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Why AD&D 1st edition is more popular than 2nd edition?

Started by zer0th, April 09, 2023, 10:53:15 PM

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zer0th

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (and role-playing games in general) with the black box with the big red dragon in the early 1990s. I continued playing Basic D&D for a few years before getting into AD&D Revised 2nd Edition, which I played for a few more years before jumping into the Third Edition hype train. Having neither played nor payed attention to D&D (or any other RPG) in fifteen years or more —after I got tired of D&D v3.5 and my friends didn't want to play GURPS or the other games I was interested— I got the RPG bug again and started running a game of 5th edition.

But before that I have been reading and watching videos about the OSR for the last three years. One thing I noticed from my immersion into this niche I missed of retroclones and OSR is how much more popular the 1st edition of Advanced D&D is compared to the 2nd edition. The only 2nd edition clone of which I am aware is For Gold & Glory, and it doesn't seem very popular.

So, pushed by another thread talking about AD&D 1st edition and not wanting to hijack that thread, I would like to ask: Why people prefer 1st edition over 2nd edition when it comes to AD&D?

honeydipperdavid

Differences between the editions:

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/22548/what-are-the-major-differences-between-add-1st-edition-add-2nd-edition

Reason why people like 1E more than 2E

-Dragonsfoot is 1E

-Older gamers started on 1E and it brings back nostalgia

-1E had less options than 2E being more streamlined

All being said, the two editions are fungible, not much of a difference frankly.

Ratman_tf

#2
I think 2e is when D&D shifted from Beer & pretzles style Dungeons and Dragons, and more structured storytelling. I mean, it's not a bright line. Dragonlance (for example) preceeded 2nd, but it was the ruleset when the shift was reaching it's height. That makes it the edition that falls outside the OSR rubric of "How Gary ran it."

There's a few of us here that love 2nd ed. It's my favorite edition of D&D.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on April 09, 2023, 11:06:09 PM
All being said, the two editions are fungible, not much of a difference frankly.

Yep. Up until 3rd, the game was still running on the same foundation. You could run a 2e module with 1e AD&D rules, or Basic, etc. with just some minor tweaking.
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honeydipperdavid

The settings were good for 2E and made it fun, just take them down to 1E or just use 2E, it wasn't a huge change like 3E, 4E or 5E.

zer0th

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on April 09, 2023, 11:06:09 PM
Dragonsfoot is 1E

I didn't know of this ... group of people. Very entertaining. I got to share this with one of my players, he is like Dragonsfoot but for D&D v3.5. Even though he had not been playing RPG for longer than I had, it was hard to convince him to try out 5th edition with me. And thanks for the link!

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 09, 2023, 11:34:17 PM
There's a few of us here that love 2nd ed. It's my favorite edition of D&D.

Even after more than fifteen years since I last played D&D v3.5, I am still burned out of that edition, I am considering to try to convince my players to switch from 5th edition to AD&D 2nd Ed. I started the campaign with the Lost Mine of Phandelver, but moved and adapted it to 1368 DR.

honeydipperdavid

Look at Castles and Crusades by Trolllord Games.

Its 2E reskinned.  If you look at their core books, they are modernized versions of the 1E AD&D books, its worth going to their website to see how they did the art.

Classes included:

Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Knight, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, and the Assassin

capvideo

When 2e came out, I thought it was a step in the right direction. It wasn't as much fun as 1e but it had the potential to replace the bloat with a more streamlined approach: just a few character classes, with options to customize the classes, a more distinct difference between magic and the divine, a simple skills system, and so forth. If they had kept going in that direction, it would (I think) have become more fun than AD&D. But they chose not to, and since 2e never became what I wanted 1e to become, and 1e was more fun for me anyway, I just went back to 1e.

Baron

I started with 1e and loved it. Played several times per week for decades, and still play to this day. The question is, why would I drop the game I love and play Cook's 2e rewrite? Or Basic, 3e, 4e or 5e? I like the specific features of 1e. There were plenty of changes implemented in 2e. Not interested.

Kyle Aaron

AD&D1e is more popular than 2e for the same reason Classic Traveller is still remembered fondly: it's incomplete, and that's a good thing.

Quotean incomplete system is better than a complete one. If a system is complete, then when read it evokes nothing in the mind - nothing more than is written. If a system is incomplete, then the reader fills in the gaps with their own imagination. For example, in AD&D1e the description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era. Is this a saxon thane in the line against Viking invaders? The Viking invaders themselves? A lamellar-clad model for the terracotta warriors of Qin? French heavy infantry at Agincourt? A young squire daring to seek out and fight a werewolf? The girl fighting the jabberwocky? A bronze-clad warrior of Sparta? A daring Amazon of the Crimea, firing her bow from her horse at Greek invaders? An Iron Age warrior of Kush? A samurai? It doesn't say. You fill in the blanks! If it were more complete, you could not do this.

That, plus 2e brought in the splatbooks. Fuck that.
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S'mon

1e has the evocative Gygaxian prose that seems to open up worlds of wonder. 2e has a tone that is both bland and often paternalistic. 1e has half orcs, assassins, demons & devils. 2e has Angry Mothers From Heck.
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Vile Traveller

OSRIC is the only AD&D 1E clone. All those other ones are various flavours of OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI, or RC.

Omega


Jason Coplen

I think in part it might be that TSR tossed Gary out on his ass. People didn't like that. I could very well be wrong, but Gary had a lot of fans and that whole fiasco happened right before 2E. I believe fans not moving to 2E due to loyalty is part of it. Also, 2E wasn't necessary except for TSR making money.
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GamerforHire

AD&D 1e ran from late 1970s through 1989–an entire decade when it was king as the game transitioned from the 3 LBB to the various hardbacks. By the time 2e came around, the competitors were legion and most of the big boys were in second and later editions. Nostalgia is big because 1e was the game everyone played, at least for a time if not most of the time.

The early 1990s also saw an economic downturn, and the key distinguishing features of 2e were the splatbooks and all of the settings, not the rules themselves. A few years into the 1990s also saw the juggernaut of Magic the Gathering steamroll roleplaying in general, and Vampire became the hot rpg. I think all of the buzz around D&D evaporated and it simply became the leading rpg among a crowded field.

Bedrockbrendan

I actually still kind of prefer 2E, but I think 2E got rid of a lot of things and went in directions that weren't the greatest ways to go. Baseline 2E is also kind of flat compared to baseline 1E in terms of flavor (where 2E tends to shine is the worlds). And I think 2E is sometimes running away from being a game and too focused on story (I don't think it's all bad, I recently ran Book of Crypts again, and I think there is a place for that kind of adventure, but the problem too many of the modules and too much of the advice became overly dense story structures that weren't only constraining on player choice, they were much harder to run than the earlier modules (and the text could get very long winded in places making it hard to find things on the fly: I am fine with lengthy background material that you read between sessions but for something like a module where you are running it live, brevity is pretty important IMO).

I know for me, I started on 1E as a player, but didn't become a GM until the first year the 2E books came out. So I learned to GM under 2E. It wasn't until I went back to the 1E DMG and other old D&D books after I got a little tired of 3E and the d20 boom that I recognized the value of the full 1E material. One thing I will also say for the 1E core books: they had a voice. People will obviously have different reactions to Gary Gygax's personality and writing style, but I still find the DMG very entertaining to read. It doesn't get dull. Can anyone say that about the 2E DMG, the 3E, etc? I don't know about anyone else, but reading a DMG in any other edition (or even a PHB) is just something I do out of a duty to learn the system. It isn't something I necessarily enjoy (it isn't torture either but its can get dull and it feels time consuming). The 1E DMG on the other hand is very enjoyable to read because it has wit, it is conversational in tone, Gary has a quirky style and way of writing that I find compelling. The other editions are all extremely dry reads in comparison.

The funny thing is the systems are pretty similar. We used to include things from the 1E PHB in our 2E campaigns, and I still used a lot of the AD&D books in my 2E campaigns.