Quote from: Phillip;453637After 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.

I've read it more than once that the Lorraine Williams actually forbid playing games during work hours.

I'm not sure these people were exactly eager to use their free time playtesting the stuff they were developing. Hell, I wouldn't be.

Quote from: ColeRemember 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.

Really? Folly.

Quote from: Phillip;453646There 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.

I can't say I really detected more of A in 2E over 1E. At least based on the text of the rule books alone (I tend to think of A as more of an issue with 3E than the previous editions). It may be there, I just haven't noticed it myself.

I think railroading did become more acceptable at some point in 2e (though I was just reading the Gygax DMG and he certaintly seemed to endorse it in certain passages). Again while I didn't notice this so much in the rule books themselves, I did notice it in many of the modules.

I recently started my 2e ravenloft game (after not playing the edition for over a decade), and I picked up a bunch of the Ravenloft modules to see if I could run any. The biggest problem I encountered in the writing was the railroading. This wasn't so bad, since I could make minor adjustments to get around it. But the modules were written so that the GM is expected to do everything possible when the PCs don't go where they are "supposed to go" (i.e. "The PCs will go to the theatre by evening. If they don't have Carmine come and get them and take them to the theatre. The PCs should leave midway through the show; if they don't have the constable get them to ask them for help).

With the Ravenloft modules (and in this case I am thinking of the created---a module I rather like), the issue seemed to stem from a desire to structure the scene in an adequately dramatic fashion, or to keep key pieces of info from the party. In the created, the ending is all but written for PCs, and there is actually one case where it tells the GM not to allow an NPC to die no matter how much damage he takes.

On the other hand, modules like Feast of Goblyns had a lot of cool locations, characters, set-ups, etc. Plus it was built around the concept of being a living adventure---where the NPCs don't hang out in specific locations, but behave freely and adapt to PC behavior.

Quote from: Elliot Wilenit was awkward to have one set of skill rules for thieves, and another set of skill rules for everyone else.

Never seen it.

Thieves use exactly the same skill rules (whatever they may be) as other characters. They simply have special rules for special thief functions -- just as clerics have rules for their class abilities, fighters for theirs, and magic-users for theirs.

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

I think they weren't that different. But I'd have to check out the SG and OA to check (don't remember them being in the 1E PHB, but I suppose they could be in there as well). I guess my real point was I was impressed with the non weapon proficiency rules (whatever edition it started in), after using the 3E skill rules for ten years.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;453657On the other hand, modules like Feast of Goblyns had a lot of cool locations, characters, set-ups, etc. Plus it was built around the concept of being a living adventure---where the NPCs don't hang out in specific locations, but behave freely and adapt to PC behavior.

It varied from module to module and the RL line had some winners, but it also had some terrible adventures as well, with not much better than a mad libs level of input for the players. That's the story of 2e, though - so much chaff to find the grains.

Quote from: Cole;453571Too much wink-wink railroading, too many piles of padded hackwork books. Too little attention to the realities of play. There were plenty of good ideas coming out over the run of 2e, the soybean filler just tends to overshadow it.

Quote from: Cole;453635There 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.

Both good points that sum up most of what I think about it. In hindsight, there are a lot of gems. Since back then we couldn't rely on that, we had to wade through a lot of crap. Well, we soon realised the general AD&D module line was horrible while Dungeon was generally passable to great, but the crap really killed our enthusiasm. It wasn't even the most hideous junk that did it but the mass of cardboard-stale filler cranked out by the TSR staff. You can actually deal with obviously bad material and laugh it off (c.f. Beneath the Twisted Tower's lame-as deus ex machina*). It is way worse when it enters your game and poisons it. Like Dragon Mountain, which looked badass on paper, but in practice, a friend tried running it (after I had already quit gaming; my last straw was Birthright) and it was a boring slog with the Tucker's Kobolds joke stretched out to an uncomfortable long mini-series.

Actually, the problem with these materials wasn't even necessarily a lack of playtesting. You can get away with no playtesting for a while (as dodgy as it sounds) since you still have an idea about what people do at the table (this is how people create their modules at home, after all). No, the problem was, these materials were divorced from the practice of play. They weren't written with a gaming group in mind; rather, often by wannabe novellists. Jean Rabe, who had written some of the most useless 2e modules? Yes, a (hack) novellist. Birthright? Yes, some failed novellist guys' novel pitch turned into a game world (says so right in the foreword). And so on.

Plus: super-bland and offensively sugary RenFaire implied setting.

__________________________
* Originally posted by Gryfalcon on RPGNet:

QuoteWhat's worse, the adventure's got a safety catch built in, to wit - if the PCs ever run low on hit points or get in trouble, Elminster and his pet dog will wander into the area, with Elminster absentmindedly calling "Heel!" as he points an odd stick in random directions. Yes, the 'stick' is actually a Wand of Healing, and it'll zap each badly injured PC.

Quote from: Melan;453665__________________________
* Originally posted by Gryfalcon on RPGNet:

Wow, that's a real kick in the balls. Made only marginally more palatable because I can't help but always hear the voice of Elminster as sounding just like Sean Connery in Finding Forrester.

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI was impressed with the non weapon proficiency rules (whatever edition it started in), after using the 3E skill rules for ten years.

It also appeared in the D&D Gazetteer series, and the Rules Cyclopedia.

I think it's fine for adding a touch of background color, as I think the designers intended. Certainly what I recall Dave Cook saying on the matter was not in line with the player culture I saw evolve and in turn inform 3e.

For the purposes of the latter, in which such factors are not garnish but meat and potatoes, there's probably not enough going on in terms either of advancement or of the kind of mechanical balance desired.


This question of just what it is we are really trying to do, which game we really want to play, is rather significant when it comes to choosing mechanical implementations.

It also, naturally, shapes one's judgment of means designed to serve ends one does not share.

Quote from: islan;453568Each edition has their benefits and differences I feel, and of course we are all predisposed towards one edition over another, but why all the hate for 2e?

When 2e came out, I bought it.  I remember trying to like it, and to overcome the sense of "uh oh" I got reading through the books, with their bland writing and crappy art.  The DMG, in particular, was a big disappointment compared to  the 1e version (which still gets referenced in my fantasy RPG campaigns, regardless of what system I'm running).  I recall going through the 2e DMG and wondering "where did all the cool stuff go?"  I had the Monstrous Compendium, too.  That was one of those things that could have been cool, but was poorly executed, and another disappointment.

I tried to like 2e, but it never failed to disappoint me.  I liked 1e, and 2e was almost like 1e (very close in so many ways), but to me it seems like the dead husk of 1e with all the soul and life sucked out of it and an animate dead spell cast on it so that it still shuffled along.  

Even with the "soulless" thing, I could have overlooked that and injected some soul into it.  But releases that followed core just made things worse.  Splat-books upon splat books.  Module after module that I bought thinking "maybe this will be cool," and it just wasn't.  2e was a steady stream of disappointment, for me.  I gave up on it a long time before it got completely ridiculous with the powers and options stuff, though.

QuoteIs there seriously no love for 2e?

Sorry; not from me.

Quote from: Phillip;453660Never seen it.

Thieves use exactly the same skill rules (whatever they may be) as other characters. They simply have special rules for special thief functions -- just as clerics have rules for their class abilities, fighters for theirs, and magic-users for theirs.

I think you know what I mean.

Even if you expand "skills" to include class powers, the actual (non-NWP) class abilities also emphasize level over ability scores, while NWP & RC have it the other way around. Unless I'm mistaken, in which case I'll happily be corrected on the substantive point. But I don't have much time for hair-splitting.

I never liked NWPs.  I dislike skill systems grafted onto a class/level based design, to begin with, and NWPs are a half-assed skill system, at that.

The "secondary skill" system is okay; out of all the various skill systems that have been proposed or published for D&D, I think it's the only one that fits well with the games class/level approach.  It's essentially just "hey, this is part of your PC background, so you're familiar with and competent at the stuff you'd expect from that background."

There were things I loved about the 2E era. And none of them were the mechanics. I still have some of the material because it was never converted in the 3E era. But I sold off all the rest of my 2E books. Much of the fluff was great. But for me, all of the mechanics were inferior to 3E.

I liked 2e and we had a lot of fun with it. We liked 3e and had more fun with it, though...

I've always said it is the settings, in particular, that stand the test of time.

The system, AFAIAC, was a step forward from 1e, but still kept many things I had a problem with (dual class vs. multiclassing, percentile strength, non scaling "skill" system, etc.)

Alot of my early formative gaming was with 2E though, I mostly play 3E these days.

In retrospect I think the 2E rules for character generation were quite good in that with NWPs and kits you could create some really interesting and flavourful PCs...halfling goldsmiths or wilderness warrior fighters, or merchants or gypsies or weapons-performer bards or whatnot.  A couple of the "Complete" books were very good as well e.g. Complete Fighter was great for adding combat moves. I didn't mind skills and powers though I never got to play this - they might work with enough DM control over which options work for a campaign.

I loved NWPs - not the ability check mechanism for using them, but the list of actual proficiency choices. By 3E, they'd ripped out most of the interesting skills by hiding them within Craft/Perform/Profession and leaving off minor special benefits, and added more powerful skills like Spot and Move Silently and Concentration. The incentive therefore being just to take those and not worry too much about having a background.