So I've been busy and away from the site for a bit, and was browsing through all the interesting detritus I missed while I was away when I spotted the "Bottom 10 RPGs of theRPGsite: 2010 Edition" and had to take a look.

Lots of what I saw didn't really surprise me, even when I didn't feel the same way.  I may have enjoyed a lot of those games, but I sure can understand why someone would hate them.  Except for...wait for it...AD&D 2nd.  This one always puzzles me.  Not that people don't like it; people like and dislike any number of things for often inexplicable and/or trivial reasons, but this game often inspires such a vitriolic reaction amongst RPG'ers.  Hatred.  Loathing.  The kind of intense dislike I've rarely seen displayed so consistently for a game.

The reason I find this odd stems, of course, from personal experience: I spent many years of highschool and university playing this game.  More than I did playing AD&D before it.  More than I ever played BECMI.  Possibly more than I've ever played any other single roleplaying game, and, across multiple adventures and campaigns, multiple different DMs, I enjoyed it.  

When I think back on it, I can't ever remember thinking the game was even bad.  Sure, it had its problems, what game doesn't?  Even games that are amongst my favourites do.  I still never thought badly of it.  This obviously wasn't for lack of playing.  It also wasn't lack of exposure to other games, as I'd played half-a-dozen other RPGs through that period.  I don't even think it was a lack of variety in play groups, as I got around to a few different groups and a couple of cons (self-selection bias I hear you cry!).

It really wasn't until I got more exposure to online forums that I actually started to really hear about how bad AD&D 2nd was, and this has left me puzzled.  Hence this thread.

Now, I have some guesses as to why my perception of the game is in the minority, but I really want to hear it from others.  Why is it that people hate AD&D 2nd Edition so much?  What is it that you really despise about it?  Did it wreck your favourite shirt?  Pee in your cornflakes?  Kick your dog?  What about the game makes it worthy of being not just the worst edition of D&D ever, but one of the worst RPGs ever?

I can honestly say I haven't played a scrap of AD&D 2nd, after several years of AD&D 1st and then many years later 3rd Edition. I don't even know for sure what the differences are. I think I've looked through some of the books, and I seem to remember skills or something like them, but really, what were the major differences?

Maybe sorting that out would help reveal some of the reasons for the strong dislike.

I actually have some guesses, but I don't want to pre-colour the responses by making suggestions.  I'd really like to see what people weigh in with.

That's the only version of D&D I liked.

While I appreciated the flexibility of D&D 3/.5, it was such a pain from a GM standpoint (that AD&D 2e wasn't, for me at least), that I ditched it as a viable system for me pretty quickly.

(The somewhat more streamlined version of d20 in Star Wars Saga Edition is tremendous, though).

And I'm one of those that had all of the "Complete" books as well as the Player's Option books, and I used them liberally...(I wasn't a HUGE fan of Skills & Powers, but High Level and Combat & Tactics' critical hit tables immediately became staples in our game).

Is this thread directed specifically at me? Because looking over the "Bottom 10" vote lists I'm the only person who put AD&D 2E in the #1 spot (a few others had it included lower down on their lists, and it ranked as the 15th worst game overall -- tied (fittingly ) with F.A.T.A.L.).

I've discussed many times in the past (on this site and others) why I don't like 2E AD&D and don't particularly care to go into it all again. Suffice to say that if you like 2E AD&D and had an enjoyable time playing it, good for you. Still doesn't make me think it wasn't a bad game (or, rather, a really bad edition of a pretty good game) though

There was a thread around in which people were posting their thoughts about the pre-WotC iterations of the game they'd want to play, and which ones they wouldn't want to play. That's the one.

From there, quoting myself:

Quote from: Benoist;366620Now, the specific pre-WotC version I would not play if I wasn't specifically invited at a game with friends or some such is AD&D2.

AD&D2 because it is an half-assed game design with a feel killed by political correctness. It takes First Ed, adds stuff like (the optional) non-weapon proficiencies which are in contradiction with First Ed's design, and just runs with it like it makes sense, while at the same time removing a class like the Assassin, or the mention of devils and demons, because "hooo... BADD might not like it". FUCK YOU, Patricia Pulling.

So there. A sample of reasons AD&D2 would be my next to last (last being 4e) choice between the iterations of the game.

Now, the specific reason why AD&D2 makes it into my list of Bottom RPGs at #10 is because I do think that, even if the game itself may be enjoyable and isn't broken by any means, it actually went very obviously, to me, the wrong way from what First Ed was and could have been in the future. As such, it deserves to be on my list.

Grognards hate 2e because it put into black & white a bunch of things that were going wrong with D&D already, viz. storification, special-snowflakification, forgetting what the archetypes were really about (aka, detachment from the roots, aka D&D emulating D&D tropes), and sanitizing of the material.

Hippies hate 2e because most of them are snot-nosed brats who grew up playing it.

I personally don't have a strong feel for it either way; my current impression from people is that it may have streamlined some stuff in an acceptable manner--but not always acceptable as a critique of certain parts of 1e. E.g., the 2e weapon to-hit modifiers are fine as they are, but the Greyhawk/1e weapon vs. armor modifiers are truly excellent if you have the patience to apply them. Unlike, say, the 1e unarmed combat rules, or psionics, which were simply horrible in implementation.

2e however did introduce various splat-type things (Complete whatever, options books) and various settings that may have generated some ill-will.

I've never had bad feelings about 2e. I played it for years. To me, 3e was so similar that it didn't make a difference. I play it the same way. I still use the 1e monster manuals though.

2e is what many feel ruined the fun they were having with D&D.
I remember that at the time 2e came out, pretty much everyone made the switch to it, and thought it was pretty good; but the mentality behind the people doing 2e quickly turned the game to shit, and it emphasized what was going wrong with TSR at the time.
There's nothing really horrific about the basic 2e rules per se, but its what 2e represented, as a whole, that makes people (including me) dislike it instinctively.

RPGPundit

Some people just look at 2e and think AD&D plus a rudimentary skill system.  But there's a lot that happened during that era that gets branded with the 2e name.

- Demons and Devils becoming Tanarri and Baatezu
- Assassins going bye-bye which led to the death of the Assassin god in the Realms and the whole Time of Troubles thing which introduced Portfolios that gods could gain, lose and swap like a set of clothes.
- Kits and Power Options, the earliest rules institutionalization of the Munchkin Build Syndrome
- A mass glut of painfully bad material that makes the d20 glut look like the Renaissance.

While the game itself may not have radically changed as much as it did going from 2-3 or 3-4, 2e came with a huge philosophical shift on the part of TSR.  Many of those 2e philosophies ended up in practice in 3e and perfected in 4e, which is why 2e carries so much hate, it's identifiable as the fork in the road that led D&D right off the cliff.

As I read it, Dark Sun at least in its first iteration seems pretty nifty.

Quote from: Aos;372392As I read it, Dark Sun at least in its first iteration seems pretty nifty.

It is, though I seem to remember the adventure included in the boxed (the flip books) set was UBER-railroady. Ah. There:

QuoteThe introductory scenario was presented using a completely new format, also used in the following Dark Sun  adventures. Instead of a normal book we have a pack including:

    * A booklet with a fiction work related to the adventure, the introduction and two new monsters.
    * A spiral bound book aimed to players. Every time the DM orders it, they can look at a new page. The flip-book includes pictures depicting scenes, maps and handouts.
    * A spiral bound book aimed to the DM, with the full adventure and roleplaying tips. Every single page has information about a different scene, and says when the players must turn their book's pages.

This new format is quite interesting, but it was never widely accepted. Anyway, A Little Knowledge is just an average adventure, useful to introduce the setting but not memorable.

What the reviewer fails to mention was that the new format was never widely accepted because it sucked ass.

My main complaint towards the original boxed set, apart of this, is that it pretty much had an implied storyline. It wasn't really a sandbox per se, or at least, it looked like it was, but it really wasn't. Also, it was for Dungeons & Dragons. There were no dungeons to speak of, and ONE Dragon roaming around. *shrug* go figure.

I had already written off 2E/TSR before Dark Sun was released (Spelljammer was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as TSR settings) so I never owned it and don't know much about it, except that it had some pretty cool s&s-looking art by Brom. Benoist's description doesn't sound too enticing (or surprising), though. That plus vague memories of hearing about how the initial boxed-set had a whole bunch of details about the setting that were promptly changed by the events in a series of novels (a slave-revolt completely upends all the existing social structures or something) so everyone was expected to buy a new setting book detailing the updated setting.

Publisher-dictated metaplot jerking around with settings and expecting everyone to buy new products to stay "current" (see also: Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes/Return of the Eight, Forgotten Realms Time of Troubles/Horde Invasion/etc., Mystara Wrath of the Immortals, various Dragonlance shit, Traveller Fifth Frontier War/Rebellion/Hard Times/Virus/New Era, Paranoia Crash Course Manual, Cyberpunk 4th Corporate War/Cyberplague, etc. -- pretty much every published rpg setting that survived into the 90s) just annoyed the hell out of me and was one of the main factors that drove me away from the contemporary rpg scene in the early-mid 90s.

Quote from: Benoist;372393It is, though I seem to remember the adventure included in the boxed (the flip books) set was UBER-railroady. Ah. There:


What the reviewer fails to mention was that the new format was never widely accepted because it sucked ass.

My main complaint towards the original boxed set, apart of this, is that it pretty much had an implied storyline. It wasn't really a sandbox per se, or at least, it looked like it was, but it really wasn't. Also, it was for Dungeons & Dragons. There were no dungeons to speak of, and ONE Dragon roaming around. *shrug* go figure.

Well, I'm not so hung up on the lack of dragons, and I imagine there are tons of dungeons in the form of cities buried beneath the sands, but I wouldn't use it or want to play in it as written, anyway- for one thing, I don't think elves, halflings and dwarves really fit the mood of it.

Also, it annoys me that, the rules on dehydration are buried in the movement section and don't have their own heading on the TOC.

Quote from: T. Foster;372395I had already written off 2E/TSR before Dark Sun was released (Spelljammer was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as TSR settings) so I never owned it and don't know much about it, except that it had some pretty cool s&s-looking art by Brom. Benoist's description doesn't sound too enticing (or surprising), though. That plus vague memories of hearing about how the initial boxed-set had a whole bunch of details about the setting that were promptly changed by the events in a series of novels (a slave-revolt completely upends all the existing social structures or something) so everyone was expected to buy a new setting book detailing the updated setting.

Publisher-dictated metaplot jerking around with settings and expecting everyone to buy new products to stay "current" (see also: Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes/Return of the Eight, Forgotten Realms Time of Troubles/Horde Invasion/etc., Mystara Wrath of the Immortals, various Dragonlance shit, Traveller Fifth Frontier War/Rebellion/Hard Times/Virus/New Era, Paranoia Crash Course Manual, Cyberpunk 4th Corporate War/Cyberplague, etc. -- pretty much every published rpg setting that survived into the 90s) just annoyed the hell out of me and was one of the main factors that drove me away from the contemporary rpg scene in the early-mid 90s.

Oh, I totally get where you're coming from there. Earthdawn did the same thing to me. I don't think I could ever run an actual campaign in a published setting ever again.
At most, I'd use it like I'd use Carcosa, as a setting my guys visit on a multi-world adventure or something.
Still, I got the 2 main books from the first set for 10$, and it's a fun read.