Why Do People Still Play 1e But Almost no one Plays 2e?

Larsdangly · March 06, 2018, 10:50:50 PM

i'm all-in with the idea that fighters are better at fighting than is represented in 1E and 2E (and basic). I just think that if that is what you want to do, then fix it in the core rules engines (to hit tables, HP, etc.) rather than bolting yet another sub system onto that creaky old thing.

Another issue: in my experience, whenever you give a class a special power you implicitly introduce a bias toward the players because the added burden of rules and paperwork is easy for players to manage but hard for DMs, who have to handle a gaggle of NPCs. So, your 5th level fighter benefits from weapon specialization, but unless your DM has his or her act together the 5th level NPC fighter you face probably doesnt.

Spinachcat · March 06, 2018, 11:52:50 PM

I have players in my OD&D games who keep referring to it as 2e.

Among non-forumites, "let's play AD&D" can cover every D&D TSR published and most players would barely notice the difference.

For me, the 2e core books felt like 1e rewritten by a committee trying to get a "mommy approved" sticker.

That said, I love the 2e settings.

Thondor · March 07, 2018, 12:09:42 AM

I wasn't aware of For Gold & Glory (well maybe I heard about it once and forgot.)

1e seems more raw. Something closer to the first dungeon delves that anyone ever played -- and has the additional benefit of being written by someone who had been running and tinkering with the game for years. 2e comes across as more commercial. It's trying to be more, and somehow dilutes the core along the way.
I'm sometimes leary of modern games that come off as being "new" -- certainly there can be genius, but that gets proven by being a game design that you can run for years and slowly refine. This is something I deliberately did in my own game design.

I still enjoy re-reading the only 2e book I bought, the Complete Paladin. But hey, that was the first character class I played, and I am pretty sure it was the first RPG book I ever bought.

I started playing shortly before 3e, and ran it for a years. At the tail end and during 4e I got into 1e/OSRIC and ran a long campaign and some one-shots. Worked on some adventures for publication and never really finished most of 'em. Recently I've gone back and run some 1e/OSRIC for a meetup in Ottawa. It's been a blast. I've been running The Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, the first adventure XPR put out, and one I always wanted to run. We may even get to some of Down the Shadowvein and Mouth of the Shadowvein, which are intringuing hexcrawls of the underdark primarily following the underground river the shadowvein. Each has a bunch of short of mini-dungeons along the way.
They are pretty loose in how they tie into the Pod-carverns, keeping versimilitude high.

And yeah XPR is at 39 adventures -- tons of variety. I know, cause I just added them all to my webstore.

Thondor · March 07, 2018, 12:19:01 AM

Quote from: Spinachcat;1028263I have players in my OD&D games who keep referring to it as 2e.

Among non-forumites, "let's play AD&D" can cover every D&D TSR published and most players would barely notice the difference.

For me, the 2e core books felt like 1e rewritten by a committee trying to get a "mommy approved" sticker.

That said, I love the 2e settings.

Certainly when I was first playing AD&D in the late nineties I couldn't been sure what version we were really playing. One GM seemed to be more 1e, based on the books I know I read some of. But I think all the games I played had each PC on their own initiative. Yeah, for a lot of people they certainly blur together.

And yeah I think the committee = commercialist feel.

thedungeondelver · March 07, 2018, 01:36:58 AM

There's certainly something to be said about "but 2e is just 1e, cleaned up" but there's those two key words: "cleaned up". It's cleaned up, all right. It's a lot of caving to the Moral Crusaders who had their torches and pitchforks out. I wish I could find it again but there's a rather notorious "Standards and Practices" document floating around out there on the web that outlined exactly how folks within TSR and submitted products from prospective writers Were to Be. Basically, AD&D went from Black Sabbath to Stryper (or Johnny Cash to Billy Ray Cyrus, etc.) The gist of the document was: no chance for the bad guys to ever win, don't ever reference drugs or alcohol or sexuality in rulebooks or modules, clearly steer players away from evil aligned characters, and so on. The 2e announcement mirrored this somewhat, bringing up a hypothetical question about a half-orc assassin who was high enough level to have a guild, and the response from TSR was "Well, you just retire that character and let the DM kind of push the assassin's guild out of the campaign, just don't mention them again". Not "adapt assassins to your game if you like" or "make an exception" but "Think of the children, and ditch them from your AD&D playstyle."

"But," But, but, but. I'm sorry, I didn't make those edicts from TSR up, TSR did. "But you can just put the stuff from 1e back in to 2e!".aaaaaand then I've got 1e again, so why not save gas money and don't bother in the first place?

Furthermore, 2e really got a head of steam going on the whole "let's shit on Greyhawk" thing (which I know other sincere attempts were made late in 2e's lifecycle to rectify those...creative decisions).

I'm simply not going to waste my time trying to ever make 2e "work" for me. It's like the guy you knew in the late 1990s who "saved money" by forever upgrading his PC, first a 486It! board, then a Pentium Overdrive on top of that, then an Evergreen Technologies Celeron 300 on a card - there's a juncture at which you really should just enjoy a thing for what it is. And that's what I think of 2e. A bunch of extraneous stuff dumped on 1e. No thanks.

Ratman_tf · March 07, 2018, 02:27:59 AM

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1028272There's certainly something to be said about "but 2e is just 1e, cleaned up" but there's those two key words: "cleaned up". It's cleaned up, all right. It's a lot of caving to the Moral Crusaders who had their torches and pitchforks out.

In TSRs defense, the moral crusaders were hell bent for leather at that point in time. A lot of entertainment was under attack, and D&D was right in the crosshairs.

Omega · March 07, 2018, 02:56:26 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028126So these are my thoughts:

1. 2e is not considerably worse than 1e, system wise. It's just somewhat less aesthetically appealing, having been made more lukewarm and less edgy.

2. 1e was first. The appeal of going back to the origin is a lot more than any appeal of "going back to an edition that existed at a certain point in time but wasn't first, and was later replaced by another system".

3. People who were around in the 1e era and stuck with 1e when 2e came around are committed. People who were around and switched to 2e already updated once, so there was less rationale for them to stay loyal to 2e when 3e (and later 5e) came along.

1:It is mostly the same game. Even alot of the text is copy paste. I think why some stick to 1e though is it has more DM tools. 2e is better organized though. I think one small irk though was the bowing to the religious outrage and even moral outrage brigade back then. Demons, drow, etc.

2: I dont think so. There are ALOT of 2e fans. The real problem is... Editions. As Gygax himself said. Each new edition you bring out you lose upwards of 50 percent of your fans every time. 2e played it safe and didnt change alot so its more a system tweaking and the loss probably was not as much. But again AD&D had more DM tools. 2e has more player tools.

3: See point 2. 50 percent loss every edition. So by 3e youve lost 75 percent of your original fanbase. Also some players just DO NOT WANT TO BUY THE NEARLY SAME GAME OVER AGAIN! This is part of that loss factor and why the damn "Five Year Plan" is such a monstrous failure just about every time. Also the more you have invested in one edition the less likely you are to hop on the new bandwagon. And if the next edition comes out too soon then people WILL notice and stop buying as they then know the company has no commitment to them or the game.

X: Of all the editions of D&D I think AD&D and 2e retained the most as its the most compatible of the editions. 3e lost a huge chunk of the fanbase simply because it was so different. I think that was in a way a brilliant move as it allowed TSR to keep selling product to the AD&D fans as the 2e modules and such needed very little in the way of tweaking. Mostly just the THAC0.

Kyle Aaron · March 07, 2018, 08:23:09 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;10281261. 2e is not considerably worse than 1e, system wise. It's just somewhat less aesthetically appealing, having been made more lukewarm and less edgy.

It's lukewarm. I like hot drinks, I like cold drinks, but if either is lukewarm I'll spit it out.

This is one reason universal rpgs don't do as well as setting-specific ones, unless they have fantastic sourcebooks: generic is lukewarm. You need to be able to read the book and imagine what you'll do in the game. You might be imagining the players around the table, or you might be imagining your character doing something awesome - but you imagine something.

The first editions of many games were written with a naive geeky enthusiasm that's appealing. Later editions are "cleaned up", and in sweeping away the muddled writing and excessive charts, you also sweep away a lot of the life of the thing.

Franky · March 07, 2018, 09:25:40 PM

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1028272... I wish I could find it again but there's a rather notorious "Standards and Practices" document floating around out there on the web that outlined exactly how folks within TSR and submitted products from prospective writers Were to Be.

This, spoilered for length:

Spoiler

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Spinachcat · March 07, 2018, 09:27:33 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1028382The first editions of many games were written with a naive geeky enthusiasm that's appealing. Later editions are "cleaned up", and in sweeping away the muddled writing and excessive charts, you also sweep away a lot of the life of the thing.

THIS is exactly why I rarely play the later editions of anything.

I rarely find the "advancements" to be worth the loss of that initial energy.

If the first edition is good, that means tremendous energy, creativity, focus and sheer will went into its creation. I rarely have seen that blast of joy appear in later editions. The only counter-example that comes to mind is the early Chaosium editions where the 2nd, 3rd, 4th editions where almost just re-printings with supplemental material tossed into the new core book.

But I'm all about that psychic wave. I've almost sworn off concerts unless I'm in the front.

ICED EARTH PIT TOMORROW NIGHT!!! FUCK YEAH!!!

[video=youtube;5ua1FiWTjVo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ua1FiWTjVo[/youtube]

thedungeondelver · March 07, 2018, 11:23:57 PM

Thanks muchly for the post, Franky!

Beldar · March 08, 2018, 05:38:07 AM

I started playing during early second edition, so it was my gateway into the hobby. That means there is a fair bit of nostalgia involved with it for me. I agree that the whole censorship trend during the satanic panic was regrettable, but what can be done?

I love the artwork, pure fantasy, and feeling of 2nd edition. My games often featured dungeons of some kind, but grand sweeping overland adventure was just as common.

If I put together a D&D group right now I would give serious consideration to 2nd edition with some moderate house ruling. I would take it over 3rd, 4th, or 5th without question.

Shawn Driscoll · March 08, 2018, 09:58:14 AM

What I want to know is, who still LARPs using 1e rules.

TheShadow · March 08, 2018, 10:27:15 AM

2e had a weird conceit that it is actually a generic fantasy RPG which can be all things to all people with a little tweaking. 1e (and 3e onwards) know that they are synonymous with a genre. Still, 2e pushes a lot of nostalgia buttons for me and is perfectly serviceable.

Armchair Gamer · March 08, 2018, 10:52:58 AM

Quote from: The_Shadow;10284342e had a weird conceit that it is actually a generic fantasy RPG which can be all things to all people with a little tweaking. 1e (and 3e onwards) know that they are synonymous with a genre. Still, 2e pushes a lot of nostalgia buttons for me and is perfectly serviceable.

2E is the least self-consciously D&Dish D&D, true. I expect that a lot of people who participate in the broader hobby have found variants or systems that do what 2E tried to do better and just use it for source material and inspiration. I know I'm on the hunt for a 'better 2E.'