Quote from: Opaopajr;895892It was a magical time of maidens traipsing with unicorns through virginal forests, knights travelling hither and non to battle threats to such flowers of beauty, for honor, faith, and said fair maiden hands... and settings where you could then have killer cannibal jungle halflings, or desert nomad dwarves, or divine right of kings amid a (fairy) realm management. All was well and the lands were at peace, and the garden bloomed with worlds and settings and a thousand beautiful campaign variations. From table to table, it was like travelling to unknown vistas and sipping deep from the well of imaginative life...

/skips off to the horizon

La la la la la!...

Damn, and I missed it.  That's how I always imagined it though.  Not sure where I was that decade, probably drunk and in grad school.  I managed to skip 2nd almost entirely, but it wasn't the same as when I skipped 4th.  I mean I didn't intentionally avoid it or anything.  I did grab Birthright and thought that was pretty cool.  I think I mostly played historical miniatures or chaosium rpgs in that era.  It was a dark time. I should have went with the virginal unicorns and traipsing knights thing. Oh well.

My first three gaming items were Frank Mentzer's version of the Basic and Expert boxed sets and the Forgotten Realms grey box campaign set that I purchased at Toys-R-Us. I then bought AD&D 2E that same year (1989) at Walden Books. To me AD&D was just a continuation of my Basic/Expert set. So it was just D&D to me.

Well, that covers a lot of time for me (in 2.5 different states), but I can mostly sum it up as: mostly like 1e, with more system hacking and more new settings.

To me, the exotic settings (mainly Dark Sun and Planescape) were what really set 2e apart from 1e.

On the downside, some of the authors had a little too much self-loathing in reaction to high adventure gaming. "Use your crappy scores to roleplay" advised some of the core books. Whatever, bud. Nobody wanted that. Our characters might have quirks, but if we save our sucky characters for farmers and ratcatchers in Stormbringer and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. For AD&D 2e, gimme my 4(+)d6-drop-low wannabe demigods to take on the worst the dungeons (deserts? planes?) could dish out.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;895963Well, that covers a lot of time for me (in 2.5 different states), but I can mostly sum it up as: mostly like 1e, with more system hacking and more new settings.

To me, the exotic settings (mainly Dark Sun and Planescape) were what really set 2e apart from 1e.

On the downside, some of the authors had a little too much self-loathing in reaction to high adventure gaming. "Use your crappy scores to roleplay" advised some of the core books. Whatever, bud. Nobody wanted that. Our characters might have quirks, but if we save our sucky characters for farmers and ratcatchers in Stormbringer and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. For AD&D 2e, gimme my 4(+)d6-drop-low wannabe demigods to take on the worst the dungeons (deserts? planes?) could dish out.

It's an attitude that still pans out to this day, with now 5e, forcing players if they want to use the array, rather than rolling, they get an 8 (-1) in a score.  No choice, using the rules as written.

I find that annoying.  My home game, I turned it into a 10.  For those who want to actually, you know, feel heroic without the typical stat they have to find and dump.

Also, I'm planning this new game to be more S&S/Heroic Fantasy than the last three AL modules (save Strahd.)  I'm sick of 'THREATEN THE UNIVERSE!!!11!' plots.  Something more personal, sandboxy feels good to me.

As for the thread, I've always gotten the impression that the locales might have been different but the playstyles were pretty much the same.

It was a time before multi-classing and the min/max minigame became so prevalent...
2e was the birthplace of A LOT of great settings. Since I never really used pre-generated characters or modules, I never noticed a lot of the railroady problems of 2e.

Quote from: Novastar;895989It was a time before multi-classing and the min/max minigame became so prevalent...

Bullshit.  The Dart Throwing Fighter was but one incident of Min/Max in all editions.

Quote from: The_Shadow;895765I basically sat out the 2e era, at least as far as D&D goes. Re-reading some old Dragon issues, I feel a kind of nostalgia, even though I wasn't taking part at the time. I can see the ren-faire thing going on, plenty of attempts to make play "serious" and with in-depth campaign worlds rather than just dungeon exploration, and so on. There's an attempt to make 2e a generic fantasy toolkit rather than a recognition that D&D is its own thing.

But how was your play at the time? Did you still approach things the way you had with 1e? Did you use one of the manifold TSR settings or a homebrew? Did you feel there was a tension between the rules and the play culture? Were you having a good time or was it starting to wear thin?

I started playing in high 2e 95-ish, and we had a blast.  We freely mixed in 1e stuff without care (we were all unaware of edition warring as the internet was still a hard ur nerd thing at the time).  We were limited to a ever evolving group with two primary DMs, and worlds were a definite good thing. Dungeon crawling was there, but it was not really a focus and was a bit too abstract IIRC.  

"I can see the ren-faire thing going on, plenty of attempts to make play "serious" and with in-depth campaign worlds rather than just dungeon exploration, and so on."  You mean 1980 Greyhawk?

Quote from: Teazia;896002"I can see the ren-faire thing going on, plenty of attempts to make play "serious" and with in-depth campaign worlds rather than just dungeon exploration, and so on."  You mean 1980 Greyhawk?

I mean that the advice in Dragon magazine seems to assume that DMs were creating all these unique worlds with their own cultures and pantheons etc, rather than using Greyhawk/D&D defaults. 3e was the first to embrace "default D&D" as a positive thing. Gygaxisms were passe in the 2e era - at least in the published materials, so that's one reason why I'm interested in people's actual experiences.

Great insights in the thread so far!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;895992Bullshit.  The Dart Throwing Fighter was but one incident of Min/Max in all editions.

The dart throwing fighter needed 18/76-90+ STR (for that +4 to +6 to dmg) and a place to hold all his ammo (each is 1/2 lb, and should have a case or quiver to logically hold them, barring DM stupidity). So you're "god mode" for around 4 rounds within 1/2/4 range (indoor in 10x feet, outdoor in 10x yards), whoopty fuckin' doo. It's white room arena theory crafting at its laughably worst.

Yeah, no. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Christopher Brady;895987It's an attitude that still pans out to this day, with now 5e, forcing players if they want to use the array, rather than rolling, they get an 8 (-1) in a score.  No choice, using the rules as written.

Also, I'm planning this new game to be more S&S/Heroic Fantasy than the last three AL modules (save Strahd.) I'm sick of 'THREATEN THE UNIVERSE!!!11!' plots. Something more personal, sandboxy feels good to me.

1: Um... its an array tied into the race selection? And every race, including humans get at least 3 stat points. You can easily turn the 8 into a 9 or 10. And even if not you can buy it off with level up stat points. Its not like a -1 in something, is the end of the world. You must have some really whinny players that they cant stand a single -1. Heroic my ass.

2: Totally agree. While Curse of Strahd was a more traditional self contained and not-world-threatening adventure. The others sure were. Once is ok. Twice is pushing it. Three times it starts to get old fast. I hope the next one isnt another world beater. ugh.

Quote from: The_Shadow;895765But how was your play at the time? Did you still approach things the way you had with 1e? Did you use one of the manifold TSR settings or a homebrew? Did you feel there was a tension between the rules and the play culture? Were you having a good time or was it starting to wear thin?

My play was faboo, but also so varied as hard to pin down. The range for settings, and campaigns within, was large. As was the potential scope to narrow down immensely to local state, county, city, or even city district level -- or dial out into multiple planes or even overlapping settings (and in more than one manner, too).

Approach things the same as 1e? Yes and no. Dungeoneering died on the vine for the most part on at least half the tables I sat, though it was still there in spades if you wanted (and not just from AD&D 1e modules). Too many 2e modules did suffer from "novel narrativitis," so I enjoyed the tables where we often had DMs ignore their terrible railroady advice, which thankfully for me was the vast majority. I was always an elitist when it came to game novels (I assume they're all crap), and viewed anything patterned on it as obviously terrible by extention due to the assumed quality of the source material.

Settings? Oh yes. I used, or participated, in a few TSR settings. Oddly enough, they were never Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. It was a majority homebrew, but that's also a plus to 2e as most of the conversions didn't need to worry about much system convergence or interference -- such as the dreaded playtesting versus unintended cascading combos.

Rules versus play culture... That's a weird one. By then RPGA (Organized Play) was already suffering from calcified attitudes and typical tournament style behavior. But I can't think of any edition, let alone system, that didn't endure something similar from that hell. However if we are talking about paradigms... not really. Second edition is such a large toolbox with a basic, and pretty resilient, chassis that it accomodated a surprising range of play assumptions. Part of it was the largest number of character stat generation methods (Methods I - IX as a start from the corebooks). Another part was the huge amount of material for pretty much every flavor I could think of. Want gritty fantasy fuckin Vietnam?, doable; want planes-hoppin' supers?, doable; want domain management?, doable; etc.

You'd have to expand that question a bit more to get the most from it, I think.

Did I have a good time? Oh yes, I had a very good time. Some things did wear on me, such as PO: Combat & Tactics as precursor to D&D 3e-ism bullshit tactical complexity (fucking hate glueball melee with prancing casters on the periphery in 3e). Yet overall there was so much material I never had the time to fully suck all the marrow out of. I play other games, but I look back and really find myself wanting to go back to AD&D 2e. The core chassis was easy, just about everything else is optional or modular, the locations were often fresh yet approachable (not too alien or 'trying too hard'), and the sheer volume of world building material to save the DM time.

In many ways I am like Gronan, I already found what I like and in my wanderings haven't found anything better.

Quote from: The_Shadow;895765I basically sat out the 2e era, at least as far as D&D goes. Re-reading some old Dragon issues, I feel a kind of nostalgia, even though I wasn't taking part at the time. I can see the ren-faire thing going on, plenty of attempts to make play "serious" and with in-depth campaign worlds rather than just dungeon exploration, and so on. There's an attempt to make 2e a generic fantasy toolkit rather than a recognition that D&D is its own thing.

But how was your play at the time? Did you still approach things the way you had with 1e? Did you use one of the manifold TSR settings or a homebrew? Did you feel there was a tension between the rules and the play culture? Were you having a good time or was it starting to wear thin?

When I played AD&D back in the day (I think that was 2e) we played it with a series of interconnected adventures. We went through dungeons, spent time on ships, climbed tall towers and did the normal adventuring stuff. Our thief sneaked and stole, our magic user cast a mean Spider Climb (I think that was what it was called, but he could climb walls with it), our cleric healed people and our fighter hit things with his sword.

We had a good time playing. I started with RQ and went back to it after the AD&D campaign finished, but would have been happy playing both.

The rules system seemed a bit limited and restricted in places, but we never really achieved high level, so that might have changed things a bit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;895992Bullshit.  The Dart Throwing Fighter was but one incident of Min/Max in all editions.

Since when? You dont need super DEX or STR to throw a dart in D&D. Just at least average DEX/STR. Same as anything else in D&D. And even a -1 isnt going to be totally debilitating.

I remember it was the first time in my circle where "game balance" became a topic of conversation like that was a thing that could and possibly should be.

It's funny, I recall that will all those kits and new races and what not, our group still hit the dungeons:)  We played a bunch in Ravenloft as well.