I came across my old AD&D books the other day, which sent me into a nostalgia trip.  I played the heck out of it in the 90s, with high-school / university friends, and we had a lot of fun.  But by the 2000s, my original group was scattered, and I was playing AD&D with a bunch of powergamers that were using every supplement known to mankind and the game seemed horribly bloated and broken.  The release of 3e was sweet relief (though, as it turned out... not for long).  

Looking back though, based on core rules alone, I'm trying to recall what (if anything) made 2e problematic.

I have some general problems with D&D that span most editions -- ie, classes / levels, AC, hit points, Vancian magic.  But those are more a matter of taste (and aren't specific to 2e).  Similarly, I liked some changes that 3e made; like consistent XP tables, BAB instead of THAC0, increasing AC instead of decreasing and a few things like that.  But in retrospect, they're really not that big a deal.  And they don't really fix anything that was broken, per se.  

My main recollection is that multiclassing / dual classing was pretty crap.  But after that, I'm mostly drawing a blank.

Quote from: Tyberious Funk;1138397I came across my old AD&D books the other day, which sent me into a nostalgia trip.  I played the heck out of it in the 90s, with high-school / university friends, and we had a lot of fun.  But by the 2000s, my original group was scattered, and I was playing AD&D with a bunch of powergamers that were using every supplement known to mankind and the game seemed horribly bloated and broken.  The release of 3e was sweet relief (though, as it turned out... not for long).  

Looking back though, based on core rules alone, I'm trying to recall what (if anything) made 2e problematic.

I have some general problems with D&D that span most editions -- ie, classes / levels, AC, hit points, Vancian magic.  But those are more a matter of taste (and aren't specific to 2e).  Similarly, I liked some changes that 3e made; like consistent XP tables, BAB instead of THAC0, increasing AC instead of decreasing and a few things like that.  But in retrospect, they're really not that big a deal.  And they don't really fix anything that was broken, per se.  

My main recollection is that multiclassing / dual classing was pretty crap.  But after that, I'm mostly drawing a blank.

I dislike how the stat bonuses are laid out. I prefer Basic D&D's method of spreading out the bonuses.
Thief skills are as crap at low levels as 1st Ed. AD&D.
I don't think we did much multiclassing.

Wrong with is too strong for me personally, but some changes that were jarring/galling at the time:

• If you were a psycho, and actually made a 1e bard, seeing them as a thief/magic-user was a huge disappointment.
• Murdered the Assassins.
• Swept the Half-orcs under the rug.
• 'Kits' (I'll treat the splatbooks as beyond the scope of your question about core rules)
• Specialist mages - arguably just an extrapolation of the illusionist, but it took a lot of tweaking to make some of the schools viable.  To a lesser extent, clerics were impacted.
• Thieves were able to specialize with their skill points; on paper it looked good, you could be a specialist... but everyone just cranked stealth and trap skills.
• Demon and Devil's had a PR makeover.
• The absolutely GUTTED DMG.  Most of the flavorful Gygaxian random charts were gone.

That said, there are things they never improved that they should have.  It was still poorly laid out, none of the cover art ever did it for me, and there was a big jump in price, especially if you consider the three-ring binder Monster Manual.

It clunky and didn't incorporate much of the game design innovations of the 80s-90s. I remember when I first got my hands on Ars Magica back in 1990ish, I thought, "This makes much more sense." Talislanta, too.

3E took the Tweetisms of Ars Magica and Talislanta--in particular, a consolidated core mechanic that wasn't counter-intuitive--and applied it to D&D.

Oh yeah, THAC0. Its silly.

For some, it's a long overdue reorganization of what came before in a much more clear manner.  For me, it's the edition that kept all the clunky rules and stripped all the flavor out at the same time, worst of both worlds.  Granted, the flavor in 2E is supposed to be in the settings, not the rules.  However, I didn't care for most of the settings.  It's a matter of taste, but for me Gygaxian weirdness in mechanics married with Gygaxian wording is this thing that "works"--like Tolkien breaking two-thirds of the rules of writing a "novel" but somehow making it work for his particular thing.  

2E is like 3.5.  I'd rather play the quirky thing that spawned it.

Compared to most OSR games, 2e is a clunky mess. Less so than Zweihander, but that isn't saying much. Compared to crunchy modern systems it's only better than D&D 5e and it does that simply through the lack of HP bloat.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1138404I dislike how the stat bonuses are laid out. I prefer Basic D&D's method of spreading out the bonuses.
Thief skills are as crap at low levels as 1st Ed. AD&D.
I don't think we did much multiclassing.

Yeah, I actually considered using Basic's score bonuses at some point, cuz I couldn't deal with how disparate 2e's bonuses were or how ridiculously high your STR had to get just to get a measly +1 to hit and damage (a score of 17? Really?). And then they had that ridiculous "warriors only" 1d100 roll on top of your 18 STR score to get some real bonuses if you were lucky enough.

I used to love multi-classing at the time, but it was kinda broken in that you could eventually become good in all your classes and just lag behind a few levels compared to single classed characters, unlike in 3e, where you have to split your level between classes and potentially become garbage if you're a spell caster, specially fighter/mage. I never tried "dual-classing" because I considered it a convoluted mess. I considered just letting humans multi-class a bunch of times.

I also didn't like how non-weapon proficiencies were based entirely on your ability scores using a roll-under mechanic. So that you needed to have high scores (which you couldn't improve) just to get a decent chance of success. And if you had an 18 you got a 90% success rate just by virtue of getting lucky at character creation. Granted, you could waste a proficiency slot to get a whopping +1 bonus to your score when using your skill, but that itself was part of how crap non-weapon proficiencies worked.

I still used them a lot, and I didn't even have a frame of reference for how bad they were initially. But the more I played other games the more I realized how much 2e non-weapon proficiencies sucked compared to actual skill-based systems.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1138412For me, it's the edition that kept all the clunky rules and stripped all the flavor out at the same time, worst of both worlds.  

This pretty much is my own feeling on 2e. It just kinda lacks the magic of 1e. I like some 2e stuff as supplements to a 1e game - eg I just added specialist wizards to my OSRIC campaign - but taken as a whole 2e just isn't exciting like 1e, nor is it any more mechanically robust than 1e - if anything it's worse than pre-UA 1e; eg getting rid of xp for gold means default advancement rate is too slow, and I never really experienced truly broken spells until 2e, with 2e Stoneskin the poster child. The adventures and the campaign setting material tend to be wordy and dull. I tried running a 2e Council of Wyrms campaign recently but it was very disappointing, a great idea that felt squandered in practice.

1) 2e was the original "caving to moral busybodies" game. TSR caved to the fundies and concerned parents, and scrubbed their game clean of all the fun, dark things which made it so fascinating. This means the elimination of player options - such as the half-orc or the assassin - but also many of the game's iconic opponents. Even as a kid, 2e felt very bland, even in comparison with Fighting Fantasy, a gamebook series also for kids, or - if we take the thought experiment further - Grimm's fairy tales, and most old stories meant for kids. As a result, it has a bland, mundane feeling that extends to much of the product line.
2) The game took out a lot of flavour from the classes. The distinctive magic of the illusionists and druids was folded back into the Wizard/Cleric classes. Some of the sub-classes lost their unique specialties (rangers, etc.). XP for GP, the genius rule at the heart of D&D, is gone.
3) 2e AD&D does not teach you how to play or run the game. It spends a lot of time on relatively unimportant topics, but it does not teach you about being an adventurer. The DMG is completely unhelpful. Gary's original book is chaotic and badly organised (blatantly obvious), but it conveys a great sense of building adventures, and an integrated campaign, which it supplements with a lot of useful tools and practical advice. For instance, the wilderness/dungeon/city encounter tables give you a concrete sense of the world, and a useful tool to run it. 2e's DMG does not give you useful advice to construct an adventure at your table, either by way of procedure or example. Even the 1st edition sample dungeon has no equivalent in 2e! It is an empty book.
4) The product line sucks. Yes, in hindsight, we can point at the standouts. I, too, like Dark Sun and al-Quadim. But the general AD&D product line of the 1990s was a minefield of absolute clunkers with the odd passable supplement. As a young fan of the game without the benefit of hindsight, I was disappointed again and again after shelling out what was (to me) considerable money for another supplement that sucked. You can't point at a great intro adventure module on the level of the old B1, B2 or T1, because there isn't one. Somehow, all of TSR's halfway competent designers worked on the exotic product lines, and the general AD&D books, the bread and butter of the company, were left to utter nincompoops, or failed novelists who wanted to get into TSR's "real" racket, schlock fantasy novels.

I had no problem with the rules, and the books' organization was much improved.  The only thing I missed from 1E was Gary's writing style.  He was just fun to read.  2E read more like a textbook, and things got progressively worse as the editions continued.

I think 2nd Ed had just become a sprawling mess - with bits bolted on to a set of core systems. 1st ed AD&D was like this, but was more flavourful and there was less of it. I think a third ed was required to rationalise the changes and bring them into a simpler set of basic systems, but they screwed the pooch after a potentially promising start.

I remember 2e with a great deal of fondness.

Yes, of course I had my pages of house rules to get the game running like I wanted it to.

Yes, I thought it was strange that Demons and Devils had dissappeared only to be replaced by Baatezu, Yugoloth and Tanar'ria but hey the Outer Planes became even better under the guidence of 2e and the Planescape setting.

Yes, some Grognards are going to miss the 101 Polearms that for some reason did not make the cut to 2e but, if I was to be honest, I used to roll all of my 1e, 2e and Basic stuff all into one glorious mess in any case.

Sure it does not teach you to roleplay.  On the otherhand this was my 3rd edition so thanks I got that all set already.

Sure it had that funky blue borders thing going on but it also had glorious full colour spreads of art as well.

Actually now I come to think of it, maybe it is time for me to pick up 2e again.  I dont know if I will be able to find those house rules but could be worth giving it a go since WotC has gone completely mental.

Quote from: Tyberious Funk;1138397I came across my old AD&D books the other day, which sent me into a nostalgia trip.  I played the heck out of it in the 90s, with high-school / university friends, and we had a lot of fun.  But by the 2000s, my original group was scattered, and I was playing AD&D with a bunch of powergamers that were using every supplement known to mankind and the game seemed horribly bloated and broken.  The release of 3e was sweet relief (though, as it turned out... not for long).  

Looking back though, based on core rules alone, I'm trying to recall what (if anything) made 2e problematic.

I have some general problems with D&D that span most editions -- ie, classes / levels, AC, hit points, Vancian magic.  But those are more a matter of taste (and aren't specific to 2e).  Similarly, I liked some changes that 3e made; like consistent XP tables, BAB instead of THAC0, increasing AC instead of decreasing and a few things like that.  But in retrospect, they're really not that big a deal.  And they don't really fix anything that was broken, per se.  

My main recollection is that multiclassing / dual classing was pretty crap.  But after that, I'm mostly drawing a blank.

I don't play 2E, but I love to look through the PHB for inspiration.  It just gets me in the mood to play D&D.

Skills and Powers. That right there was justification to take a machete and a torch to the 'codex creep' that had grown up around 2E.

Quote from: LiferGamer;1138409That said, there are things they never improved that they should have.  It was still poorly laid out, none of the cover art ever did it for me, and there was a big jump in price, especially if you consider the three-ring binder Monster Manual.

Oh God, the binder style Monster Manual. Interesting idea that turned out to be terrible in practice. Thankfully they went back to standard book format for the reprints.