yet again.

Quote from: jibbajibba;454106I don't think the early kits do that at all. the ones from Fighter, Rogue, Preist, Wizard, Bard and even to a lesser extend Ranger and Paladin are all role play based with the odd exception as I noted like Bladesingers or 3 armed tree rangers.

I have played Bardic Riddlemasters, Myrmidon Warriors, Rogue Spies, Wizard Patricians and none of them have anything like the mechanical advantages of a prestige class, a thief acrobat or a barbarian.

I do not think this is a consistent observation of all kits throughout second edition, early or not, and I do not think that kits, bardic riddlemasters and myrmidon, automatically make for more, or better role playing.

Quote from: jibbajibba;454106And whilst I would hope that Taciturn Fighter #6 is not a phenomena for you it was for a lot of 1e players and to me links back to the whole promoting your hirelings to PC status like a treadmill of PC fodder going back to the whole don't prepare a backstory for your PC let it develop through play concept.

Taciturn fighter #6 is not an issue I run into that often, no. There are people who are not really at ease role playing at all, and others who like role playing the same character (often turning out to be themselves in elf clothes) over and over again, and others who like to try out new things and personalities and outlook each time they play a different characters, with all sorts of shades in between these broad player types, and the same players having different likes and dislikes evolving over time.

What I'm saying is, to overly simplify it: there are people who suck or don't care about role playing, and there are people who do care and/or don't suck at it. Now, you're telling me there is a subset of players who need to have a bunch of words like "bardic riddlemaster" to be able to play a different character than their last one. OK, why not. I'm just not feeling like I need that. My hirelings are different individuals and when I get to make them myself as a player, they are not just "hireling number 8." The Magic user I am playing right now hired three hirelings before starting the game, so I got to decide who these people were prior to play. One is Llewyn, my linkboy, who's a young lad, just 15 years old, who wants to make it out of the mines for good. Skeyf is a grumpy middle-aged guy, he's one-eyed, and he's a viking type guy who worships the Black Sow, a deity from his childhood, and is a bit of a pain in the ass. Neb is a farmer whose family got killed by a bunch of orcs. Now he just can't make it on his own, so he changed lives and decided to become a mercenary. He's half expecting, and half hoping, he's going to die pretty soon.

These are my hirelings.

Now, the hirelings and henchmen you usually meet in a D&D game are not created by you as player prior to the game. They're NPCs you meet and hire in guilds, in mercenary companies, in inns and bars, whatnot. Now, if these hirelings and henchmen are all basically NPC #82323, without a little bit of personality (it doesn't take much to make a unique character, really) to themselves, then the DM has some work to do to cultivate his world's believability and role-playing techniques. It's an issue with a GM who's not good with it, not an issue with the game.

I suppose the question is: how much mechanical "support" do you want for your character concept. I largely agree with Jibba-Jibba but I'd add I think what kits really do is let you make different sorts of characters that are interesting.

I liked these since compared to the 3E approach since they're not as broken, because the concepts themselves were a lot less silly with stuff like dwarven rat catcher, gypsy, gladiator etc, and since  the character actually starts as a pirate or a smuggler or whatever instead of having to use a lot of background space to try and explain how you plan to become a whatever and why.

Kits are actually a middle position as far as giving support for a concept goes since they just give a couple of minor benefits (and drawbacks!) for being something or other. If you were using early Dragon material most of them would be classes instead - I'm sure I've seen complete separate 1E classes for everything from archers to merchants to sumo wrestlers to witches.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;454126I think what kits really do is let you make different sorts of characters that are interesting.

No wonder I don't see the point. I don't need kits to "let me" make different sorts of interesting characters.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;454126Kits are actually a middle position as far as giving support for a concept goes

And that is basically all I see with AD&D2: It's a middle-of-the-road approach to everything to the point it has no personality of its own, no focus on anything, to the point of utter blandness. If you mix all the colors in the rainbow, what you get is cold white light.

Quote from: Benoist;454129And that is basically all I see with AD&D2: It's a middle-of-the-road approach to everything to the point it has no personality of its own, no focus on anything, to the point of utter blandness. If you mix all the colors in the rainbow, what you get is cold white light.

If your campaign implicitly or explicitly contains everything in the body of 2e, you are going to have a mess; you have to come up with your own focus as players/gms.

Quote from: Cole;454130If your campaign implicitly or explicitly contains everything in the body of 2e, you are going to have a mess; you have to come up with your own focus as players/gms.

... and since I want the focus of the game to be "dungeons" and "dragons", I end up playing First Edition instead.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI did see Dark Sun at the time, along with all the other settings, and although some of them (DS in particular) look attractive, they struck me as being more hampered than helped by being tied to D&D.

I'll second that.

Warhammer 40,000 was novel, but then there were way too many "Hobbits ... in ... [fill in the blank]!" things for my taste.

R. Talsorian's Castle Falkenstein was marvelous, though.

Dark Sun?

Give me Talislanta any day, or Jorune, or (for something really distinctive) Empire of the Petal Throne.

Still, DS and Planescape looked like a big step up from what TSR had been cranking out in the late '80s.

I loved Dark Sun when I ran it. Didn't last long, but I really liked the feel of it. Planescape, I didn't know back in those days. Now I got the main boxed set though, and I like it.