We've all read the threads which say how much AD&D2 sucked.  We've all read how the game was "dumbed down", and even how "the art sucked."  Personally, my answers to those are 1) It's written plainly instead of in unintelligible Ancient Gygaxian, 2) The demons were still in the game under different racial names, and descriptions even noted that humans called them demons, 3) IMO, the art was worlds better than just about everything else in game books at the time.

But, enough of that.  The cry of hardcore fandom is that AD&D2 sucks as much as the Palladium system.  It somehow ruined AD&D1.  So, what I want to know is this:

What did AD&D2 do differently that you prefered the AD&D1 rules for?  Did you start playing AD&D2 and bemoan the loss of the older Weapon Speed rules?  Did you crave the old unarmed combat rules from the old DMG?  What was it that was changed that made AD&D2 so sucky in your eyes?

That topic is too large to fit on the entire internet, but here's my list.

Impossibly dry text.  I never played with a single gamer who'd actually read the rules.

Totally messed up weapon stats.  The long bow doing a d8 and 2 attacks per round and heavy crossbows a d4+1 and one attack every three rounds is just the tip of the iceberg.  This is because the game designers just ported across 1st edition and didn't really think about it much.

Including secondary skills and non-weapon proficiencies in the same book.  Everyone seemed to have both on their character sheet.  It's one or the other people.

Non-weapon proficiencies that didn't mesh with theives abilities.  What?  I can hide in shadows 25% of the time but I've got a 14 in 20 as a blacksmith?  I'm in the wrong line of work.  Actually the theives abilities were a compound mess as it is.  See Buck Rogers XXVc for how 2nd edition should have worked on just about every count.

Complete books of cheese.  Character kits as background would be fine.  As archetypes with special abilities.  Cheeese!

TSR management's phobia of anything offensive has to fit in here somewhere.

I'm no grognard, but when I was a teenager I pretty much just played WoD games and anything that wasn't D&D.  Secretly, I found D&D2e confusing as all hell rules-wise.

It just didn't make sense to me.  It makes more sense nowadays, but it took C&C to make me actually get a handle on the system...so I could convert it properly!

AD&D2 sucked because it didn't significantly improve on AD&D1.  Twice. And then they dumped all those supplement books on top of it that it wasn't strong enough for and it collapsed.

My first RPG was AD&D 2e.

*ducks*

Actually, I have some fond memories of it. I also remember asking myself (several times) why the hell did something work this or that way. Simply put, some stuff made no sense at all.

Quote from: JongWKMy first RPG was AD&D 2e.

*ducks*

Actually, I have some fond memories of it. I also remember asking myself (several times) why the hell did something work this or that way. Simply put, some stuff made no sense at all.

AD&D 2e was also my first. It is still my favorite version of D&D.

Are people arguing that AD&D2e was a bad system on its own merits?  Most of the arguments here seem to be that it was inferior to AD&D ... but that's a long way from saying that it's a bad system.  AD&D is a high standard to hold games to.

I personally think that 2E wasn't as good as AD&D, but was still a serviceable game.  Certainly I had a lot of fun with it.  It had a bit of a thicket of intertwining and over-built rules, but that's pretty typical of the era in which it was designed.

Quote from: TonyLBAre people arguing that AD&D2e was a bad system on its own merits?  Most of the arguments here seem to be that it was inferior to AD&D ... but that's a long way from saying that it's a bad system.  AD&D is a high standard to hold games to.

Well, if it isn't abundantly apparrent, I think AD&D2 is a fine game.  I really enjoy it better than the edition before or the ones after.

I've often heard that AD&D2 is a "sucky game."  The arguments I've read in the past are more or less that AD&D1 is better and AD&D2 somehow ruined everything.  Honestly, that seems pretty irrational to me.  So, I'm wanting to draw some explanations out in the open, discuss them, and possibly understand this, to me, strange attitude.

Sorry, can't help you.  I liked 2nd edition probably better than any other edition (though basic D&D is my favorite, I recognize AD&D 2nd as being the better design).

I never really saw what the big uproar was about with 2nd edition.

The rules are, what, 90% similar to what's in AD&D 1st.

Here's what I see as the advantages of 2nd edition:
* The writing style was much more clean and concise.
* All of the rules necessary to play were put in the Player's Guide.
* It reduced the emphasis on using miniatures.
* It removed a few things that didn't really "fit" from the core - Half-Orcs, Monks, Assassins, Level Titles (which I liked, but weren't needed), Psionics, etc.
* It completely ignored the pile of crap that was Unearthed Arcana.
* It had a wide variety of character options in the supplements.
* It had the best campaign worlds and introduced concepts other than generic fantasy worlds (like Greyhawk and Dragonlance for 1st ed).

The biggest problem I had with 2nd ed was that the DMG was essentially worthless.  They could have stuck a lot of the "flavour" stuff from the 1st ed DMG in there and made it worthwhile.  Instead, it's just a bland, pointless book.  The absolutely only thing you need it for is the treasure tables.

My only other issue with 2nd ed - they never gave an update for Oriental Adventures.

My first game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which actually happened by accident, when I went to the library to complete my personal project of transcribing the 1e AD&D books into notebooks and some other kids were getting ready to play. Anyway that's neither here nor there, because after playing 1e for a while I convinced my guardians to buy me 2e. I played it for about 6 years before moving on.

There were a few things that struck me about 2e vs 1e.

2e had awesome setting and background material. Everything from Spelljammer, to Dark Sun, to Planescape- awesome, inspiring stuff.  

However, aside from the monster books, the core rules struck me as dull and uninspired. Zeb Cook was no Gygax. Where in 1e it seemed like the sky was the limit, 2e was all about saying no, it seemed to me, even with the great setting stuff I've talked about above. It kept some of the worst aspects of 1e (like, IMO Racial level limits), and dilluted the best aspects. You had to ignore what the books said about what to allow and go it alone if you wanted the really cool stuff in your game. Luckily we had settings like Dark Sun to show to rules-lawyers who didn't want to let the DM get away with house rules.

So I guess what I'm saying is that AD&D 2e was a mixed bag for me.

Quote from: GabrielBut, enough of that.  The cry of hardcore fandom is that AD&D2 sucks as much as the Palladium system.  It somehow ruined AD&D1.  So, what I want to know is this:

What did AD&D2 do differently that you prefered the AD&D1 rules for?  Did you start playing AD&D2 and bemoan the loss of the older Weapon Speed rules?  Did you crave the old unarmed combat rules from the old DMG?  What was it that was changed that made AD&D2 so sucky in your eyes?

I have to say that, like others, the fact I did not like 2nd edition as much as 1st doesn't mean I think it was a bad game.

I just felt the edition wasn't a worthwhile upgrade AND lost most of its charm in the process. I also felt most of the additions made weren't improving the experience much either. That's three strikes against it.

I'm an AD&D 2nd ed hater.

Basically, mechanics-wise, it's AD&D1 with a couple things cleaned up, a lot of things not cleaned up, a lot of conflicting ad hoc mechanics grafted on, and so on. Plus the splatbooks. All of this sucks pretty hard, but it's not a big deal, because there was a lot of confusing shit in AD&D too, and most people played it with ad hoc rules, etc.

So not much reason to hate it there, ultimately. I never played AD&D1 BtB either. AD&D was for me always an OD&D supplement, the best one, but the original game and the various basic boxed sets were always better games at the core IMO. Start with the simple and use AD&D to build up.

But the reason for the brutal, blistering, mind-numbing hate that so many of us feel doesn't have so much to do with the system ultimately, I don't think. What it has to do with is the giant black hole sucking every last ounce of color out of D&D. Because D&D was a very colorful game. Some of that color people hated (a lot of people hated alignment, frex, or got put out at the swords & sorcery/tolkien hybrid implicit in the rules), but there was a lot of it, and a lot of it people liked. Demons, devils, assassins, erol otus art, weird artifacts, ancient technology, that seventies-early eighties heavy metal/renfaire vibe, etc.

AD&D2 was like a negative plane paraelemental came in and just sucked all that into the void, leaving sterile boredom everywhere in its wake. Gygaxian prose has its problems, but it's better than engineering textbook prose for stoking the imagination. A lot better.

AD&D3 completed the job of killing 'real' D&D by also destroying the loose systematic continuity that had lasted from 1974 to 1997, but that's another thread.

One thing I did like about 2e rules was Thac0. I'm not a math guy, but i heard it was used by some 1e groups, is that true?

I'm actually agreeing with Blakkie.

AD&D1 was pretty good, but obviously a product of its time. It definitely had problems. However, there was still wide open space where nobody had thought of a rule or only vaguely defined a rule, and in situations like that, those guidelines got gleefully ignored.

AD&D2 did not improve on many of these area, and in many cases they actually set down suddenly very clear rules that were a lot less fun to play. The example I often use is the very clear cut example of the character that started as Lawful Neutral, and played through several adventures doing basicly good acts and the DM decides she needs her alignment changed. So he changes it to Lawful Good, and docks her like 2500 XP.

That's an example of a player being punished for developing their character. Not to mention, she probably picked 'good' acts to do because of adventures that same DM was coming up with, and then it was the DM arbitrarily laying down a punishment at the end.

In AD&D1, I think there's some vague advice about "if a character seems to act differently than their alignment, it may warrant docking some XP.."

But I think most of us read that as "...and it also may NOT warrant docking any XP.."

In AD&D1, people felt very free to just make shit up within the guidelines provided. I'm not sure why, but I always felt there was a lot less freedom in AD&D2 to just make shit up. (I certainly felt it and I couln't really articulate it at the time as to why or why not).

I'm also not sure why, but I feel like D&D3, and 3.5, I'm back to that freedom. Although now, it's not a matter of making things up, as it is knowing the way the rules work.

Monster Manuel,

Yes. Thac0 was actually originally put into the Gamelords "Thieves' Guild" system as Hac0, and allowed math to substitute for tables plus math. TSR took this up eventually, but lots of groups borrowed it from TG or just made it up themselves before that.

In early D&D when there were only a few modifiers the tables were way better and quicker. But when you get to higher levels or too many attribute modifiers you have to add and subtract lots of things anyway, so the math approach makes more sense.

Which is why ascending armor class in 3e is an improvement relative to 2e, it makes this math simpler. If you play OD&D though the tables are often better because usually there are minimal modifiers to keep track of.