TheRPGSite

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 :p) 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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=16710).

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 (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13527.phtml):

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 (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13527.phtml):


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.

Quote from: T. Foster;... ([iSpelljammer[/i] was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as TSR settings...

BS.

Spelljammer was the JESUS setting.  It gave everyone everything they ever wanted in a flood of insightful, out-of-the-box thinking and jaw-dropping originality:

The waning empire of Space Elves; though past their absolute dominion over all that came to pass in the crystal spheres, they still engender contempt in everyone else with their aloofness and arrogance.

Differentiating space orcs from ground orcs by spelling their racial name backwards.  Scro?  Pure awesome.

Porting in you favorite races from EVERY TSR setting (not all of them, I know).  Space Drow and Kender.

Hippo men.  With Pistols.

And don't forget the awesome githyanki pirates with eye patches and puffy shirts :rolleyes:

(http://www.spelljammer.org/monsters/conversions/PirateOfGith.gif)

People let tsr politics and the lame modules color their feelings for AD&D 2 in too harsh a light.  While I always had problems with the rules (mostly the same problems I have with every edition of D&D), I had my best campaigns in 2e and I thought the rules were much better than 1e.  I still can't figure out the combat rules of 1e.  Perhaps the best way to play D&D is with 2e rules and 1e modules.

I actually LOVE Spelljammer BECAUSE it is Gonzo AD&D In Space.

There are some really cool concepts in there, IMO. But really, it's the sort of thing, you either go for it, laugh it up and enjoy the ride for what it is, or you just gag and puke in short order just at the idea of playing this thing.

See... I love this Gythianki pirate, for instance. Brought a smile on my face, and made me laugh a little. If there's a setting that truly doesn't take itself seriously, this is it. But it does -not- have to suck in actual play. It totally can be awesome.

and don't forget the...

(http://www.headinjurytheater.com/images/d&d%20beasts%20giant%20space%20hamster.jpg)

Quote from: mhensley;372412and don't forget the...

(http://www.headinjurytheater.com/images/d&d%20beasts%20giant%20space%20hamster.jpg)

See. That's what I'm talking about. THE Gonzo AD&D setting.

Quote from: T. Foster;372395Publisher-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.

That I can't stand anymore, either. Rebooting settings with metaplot evolutions periodically, which in effect allows some random fiction writer for the Forgotten Realms (say) to reboot my FR campaign (say) every now and then if I want to keep up with official material, is something I just would not support anymore.

I buy a setting. I like it, and run games with it. If the publisher just reboots the setting with some metaplot bullshit, the publisher just says "bubye" to my dollars, as far as I'm concerned.

This is where I officially distance myself from T.Foster.

The Fuck?!?! Wrath of Immortals is teh aweosemeee!!111!!!
The old golden box is utter bullshit in comparison.

Also: FFW: holy fuck Traveller is not a serious undertaking for true connaisseurs without the FFW boardgame!

Quote from: Benoist;372407I actually LOVE Spelljammer BECAUSE it is Gonzo AD&D In Space.

There are some really cool concepts in there, IMO. But really, it's the sort of thing, you either go for it, laugh it up and enjoy the ride for what it is, or you just gag and puke in short order just at the idea of playing this thing.

See... I love this Gythianki pirate, for instance. Brought a smile on my face, and made me laugh a little. If there's a setting that truly doesn't take itself seriously, this is it. But it does -not- have to suck in actual play. It totally can be awesome.

Illithids == Daleks. Nuff said. Big Spelljammer fan here.

I think Spelljammer probably fares better in retrospect (where it's easier to view it as a wacky gonzo "play while drunk/high" setting) than it did at the time, where TSR was, at least in public (who knows what they were saying in the staff breakroom) treating it as serious/legitimate "AD&D canon," the Universal capstone-setting that was supposed to tie Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms together into a single unified whole -- and then they started including Spelljammer elements in non-SJ products (e.g. WGR1) and even made the 1990 GenCon AD&D Open (at that time the premiere AD&D tournament event) a Spelljammer adventure, and it just felt like they were trying to ram that discordant crap down my throat.

Man, T. Foster, you could be a fucking German romantic the way you talk! I assume you don´t watch Dr. Who? Or used to read Mad magazine?

Quote from: Settembrini;372420This is where I officially distance myself from T.Foster.

The Fuck?!?! Wrath of Immortals is teh aweosemeee!!111!!!
The old golden box is utter bullshit in comparison.

Could be; I never owned WotI (and consider the golden box utter bullshit anyway). But isn't that the product that sunk the island of Alphatia and instructed everyone to go out and buy the Poor Wizard's Almanac in order to "upgrade" their Mystara campaigns to the new baseline?

QuoteAlso: FFW: holy fuck Traveller is not a serious undertaking for true connaisseurs without the FFW boardgame!

I'll give you this one too. I like the FFW as well (and also like The Rebellion for that matter), but it did set the trend that ultimatelt led to TNE (which I very much did not like) in motion, and I know that had I left it off the list I would've gotten some response along the lines of "you're full of shit; publisher-dictated metaplot didn't start in the late 80s, just look at the Fifth Frontier War (1980) -- a big honking piece of publisher-dictated metaplot right in the middle of your precious old-school Classic Traveller! No difference whatsoever from TSR telling you to reboot your Forgotten Realms campaign after every new series of novels. Suck on that, you would-be-grognard douchebag!"

OK, I see your reasoning. Trouble is: dogma doesn´t work. So there´s good metaplot and there´s bad metaplot. Sorry, but that´s just how I see it. Fundamentalism doesn´t model reality.
And in reality, there´s some utterly splendind metaplots driven by a company.

It´s like this:

If you have a doofus girlfirend, and most likely will have to stay with her? It´s easier to blame women in general. But in fact...you get the idea.

Quote from: T. Foster;372423I think Spelljammer probably fares better in retrospect (where it's easier to view it as a wacky gonzo "play while drunk/high" setting) than it did at the time, where TSR was, at least in public (who knows what they were saying in the staff breakroom) treating it as serious/legitimate "AD&D canon," the Universal capstone-setting that was supposed to tie Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms together into a single unified whole -- and then they started including Spelljammer elements in non-SJ products (e.g. WGR1) and even made the 1990 GenCon AD&D Open (at that time the premiere AD&D tournament event) a Spelljammer adventure, and it just felt like they were trying to ram that discordant crap down my throat.

I totally see where you're coming from, particularly in the way the TSR production evolved up to Spelljammer, and afterwards.

I personally like the idea of a Spelljammer vessel showing in some old school module, just like you'd have, say, a crashed spaceship in Blackmoor. It can be handled either well, or very poorly, depending on the context.

As for the idea of "AD&D Canon" - I am completely adverse to it, the concept, I mean, as both a player and a GM. There's no such thing as "canon" to me as far as RPGs are concerned. I do my thing with the products, and I expect my GM to do his own when I play (unless we're in some sort of cooperative campaign with rotative DMs and such, but even then, I want the DMs to be able to do with their universe whatever the heck they want with it, and not have to adhere to any Official (TM) Canon just because the publisher says so).

The very idea of canon, as in fictional canon, is, to me, completely antithetical to the very idea of role playing games, and the way actual gaming groups take possession of the universes they play, as they play them.

As a scholarly pursuit, with aims of theoretical arguments and comparisons between RPG products, and so on, so forth, I don't mind the concept of "canon". As a GM or a Player, I do mind. Not that it's particularly relevant to what you were saying in this instance, Trent, but that's just what popped into my mind as I read your post.

Quote from: Settembrini;372428OK, I see your reasoning. Trouble is: dogma doesn´t work. So there´s good metaplot and there´s bad metaplot. Sorry, but that´s just how I see it. Fundamentalism doesn´t model reality.
And in reality, there´s some utterly splendind metaplots driven by a company.

It´s like this:

If you have a doofus girlfirend, and most likely will have to stay with her? It´s easier to blame women in general. But in fact...you get the idea.

OK, point conceded. But I still say that there was enough bad metaplot, especially in the 1988-93 era when it overtook seemingly every commercial rpg setting, including those that had not previously been metaplot driven, to make me wary of the whole concept.

One approach to metaplot that I really liked was the Hero Wars timeline as presented in the Avalon Hill-era RuneQuest stuff -- they detailed each area as of a certain year, gave you a timeline of specific metaplot events that were going to occur over the next several years and more general hints of what was going to occur in the more distant future, but they did it all up-front so each individual GM could make an informed decision how (or if) he wanted to incorporate those elements instead of being kept in suspense and at the whim of the publishers who may or may not have their heads completely up their asses.

Quote from: T. Foster;372427I'll give you this one too. I like the FFW as well (and also like The Rebellion for that matter), but it did set the trend that ultimatelt led to TNE (which I very much did not like) in motion, and I know that had I left it off the list I would've gotten some response along the lines of "you're full of shit; publisher-dictated metaplot didn't start in the late 80s, just look at the Fifth Frontier War (1980) -- a big honking piece of publisher-dictated metaplot right in the middle of your precious old-school Classic Traveller! No difference whatsoever from TSR telling you to reboot your Forgotten Realms campaign after every new series of novels.

Gosh, what a train wreck.

FFW doesn't belong on the publisher-dictated meta-plot list at all. In fact, in the way it was originally designed for RPG (As compared to say how the Grognards played it), was for exactly the opposite purposes, namely, letting the players take control of a Traveller Campaign set in the Imperium (and that is exactly how we played it).

Never mind the order of battle and stuff, as a GM, I just setup the start of the war, and played through a few turns (On an alternate timeline) where the Imperium completely withdrew from the Spinward Marches to avoid a protracted war.

Result = Sword Worlds Independence which shortly led to a series of minor planetary wars and new opportunities for diplomacy and intrigue with both the Imperium and the Zhodani. This was one of the best sandbox sci-fi campaigns of my late high school years.

WTH did you guys do with my game?

Quote from: Benoist;372430As for the idea of "AD&D Canon" - I am completely adverse to it, the concept, I mean, as both a player and a GM. There's no such thing as "canon" to me as far as RPGs are concerned. I do my thing with the products, and I expect my GM to do his own when I play (unless we're in some sort of cooperative campaign with rotative DMs and such, but even then, I want the DMs to be able to do with their universe whatever the heck they want with it, and not have to adhere to any Official (TM) Canon just because the publisher says so).

The very idea of canon, as in fictional canon, is, to me, completely antethical to the very idea of role playing games, and the way actual gaming groups take possession of the universes they play, as they play them.

As a scholarly pursuit, with aims of theoretical arguments and comparisons between RPG products, and so on, so forth, I don't mind the concept of "canon". As a GM or a Player, I do mind. Not that it's particularly relevant to what you were saying in this instance, Trent, but that's just what popped into my mind as I read your post.

Oh sure, it's easy enough now to keep the good and throw out the bad and fuck being "official" -- that's what I've been doing for pretty much the past 20 years -- but that wasn't the way I looked at things (or felt I was being encouraged to look at them) in 1989, when I was 14 years old and had been indoctrinated to believe that the professional game designers knew better than I did. And it's worth noting in this context that even when I gave up on TSR's canon I didn't give up on the idea of canon entirely, I just moved to games/settings with "better" canon - Glorantha and (pre-TNE) Traveller. It wasn't until those settings went south on me that I really broke free and decided not to care about what was and wasn't official and that I should trust my own judgment above that of the professionals (which was the realization that allowed me to finally re-embrace A/D&D -- that I was going to keep playing the game the way I liked it and not let TSR/WotC ruin my fun).

Quote from: GameDaddy;372434Gosh, what a train wreck.

FFW doesn't belong on the publisher-dictated meta-plot list at all. In fact, in the way it was originally designed for RPG (As compared to say how the Grognards played it), was for exactly the opposite purposes, namely, letting the players take control of a Traveller Campaign set in the Imperium (and that is exactly how we played it).

Never mind the order of battle and stuff, as a GM, I just setup the start of the war, and played through a few turns (On an alternate timeline) where the Imperium completely withdrew from the Spinward Marches to avoid a protracted war.

Result = Sword Worlds Independence which shortly led to a series of minor planetary wars and new opportunities for diplomacy and intrigue with both the Imperium and the Zhodani. This was one of the best sandbox sci-fi campaigns of my late high school years.

WTH did you guys do with my game?

I was thinking specifically of the quarterly war-progress reports in JTAS and Spinward Marches Campaign (1985?) which presented the post-FFW Marches and said, essentially, this is how the war played out Officially, and what we're going to assume as the baseline going forward. If the war hadn't played out that way in your campaign you had to decide to either conform to the GDW version or splinter off your own way. Not such a big deal, but in retrospect it definitely foreshadowed what was to follow a couple years later with the much more sweeping change of The Rebellion.

Quote from: Benoist;372430The very idea of canon, as in fictional canon, is, to me, completely antethical...

*SIGH* Antithetical, I guess.
Fuck, I hate this. I "frenchified" the word. Apologies.

Quote from: Bobloblah;372363So 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?

AD&D 2e is the high watermark of fantasy roleplaying -- better than anything that came before it, and better than anything that came after it. Best art. Least focus on miniatures. Most focus on amazing worlds and heroic fantasy.

Quote from: T. Foster;372436Oh sure, it's easy enough now to keep the good and throw out the bad and fuck being "official" -- that's what I've been doing for pretty much the past 20 years -- but that wasn't the way I looked at things (or felt I was being encouraged to look at them) in 1989, when I was 14 years old and had been indoctrinated to believe that the professional game designers knew better than I did. And it's worth noting in this context that even when I gave up on TSR's canon I didn't give up on the idea of canon entirely, I just moved to games/settings with "better" canon - Glorantha and (pre-TNE) Traveller. It wasn't until those settings went south on me that I really broke free and decided not to care about what was and wasn't official and that I should trust my own judgment above that of the professionals (which was the realization that allowed me to finally re-embrace A/D&D -- that I was going to keep playing the game the way I liked it and not let TSR/WotC ruin my fun).

So you DID have your "narrativist" period, heh? :D

Maybe I'm conflating narrativism and canon too hastily here. Well. Such is life, I guess.

Anyway. I had mine too. One title comes to mind: Vampire: The Masquerade. Though I don't remember ever running it by-the-book, in terms of metaplot at least (I don't think anyone was, really... maybe that's why it's such a good game, still). Then, I had my "I'm freeeee" moment with the OGL. That's how I slowly made my way back to O/AD&D, actually. I grew tired of 3rd ed's complications, sure, but more than anything, I grew tired of the conversations taking place about the game online, with "Is this Overpowered?", "How to optimize my CoDzilla Build?" and such. Advised Philotomy at the time to look at Castles & Crusades and other such games, because I was thinking of doing it too (yes, I am very proud of providing some info at the time that eventually lead him to OD&D, and to post his Musings online later on. I sure wasn't the only one providing the advice, but still. There). And slowly made my own way back to older games myself.

Not "narrativism" in the Forge sense -- the closest I ever came to that was Hero Wars, to which I had a Patrick-Stewart-saying'"WTF is this shit?!" reaction -- but I did have a regrettable period of running railroady-as-hell adventures (I actually ran the infamous Avatar trilogy -- all three parts!) and thinking that the players should think it was cool to be able to witness (but not actually, you know, cause or even usually directly participate in) important world-shaking metaplot events. I even ran my RQ campaign that way for awhile -- I once spent about 6 months dragging the PCs all over the map of Genertela showing them a bunch of places and events I'd read about and thought were cool -- until I finally got Griffin Mountain and its sandboxiness (along with the fact that "official" Glorantha was moving increasingly in a direction I didn't like -- which ultimately led to the aforementioned Hero Wars -- and Traveller had already let me down) set me free. :)

Quote from: Bobloblah;372363Why 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?

No clue. Never played it.

Quote from: Settembrini;372426Man, T. Foster, you could be a fucking German romantic the way you talk! I assume you don´t watch Dr. Who? Or used to read Mad magazine?

I love Dr. Who, probably more than I should, but have only really embraced it within the past few years -- I started with the new series and have worked backwards to the classic one. When I tried to watch it a few times as a kid (ironically because I was playing in a Dr. Who rpg campaign*) it never clicked for me -- the only impression I remember it making was that it was too cheap-looking and slow-moving. I was a very serious and humorless kid. You wouldn't have liked me as a kid -- I'm much better now ;)

*I sort of stumbled into this at the local game-club because they had an open spot for a player the first time I went -- the fact that I knew nothing whatsoever about the show wasn't really a hindrance, both because the character I was playing (a test-pilot from the 21st century) didn't require it, and because as far as I can recall in several months of weekly play, we never interacted with anything from the show -- characters, races, locations, or items. The GM just took the basic premise [Time Lord + TARDIS + companions + adventures] and did his own thing with it. Which was awesome -- still the best rpg campaign I've ever been a player in.

Quote from: T. Foster;372447I finally got Griffin Mountain and its sandboxiness (...) set me free. :)

You and others are going to kill me, especially since I'm a huge RQ fan myself... but I don't think I've actually ever seen, let alone played, Griffin Mountain.
...

I know... :o

Quote from: 1989;372441AD&D 2e. Best art.

This much I agree with. People complain about larry elmore being bland and looking back i can see they're not wrong, but for me at the time, it was the shit and i still like it much better than anything that's come since. The art throughout the phb and dmg was great--all those fantastic full colour plates. I even like those blue thick-lined drawings. The only art i didnt care much for was jeff easley. I never liked his colour palettes.

Quote from: Benoist;372455You and others are going to kill me, especially since I'm a huge RQ fan myself... but I don't think I've actually ever seen, let alone played, Griffin Mountain.
...

I know... :o

Don't post, buy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000F3N8SS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used) :)

Quote from: Benoist;372393My 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.

Dude, Dark Sun had a couple of huge dungeons right there in the first boxed set: Bodach and Giustenal come immediately to mind, and there were scattered references to other lost cities and remnants of previous ages that the PCs were encouraged to explore. It also had tons of really interesting outdoor locations to discover and explore, including the giant plain of obsidian, the rainforests of the Ringing Mountains and the plains beyond them, the islands of the Silt Sea, the Dragon's Crown, the only gold mine, bandit and slave camps, and the other cities of the Tablelands. Edit: The two supplemental boxed sets were both just big, well-written adventure locations that were designed with tons of things to do than fight Dregoth, Nibenay or the Queen of Gulg

The modules and campaign expansions that came out had tons more dungeons and really cool adventure locations in them, as well as tons of things to do that didn't involve tackling sorceror kings. The first three non-adventure supplements for the game were about slavery and former slaves, being a merchant, and being a wizard, with only the last really dealing with opposition to sorceror kings.

It's true many of the modules told stories about fighting the sorceror kings, but the game materials put out for DMs to actually create their own stories had a strong emphasis on exploration, with lots of maps, ideas for why PCs would be interested in exploring the area beyond Find the McGuffin to Kill Hamanu. The second boxed set, despite being hampered in some ways by the stupid metaplot, had even more locations, many of which were even more interesting and had even less to do with sorceror-kings (the entire Jagged Cliffs region, frex).

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372464Dude, Dark Sun had a couple of huge dungeons right there in the first boxed set

I honestly didn't remember those. I don't know if I can attribute this to Dark Sun or AD&D2 in general - stepping further and further away from dungeon exploration I mean. Also, it's probably coming to my mind this way because of the way I think of D&D now that I came back to 0e and 1e, where dungeon (and wilderness) exploration -is- a major point of the game.

IDK. Seems to me there is a disconnect between "Dark Sun" and what I think of as "Dungeons & Dragons".

Game Daddy, only because Traveller has the bestest presentation of Metaplot ever, it does not become less Metaplot. It influenced all products coming afterward, from modules way to MegaTraveller and T:NE. And T4. And G:T!

Without the official metaplot there would be no "what ifs?". An evolving future history which still delivers the tools to deviate at any point. You can only deviate because it is there! This is awesome squared. Without Metaplot, there would be no FFW board game, and no Pocket Empires. Hammer and Nail, and an instruction for making a cabinet. What cabinet? Maybe a table isntead? You decide!

That Traveller is good does not mean it can´t have "bad" things in it causing it´s quality.

ADD: The opportunities to cause bad stuff with Metaplot have indeed been plumbed much deeper than the ones to cause good things.

Quote from: Benoist;372430There's no such thing as "canon" to me as far as RPGs are concerned. I do my thing with the products, and I expect my GM to do his own when I play (unless we're in some sort of cooperative campaign with rotative DMs and such, but even then, I want the DMs to be able to do with their universe whatever the heck they want with it, and not have to adhere to any Official (TM) Canon just because the publisher says so).

The very idea of canon, as in fictional canon, is, to me, completely antithetical to the very idea of role playing games, and the way actual gaming groups take possession of the universes they play, as they play them.

You must be very lucky that you never saw what happened to Aventuria during L'Oeil Noir Deuxième Édition...

Quote from: T. Foster;372431But I still say that there was enough bad metaplot, especially in the 1988-93 era when it overtook seemingly every commercial rpg setting, including those that had not previously been metaplot driven, to make me wary of the whole concept.

Now imagine a country where the leading game (the so-called mainstream) had a metaplot from day 2 on.

Imagine that after White Box, Holmes D&D was published in conjunction with DL1, with Krynn-isms being hard-coded into the rules. So the blue Holmes rulebook came with kender, three magic-using schools, and silvanesti and qualinesti elves, instead of the more generic class descriptions. Every adventure module (even one-shots) were set in Krynn, probably with hints to the big plot happening in the main module line. So even, say, The Keep on the Borderlands had draconians and gully dwarves, not to mention a "best before" date because after DL8 the area was officially cleared of monsters, or the evil cleric, whose mission it was to find a lost silver dragon egg, was successful and returned to Sanction, or worse, the keep has officially fallen to the blue dragon army.

Imagine a country where the community is divided along the lines of GMs who developed their own campaign settings in different fantasy flavours (players of D&D, Midgard, RM, even RQ) - and the mainstream who followed one metaplot in one late medieval/pseudo renaissance setting.
But it was exactly that metaplot that secured the position of Das Schwarze Auge as number one game in Germany. So from a marketing POV I can understand that the concept...

Quote from: T. Foster;372431... overtook seemingly every commercial rpg setting, including those that had not previously been metaplot driven

On the bright side, before AD&D 2 at least there was an AD&D 1.

Quote from: Benoist;372509Seems to me there is a disconnect between "Dark Sun" and what I think of as "Dungeons & Dragons".

Same here. TSR lost me with Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Planescape. They almost pulled me back in with Birthright, though.

I liked Kits. The stuff they gave you tended to be way overshadowed by your basic class powers once you hit high level, but they were a nice way to give a lick of flavour to low-level characters. Were I to run a 2E game in the near future I'd honestly considering using a kits as an alternative to the skill system from 2E or the non-adventuring professions from 1E - so your skills are "whatever a [KIT NAME] would be reasonably expected to know".

I also like the core 2E rules. Assassins can easily be grafted in. Devils and Demons are a mere name-change away. They're compatible enough with 1E that you can use all that good stuff without too much trouble. Specialist wizards and priests spice up the magic system a bit.

I wasn't too keen on the modules that came out, but I've never been keen on prepublished adventures anyway, I prefer to improv (which, incidentally, 2E caters to quite nicely). My big gripes in the 2E era were as follows:

- Player's Option. Wow. That's a lot of optional rules there. Do you expect anyone to use more than a fraction of them?

- Excess settings. Far and away my biggest issue. Don't get me wrong, I love many of the 2E settings. Unfortunately, TSR got caught up in trying to support too many of them. It ended up feeling like they'd spread themselves too thin - rather than doing a small number of settings and doing them well, they tried to do a ridiculous number of settings all at once and ended up doing them all a disservice as a result.

Also, some of the settings were just a little too generic and felt redundant. Really, did we need Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and Mystara (after basic D&D got take out to the back of the shed and shot)? Why not just settle on one "standard D&D fantasy" setting (perhaps grafting the other settings onto it, so they're in different parts of the same world), and have a few other settings based on radically different assumptions?

Were I in charge of TSR at the time, I'd have limited the 2E settings to the following:

- Forgotten Realms, for standard D&D fantasy, simply because at the time it was the most popular one (and, really, I can't tell the difference in flavour between it and 2E-era Mystara and Greyhawk and Dragonlance, so fans of those settings could just cannibalise FR stuff for all I care). Maybe with Greyhawk and Dragonlance and Mystara bolted onto different continents.

- Dark Sun, for the exotic out-there weird-dark fantasy stuff.

- Spelljammer OR Planescape for the world-hopping stuff. Possibly both, with Spelljammer being what you do at low levels before you're capable of taking on the planes.

- Al-Qadim for Arabian Nights stuff, maybe. But I'd be more likely to pull an Oriental Adventures and do a more generic "Arabian Nights Adventures" book with pointers on running an Arabian Nights-themed game in any official or homebrew setting with a suitable culture.

- Ravenloft probably wouldn't make the cut - again, I'd be more likely to do a "Gothic Adventures" book for horror-themed D&D campaigns in any setting.

- Likewise, Birthright wouldn't make the cut - I'd put out a "Royal Adventures" book with guidelines on running Birthright-type campaigns in any setting instead.

Really, I think the problem 2E had with the settings was that TSR worked on a simple (but flawed) principle: every major campaign theme deserves a separate campaign setting. And I'm sorry, but I just don't see that. To use Ravenloft as an example, I think horror-D&D is a fun idea, but I see absolutely no need to have a designated "horror" setting. Likewise, I don't see any need for an Arabian Nights style game to have an "Arabiaworld" setting just about every generic fantasy world has a Middle East-flavoured region anyway, and I don't see a need for a "Kingworld" setting to support Birthright when really any setting will do (especially if you go the WFRP route and have a "Border Princes" region where the rulers aren't officially described in any setting material). I just never saw a reason for many of the 2E settings to exist.

None of which has any reflection on the core game, however.

It is worth noting that 2E also had a reasonable showing in the "top games" list too.

Quote from: Benoist;372509I honestly didn't remember those. I don't know if I can attribute this to Dark Sun or AD&D2 in general - stepping further and further away from dungeon exploration I mean. Also, it's probably coming to my mind this way because of the way I think of D&D now that I came back to 0e and 1e, where dungeon (and wilderness) exploration -is- a major point of the game.

IDK. Seems to me there is a disconnect between "Dark Sun" and what I think of as "Dungeons & Dragons".

Possibly. I think that's because DS was published during AD&D 2e, when the emphasis from TSR in its modules was story-driven games because it encouraged people to buy more modules to get the complete "story".

DS though, is perhaps the best outdoor exploration setting published by TSR (I prefer it to Mystara, but YMMV). DS maps were always incredibly interesting, and the focus in the Wanderer's Guide / Chronicle was life outside the city states, with tons of ideas for adventure locations. If you still have the boxed sets, it's worth taking a second look at them and seeing how many things to explore are crammed into each one.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;372523Same here. TSR lost me with Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Planescape. They almost pulled me back in with Birthright, though.

Ugh. I'm exactly the opposite. I loved Dark Sun and Planescape, and really couldn't stand Birthright. It had some clever ideas, but it was JAFE (Just Another Fantasy Europe) and it felt particularly denuded of adventure possibilities.

Quote from: Settembrini;372517Game Daddy, only because Traveller has the bestest presentation of Metaplot ever, it does not become less Metaplot. It influenced all products coming afterward, from modules way to MegaTraveller and T:NE. And T4. And G:T!

Without the official metaplot there would be no "what ifs?". An evolving future history which still delivers the tools to deviate at any point. You can only deviate because it is there! This is awesome squared. Without Metaplot, there would be no FFW board game, and no Pocket Empires. Hammer and Nail, and an instruction for making a cabinet. What cabinet? Maybe a table isntead? You decide!

I agree with the highlighted part in particular: if you don't want Rebellion or Virus, then continue on without them. The only drawback is for those who want to use official products like adventures; it becomes necessary to adapt them to make them useful, or to play without 'official' support. I don't find either of those options to be a problem, but some gamers do.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372526Possibly. I think that's because DS was published during AD&D 2e, when the emphasis from TSR in its modules was story-driven games because it encouraged people to buy more modules to get the complete "story".

*nod* I agree. That's part of it, at least.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372526DS though, is perhaps the best outdoor exploration setting published by TSR (I prefer it to Mystara, but YMMV). DS maps were always incredibly interesting, and the focus in the Wanderer's Guide / Chronicle was life outside the city states, with tons of ideas for adventure locations. If you still have the boxed sets, it's worth taking a second look at them and seeing how many things to explore are crammed into each one.

That I remember, however, and I agree with this. The maps in particular were really, really interesting (gorgeous too, but that's another point altogether). I do remember feeling a bit bummed though that the maps were not center pieces somewhere in the box's design, in the sense of Hex explorations and such. But then again, we run into a major shift away from the classic hex exploration into something more of a "story" paradigm, where the narrative of exploration matters more than rolling for wandering monsters, if you get my drift.

Quote from: Warthur;372524- Excess settings. Far and away my biggest issue. Don't get me wrong, I love many of the 2E settings. Unfortunately, TSR got caught up in trying to support too many of them. It ended up feeling like they'd spread themselves too thin - rather than doing a small number of settings and doing them well, they tried to do a ridiculous number of settings all at once and ended up doing them all a disservice as a result.

Also, some of the settings were just a little too generic and felt redundant. Really, did we need Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and Mystara (after basic D&D got take out to the back of the shed and shot)? Why not just settle on one "standard D&D fantasy" setting (perhaps grafting the other settings onto it, so they're in different parts of the same world), and have a few other settings based on radically different assumptions?

Were I in charge of TSR at the time, I'd have limited the 2E settings to the following:

- Forgotten Realms, for standard D&D fantasy, simply because at the time it was the most popular one (and, really, I can't tell the difference in flavour between it and 2E-era Mystara and Greyhawk and Dragonlance, so fans of those settings could just cannibalise FR stuff for all I care). Maybe with Greyhawk and Dragonlance and Mystara bolted onto different continents.

- Dark Sun, for the exotic out-there weird-dark fantasy stuff.

- Spelljammer OR Planescape for the world-hopping stuff. Possibly both, with Spelljammer being what you do at low levels before you're capable of taking on the planes.

- Al-Qadim for Arabian Nights stuff, maybe. But I'd be more likely to pull an Oriental Adventures and do a more generic "Arabian Nights Adventures" book with pointers on running an Arabian Nights-themed game in any official or homebrew setting with a suitable culture.

- Ravenloft probably wouldn't make the cut - again, I'd be more likely to do a "Gothic Adventures" book for horror-themed D&D campaigns in any setting.

- Likewise, Birthright wouldn't make the cut - I'd put out a "Royal Adventures" book with guidelines on running Birthright-type campaigns in any setting instead.

Really, I think the problem 2E had with the settings was that TSR worked on a simple (but flawed) principle: every major campaign theme deserves a separate campaign setting. And I'm sorry, but I just don't see that. To use Ravenloft as an example, I think horror-D&D is a fun idea, but I see absolutely no need to have a designated "horror" setting. Likewise, I don't see any need for an Arabian Nights style game to have an "Arabiaworld" setting just about every generic fantasy world has a Middle East-flavoured region anyway, and I don't see a need for a "Kingworld" setting to support Birthright when really any setting will do (especially if you go the WFRP route and have a "Border Princes" region where the rulers aren't officially described in any setting material). I just never saw a reason for many of the 2E settings to exist.

I generally agree, but to defend Ravenloft, it wasn't just a horror setting, it was also their 17th century Europe setting. It had guns and cravats. I think it had a distinct enough identity and draw to be worth keeping around.

Birthright should have been a supplement, like Council of Wyrms.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372527Ugh. I'm exactly the opposite. I loved Dark Sun and Planescape, and really couldn't stand Birthright. It had some clever ideas, but it was JAFE (Just Another Fantasy Europe) and it felt particularly denuded of adventure possibilities.

LOL I'm in between. I loved both the original Dark Sun and Planescape boxed sets as sandboxes, basically, but never bought into any further development/products of their lines. Same thing with Birthright, though I must admit, I love the basic theme and tone of the universe, its implied game play, and well... I'm VERY much into Magical Medieval Societies, aka Medieval European mockups, myself. The more Medieval, the better, to me.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372531I generally agree, but to defend Ravenloft, it wasn't just a horror setting, it was also their 17th century Europe setting. It had guns and cravats. I think it had a distinct enough identity and draw to be worth keeping around.

You see, I never got into it deeply enough to notice that - that got deeply buried in the marketing. I remember seeing the Masque of the Red Death product, which was meant to be a Victorian horror-style take on D&D, but I didn't realise the core setting was meant to have a 17th century feel.

So chalk one up for seriously failed marketing there.

Quote from: Benoist;372532LOL I'm in between. I loved both the original Dark Sun and Planescape boxed sets as sandboxes, basically, but never bought into any further development/products of their lines. Same thing with Birthright, though I must admit, I love the basic theme and tone of the universe, its implied game play, and well... I'm VERY much into Magical Medieval Societies, aka Medieval European mockups, myself. The more Medieval, the better, to me.

I'm much the same with Planescape - never liked the later boxes and stuff. Though I will defend the products which expanded on Sigil itself, if only because a) it's always nice to have a really detailed home base for a campaign setting and b) the more Sigil detail you had the more viable a primarily Sigil-based campaign was, and anything which made it easier to run something like Planescape: Torment is fine my me. And the metaplot really wasn't that intrusive until later on in the product line.

Quote from: T. Foster;372370Is 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 :p) with F.A.T.A.L.).

Nah, it wasn't directed towards anybody in particular.  The title was an exaggeration, mainly because I find it somewhat surprising that one of the bigger RPGs is so commonly reviled.

Quote from: T. Foster;372370Suffice 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 :)

I don't need your approval, nor was I looking for it, and I'm not trying to convince you of anything.  I also wasn't trying to say that you disliking it is badwrongfun.  I was simply trying to give context to my question.  I'm just interested in why people feel the way they do about it. :)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372375Grognards 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.

Can you expand on this at all?  Especially the "special-snowflakification" and "forgetting what the archetypes were really about," as I'm not sure I understand what you mean by those (or why).

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;3723752e however did introduce various splat-type things (Complete whatever, options books) and various settings that may have generated some ill-will.

I'd developed the impression that this was the core of where the real antipathy towards this edition developed.  Looking back I realize that the groups I played with used a little of the material from the Complete books, but not most of it.  We implemented some combat rules from the Complete Fighter and Complete Thief, as well as the pantheon-specifics from the Complete Priest, but rarely made use of kits from any of the books other than the Complete Wizard.  As a DM I got a lot of use (and still do) out of the DMGR series, as well as the historical campaign settings, buit those were setting and inspiration material, not so much what I would've called "Splat Books."  

Beyond the pieces from the 4 complete books I mentioned, we stuck to almost exclusively to base rules. Noone cared that the assasin was gone, and agreed with the idea that nearly any class could be one; you could still kill for money and kicks.  The general "sanitization" seemed mostly irrelevant as the monikers "demon" and "devil" were still present, they just weren't what those two groups called themselves.  We didn't follow canon in any of the published campaign settings, even though we used several with the attendant modules. And by the time that the Options books came out, we weren't playing nearly as often, and simply weren't touching much in the way of new material.

Does it seem reasonable to say that most people's objections weren't really in the core game (or ruleset) that AD&D 2nd was?  That a lot of it revolved around directions later books/settings took?  I happen to feel that way about 3rd and 3.5: the base game was/is pretty good, but the WoTC splat books make me want to gag - munchkin city.  Let's not even talk about Prestige Classes...

Quote from: Warthur;372533You see, I never got into it deeply enough to notice that - that got deeply buried in the marketing. I remember seeing the Masque of the Red Death product, which was meant to be a Victorian horror-style take on D&D, but I didn't realise the core setting was meant to have a 17th century feel.

So chalk one up for seriously failed marketing there.

Well to your credit, there is a major difference between the original 2nd edition boxed set and what White Wolf later did with the setting. In the former, you very much had a mix of lots of different influences and settings. Not just the 17th century feel. It was yet another attempt to link all the TSR settings together, and it borrowed from all of them heavily. That's the wonder of the boxed set IMO - a patchwork of very different types of D&D horror in a huge package. You pick and choose what you want to play with, and run with it. I really, really like Ravenloft - the original boxed set alone, again. Not the supplements.

It's White Wolf and its treatment/reboot of the setting that really brought more coherence and uniformity to the whole. Some people will think it was an awesome idea, others will think it sucked. I'm somewhere in between. If a DM tries to run WW Ravenloft by "canon", running it as written, then I'll probably be unhappy. If you draw from all the metaplot BS written for the setting (its  Gazetteers in particular) to flesh out your own take on the setting, it has serious potential.

Quote from: Benoist;372530*nod* I agree. That's part of it, at least.


That I remember, however, and I agree with this. The maps in particular were really, really interesting (gorgeous too, but that's another point altogether). I do remember feeling a bit bummed though that the maps were not center pieces somewhere in the box's design, in the sense of Hex explorations and such. But then again, we run into a major shift away from the classic hex exploration into something more of a "story" paradigm, where the narrative of exploration matters more than rolling for wandering monsters, if you get my drift.

That's true, and a fair criticism. I owned both the FR grey box and the DS box, so I used to take the hex acetate from FR and use it on the DS maps, and I found that some clever dog had set it up so that they worked almost perfectly. That let me do everything I needed to in terms of tracking how far PCs got in a day. Then I just came up with some random encounter tables (I didn't have the monster compendium things, they might've had some random encounter tables in them) and everything was kosher.

Odd that a lot of complaints seem to be round modules, settings and supplements. All optional stuff you totally don't need.

For me 2e was just a streamlined form of AD&D with more character flexibility. As I said someplace else the flexibility was good becuase it was much more roleplay based flexibility than power play. Kits didn't really make you tough (that daft tree armed tree ranger aside) they just fleshed out more stuff. Priest spheres made priests weaker if anything.
The extra non-weapon proficiencies were crudely done but definitely an improvement.

Now Skills and Powers was broken. and after that I wasn't buying any product because I was at Uni and running my own stuff.

The stuff about devils and demons is incredibly trivial and at least by me totally ignored.

When 3e came out we tired it but all the stuff folks bitch about with 4e we found was true of 3, battlemap and minis focus, optimisation of build choices etc etc. So we didn't pursue it and instead stuck to 2e.

Quote from: Bobloblah;372535Does it seem reasonable to say that most people's objections weren't really in the core game (or ruleset) that AD&D 2nd was?  That a lot of it revolved around directions later books/settings took?  I happen to feel that way about 3rd and 3.5: the base game was/is pretty good, but the WoTC splat books make me want to gag - munchkin city.  Let's not even talk about Prestige Classes...

Sort of, but considering that the things that I like and think are good about 2E AD&D are all present in other editions (1E AD&D and BECMI D&D), what distinguishes it from those editions in my mind are the differences, all of which IMO fall on the negative side of the ledger.

Say 2E AD&D is 80% (for the sake of argument, it may be a little more or a little less) identical with 1E AD&D. Some people like those 20% differences and think they improved the game (that was obviously the intent, and most of those changes are things that were already widespread as 1E house-rules and in RPGA play), but for me only 5% (at most) count as actual improvements and the other 15% are either net-neutral changes (it's different but not in a way that is particularly better or worse) or negative (IMO 2E screwed up something that was better in 1E). Plus, at least IMO, the changes 2E made especially to assumed playstyle (focusing more on story-type adventures and less on dungeon- and hex-crawling) meant that there's another 20% or so of the rules that weren't changed from 1E but should have been -- things that made sense in the 1E context but don't in the 2E context.

So, to me, 2E took a game that was 90% good and turned it into a game that's at most ~65% good. While a 65% good game is still pretty good in the overall scheme of things (and was enough to keep me playing 2E for about a year), it's a whole lot less than 90%, and that stuck in my craw, especially since the evolution was gradual and incremental enough (not something like D&D 4E or WFRP 3E where the new edition is obviously a completely different game from the previous one and it's a conscious decision to either move forward or stay behind) that it had a pernicious influence and made me forget why it was that I liked A/D&D in the first place. When I dropped 2E and moved on to other games I wasn't specifically dropping 2E, I was dropping A/D&D, because I felt it was lame and stupid and no longer fun. It wasn't until a few years later, after I'd made a clean break and put some distance between myself and D&D and was able to look back at it with a fresh perspective that I realized that it wasn't that D&D as a whole was lame and stupid and no longer fun, it was just 2E AD&D -- that OD&D, 1E AD&D, and even BECMI D&D still had all the things I liked about them in the first place, they had just been obscured and tainted by the association with 2E.

And so I tend to have an exaggerated negative emotional reaction to 2E (doing stuff like putting it #1 on my list of all-time worst rpgs ;)) out of proportion to its actual negative qualities.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372544Odd that a lot of complaints seem to be round modules, settings and supplements. All optional stuff you totally don't need.

It's true in my case that I complain more about the modules than the core game, but that's because I don't mind the core game at all. RC and 2e are the versions of D&D I got in with - 2e is the first version I ever personally owned, in fact.

Quote from: Bobloblah;372535Does it seem reasonable to say that most people's objections weren't really in the core game (or ruleset) that AD&D 2nd was?  That a lot of it revolved around directions later books/settings took?  I happen to feel that way about 3rd and 3.5: the base game was/is pretty good, but the WoTC splat books make me want to gag - munchkin city.  Let's not even talk about Prestige Classes...

Not really. Not in my particular case, I mean. I actually think that some of the base settings, some ideas and options from later 2nd ed books are at least salvageable, as evidenced by this very thread.

I really think that to me it comes down to the bigger picture of how the game (by which I mean "Dungeons & Dragons", all iterations, for all time) evolved over time. There are several very noticeable fractures in the game's evolution, and the first that is truly noticeable and taking the game in a widely different direction is 2nd edition, by removing aspects I like about First Ed's game play: we were talking about hexcrawling earlier, emphasis on dungeon exploration, miniatures were even mentioned earlier - and I like miniatures, personally, though under a specific set of assumptions/particular immersive mindset, medievalist fantasy as opposed to 'its own thing where everything goes', taking some color out of it (assassin, demons and devils, i.e. the "non-political-correctness" of 1E), and so on, so forth.

2nd edition is a more than playable game. Very enjoyable in and for itself (with the right people and in the right circumstances of course, much like any other game in existence), but on the scale of D&D's evolution, it's really the first culprit in a long line of different breaks that make the game evolve in -sometimes, most of the time, though not always- unfortunate ways.

Quote from: T. Foster;372548So, to me, 2E took a game that was 90% good and turned it into a game that's at most ~65% good. While a 65% good game is still pretty good in the overall scheme of things (and was enough to keep me playing 2E for about a year), it's a whole lot less than 90%

Also, this. Very well put indeed.

A bit of an ill-informed opinion here. I don't really know the difference between AD&D 1e and 2e. I know I played them a a fair bit at the time but I never actually read through or ran the game. The point is I never reallt liked the game.

I don't like splitting of races and classes. I think this was a sign taking fantasy away from the world of legends and myths and trying give it a certain faux-realism. It seems to say "this is a a real world with magic might look like" expect of course it dosen't follow though which makes all the more jarring to me. And all the small decision just rub me the wrong way.

Dual classes? Yuck. Let's make things even more bastardised.

What hell is a first level paladin? Did you get a certificate in the post that says 'bona-fide paladin' ?

Do we really need half-elves?

But above all I just never understood the rules. It all seemed very arbitary ("No, you are a ranger, you should fight with two weapons" "Ehi?") made even more confusing by the fact that each group did things differently. From what I could determine the system was not all that simple (I recall character sheets several pages long), it wasn't all that realisitic, it wasn't all that flexible and the combat wasn't really that deep tactically. So what exactly did those rules do well?

D&D 3e I get. It's not my kind of game but I see what it tries to do and it does that well. Basic D&D I get. It's a little clumsy but it is simple and iconic. AD&D is just a tangled mess to me.

For a different perspective on the settings aspect of 2e, I'm guessing I'm opposite of most folks. I would have thrown out Mystara and FR both in favor of Birthright. Greyhawk I could see as a legacy product and the "base" setting, but IMO Birthright presented so much of a superior "Western European" setting that it really would have been no contest. Setting aside the regency rules, which still are very cool but could indeed have been an add-on to any setting, BR presents extremely flavorful cultures with a plausible (in a fantasy context) backstory that has a very mythological feel, a reasonable (for a fantasy setting) explanation for the existence of a great many strange beasties, and also includes races that come across to me as much more than funny looking humans. The setting can be played all the way from a complex board game to a standard D&D setting, and there is plenty of room in the world for including other settings on other continents. To me, BR kicks FR's Frankensteinian, "everything but the kitchen sink", chock full 'o Mary Sues ass.

Quote from: T. Foster;372460Don't post, buy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000F3N8SS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used) :)

This... is awesome, BTW. Thanks, Trent. :)

Quote from: Bobloblah;372535Can you expand on this at all?  Especially the "special-snowflakification" and "forgetting what the archetypes were really about," as I'm not sure I understand what you mean by those (or why).

I think the classic case, from what I've read, is the way the Ranger was changed from being an archetype based mainly on Aragorn to a "job" based on Drizzt. Thus, instead of specializing in fighting evil humanoids, the Ranger was genericized as specializing in any specific type of monster (player's choice). And notwithstanding Zeb Cook's claim to the contrary, the Ranger's two-weapon fighting ability in 2e is widely believed to come from Drizzt.

In general the pattern involves taking an archetype and turning it into a profession. Thus Clerics started in D&D based on fighting clergymen like the Templars, Bishop Odo, or Archbishop Turpin. Then the idea began to bump into naturalistic portrayals of polytheism in D&D rules & settings. (It's beside the point that the portrayals were inaccurate in historical terms.) So Clerics sort of became priests of arbitrary deities, but they kept their uniquely Templar-like qualities of having good hit dice, armor, and weapons.

Another example is raising level limits for demihumans. Some people hate level limits. Some people like them. For those who see them as a brake on munchkinesque favoring of the exotic and twinked races, and a way of preserving the humanocentric focus of the game, weakening the limits is a negative. But if you aren't acquainted with D&D's literary/mythological roots, the limits are pointless. Simply put: demihumans aren't protagonists in traditional fantasy. They may be more powerful than most humans, but legendary humans and human protagonists of fantasy stories tend ultimately to be "the best".

Quote from: Bobloblah;372535Can you expand on this at all?  Especially the "special-snowflakification" and "forgetting what the archetypes were really about," as I'm not sure I understand what you mean by those (or why).

I'm sure people's definition of "special-snowflakification" will differ. It's meaning is fluid, depending on particular experiences, likes/dislikes and so on, pretty much to the point of making it useless right off the bat, actually (much like the term "munchkin", by the way).

That's actually not the first criticism I would have thrown at 2nd ed, either, as you can see from my previous posts.

What I do get from the term, however, personally, is the tendency to understand players characters as "heroes" right from the start of the game, giving them 5 pages backgrounds prior to the first game session, making sure to provide all the mechanical gimmicks and options to make sure that the character is "unique", and so on, so forth.

In my experience, that's not what actually happened while playing First Ed. Your first level character had a name. You had a pretty vague idea of where your character was coming from, why he would become an adventurer, but that was pretty much it. Why? Because there was a strong chance that your character would never see his second level, to begin with! So you played with a rough idea of who your character was, were trying to play smart, play well, and if successful, then you had an entire background for the character... a background that was actually played in the game, not decided on a whim as a piece of fiction outside of it.

There again, I can see a shift in the understanding of the game that, in the end, I think was detrimental to its feel and specificities as a role playing game, rather than a fiction story game emulation.

Quote from: Bobloblah;372535I'd developed the impression that this was the core of where the real antipathy towards this edition developed.  Looking back I realize that the groups I played with used a little of the material from the Complete books, but not most of it.  We implemented some combat rules from the Complete Fighter and Complete Thief, as well as the pantheon-specifics from the Complete Priest, but rarely made use of kits from any of the books other than the Complete Wizard.  As a DM I got a lot of use (and still do) out of the DMGR series, as well as the historical campaign settings, buit those were setting and inspiration material, not so much what I would've called "Splat Books."  

I really liked the Complete Fighter, Priest, Thief and Wizard handbooks when they rolled out, personally. They had a lot of interesting fiddly bits, and not only in terms of kits, of course. But really, again, you see a shift in the game's design, a different way to look at it and understand its purpose.

The "kit" idea came from the "one concept = one class" paradigm which has been coexisting with the game since its humble beginnings. In some ways, you could even say that it all started when a guy (whose name I can't remember right off the bat) one day came up with the "Thief" character class, went on with all the different takes included in Greyhawk, Blackmoor, The Dragon etc, up to AD&D, which sealed some of them as "core identity" to the game, went on through kits and stuff, then prestige classes, and so on. The roots of this probably can be traced back to OD&D itself, with its way of handling non-human characters, and pointing out that if you want to play a Balrog, just go for it by making up some sort of class for the thing.

Well, to address the original question.

Second edition stunk.  Yes Al Quadim was brilliant.  Yes it was interesting that Beholders and Mind Flayers came from outer space.  Why were we always running into them underground though?

But what was done was a classic hack job by people who didn't know, understand, or care about the game.

Now I'm not in favour of radical rules changes and feel the core system of D&D is actually pretty good.  But second edition was a case of randomly scrapping and modifying rules without checking what else is screwed up by it.  Heavy crossbows that do 1d4+1 damage and take 2 rounds to load being a great example I always run to because it's so blatant when a long bow does 2d4 and makes 2 attacks per round and can be built to use the character's Strength bonus.  But there's stuff in the spells that are as bad or worse.  Stone skin comes to mind but it was still bad in 3rd edition.

Then there's the proficiencies and theif's skills mess.  Why isn't there a single integrated system here?  Why is my thief so much better at black smithing than stealing stuff?  Maybe he's in the wrong line of work.

And level limits?  How did those possibly make it into a second edition?  What a ridiculous and unwieldy concept.  But would it really be D&D if humans were actually a viable character race?  Nah!  Probably not.

Quote from: David Johansen;372577Yes it was interesting that Beholders and Mind Flayers came from outer space.  Why were we always running into them underground though?
.

It's the First law of Dr. Who: if you're evil and from outer space, you go underground right after you make planet fall.

Then there was the whole, experience system.  Don't get me wrong, I use the Rolemaster experience system as is out of the box.

The problem with D&D 2e's attempt to do the same type of thing occurred in low level parties with multiple magic users, who of course, select for diversity, share spells and quite possibly level up in the first session...

Quote from: Benoist;372576What I do get from the term, however, personally, is the tendency to understand players characters as "heroes" right from the start of the game, giving them 5 pages backgrounds prior to the first game session, making sure to provide all the mechanical gimmicks and options to make sure that the character is "unique", and so on, so forth.

Yes, this too.

I have to cop to not being very directly plugged-in to the 2e-hate. Never played the game, have only glanced at it when it came out and then, much later, on the second-hand shelves. So what anyone reads from me on this topic is a mix of personal impressions and my filtered reading of what I've seen written by others.

By the time 2e came out I was entirely alienated from D&D. Although I was initially curious about the inclusion of skills, when I looked at the game it just seemed like a continuation of the worst trends I'd seen in D&D through the 1980s, combined with a half-assed and inelegant attempt at incorporating mechanical concepts that had been percolating in other games.  (I probably thought of Runequest as the acme of RPG design at the time.)

This sense was reinforced by the artwork, fairly or unfairly. OD&D and 1e looked and played gritty. Then at some point you had the Hildebrand-ization of fantasy art, followed by the dominance in D&D of Easley, Parkinson, and Elmore. Without necessarily pointing the finger at them personally (art directors probably had a big hand in it, and I've at least seen stuff by Easley and Parkinson that breaks the mold), there was a shift toward romantic "high fantasy" images that continued into the 2e era.

So in my eyes 2e didn't do itself any favors, and when much, much later I decided to re-examine and reevaluate D&D, it was the editions with which I was already familiar: OD&D and AD&D 1e. "Basic" benefitted also because it really isn't very different from those two. While 2e probably would have gotten a "meh" from me circa 1990, compared to my anti-gonzo RQ/DQ/Harn/GURPS-ified disdain for the D&D I really knew, nowadays 2e still gets a "meh" while "old school" D&D gets new appreciation from me.

Quote from: Benoist;372557Not really. Not in my particular case, I mean. I actually think that some of the base settings, some ideas and options from later 2nd ed books are at least salvageable, as evidenced by this very thread.

I really think that to me it comes down to the bigger picture of how the game (by which I mean "Dungeons & Dragons", all iterations, for all time) evolved over time. There are several very noticeable fractures in the game's evolution, and the first that is truly noticeable and taking the game in a widely different direction is 2nd edition, by removing aspects I like about First Ed's game play: we were talking about hexcrawling earlier, emphasis on dungeon exploration, miniatures were even mentioned earlier - and I like miniatures, personally, though under a specific set of assumptions/particular immersive mindset, medievalist fantasy as opposed to 'its own thing where everything goes', taking some color out of it (assassin, demons and devils, i.e. the "non-political-correctness" of 1E), and so on, so forth.

2nd edition is a more than playable game. Very enjoyable in and for itself (with the right people and in the right circumstances of course, much like any other game in existence), but on the scale of D&D's evolution, it's really the first culprit in a long line of different breaks that make the game evolve in -sometimes, most of the time, though not always- unfortunate ways.

All the stuff you don't seem to like, like getting away from dungeons and hex crawling and getting into the city and more complex plots and 'story' are all the stuff I thought was great as it fitted how we played.

The dropping of the assasin class wasn't really a Pollitical correctness thing it was a move to return to 4 core classes and allow stuff like barbarians, illusionists, druids and assasins to fall out of the classed through the use of kits.
There were odd rules like ranger 2 weapons fighting and the fact that a base proficiency as it was based on stats ended up being high and extra slots were wasted. But that stuff was easy to house rule.
To me it was the move toward more immersive roleplaying that was the strength of 2e.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372660All the stuff you don't seem to like, like getting away from dungeons and hex crawling and getting into the city and more complex plots and 'story' are all the stuff I thought was great as it fitted how we played.

I understand. I got that from your posts.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372660The dropping of the assasin class wasn't really a Pollitical correctness thing it was a move to return to 4 core classes and allow stuff like barbarians, illusionists, druids and assasins to fall out of the classed through the use of kits.
There were odd rules like ranger 2 weapons fighting and the fact that a base proficiency as it was based on stats ended up being high and extra slots were wasted. But that stuff was easy to house rule.
To me it was the move toward more immersive roleplaying that was the strength of 2e.

Two things here.
1/ Yes. Removing the Assassin really was all about protecting TSR from lawsuits from people hunting D&D with pitchforks (though it was indeed reintroduced through the backdoor, via Complete Thief's Handbook).
2/ Immersive role playing =/= story gaming. Actually, I personally find story gaming to be detrimental to game immersion. At its worse, you are no longer your character in the game world - there is no identification left with your game avatar; you instead entertain a detached attitude, and look at your character as a narrative construct, as though the player was a "narrator" and the character was a "protagonist". That is not immersion, to me. That's fucking wankery.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372660All the stuff you don't seem to like, like getting away from dungeons and hex crawling and getting into the city and more complex plots and 'story' are all the stuff I thought was great as it fitted how we played.
.

Ah, but is D&D really the bests system for city adventures and complex plots?
I raised in a recent thread about "Non Attritional D&D". The resouce management aspect of D&D, the spell system in particular is geared towards dungeon/hex play. If you want to play a city based or more scene based game the economics and class/monster balance of the game changes completely in ways you may not necessarily want.

It' not deal breaker. I'm sure it can be D&D can be adpated to work in a scene based game and has been done so successfully by any GMs around the world, but I think there is a case to say its not a natural fit.

Quote from: Benoist;372663Actually, I personally find story gaming to be detrimental to game immersion. At its worse, you are no longer your character in the game world - there is no identification left with your game avatar; you instead entertain a detached attitude, and look at your character as a narrative construct, as though the player was a "narrator" and the character was a "protagonist". That is not immersion, to me. That's fucking wankery.

You speak the ultimate truth.  You may remove your Tut Headdress and adorn yourself with the sun disk of Ra.

Quote from: Soylent Green;372667Ah, but is D&D really the bests system for city adventures and complex plots?
I raised in a recent thread about "Non Attritional D&D". The resouce management aspect of D&D, the spell system in particular is geared towards dungeon/hex play. If you want to play a city based or more scene based game the economics and class/monster balance of the game changes completely in ways you may not necessarily want.

It' not deal breaker. I'm sure it can be D&D can be adpated to work in a scene based game and has been done so successfully by any GMs around the world, but I think there is a case to say its not a natural fit.

Seemed to work for the last 30 years or so :)

Quote from: jibbajibba;372688Seemed to work for the last 30 years or so :)

I understand I am not disuputing that. Likewise you could run Call of Cthulhu using the Ghostbuster rules, and you might be surprised what people have used Twerps for. They question is how why would you want to do that?

In the case of D&D the richness of the D&D specific lore and the easy availabilty of players might reason enough to stick with it even when you are not dungoneering. But that doesn't mean that the the system is in itself  entirely "style neutral".

Quote from: Benoist;372663Two things here.
1/ Yes. Removing the Assassin really was all about protecting TSR from lawsuits from people hunting D&D with pitchforks [...]

That may be, but now that people mention it, from where I stand--this may be some combination of the RQ-swine and stone-age grognard in me speaking--and completely divorced from the politics and history of D&D's development--it's an appealing idea to treat a capital-A Assassin "class" as superfluous, so that anyone can be a lower-case-a assassin if they're interested in the job.

(Of course the next logical step is to get rid of the Thief...and then get rid of classes altogether...ending up with Talislanta if not Runequest.)
 

Quote2/ Immersive role playing =/= story gaming. Actually, I personally find story gaming to be detrimental to game immersion.

Sure, but I don't see anyone including jibbajibba or the other 2e fans, claiming that 2e as a system is geared for storytelling (WW-style) or storygaming (modern indie-style), let alone promoting it on those grounds.

Ah, I see that JJ uses "story" and "plot" in his post. A lot of people use those words to just mean that the game includes complex relationships and interaction between PCs and world-continuity. I do also see those words used to mean GM-guided, often linear storylines. Can't really say which one JJ is talking about, but I suspect it's the former.

Quote from: Soylent Green;372690I understand I am not disuputing that. Likewise you could run Call of Cthulhu using the Ghostbuster rules, and you might be surprised what people have used Twerps for. They question is how why would you want to do that?

In the case of D&D the richness of the D&D specific lore and the easy availabilty of players might reason enough to stick with it even when you are not dungoneering. But that doesn't mean that the the system is in itself  entirely "style neutral".

It's easy to answer that. Round here in 1980 or so there was 1 game shop they had D&D, Gamma World, Traveller and some Runequest. We tried runequest but it didn't stick. So for Fantasy RPGs we used D&D. We stopped doing dungeon delving when we were no longer allowed to stay in a classroom at lunch time. This means we played without figures.
On top of that I grew up on a mix of mythology and fantasy novels by the time I was playing D&D I was desperate to imitate LotR, Zelazny, Ivanhoe, the seige of Troy, the tales of King Arthur, Fafhard and the Grey Mouser . Aside from the route through Moria I guess I never got the fiction that came up with a dungeondelve so trying to recreate it was never a priority.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372697It's easy to answer that. Round here in 1980 or so there was 1 game shop they had D&D, Gamma World, Traveller and some Runequest. We tried runequest but it didn't stick. So for Fantasy RPGs we used D&D. We stopped doing dungeon delving when we were no longer allowed to stay in a classroom at lunch time. This means we played without figures.
On top of that I grew up on a mix of mythology and fantasy novels by the time I was playing D&D I was desperate to imitate LotR, Zelazny, Ivanhoe, the seige of Troy, the tales of King Arthur, Fafhard and the Grey Mouser . Aside from the route through Moria I guess I never got the fiction that came up with a dungeondelve so trying to recreate it was never a priority.

I get that. I'm not a dungeon person myself, it do anything for me. Recapturing the the feel of genre fiction is much more interesting for me.

Quote from: Soylent Green;372708Recapturing the the feel of genre fiction is much more interesting for me.

And this, my friends, is the root of story gaming.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372688Seemed to work for the last 30 years or so :)

I'm with him.

When I ran AD&D2e, I don't know if I ever ran a dungeon crawl...I know I never ran one of my own devising.

Quote from: Benoist;372716And this, my friends, is the root of story gaming.

No, it isn't. If there's a single root, it isn't the desire to make a game that feels like Howard or Leiber or Vance. Not per se, partly because "feel" is several things.

You're coming off as a lot more extreme, Benoist, than I thought. Maybe you could start a thread on your experience and thoughts on city adventures and long-term character development. It isn't all dungeons for you, is it?

Quote from: Benoist;372716And this, my friends, is the root of story gaming.

You say that as if it were a bad thing?  :-)

Seriously, the trouble is while dungeon/hex crawling is a meaningful term which describes a very specifc style of play I am not sure what "story gaming" is suposed to mean except perhaps "every other kind of roleplaying game".

2/10

I'm a grognard that played 1E, moved to 2E and jumped at 3E like a hyperactive frog on speed. I remember 2E fondly and still have some of my 2E material. But I think it is an inferior version of the game when compared to 3.5/OGL. I personally never encountered ant 2E hate when playing it. And never saw any reason to stick with it once 3E was released. It's an earlier edition, game rules evolve. I can't see myself ever playing it again. But it isn't on my most hated RPG list either.

Quote from: Benoist;372716And this, my friends, is the root of story gaming.

... what?

You should read Feng Shui sometime.

We had a lot of fun in 2e. In my hometown, 1e holdouts were in the marked minority. But then, most of us moved on to 3e or non-D&D games, leaving 2e fans in the minority.

I felt that 2e's greatest legacy was its settings, though I count Dark Sun and Planescape as the best, not Spelljammer.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372785No, it isn't. If there's a single root, it isn't the desire to make a game that feels like Howard or Leiber or Vance. Not per se, partly because "feel" is several things.

You're coming off as a lot more extreme, Benoist, than I thought. Maybe you could start a thread on your experience and thoughts on city adventures and long-term character development. It isn't all dungeons for you, is it?

Sorry if it's coming off as extreme. It really isn't, as a matter of fact. I'm saying it is the root, as in "this is how it starts". I don't mean that fiction genre emulation "is" or "equates" to story gaming. There's a nuance: fiction genre emulation does not have to lead to story gaming, but mistaking genre emulation for fiction emulation certainly leads to a type of story gaming I do not appreciate myself.

I'm not interested in fiction when playing RPGs. I'm interested in actuality.

Not to be obstuse but frankly I'm kind of lost here. I the find the disctinction between "roleplaying gamen" and "story gaming" as unclear as the distinction between "genre emulation" and "fiction emulation".

Quote from: Soylent Green;372839Not to be obstuse but frankly I'm kind of lost here. I the find the disctinction between "roleplaying gamen" and "story gaming" as unclear as the distinction between "genre emulation" and "fiction emulation".

That's because a lot of it is bafflegab as bad as the Forge's.

Quote from: Soylent Green;372839Not to be obstuse but frankly I'm kind of lost here. I the find the disctinction between "roleplaying gamen" and "story gaming" as unclear as the distinction between "genre emulation" and "fiction emulation".

Genre emulation in this case implies a color, or feel to the game that is still a role playing game, where you are playing characters in a game world that is "actual" in your mind's eye. You are your character, your character is you.

Fiction emulation implies the implementation of patterns and techniques used to write fiction, which leads to players seeing themselves as "narrators" apart of their characters, which become "protagonists" in a "story" with storylines, plots, subplots. A way to look at the game as a piece of fiction with a narrative, as opposed to a game of immersion and actuality.

The fact that you're not seeing the difference, along with the way you were saying that you don't see anything "wrong" with story gaming, actually validates my point that fiction genre emulation may lead to story gaming. You like that. I don't.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372840That's because a lot of it is bafflegab as bad as the Forge's.

Fuck you.

Nailed it, twice!

Quote from: Benoist;372845Fuck you.

Right back at you, sunshine. The terms are confusing, there's no consensus on what they mean, and they don't appear useful for analysing actual play experiences. Their only use is rhetorical and political, to indicate that one likes the right type of games and to execrate the wrong kind.

The terms are confusing, there's no consensus...is irrelevant when the terms are explained for the purpose of a given discussion. Benoist was unclear in his first go at it, I called him on it, he explained, end of story.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372847Right back at you, sunshine. The terms are confusing, there's no consensus on what they mean, and they don't appear useful for analysing actual play experiences. Their only use is rhetorical and political, to indicate that one likes the right type of games and to execrate the wrong kind.

Except that I just explained what these terms meant to me, in the context of my argument. That you do not care to recognize this meaning and address the actual argument on a fair basis, whether your own preferences/opinions end up differing with mine or not, to instead concentrate on what you imagine are motives behind said arguments, is not my problem. It's yours, and yours alone.

I have preferences and opinions. Deal with it, or fuck off.

Quote from: Benoist;372849Except that I just explained what these terms meant to me, in the context of my argument. That you do not care to recognize this meaning and address the actual argument on a fair basis, whether your own preferences/opinions end up differing with mine or not, to instead concentrate on what you imagine are motives behind said arguments, is not my problem. It's yours, and yours alone.

I didn't say anything about motives. I can't address your argument because there's no argument to address here. Patterns do something, which leads to emulating "fiction" which leads to "story gaming" whatever that is.

QuoteI have preferences and opinions. Deal with it, or fuck off.

I am dealing with it. I'm telling you the language by which you express your preferences and opinions expresses them poorly.

Look, if you want to make the point that people focus too much on having plots like in fantasy novels for their games, and that they ought to let PCs explore the world through their characters without the DM forcing them to follow his plot, you can just do so. Heck, you can copy and paste that sentence fragment next time to save yourself some effort.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372848The terms are confusing, there's no consensus...is irrelevant when the terms are explained for the purpose of a given discussion. Benoist was unclear in his first go at it, I called him on it, he explained, end of story.

If you think those constitute "explanations", comrade, you're using a pretty low bar. They're just bafflegab piled on bafflegab. I've taken you guys to task for this before, many times, and all I ever see is an abandonment of some of the old jargon and its replacement with new, equally bad, jargon.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372851(...) I can't address your argument because there's no argument to address here. (...)

I understand you're just pissed because I actually disagree with you on something. Your argumentation really can be summarized with: "your vocabulary sucks, you write like you don't understand a word of English - I don't want to make any effort to actually exchange ideas with you, and I'm just here to tell you how much you suck at it. That, or you're a Forgite asshole, whatever insults you the most."

Great arguments. Really, I'm stunned.
*golf clap*

Call me when when you actually want to exchange ideas, instead of throwing poo at each other. :)

Quote from: Benoist;372854I understand you're just pissed because I actually disagree with you on something.

I'm not pissed at you at all. I'm rarely pissed off by mere disagreement. You're taking this much more personally than I am.

QuoteYour argumentation really can be summarized with: "your vocabulary sucks, you write like you don't understand a word of English - I don't want to make any effort to actually exchange ideas with you, and I'm just here to tell you how much you suck at it. That, or you're a Forgite asshole, whatever insults you the most."

Great arguments. Really, I'm stunned.
*golf clap*

Call me when when you actually want to exchange ideas, instead of throwing poo at each other. :)

I'm happy to exchange ideas. I just ask that we do so in plain language, rather than needing to invent a bunch of terms. I've been consistent about this for years and years. It really is my critique of the Forge (which is distinct from the general anti-Forgism around here), and it's my critique of much of the discussion of the differences between editions of D&D, and the evolution of styles of roleplaying over time.

Both suffer from the same problem: the accretion of meaningless jargon that is useless because it is so abstract and divorced from the actual activities it purports to describe.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372856I'm not pissed at you at all. I'm rarely pissed off by mere disagreement. You're taking this much more personally than I am.

It certainly doesn't look like it. *shrug*

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372856I'm happy to exchange ideas. I just ask that we do so in plain language, rather than needing to invent a bunch of terms. I've been consistent about this for years and years. It really is my critique of the Forge (which is distinct from the general anti-Forgism around here), and it's my critique of much of the discussion of the differences between editions of D&D, and the evolution of styles of roleplaying over time.

Both suffer from the same problem: the accretion of meaningless jargon that is useless because it is so abstract and divorced from the actual activities it purports to describe.

From there, I see two options: you don't understand what I mean, in which case you ask me, I explain (which again, I already did, after Elliot called me on it), and we move on with the discussion of ideas from there. Or you do understand, and we move on with the discussion of ideas.

That's not what I'm seeing from you right now.

Quote from: Benoist;372858It certainly doesn't look like it. *shrug*

Mate, you're the one running around going "Fuck you!" here every other post.

QuoteFrom there, I see two options: you don't understand what I mean, in which case you ask me, I explain (which again, I already did, after Elliot called me on it), and we move on with the discussion of ideas from there. Or you do understand, and we move on with the discussion of ideas.

That's not what I'm seeing from you right now.

I know what you're driving at because I've sat through thousands of words about this jargon at this point and because we've spoken about gaming at length on other occasions, but that doesn't mean I find it any less obfuscatory.

It's also maddeningly vague and abstract jargon, in that talking about how there are "patterns" and whatnot doesn't talk about any specific pattern and its consequences, which is the interesting stuff (also the stuff that serves as proof of any assertion made here).

Look comrade, you're not a dumb guy, you don't need to use all this jargon and abstract talk. I'm pretty sure you actually play RPGs so just focus in on specifics and you'll be OK.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372860Look comrade, you're not a dumb guy, you don't need to use all this jargon and abstract talk. I'm pretty sure you actually play RPGs so just focus in on specifics and you'll be OK.

Look mate. I don't need you to coach me on how to formulate my ideas. Either you want to understand, or you don't.
That really is your problem, you know? Not mine.

Quote from: Benoist;372864Look mate. I don't need you to coach me on how to formulate my ideas. Either you want to understand, or you don't.
That really is your problem, you know? Not mine.

The burden of communicating clearly is on the writer. If you don't care about being understood, why write anything here in the first place?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372865The burden of communicating clearly is on the writer.

At first, sure. Then, when the writer is confronted with misunderstandings, he may be asked to clarify (which Elliot did). He then explains what he meant (as I did), and it then falls on the other participants in the conversation to ask for more clarifications, or present their own points of view in response to the arguments.

See. If anything, right here, in this post I just quote here, you're the one who's engaging in pure rhetoric for the sake of it. You're also the one who keeps splitting terminological hairs instead of moving on with the conversation, keeps discussing the form, not the actual content. You want to be right, rhetorically - I get it.

So. Can we get passed the pissing contest and go on with the conversation, now? :)

When people get cranky about 2e, I just roll my eyes, and ignore 'em. :rolleyes: 1e and 2e both have advantages over the other, so for years, I happily ran a 1e/2e hybrid. 2e didn't have Assassins? Who gives a shit? Port 'em back in. Half-Orcs have disappeared? Whoop-dee-doo. Use 1e Half-Orcs then. It's easy as pie. Honestly, getting riled up about the differences between 1e and 2e is gaming purist fappery.

Oh, and Dragonlance rocks, so suck on that, grognards. :p Yes, that's an indirect razz at all the greybeards at K&K... ;)

The clearest indication of swinery in 2e, and there are not too many  IN THE CORE RULES is the change of the sage rules. Now that´s ass-tastic. Bonus: the latecoming Sages & Specialist DOES NOT HAVE SAGES IN IT!!

Quote from: Benoist;372868At first, sure. Then, when the writer is confronted with misunderstandings, he may be asked to clarify (which Elliot did). He then explains what he meant (as I did), and it then falls on the other participants in the conversation to ask for more clarifications, or present their own points of view in response to the arguments.

See. If anything, right here, in this post I just quote here, you're the one who's engaging in pure rethoric for the sake of it. You're also the one who keeps splitting terminological hairs instead of moving on with the conversation, keeps discussing the form, not the actual content. You want to be right, rhetorically - I get it.

So. Can we get passed the pissing contest and go on with the conversation, now? :)

Sure.

IME, 2e is popular with people who want their D&D games to feel like fantasy novels, movies, comics and the like in being used to create games primarily about the relationships of PCs to NPCs within a context that forces them to associate with one another (some sort of plot or quest, usually).

For example: Every 2e setting I've read other than Planescape (Dark Sun, FR, Birthright, Ravenloft, Dragonlance) has named "big bads" who are intended to be recurring, major villains that can provide the context of forced association (they're trying to destroy the world, take over the kingdom, recover the orb of power, etc.) and act as nemeses.

I can't speak to AD&D 1e since I'm less familiar with it, but I'm given to understand that there were fewer big bads / nemeses of this sort in its published material.

I think this kind of nemesis is not the reason people like AD&D 2e, but indicative of the kind of games they were playing and wanted to play with it.

Why 2e and not 1e in this respect? I think it's because TSR's audience had changed from wargamers to people who enjoyed fantasy and sci-fi literature (not that the two don't overlap a bit) over the course of the 80's (I don't know why - someone else will have to explain that part). So they brought on staffers who would produce material more to the taste of that new audience, and began producing material more to the taste of that new audience. That had a snowball effect as new gamers were exposed to that kind of thing and came to see it as what D&D was, and what you did with it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372853If you think those constitute "explanations", comrade, you're using a pretty low bar.

Sorry, "comrade", but you're just being cute. You know what Benoist is trying to say

Quoteif you want to make the point that people focus too much on having plots like in fantasy novels for their games, and that they ought to let PCs explore the world through their characters without the DM forcing them to follow his plot

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372873I think it's because TSR's audience had changed from wargamers to people who enjoyed fantasy and sci-fi literature (not that the two don't overlap a bit) over the course of the 80's (I don't know why - someone else will have to explain that part).

I always thought it was because a lot of the people coming into D&D during its heyday, not having the experience or knowledge necessary to "get" the roots of D&D, had to interpret these weird new games, and the only way to make sense of it was to associate it with something more mainstream (popular fantasy and scifi literature/films), which is an entirely different context from the wargaming roots.

I mean, hell, you even see those sorts of things happening pre-2e.  Greenwood intended FR to be a series of fantasy novels, and admitted that a large portion of his game-time was spent ignoring the rules, and instead developing plots and character relationships through freeform play.  A lot of the early Dragonlance novels were based on actual play reports from Hickman's AD&D 1e group, where they would replay the same fight/scenario again and again until just the right series of events occurred to create an interesting piece in a story. And all of this is ignoring Arneson's weird houserules for OD&D.

"Story" focused play is nearly as old as D&D itself, it's just a subset of people choosing to do something different with the tools given to them.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372875Sorry, "comrade", but you're just being cute. You know what Benoist is trying to say

I am certainly capable of puzzling it out, but I dislike having to parse obfuscatory jargon to retrieve relatively simple points. I also think that the terminology packs in assumptions and positions that don't exist when the same statement is restated in plain language.

Quote from: Peregrin;372879I always thought it was because a lot of the people coming into D&D during its heyday, not having the experience or knowledge necessary to "get" the roots of D&D, had to interpret these weird new games, and the only way to make sense of it was to associate it with something more mainstream (popular fantasy and scifi literature/films), which is an entirely different context from the wargaming roots.

It's entirely possible as an explanation for why the audience changed.

QuoteI mean, hell, you even see those sorts of things happening pre-2e.  Greenwood intended FR to be a series of fantasy novels, and admitted that a large portion of his game-time was spent ignoring the rules, and instead developing plots and character relationships through freeform play.  A lot of the early Dragonlance novels were based on actual play reports from Hickman's AD&D 1e group, where they would replay the same fight/scenario again and again until just the right series of events occurred to create an interesting piece in a story. And all of this is ignoring Arneson's weird houserules for OD&D.

"Story" focused play is nearly as old as D&D itself, it's just a subset of people choosing to do something different with the tools given to them.

I don't doubt that. I've got no problem with people using D&D to do it, either.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372873For example: Every 2e setting I've read other than Planescape (Dark Sun, FR, Birthright, Ravenloft, Dragonlance) has named "big bads" who are intended to be recurring, major villains that can provide the context of forced association (they're trying to destroy the world, take over the kingdom, recover the orb of power, etc.) and act as nemeses.

Just a minor point, wouldn't one be safe in assuming Planescape also has named BBEGs in the named Demons and Devils? I mean Demogorgon, Asmodeus, Orcus, etc. are pretty big, bad, and evil... and they have names.

Genre Emulation would be for example:

Taking a module written for standard high fantasy like B2: Keep on the Borderlands and rewriting it for two different settings.  One Howard's Hyperborea and the other Tolkien's Middle-Earth.  In each case, the setup of the Keep and the Caves would have different backgrounds, opponents, plots, encounters, etc.. all designed to change the feel of the module so it fits better into the genre of the original setting.

However, while I am making changes to accomodate different genres, I am still coming from the same perspection of Immersion.  I am trying to create a Sword and Sorcery world or Tolkienian Fantasy world and the changes I make are focused on emulating that genre, by making those worlds as realistic as possible when compared to the originals.

Fiction Emulation would be rewriting that module with more of a focus on literary devices: Plot, Protagonists, Antagonists, Drama.  Nothing wrong with this approach, in fact everything other then 100% randomized sandbox gaming needs to incorporate these to some degree.

What Benoist was getting to I think is that if you start with a priority of Fiction Emulation then right there from the start you are prioritizing:

Literary elements > world-building

Now, does that equal story-gaming?  No.  However, once you start that way, taking the literary emulation further eventually does lead to:

Story > Immersion aka. Narrativism or Story-Gaming


Can you do both Genre and Fiction emulation thus getting the feel of both a Sword and Sorcery world and a Conan story without becoming a Storygame?  Sure, Barbarians of Lemuria is a good example of that.

Quote from: Sigmund;372890Just a minor point, wouldn't one be safe in assuming Planescape also has named BBEGs in the named Demons and Devils? I mean Demogorgon, Asmodeus, Orcus, etc. are pretty big, bad, and evil... and they have names.

I never found them focused on as prominently as say Szass Tam or Fzoul Chembryl in FR, the Sorceror Kings in Dark Sun, or Kitiara and Arakis in Dragonlance. But yes, they definitely have the potential to be nemeses. I only have Hellbound, the Planeswalker's Handbook and the Monstrous Compendium for PS though, so they may have done stuff in some of the Planes of... as well.

Although I'm going at things from the other side, a lot of what Benoist says makes sense to me. Basically the division is whether you want:

A. To have the characters live in the sort of world that's described in fantasy literature.

or

B. To have the character do the sort of things that the heroes of fantasy literature are described as doing.

The two aren't as easy to combine as it seems. In most fantasy literature the characters are insanely lucky and survive "certain death" over and over (just look at all of the good luck on top of the massive amounts of skill it took for Conan to get out of the various scrapes that he got into) and there is coincidence by the bucketload.

If you take A at face value (trying to have your game represent what it's like to live in a fantasy world) then the PCs won't have the advantage of the bucketloads of luck and coincidence that most fantasy protagonists have as well as all of the sorts of things that happen in fantasy literature because it serves the purpose of the story rather than being what is most "realistic" or "likely" in that situation.

If order to get B (characters doing the sorts of things that fantasy heroes do) you need to have something more than just rules that manage fantasy world physics. You need some way of taking those rules and making the PCs have the same sort of non-random luck as fantasy literature heroes have and some way of generating all of the various (unrealistic/unlikely) coincidences that drive fantasy literature. The only way to do this is by having the DM fudge things left and right or by introducing metagame mechanics.

So there's basically a few different ways of trying to manage the competing demands of A and B.

I. Telling B to fuck off and focusing on A. The most important thing you want here is Immersion. (Old School)

II. Having rules built for A (even if the text says differently) and then have the GM fudge things left and right in order to make the actual game play look more like B. The most important thing here is the Story. (Middle School, 2ed, most WW games etc.)

III. Telling A to fuck off and focusing on B. The most important thing here is Fictional Emulation. (Indie)

IV. Not really giving a fuck rules-wise about A or B really and just wanting lots of cool fights. The GM can still inject a lot of A and B into the game, but the rules themselves don't do it. The most important thing here is Game Balance (4ed etc.)

The basic mentality put forward by 2ed is the most II-ish of the edition of D&D and this worked well as a compromise for all of the different sorts of game styles for a while, but a lot of the people who want B more than A eventually gave up on D&D altogether and went on to WW games or Indie games (Edward's infamous comment about "brain damage" is that II is a really dumb way of trying to get B and we should try III instead if we want B). With the people who want B not really playing D&D anymore, the people who wanted more A don't have any reason to compromise and could happily go back to older playstyles.

In any case I like both Old School and Indie stuff but I really really hate the sort of gameplay that 2ed and WW seem to focus on (railroaded epic plot in a can).

In a lot of ways 2ed style gameplay is unpopular since it goes strongly against both Old School and Indie ideas so it doesn't have any strong fanbase left.

Quote from: Peregrin;372879I always thought it was because a lot of the people coming into D&D during its heyday, not having the experience or knowledge necessary to "get" the roots of D&D, had to interpret these weird new games, and the only way to make sense of it was to associate it with something more mainstream (popular fantasy and scifi literature/films), which is an entirely different context from the wargaming roots.

I can say that this was true for me.  My interest in D&D came in 1982*, when I was 10, after playing an extemporaneous session of BD&D on my cousin's patio one afternoon that a friend of his ran.  

From there I picked up the Moldvay BD&D set from either K-Mart or Magic Mart, and either proceeded to find other people at school who knew the game or else recruited friends of mine to play, my memory is pretty foggy on that sequence.

None of us had any notion of what wargaming was, much less that this D&D game was part of such tradition.  Instead, we all somehow puzzled out ways to do what we wanted with the game, and the primary sources for us were pop culture:  comics such as Conan the Barbarian, but also titles like The Micronauts; Saturday morning cartoons (Thundarr; Tarzan and the Super 7); assorted live-action shows such as Star Trek, and PBS re-broadcasts of Doctor Who; the usual fantasy and SF movies; and whatever genre fiction we'd read at that point.

At some point, I had figured out that there was a small hobby shop in the area and bought some of my gaming material there, but it wasn't a place where I ever went to play games due to it being about 15 miles from where I lived and not really doing much driving at that age.

It wasn't until I was in college that I met anyone who was /had been involved in wargaming, and even among the older gamers that I played with, it didn't seem to have been something they held onto once they were into RPGs.  




* This is actually something of a guess, as I don't recall precisely the year.  Given that I bought the Moldvay D&D basic set and not the Mentzer, I would assume that it was before '83 at any rate, or else my area was just lagging far behind the times, which is a strong possibility.)

First of all Daztur, that was a very interesting and well-reasoned, though-provoking response, so thanks.

I appreciate that when making high level distinctions one has to make generalisations, so I'll try not to nitpick, however there are some conclusions you draw I'm not sure I entirely agree with.  

You draw the distinction between two types of games/gamers.

A. To have the characters live in the sort of world that's described in fantasy literature.

B. To have the character do the sort of things that the heroes of fantasy literature are described as doing.


I think the split is correct but not necessarily the definition. Specifically I don't think the description of 'A' is quite accurate. It is implicit in most roleplaying games that you are playing adventurers of some description. In D&D you don't normally stay home and keep working the farm. The classes and abilities the rules cover are all modelled on the heroes of fantasy literature. So it's not really just about living in a fantasy world, it's living like a fantasy hero in a fantasy world.

But I agree there is a difference and I think this down to the importance given to dramatic structure.

Type B games want to have a dramatic structure. As you say typically heroes that beat the odds, the tempo of the adventure will tend to increases in intensity, the stakes escalate leading to a big climax.  

Type A game is more like an MMO. The world does not revolve around the characters, you choose your own destiny, make your own way and if you do well you will be rewarded if you do poorly you will suck.  

Also I'm not entirely sure I agree with the Type A = immersion = Old School assertion. Of course immersion a tricky term, we seem to debate exactly what we mean by it on this forum at least once a week. That said a lot of A Type adventures (for instance published dungeons), don't really portray a fantasy world in any sort of logical or naturalistic way - quite often they are deliberately jarring, with challenges that rely on OOC knowledge or aimed at the player's skills to solve rather the character's. That for me is not immersive. Or it may be immersive in the way that a FPS game is immersive (it draws you into the game) but it's not immersive in sense of getting into the mind of your character.


I suspect, and I stress merely suspect, a lot of players would ideally want both A and B but have been put off B by too many bad experiences. For while it is fairly easy to run a decent Type A game, Type B games not so much. I'm sure we've all been in hellish games in which the player characters are no more passengers on the GM's personal fantasy ride. But I do think it is possible to combine both A and B, that is to say games which respect the players freedom to make meaningful choices and yet will (with a little gentle nudging by the GM) gravitate towards dramatic situations that reflect the fiction. Pendragon scenarios seemed particularly good at this.

Daztur> "Incoherent" games are by far more popular than "pure" ones of any of the types. It's the most obvious thing that Edward overlooked, and it's something that the OSR doesn't seem to get much either.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372943Daztur> "Incoherent" games are by far more popular than "pure" ones of any of the types. It's the most obvious thing that Edward overlooked, and it's something that the OSR doesn't seem to get much either.

"OSR"? Who are you talking about?

There are nearly as many positions on this amongst old-schoolers and bloggers than there are people interested in these games in the first place. I posit that "OSR" in this case makes some extreme opinion look like it's a consensus amongst a group, or groups, of individuals interested in vintage games that is/are not cohesive and do/es not have any consensus on this issue in the first place.

That's the biggest fallacy about what people refer to as "OSR".

Quote from: Benoist;372951"OSR"? Who are you talking about?

There are nearly as many positions on this amongst old-schoolers and bloggers than there are people interested in these games in the first place. I posit that "OSR" in this case makes some extreme opinion look like it's a consensus amongst a group, or groups, of individuals interested in vintage games that is/are not cohesive and do/es not have any consensus on this issue in the first place.

That's the biggest fallacy about what people refer to as "OSR".

The author of the OSP then.

Quote from: Benoist;372951That's the biggest fallacy about what people refer to as "OSR".

There's quite a similar comment for anyone who uses the term "4venger" or "c4bal" or any of that shit.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372953The author of the Old School Primer then.

Matt Finch? How so?

Quote from: Fifth Element;372954There's quite a similar comment for anyone who uses the term "4venger" or "c4bal" or any of that shit.

So you are telling me that the "OSR" acronym is used solely as a mean of derision by people not enjoying vintage games to describe those who do? Sounds like there's some truth to it, to be honest.

Quote from: Benoist;372951"OSR"? Who are you talking about?

There are nearly as many positions on this amongst old-schoolers and bloggers than there are people interested in these games in the first place. I posit that "OSR" in this case makes some extreme opinion look like it's a consensus amongst a group, or groups, of individuals interested in vintage games that is/are not cohesive and do/es not have any consensus on this issue in the first place.

That's the biggest fallacy about what people refer to as "OSR".

Replace "OSR" with "Forge" and it still works.

Quote from: Benoist;372956So you are telling me that the "OSR" acronym is used solely as a mean of derision by people not enjoying vintage games to describe those who do? Sounds like there's some truth to it, to be honest.

No, but I do mean that terms like "4venger" are applied to anyone who plays 4E, regardless of whether they are worthy of derision or not.

Quote from: Fifth Element;372961No, but I do mean that terms like "4venger" are applied to anyone who plays 4E, regardless of whether they are worthy of derision or not.

I'm sure it is applied in this way by some people, yes. I personally have used it to refer to a specific subset of hardcore fans of the game who just cannot help but defend The Game That Can Do No Wrong (TM), but I'm sure it's been used in the way you describe. *nod*

Quote from: Benoist;372962I'm sure it is applied in this way by some people, yes. I personally have used it to refer to a specific subset of hardcore fans of the game who just cannot help but defend The Game That Can Do No Wrong (TM), but I'm sure it's been used in the way you describe. *nod*

You may think that's how you use it, but I can personally guarantee you that it is not.

Quote from: Fifth Element;372963You may think that's how you use it, but I can personally guarantee you that it is not.

I don't give a shit what you think, though if you care about what -I- think (I'm not holding my breath, don't worry) on the matter, I think you've just found an occasion to troll a little bit, and are just all too happy to oblige.

Quote from: Benoist;372955Matt Finch? How so?

The OSP disparages "modern" games and certain styles of play it associates with those games. He even, as you pointed out and quoted over on therpghaven.com, makes up little stereotypical examples to try to isolate the two styles.

Similarly with Sett, Elliott, you, and a number of other vocal posters connected to the OSR on here who go off about "story gaming". "Story gaming" and "Immersion" (or whatever it is this week) are artificial categories of play that don't exist except on message boards. It's like GNS all over again.

For the record: I don't use OSR as a term of derision, but I'm not part of the OSR gang, either. I use it to refer to pretty much the vocal internet posters who talk about about playing older editions of D&D, and of them, mainly the proselytic arm rather than the productive one.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372967The OSP disparages "modern" games and certain styles of play it associates with those games. He even, as you pointed out and quoted over on therpghaven.com, makes up little stereotypical examples to try to isolate the two styles.

What it does is point out the difference between using dice and using descriptions and actions of the part of players to resolve actions in the game. Yes the example is stereotypical, on purpose, and the text does include a disclaimer pointing it out:

Quote from: Matt Finch, Old School PrimerNote: The modern-style GM in these examples is a pretty boring guy when it comes to adding flavor into his game. This isn’t done to make modern-style gaming look bad: we assume most people reading this booklet regularly play modern-style games and know that they aren’t this boring. It’s done to highlight when and how rules are used in modern gaming, as opposed to when and how they aren’t used in oldstyle gaming. So the modern-style GM talks his way through all the rules he’s using, which isn’t how a good modern-style GM usually runs his game.

There is a difference in play style, and the OSP addresses this difference. I don't see it as an attempt to disparage anything. I see how the example can be misconstrued as such, but since it very cleary spells out that it is not such attempt in its disclaimer, I do not. Do with it as you will.

Matt Finch visits these parts from time to time. Maybe he'll clarify.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372967Similarly with Sett, Elliott, you, and a number of other vocal posters connected to the OSR on here who go off about "story gaming". "Story gaming" and "Immersion" (or whatever it is this week) are artificial categories of play that don't exist except on message boards. It's like GNS all over again.

Actually, no, these aren't "artificial" categories. One (story gaming) understands games  as the reenactment of story lines, plots, subplots, with countless GMs out there who try to emulate its tenets and are suddenly surprised that their game went to shit, their players quit because the game was too linear, or they did not talk to the right NPC, went off the map/track/storyline, or felt like none of their choices mattered in the grand scheme of things, whereas the other (immersive gaming) depicts events in the game world as they occur, as examplified in a sandbox style of play, or dungeon/wilderness explorations, or open-ended campaign for instances, where story is the consequence of play after it actually occurred.

I've seen plenty of both types of games, and really, you can talk about forgite bullshit, try to keep the argument squarely focused on terminological hair-splitting (very similar to forgite speech on your part, by the way) and or pure rhetorical wankery, as you've done time and time again on this board, but just because you say something doesn't exist doesn't mean it doesn't. Sorry to say.

Nice try, though. :)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372967The OSP disparages "modern" games and certain styles of play it associates with those games. He even, as you pointed out and quoted over on therpghaven.com, makes up little stereotypical examples to try to isolate the two styles.

Players and fan publishers of old school games do not like the direction many modern games have gone in and speak their mind about what they see is wrong with modern games they don't like and right with older games they do like. This is no different than people who like 4e saying what they like about it and what they don't like about earlier editions.

Matt Finch's Old School Primer is just ONE way to play old school. It is arguably very close to the the way Gary and Dave thought, but it isn't the only way. Yes, Matt's Old School Primer compares the worse way to handle "new school" to his version of "old school" but Matt admits that in the the article and says it is being done to make the differences very clear.  Was that the best way to do it? I don't know, but the article certainly owns up to what it is doing. It's not pretending that all "new school" GMs are as poor as the examples.

Quote from: Benoist;372844Genre emulation in this case implies a color, or feel to the game that is still a role playing game, where you are playing characters in a game world that is "actual" in your mind's eye. You are your character, your character is you.

Fiction emulation implies the implementation of patterns and techniques used to write fiction, which leads to players seeing themselves as "narrators" apart of their characters, which become "protagonists" in a "story" with storylines, plots, subplots. A way to look at the game as a piece of fiction with a narrative, as opposed to a game of immersion and actuality.

The fact that you're not seeing the difference, along with the way you were saying that you don't see anything "wrong" with story gaming, actually validates my point that fiction genre emulation may lead to story gaming. You like that. I don't.

I think you may not be too far off in claiming that story-gaming is rooted in a desire for genre emulation. A genre or setting colour seems to be very high on the list of priorities in most of the games I've been playing over the past few years. But this description of fiction emulation overstates the way literary elements are inserted into "story game" play, at least in my experience.

And something that doesn't seem to have been addressed at all so far is that many story game rpgs stress that PC motivations and actions need to be the central, driving force of the gameplay. This seems directly counter to a lot of published 2e and WW material. Maybe one of the reasons 2e is so widely disliked is that it ultimately alienated both the old-school players, who stuck with 1e and OD&D, and the "story" gamers.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;372967Similarly with Sett, Elliott, you, and a number of other vocal posters connected to the OSR on here who go off about "story gaming". "Story gaming" and "Immersion" (or whatever it is this week) are artificial categories of play that don't exist except on message boards. It's like GNS all over again.

The funny thing here is that Sett is nearly as !!!! about the OSR as our friend J Arcane, and I've never connected myself very closely to the OSR.

What's really going on here is that you're still bearing a grudge over the criticism of 4e, and the counter-criticism of the lame use of history by 4e's defenders.

A bit late but what the hell:

Quote from: Benoist;3726631/ Yes. Removing the Assassin really was all about protecting TSR from lawsuits from people hunting D&D with pitchforks (though it was indeed reintroduced through the backdoor, via Complete Thief's Handbook).

From Zeb Cook on Dragonsfoot
The assassin class created a lot of problems for players and DM's, everything from game abuse to party harmony. It was a class specialized powers for specialized situations that a lot of players insisted should be a general utility in a standard adventuring party which killed the point. Besides which, assassination is more a mindset than a single set of skills. If you RP'd an assassination proper, any character class could do it, they just had to use the skills they had. I didn't argue to remove it to be PC (believe me, I'm not that PC); I felt it created more problems for play than it was worth.

Quote from: Spazmodeus;373004From Zeb Cook on Dragonsfoot
The assassin class created a lot of problems for players and DM's, everything from game abuse to party harmony. It was a class specialized powers for specialized situations that a lot of players insisted should be a general utility in a standard adventuring party which killed the point. Besides which, assassination is more a mindset than a single set of skills. If you RP'd an assassination proper, any character class could do it, they just had to use the skills they had. I didn't argue to remove it to be PC (believe me, I'm not that PC); I felt it created more problems for play than it was worth.

Interesting. Thanks for that.

Quote from: two_fishes;372991I think you may not be too far off in claiming that story-gaming is rooted in a desire for genre emulation. A genre or setting colour seems to be very high on the list of priorities in most of the games I've been playing over the past few years. But this description of fiction emulation overstates the way literary elements are inserted into "story game" play, at least in my experience.

And something that doesn't seem to have been addressed at all so far is that many story game rpgs stress that PC motivations and actions need to be the central, driving force of the gameplay. This seems directly counter to a lot of published 2e and WW material.

Actually I think this applies to most published scenarios. By the very nature published scenarios have to be generic and won't address the specific motivations (unless it's something as basic as "more gold"). Most published scenarios are simply appalling, there is no getting away from that.

On the general theme of terminology and jargon, I agree that this discussion could profit from recognizing the distinction that between "story gaming" (mostly Forge style) and heavily-scripted "storytelling games" (which, in publication history, actually go back to the early 80's at least).

In practice, though, the most prominent "story games" are equally unfriendly to the "in character experience" approach as "storytelling games".

Quote from: two_fishes;372991something that doesn't seem to have been addressed at all so far is that many story game rpgs stress that PC motivations and actions need to be the central, driving force of the gameplay. This seems directly counter to a lot of published 2e and WW material. Maybe one of the reasons 2e is so widely disliked is that it ultimately alienated both the old-school players, who stuck with 1e and OD&D, and the "story" gamers.

That's an interesting bit, there, 2F. I thought there was more of an evolution from the insistance on genre emulation that 2e tried to carry to a step further down the road where fiction emulation became a thing of its own, i.e. importing fiction writing techniques and elements into the game play (the WoD games boom), which led to story gaming (aka forgite storygames), in vaguely chronological order.

Quote from: Benoist;373013That's an interesting bit, there, 2F. I thought there was more of an evolution from the insistance on genre emulation that 2e tried to carry to a step further down the road where fiction emulation became a thing of its own, i.e. importing fiction writing techniques and elements into the game play (the WoD games boom), which led to story gaming (aka forgite storygames), in vaguely chronological order.

Many story games may be a response to the way WoD and 2e forced those literary "fiction emulation" elements into games. I'm thinking of Ron Edwards' hatred of the whole meta-fiction trend in Dragonlance and WoD as well as the way many Forgey games insist on prepping a situation "pregnant with conflict" that has no pre-determined outcome (Dogs in the Vineyard) or where PC goals are mechanically emphasized, forcing players to drive the story, not the GM (Burning Wheel). So the chronology may be roughly correct.

Definitely agreed about the emphasis on meta-fiction and "GM story time" creating problems.

Most of the time I just ignore the "writing techniques" WoD puts in its books, and just run it like a sandbox game, tossing out hooks and interesting NPCs as necessary.  Much more fun than trying to box the players in.

Hell, has anyone read Tracy Hickman's Xtreme Dungeon Mastery?  The whole "Story is Everything!" chapter is basically about how to railroad your players without letting them realize what's going on (freedom within a confined space, but still limiting players to only a handful of outcomes in the end, making the "freedom" earlier in the meta-plot pretty pointless).

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373003The funny thing here is that Sett is nearly as !!!! about the OSR as our friend J Arcane, and I've never connected myself very closely to the OSR.

What's really going on here is that you're still bearing a grudge over the criticism of 4e, and the counter-criticism of the lame use of history by 4e's defenders.

Not really. In case you haven't noticed, I've been ignoring the 4e flame wars here for months now. It's just that the same silly vocabulary used there is still being circulated, and has begun to infest other discussions.

Quote from: Benoist;372974There is a difference in play style, and the OSP addresses this difference. I don't see it as an attempt to disparage anything. I see how the example can be misconstrued as such, but since it very cleary spells out that it is not such attempt in its disclaimer, I do not. Do with it as you will.

I'm not "misconstruing" it. I'm saying that it's an artificial distinction since it doesn't occur in the wild. Matt acknowledges as much in the very disclaimer you noted. And especially since he acknowledges that modern games aren't "that boring" it's spurious to assign that as the "modern" style and the other as the "old school" style.

QuoteActually, no, these aren't "artificial" categories. One (story gaming) understands games  as the reenactment of story lines, plots, subplots, with countless GMs out there who try to emulate its tenets and are suddenly surprised that their game went to shit, their players quit because the game was too linear, or they did not talk to the right NPC, went off the map/track/storyline, or felt like none of their choices mattered in the grand scheme of things, whereas the other (immersive gaming) depicts events in the game world as they occur, as examplified in a sandbox style of play, or dungeon/wilderness explorations, or open-ended campaign for instances, where story is the consequence of play after it actually occurred.

They remain artificial and inaccurate categories because the things they describe coexist in actual gaming groups, and interact with one another in all sorts of interesting ways. These categories are mere regulative ideals for the few people who care about them, without merit as descriptions of what actually goes on at tables.

QuoteI've seen plenty of both types of games, and really, you can talk about forgite bullshit, try to keep the argument squarely focused on terminological hair-splitting (very similar to forgite speech on your part, by the way) and or pure rhetorical wankery, as you've done time and time again on this board, but just because you say something doesn't exist doesn't mean it doesn't. Sorry to say.

Nice try, though. :)

I don't know if you're aware of this, but the burden of proof is on the person asserting the existence of a thing. Whining about how I'm mean and nasty for claiming that you're full of shit doesn't show the existence of the pure types of these categories outside of your head.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373067Not really. In case you haven't noticed, I've been ignoring the 4e flame wars here for months now. It's just that the same silly vocabulary used there is still being circulated, and has begun to infest other discussions.

Well, there have been some attempts to reexamine the use of the word "immersion"; in my opinion, the term itself has been poisoned and it would be good if it went away. But the various concepts behind it are each fairly rigorous once they're teased apart from each other.

You yourself once suggested "mimetic" vs. "formalistic" as categories. I don't think those particular words are absolutely necessary--there's already vocabulary available, not to mention longhand explanations as necessary. But the conceptual distinction is valid and it allows people to express a preference, analyze reactions to design and cultural developments, and so forth.

Unfortunately, once you do draw a distinction and use it in this fashion, that doesn't mean--not by a long shot--that people are now going to agree on matters of taste. I think the thing to do at this point is to accept that tastes differ.

I realize that theoretical discussion and criticism have a tendency to amplify differences. But if your first resort, in response to someone trying to articulate their reasons for liking or disliking something, is to try to completely invalidate the categories which underlie their perceptions, that's intellectually dishonest.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373072Well, there have been some attempts to reexamine the use of the word "immersion"; in my opinion, the term itself has been poisoned and it would be good if it went away. But the various concepts behind it are each fairly rigorous once they're teased apart from each other.

Entirely possible. I'm not saying that all conceptual thinking about RPGs is bad. A lot of it is, though.

If I had to point to a single, consistent conceptual problem that drives me absolutely nuts and which I think is obviously a problem when it's pointed out, it's the confusion between systems and styles of play (and, as a corollary, the belief that one causes the other). It's not the only problem, but it's one that I see being pretty consistently made.

QuoteYou yourself once suggested "mimetic" vs. "formalistic" as categories. I don't think those particular words are absolutely necessary--there's already vocabulary available, not to mention longhand explanations as necessary. But the conceptual distinction is valid and it allows people to express a preference, analyze reactions to design and cultural developments, and so forth.

"Mimetic" and "formalist" refer to game system types, not styles of play. Because of the importance I place on playing styles, I don't talk about that distinction very much, and I don't claim that the two sides of the distinction are mutually exclusive (in fact, I've mentioned several times in the past that it's a spectrum). I also tend to avoid using those terms unless absolutely necessary, as my own concession to avoiding jargon.

Regarding "story game" and "immersion", I really don't think they're good distinctions. The discussion prior to their use on this thread was a superior analysis of preferences because it was forced to speak to specifics. Once people can simply lump themselves into one category or another, they no longer have to engage with the texts under discussion or their experiences of playing the game (or even just their expectations about what playing it will be like). I think this is a bad thing, that it encourages lazy thinking, and that it reduces the quality of discussion.

QuoteUnfortunately, once you do draw a distinction and use it in this fashion, that doesn't mean--not by a long shot--that people are now going to agree on matters of taste. I think the thing to do at this point is to accept that tastes differ.

I have no problem with tastes differing in this context. We're not debating the merit of any particular taste - I've never had a problem with OSR people enjoying OD&D, nor with 4e people enjoying 4e.

QuoteI realize that theoretical discussion and criticism have a tendency to amplify differences. But if your first resort, in response to someone trying to articulate their reasons for liking or disliking something, is to try to completely invalidate the categories which underlie their perceptions, that's intellectually dishonest.

It would be intellectually dishonest if I didn't really think that the categories are bad ones with pernicious effects on thinking and writing about games. But I do. It's a disagreement about foundations, rigour and care in thinking and writing, just like it has been for the last, what, four years now?

And for the record, the post which started this whole shitstorm, the "bafflegab" comment, was in response to Soylent Green's confusion about what the hell all the jargon Benoist started throwing at him meant. Benoist's comment about him was high-handed, pretentious and condescending if you're at all aware of Benoist's opinion on "story gaming". A perfect example of the corrosive effect of jargon.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373069I don't know if you're aware of this, but the burden of proof is on the person asserting the existence of a thing.

Honestly, all I see is you going on and on with rhetorical bullshit, silly hair splitting and a basic intellectual dishonesty I'm tired to have to deal with. There's no content in your post. Just negative mental fencing which is supposedly destined to fix what you perceive as my -how did you put it?- high-handed, pretentious and condescending comment. If there's someone condescending here, it's you, dipshit. The "corrosive effect of jargon" you're talking about is something you, yourself, alone, fabricated from my comments. You somehow think it's okay, and nobody will notice. That makes you a whole lot more pretentious than I am, trust me.

But you know what? Whatever. As I said, I'm tired of your bullshit. We went on for several pages on this thread, and that's just enough. I have better things to do. If you enjoy wasting your time, more power to you, I guess. Good day! :)

Quote from: Benoist;373110Honestly, all I see is you going on and on with rhetorical bullshit, silly hair splitting and a basic intellectual dishonesty I'm tired to have to deal with. There's no content in your post. Just negative mental fencing which is supposedly destined to fix what you perceive as my -how did you put it?- high-handed, pretentious and condescending comment. If there's someone condescending here, it's you, dipshit. The "corrosive effect of jargon" you're talking about is something you, yourself, alone, fabricated from my comments. You somehow think it's okay, and nobody will notice. That makes you a whole lot more pretentious than I am, trust me.

But you know what? Whatever. As I said, I'm tired of your bullshit. We went on for several pages on this thread, and that's just enough. I have better things to do. If you enjoy wasting your time, more power to you, I guess. Good day! :)

A few years ago on this forum, pseudoephedrine claimed that anarchy was a stable and desireable form of gevernment. If that statement doesn't convince you that he is full of shit, then nothing ever will.

Quote from: jeff37923;373115A few years ago on this forum, pseudoephedrine claimed that anarchy was a stable and desireable form of gevernment. If that statement doesn't convince you that he is full of shit, then nothing ever will.

Ah, Jeffy, I didn't realise someone had rung the idiot bell to call you in. If you're going to keep on bringing up my political positions, it would help if you could correctly state them. Were you someone of say, average human intelligence, I might ask what relevance my politics has to this thread, but I'm not sure you know what a big word like "relevance" means. Don't worry though, you're only a few modules of Hooked on Phonics away from at least being able to pronounce it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;372544Odd that a lot of complaints seem to be round modules, settings and supplements. All optional stuff you totally don't need.
 
For me 2e was just a streamlined form of AD&D with more character flexibility. As I said someplace else the flexibility was good becuase it was much more roleplay based flexibility than power play. Kits didn't really make you tough (that daft tree armed tree ranger aside) they just fleshed out more stuff. Priest spheres made priests weaker if anything.
The extra non-weapon proficiencies were crudely done but definitely an improvement.
 
Now Skills and Powers was broken. and after that I wasn't buying any product because I was at Uni and running my own stuff.
 
The stuff about devils and demons is incredibly trivial and at least by me totally ignored.
 

 
This is largely why I liked 2e.  I didn't have much money at the time and didn't buy most of the settings.  I picked up many of the splat books used but we mostly just made our own campaigns, sometimes mixing in 1e modules.  By the time the Skills & Powers books came out, I had gained enough sense to see that they were unplaytested crap so they didn't influence my game.  
 
I didn't care about the trivial earlier changes like loss of assassin and stupid names for demons.  I was spared from the metaplots and the railroady adventures (I've read a few in pdf or from others - wow were many of the modules bad).  If you just compared phb to phb, 2e was a cleaned up version that worked better with more flexibility.  
 
Warthur was right that Birthright should have been an addon, not a setting.  I borrowed a friend's copy to add kingdom management to my game and it was nice to have estimates for money and troops.  But the setting was too vanilla.

Quote from: Sigmund;372567To me, BR kicks FR's Frankensteinian, "everything but the kitchen sink", chock full 'o Mary Sues ass.

This is true, but I really wouldn't play in either one.  I'd go with the generic BR over Greenwood's masturbation fantasies added on by a hundred failed writers if forced to choose.

Quote from: BenoistBut you know what? Whatever. As I said, I'm tired of your bullshit. We went on for several pages on this thread, and that's just enough. I have better things to do. If you enjoy wasting your time, more power to you, I guess. Good day! :)

Good, get out of the thread you sloppy, whinging cunt. And don't throw your gibberish around these forums any more if you don't want to put up with me pointing out how full of shit it is.

Quote from: Nicephorus;373121If you just compared phb to phb, 2e was a cleaned up version that worked better with more flexibility.

Talking about the PHB, I can see how you're coming to that conclusion, and there's more than a little truth to it, on an organizational standpoint.

The DMG is another matter entirely, to me. It is -the- worst DMG produced for any iteration of (A)D&D, in my opinion. Not because of its organization, which is way better than the First Ed DMG, we'll agree on that, but because it has no "soul". There's nothing in there akin to the Gygaxian spirit, the feel of conversation from one DM to another. There are lists of magic items, a bunch of tools, sure. But no real personality there.

The MM is a different animal altogether. I much preferred the way it was done in First Ed personally, with its own hardcover. The idea of the binder you could add pages to from different supplements and appendices is a very good one, but the implementation failed miserably because -imo- it neglected to consider who the users were: mostly kids who lose pages, rip the puncture holes apart, and so on, so forth. Result? Twenty years later, I still have my First ed MM. The 2e MM didn't survive. The binder's still somewhere, in France, but there are so many pages missing it's not funny.
 

Quote from: Nicephorus;373121Warthur was right that Birthright should have been an addon, not a setting.  I borrowed a friend's copy to add kingdom management to my game and it was nice to have estimates for money and troops.  But the setting was too vanilla.

Loved Birthright. Still do. :)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373123Good, get out of the thread you sloppy, whinging cunt. And don't throw your gibberish around these forums any more if you don't want to put up with me pointing out how full of shit it is.

LOL See? THIS is high-handed, pretentious and condescending.
This is ego at work. Learn the difference.
What are you, fifteen years old? :worship:

I'm hooked on phonics! It's been days since I had a fix, though. Last night as i lay in bed, shaking, I saw an eviscerated cat crawl across my ceiling. Rhymes with hat!

Quote from: Benoist;373126LOL See? THIS is high-handed, pretentious and condescending.
This is ego at work. Learn the difference.
What are you, fifteen years old? :worship:

Strong words from a man who thinks the height of wit is "Fuck you!" I see you still consider repetition to be the strongest form of argument you have.

Edit: Also, didn't you just claim you were "tired of [my] bullshit" and had "better things to do"? You're pulling a Sett here.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373128Strong words from a man who thinks the height of wit is "Fuck you!" I see you still consider repetition to be the strongest form of argument you have.

You really crack me up, mister "whinging cunt"/jargon that never was.
Ah, well. Alright. Enough of this.
Have the last word. You "win". :D

Quote from: Benoist;373130You really crack me up, mister "whinging cunt"/jargon that never was.
Ah, well. Alright. Enough of this.
Have the last word. You "win". :D

You did this already. It hasn't gotten any more clever or believable the second time around.

Quote from: Benoist;373124The DMG is another matter entirely, to me.
 
The MM is a different animal altogether. I much preferred the way it was done in First Ed personally, with its own hardcover.

I find that I don't use DMGs that much other than for tables.  Hold for editions 1 -3.  (never played 4).  
 
The MM binder idea is cool - for the first 10 minutes.  It was unwieldy so I would take pages out for a game and leave it home.  then I would forget to put them back and couldn't find them.  Of course, the pages tore.  I think late 2e put out a standard book format.  
 
 
To me, genre emulation doesn't have to be about turning a game into a story with worrying about plot and structuring things like a book.  It's more about tweaking mechanics to achieve a universe similar to a work of fiction and then turning the characters loose in it.  For example, how common are magic items and spellcasters in the body of fiction?  Are the heroes godlike or more good as 1.5 men?  Then the characters are faced with the same sorts of decisions as they would be the the fictional world.  This is always I've used published settings and created my own settings.  "Usable new spell system and nice map."  I hate NPCs running the show and metaplot that isn't a direct product of player actions.
 
The absolute last thing I want to do is recreate the plot and characters of a movie or book.  
 
I've noticed that there are two types of Forgotten Realms players.  For the first, it has a nice set of maps, some cool locations and kingdoms that are recognizable as standard fantasy fare.  It saves them time so they can start running games quickly and are able to answer player questions like "how far to the nearest city."  It's not really different than Greyhawk.
 
But there are also people who are really into FR.  I never play in FR games so that I don't have to run into these people.

Quote from: Nicephorus;373133To me, genre emulation doesn't have to be about turning a game into a story with worrying about plot and structuring things like a book.  It's more about tweaking mechanics to achieve a universe similar to a work of fiction and then turning the characters loose in it.  For example, how common are magic items and spellcasters in the body of fiction?  Are the heroes godlike or more good as 1.5 men?  Then the characters are faced with the same sorts of decisions as they would be the the fictional world.  This is always I've used published settings and created my own settings.  "Usable new spell system and nice map."  I hate NPCs running the show and metaplot that isn't a direct product of player actions.
 
The absolute last thing I want to do is recreate the plot and characters of a movie or book.

Yes. That's what I was talking about when I was separating genre emulation (emulating the feel of the genre itself, its colors and patterns) from fiction emulation (importing narrative techniques and motifs into the game from the genre emulated). You like genre emulation, despise fiction emulation.

I relate with your feelings, obviously. :)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373131You did this already. It hasn't gotten any more clever or believable the second time around.

Borr-ring...

Anyway, Pseudo, my beef with you in this thread, aside from the fact that you're continuing this argument with Benoist long after the substantive issue has been resolved (i.e., we know what Benoist means) is that you dredged up a beef with me (and Sett) for absolutely no reason connected with the actual topic. Here's the real connection:

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373079If I had to point to a single, consistent conceptual problem that drives me absolutely nuts and which I think is obviously a problem when it's pointed out, it's the confusion between systems and styles of play (and, as a corollary, the belief that one causes the other).

This has everything to do with the 4e discussions, nothing to do with this one. If anything this thread has seen agreement on all sides that 2e's system isn't strongly tied to the style of play that has helped give 2e a bad name.

That isn't to say I agree with your quote, immediately above, but that's something that belongs in another thread entirely.

Quote from: Nicephorus;373133I find that I don't use DMGs that much other than for tables.  Hold for editions 1 -3.  (never played 4).  
 
The MM binder idea is cool - for the first 10 minutes.  It was unwieldy so I would take pages out for a game and leave it home.  then I would forget to put them back and couldn't find them.  Of course, the pages tore.  I think late 2e put out a standard book format.

It did, I own it (two copies in fact). It was out by the early 90's (I think I got my first copy around 1993-94).
 

QuoteI've noticed that there are two types of Forgotten Realms players.  For the first, it has a nice set of maps, some cool locations and kingdoms that are recognizable as standard fantasy fare.  It saves them time so they can start running games quickly and are able to answer player questions like "how far to the nearest city."  It's not really different than Greyhawk.
 
But there are also people who are really into FR.  I never play in FR games so that I don't have to run into these people.

There are canon nazis for almost every published setting out there. In FR's case it's particularly prone to produce that kind of personality because (IMHO, of course) the only thing that makes FR better than a homebrew is that it has a greater level of detail than most people would ever put into their homebrew settings while still resembling many of those settings in broad enough strokes to be familiar.

I'd contrast it with Dark Sun or Planescape, both of which have all sorts of other unique stuff going for them. For FR, the detail is what draws people in.

BTW, don't take that as a defense of FR. I'm not a fan. But I do recall when I first read it being absolutely amazed at how every innkeeper across Faerun seemed to have a name, class and backstory, and I've heard that sort of thing a lot from people who do still play it.

Quote from: Nicephorus;373133The MM binder idea is cool - for the first 10 minutes.  It was unwieldy so I would take pages out for a game and leave it home.  then I would forget to put them back and couldn't find them.  Of course, the pages tore.  I think late 2e put out a standard book format.

The MM binder is IMO emblematic of everything wrong with 2E AD&D (and TSR of that era). Which is to say it probably seemed like a good idea in the brainstorming session where it was proposed -- one page per monster so each DM can organize the book as they prefer and only have to carry with them the subset of monsters they're actually using instead of 3+ big hardback books -- but the actual product was made of pure, undiluted fail. Not only did it (pretty much inevitably) end up being way more inconvenient and taking up way more space than the traditional book-model, not only did the format pretty much guarantee that the most-used pages were going to get ripped and lost, but it wasn't even usable in its intended fashion because most monsters were printed two to a sheet -- one monster on the front, a different monster on the back -- so you couldn't really customize its organization, and couldn't even store it in straight alphabetical order, because frequently new monsters would fall between the front and back sides of previously-released pages.

Perhaps this idea could have worked if the monsters had been printed one per sheet (though considering how much filler-material had to be included to get most monster descriptions up to one page I have no idea what they would have done with twice the space -- perhaps a short fiction-piece starring each monster?) and on thicker, reinforced pages, but then we're looking at an even bigger space-hog, requiring several 2" thick binders just to get the "canon" monsters from the 1E books, not to mention all the additions and setting-specific monsters that followed.

It seems pretty clear that TSR announced (and sold to Random House) the MM binder because it seemed like a cool idea without giving any real consideration to all of the practical hurdles and limitations until it was too late, and then even when those issues became obvious they still stuck with the format for several years, out of a) laziness, b) inertia, c) unwillingness to admit they'd screwed up, or d) all of the above.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373135Borr-ring...

Anyway, Pseudo, my beef with you in this thread, aside from the fact that you're continuing this argument with Benoist long after the substantive issue has been resolved (i.e., we know what Benoist means) is that you dredged up a beef with me (and Sett) for absolutely no reason connected with the actual topic. Here's the real connection:

This has everything to do with the 4e discussions, nothing to do with this one. If anything this thread has seen agreement on all sides that 2e's system isn't strongly tied to the style of play that has helped give 2e a bad name.

We're not disagreeing about the system here, Elliott. Most of this thread has been about settings, modules, supps and the like. And I guarantee you there's no consensus here about whether 2e's settings, modules and supplements force players to use them or play them in a certain way or not (or which ones do, if some or all do).

Quote from: T. Foster;373140Perhaps this idea could have worked if the monsters had been printed one per sheet (though considering how much filler-material had to be included to get most monster descriptions up to one page I have no idea what they would have done with twice the space -- perhaps a short fiction-piece starring each monster?) and on thicker, reinforced pages, but then we're looking at an even bigger space-hog, requiring several 2" thick binders just to get the "canon" monsters from the 1E books, not to mention all the additions and setting-specific monsters that followed.

Variant rules for monsters might have worked to fill up space. Think like the various types of hydra, or the age tables for dragons, but for every monster. Elf sub-types alone could probably fill both sides of a page.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373141We're not disagreeing about the system here, Elliott. Most of this thread has been about settings, modules, supps and the like.

Again, your issue regarding the connection between systems and styles of play is irrelevant.

QuoteAnd I guarantee you there's no consensus here about whether 2e's settings, modules and supplements force players to use them or play them in a certain way or not (or which ones do, if some or all do).

There may not be consensus, but there's no contention either, unless you can point to someone who's actually claiming that the 2e materials "forced" anyone to do anything.

The closest I've seen, that I can recall, is people saying that the 2e materials as whole continued and amplified a trend toward plotted adventures and adventures situated within a metaplot. The claim is about an aggregate trend, in numbers and emphasis. Maybe there are exceptions.

To complete my thoughts from my previous post...

Those sorts of adventures still contain usable material for non-story-plotted games, but they require more customization than a location-based adventure or a situational scenario, and more of the page count is wasted.

Also, I think it's very hard to utterly disconnect the style of a printed adventure and the way it's actually going to be played. If you have an inexperienced GM who doesn't know what he or she wants to do, then the adventure as printed looks like a model to follow. For that matter if you have a GM who believes that scene-based pre-plotting is a good idea (and note, I'm not saying it is or isn't, for a given group), then an adventure written that way is much more attractive and much easier to use.

So...of course it'd be best to collect some real data on actual play to see how those materials impacted people's gaming. The best we can do here is collect anecdotes; however, I think the anecdotes tend to support the idea that e.g. Dragonlance in play was a plotted railroad. Some people liked that, some people hated it. You'll have to show me the people who say they used the DL modules to construct a sandbox. (That DL was a 1e phenomenon is irrelevant, we already agree that 2e RAW isn't railroady.)

I liked 2e AD&D, as I feel that it polished up 1e AD&D with some tweaks (better, IMO).

Yes, the binder concept for the MM was great in theory, but a disaster in use.  As noted previously, the pages invariably ripped and came loose.  The binder was bigger and bulkier than a softcover or hardback book.

A failing of DL, IMHO, was using the characters from the novels as pre-generated characters for the module series.  Not only did it re-enforce play style and choice to mirror the events in the novels, it also created a disconnect between what players envisioned in their mind's eyes for those characters' ability scores, classes, and levels and what was presented in the modules as the pre-generated characters of the characters from the novels.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373120Ah, Jeffy, I didn't realise someone had rung the idiot bell to call you in.

No need for a bell, your pretentious condescending nature screams sophomoric pseudointellectual loud enough.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;373120If you're going to keep on bringing up my political positions, it would help if you could correctly state them. Were you someone of say, average human intelligence, I might ask what relevance my politics has to this thread, but I'm not sure you know what a big word like "relevance" means.

See? not only is your misguided support of anarchy relevant to the discussion, because it screams lazy thinking at the top of its lungs which you are doing more of here, it is valid. You are a puppy, you come in and in your youthful enthusiasm chew up the surroundings and then pridefully pee on the floor, thinking that it will substitute for logical arguement. Why don't you go back to the coffee shop and play while the others continue with their discussion? We promise to throw you a bone to gnaw on.

Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;372399BS.

Spelljammer was the JESUS setting.  It gave everyone everything they ever wanted in a flood of insightful, out-of-the-box thinking and jaw-dropping originality:

The waning empire of Space Elves; though past their absolute dominion over all that came to pass in the crystal spheres, they still engender contempt in everyone else with their aloofness and arrogance.

Differentiating space orcs from ground orcs by spelling their racial name backwards.  Scro?  Pure awesome.

Porting in you favorite races from EVERY TSR setting (not all of them, I know).  Space Drow and Kender.

Hippo men.  With Pistols.

Damn straight!

Honestly, the problem with 2E is that it made the game more interesting than the ridiculously dry, rigidly interpreted "dungeon delve setting" material 1E had become bogged down with. 1E got me in to RPGs, I'll grant it that, but it was 2nd edition that got me back to AD&D. I'd been wandering around for years enjoying Dragonquest, Runequest, Palladium and T&T when 2nd edition popped up and my weekly college group talked me in to picking it up. It became my main fantasy system for the next eleven years.

The fact that many people today and in retrospect disliked it and love to talk about how much they dislike it doesn't bother me; those were the kinds of gamers I was clearly avoiding back then anyway...boring simulationists who couldn't handle the much more interesting fluff and diversity 2E brought to the game.

Jeff might be technically more stupid than Pseudo, but he´s also more right!

Quote from: Drohem;373152A failing of DL, IMHO, was using the characters from the novels as pre-generated characters for the module series.  Not only did it re-enforce play style and choice to mirror the events in the novels, it also created a disconnect between what players envisioned in their mind's eyes for those characters' ability scores, classes, and levels and what was presented in the modules as the pre-generated characters of the characters from the novels.

What about the folks who played the modules first, then read the books?

Seanchai

Quote from: Settembrini;373165Jeff might be technically more stupid than Pseudo, but he´s also more right!

Best back-handed compliment I have recieved all day. :D

Quote from: Seanchai;373180What about the folks who played the modules first, then read the books?

Seanchai

Fuck them.

Quote from: Nicephorus;373133The MM binder idea is cool - for the first 10 minutes.  It was unwieldy so I would take pages out for a game and leave it home.  then I would forget to put them back and couldn't find them.  Of course, the pages tore.  I think late 2e put out a standard book format.

I can confirm that. I came into the hobby in 1994, and you couldn't get the old binder any more even then - the book had become the standard (I believe it came out in 1993).

When you consider that 2E came out in 1989 and 3E came out in 2000 it wasn't even "late" 2E - the binder got phased out well within the first half of 2E's lifetime.

Quote from: jeff37923;373181Best back-handed compliment I have recieved all day. :D

I really mean the "you are right"-part, though.

Quote from: Drohem;373191Fuck them.

Wait! Are paying them first?

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;373280Wait! Are paying them first?

Seanchai

*rolls d% on the random prostitute table*

Saucy Tart. I guess you just got lucky, if you can shut her up, that is. :)

Quote from: camazotz;373161The fact that many people today and in retrospect disliked it and love to talk about how much they dislike it doesn't bother me; those were the kinds of gamers I was clearly avoiding back then anyway...boring simulationists who couldn't handle the much more interesting fluff and diversity 2E brought to the game.

Things in 2E I really liked:

Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, and the original Tome of Magic (it had Wild Magic in it..)

I really disliked the Forgotten Realms under 2E, but I am now in the process of rediscovering it. The 2E Forgotten Realms Adventures book is interesting: it's the transition book from 1E to 2E, this is even before they had the familiar 2e FR logo.

In this book, they had to eliminate entire countries, redraw parts of the map, create new deities, kill off and erase old ones.. and do away with entire classes and races, while re-introducing bards as a base class.

I couldn't find much about goblins busting through walls, so I know it won't meet the high standards of many people, but I really liked it.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;373289I couldn't find much about goblins busting through walls, so I know it won't meet the high standards of many people, but I really liked it.

LOL Idiot. :D

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;373289I couldn't find much about goblins busting through walls, so I know it won't meet the high standards of many people, but I really liked it.

You know, the really amusing thing about that? The FRCG explains why there aren't guards on the walls, it explains how the goblins blew the wall open, and it explains exactly how the goblins knew where to go. (I happened to be rereading it the other day.)

Quote from: Thanlis;373340You know, the really amusing thing about that? The FRCG explains why there aren't guards on the walls, it explains how the goblins blew the wall open, and it explains exactly how the goblins knew where to go. (I happened to be rereading it the other day.)

Perhaps this didn't make it into the finnish translation*. I have to admit I only skimmed the (HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL) sample adventure part, I was mainly interested in the regional writeups (that I actually use).


* The guy who had the issue was finnish.

** Alternate explanation: The Fins are still mad about the Faerunization of Finnish deities from the Kalevala such as Loviatar?

Quote from: Thanlis;373340You know, the really amusing thing about that? The FRCG explains why there aren't guards on the walls, it explains how the goblins blew the wall open, and it explains exactly how the goblins knew where to go. (I happened to be rereading it the other day.)

I just looked at the Raid on Loudwater encounter (p. 8) and I couldn't find any of that information.  Could you please tell us where did you found it?  What page and section?

Quote from: Drohem;373355I just looked at the Raid on Loudwater encounter (p. 8) and I couldn't find any of that information.  Could you please tell us where did you found it?  What page and section?

On page 9, second column, second to last paragraph, we find that the goblin hexer has a scroll among his possessions. We also find that the contents of the scroll are listed on page 18. Page 18 talks about the scroll, and page 19 has the actual contents. First paragraph of the scroll:

"I learned through divinations that the totem is in a shop called Garwan's Curiosities in Loudwater. Go and retrieve it. Use the old barrel of alchemist's fire."

So the goblin leader has divination magic, knew where the target of the goblin raid was, and gave them a barrel of alchemist's fire to break the wall.  FWIW, one flask of Alchemist's Fire does 1d6 fire damage. A 10' wide wall made of stone would have, um, 80 hit points or so. So you'd want about 25 times a flask in the barrel, which I think is no problem. A hip flask is like six ounces, and a beer barrel is way more than 150 ounces. Or it's more potent alchemist's fire (i.e., level 6). Whichever.

Page 14 discusses the Loudwater Patrol, which is the local militia. Relevant quotes: "Loudwater's patrollers are not well trained" and "On average about four Patrol members are on duty at any one time." You've also got four guards on each of the gates (page 10), so it's not entirely surprising that there's nobody watching the southern wall on a non-stop basis. Loudwater isn't under siege, and it isn't a fortification.

Page 13 shows a map of the area. Note that the forest comes right up to the southern wall. This is terrible if you're trying to defend a castle, but we're not. I think there's a bit of a discontinuity in that page 10 also describes Loudwater as "well-defended," mind you. C'est la vie.

Quote from: Thanlis;373375On page 9, second column, second to last paragraph, we find that the goblin hexer has a scroll among his possessions.

Thanks.

Quote from: Bobloblah;372363Except for...wait for it...AD&D 2nd.  This one always puzzles me.  

I agree; I played plenty of 2e and so did all the gamers I knew during that period.  It's some kind of "hip to hate it now" thing because it's not retro-Old School or Still-Underway d20.  It'll be hip again in 10 years.

I liked and defended AD&D 2e way back on this site.

So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise? Obviously you'd want the dmg, phb, and hardcover mm. The Player's Option books should be skipped. The Complete books are what worry/puzzle me.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise? Obviously you'd want the dmg, phb, and hardcover mm. The Player's Option books should be skipped. The Complete books are what worry/puzzle me.

I thought the Fighter, Cleric, and Mage books were alright.  The Cleric book is great if you want to trick out priests of specific deities or cults.  The Mage book is probably the weakest of the three.  I don't recall ever doing anything with the Thief book.

Quote from: jrients;373526I thought the Fighter, Cleric, and Mage books were alright.  The Cleric book is great if you want to trick out priests of specific deities or cults.  The Mage book is probably the weakest of the three.  I don't recall ever doing anything with the Thief book.

The completes server 2 purposes. Additional rules and additional RP opportunities.

The Fighter and Priest are the best on the rule front (note the Psionist is good on rules if you like PSi - which I don't in fantasy games).

They are all good at the roleplay side though. Examples of ways to play wizards outside the bloke in the tall hat with the fireball spell is useful. The complete bard has some great RP ideas.

The complete races are similarly okay.

The only thing you must never ever use is in the otherwise fine complete ranger there is a tree with 3 arms... as a PC .... never ever ever let anyone use this - also drop the rangers 2 weapon style specialism cos it's stupid and has zero logic in term of game balance, roleplay justification or anything else.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise? Obviously you'd want the dmg, phb, and hardcover mm.

Rules-wise that is all you need. AD&D2 shines when it comes to the settings. Even the most stupid of the settings had a lot to offer.

Tome of Magic!!!! Just as AM said.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522The Player's Option books should be skipped.

Actually, I go against the popular choice, there. I loved the Player's Option books when I found out about them (i.e. when they came out, actually), and still think that they were great, exactly as they were intended: toolboxes destined to make whatever you want out of the fairly tight system that was AD&D. On the actual implementation it did suck, but the intent to provide tools for people to customize mechanical aspects of the game, be able to play monsters, etc was a good one, IMO.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise?

See. That's my problem with 2e itself (regardless of the big picture). I struggle to find an answer to this question. I think it's a fine system in and of itself, but I can't really spell out any "WHOA this totally grabbed me by its awesome" moment for me, rules-wise. It's a bland D&D system, to me.

Quote from: Benoist;373540Actually, I go against the popular choice, there. I loved the Player's Option books when I found out about them (i.e. when they came out, actually), and still think that they were great, exactly as they were intended: toolboxes destined to make whatever you want out of the fairly tight system that was AD&D. On the actual implementation it did suck, but the intent to provide tools for people to customize mechanical aspects of the game, be able to play monsters, etc was a good one, IMO.

Giving "points for effort" is a pretty low standard. As I mentioned in one or the other of these threads, almost all of the 2E stuff sounded good in theory, it was just the actual products themselves that sucked. My semi-serious advice to people wanting to draw inspiration from 2E stuff is to read the back-cover or catalog blurb, spend a few minutes flipping through the book, and then put it back and go make up your own stuff (rules/setting/adventure) based on the same idea. Chances are it will be just as good as what TSR produced, maybe even better (and a lot cheaper too) :)

Quote from: jrients;373526I thought the Fighter, Cleric, and Mage books were alright.  The Cleric book is great if you want to trick out priests of specific deities or cults.  The Mage book is probably the weakest of the three.  I don't recall ever doing anything with the Thief book.

I recall the Complete Thief being my favourite of the bunch. Fighter and Wizard were very good as well.

Most of them were at least decent, though I recall the Bard book introducing some seriously overpowered kits. Bladesinger, IIRC?

Quote from: T. Foster;373544Giving "points for effort" is a pretty low standard. As I mentioned in one or the other of these threads, almost all of the 2E stuff sounded good in theory, it was just the actual products themselves that sucked. My semi-serious advice to people wanting to draw inspiration from 2E stuff is to read the back-cover or catalog blurb, spend a few minutes flipping through the book, and then put it back and go make up your own stuff (rules/setting/adventure) based on the same idea. Chances are it will be just as good as what TSR produced, maybe even better (and a lot cheaper too) :)

Well yeah, you're right. It is a low standard.
I guess it's a glass half full/half empty kind of thing, here. :)

As for your advice, I do indeed think, semi-jokingly, that it'd work in a vast majority of cases. Which is saying much, I guess.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise? Obviously you'd want the dmg, phb, and hardcover mm. The Player's Option books should be skipped. The Complete books are what worry/puzzle me.

I thought the Player's Option books were garbage, myself.  I didn't really discover them until about a year ago (though I knew of them when they came out), though, and I'm sure 3.0 coloured my judgement.

PHB, DMG and MM are required, and are all good.  Personally, I'd say that beyond that it's all truly optional.  If you want a little more depth to the rules, check out the Complete Fighter/Thief/Priest/Wizard.  They add a lot of interesting options without (for the most part) going over the top.  Tome of Magic is also good, but I didn't really find anything essential in it.

I've also gotten a lot of use out of many of the DMGR series of DM supplements.  They aren't actually rules supplements, but Campaign Sourcebook, Creative Campaigning, and the Book of Villains still saw lots of use.  The HR series of "historical" supplements have also been great.  Note that I put historical in quotes here, because they are by no means scholarly historical references.  Even so, as long as noone in your group is a jerk, they present more than enough material to run a campaign in the desired time period, even including options for different styles of play (historical, mythical, fantasy).  They include both fluff and crunch.

As others have mentioned, where AD&D2nd really shines is in its settings; NOT its modules, mind you, but the setting material (although some of the setting-specific modules are quite good).  I think a lot of people look at those settings that are stylistically or substantively uninteresting to them and proclaim that they are awful.  This misses the point, I think.  As an analogy, I can appreciate a piece of music from a genre I intensely dislike; my distaste doesn't necessarily override the quality of the playing/composition/lyrics/what have you.  You need to decide what kind of setting grabs you, of course, but if the style of Planescape/Dark Sun/Ravenloft/Al'Qadim/Spelljammer/Birth Right interest you, you will likely find that they are all very well done.

I'm working on rebuilding my 2E collection myself - I remember there was a line of supplements with blue covers that supplemented the DMG in the same way as the brown "Complete" series supplemented the PHB - are any of those good? The only one I have is The Complete Book of Villains, which has essentially no new rules but is a fantastic discussion of how to use villainous NPCs in a game. Likewise, I'd be interested to hear about which of the green-covered books in a similar style (the ones which were guides to building settings based around particular period in Earth's history) were good.

As far as my own supplement recommendations go, like I say, the Complete Book of Villains is good for GMing advice. The Complete Psionicist's Handbook is great if you want to add psionics to 2E - or even 1E, since in my book it's a far better take than 1E presented. The World Builder's Guidebook and the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook are excellent prep aids - I especially liked that the WBG let you start at any point, whether you were taking a top-down or bottom-up approach.

Quote from: Warthur;373557I'm working on rebuilding my 2E collection myself - I remember there was a line of supplements with blue covers that supplemented the DMG in the same way as the brown "Complete" series supplemented the PHB - are any of those good? The only one I have is The Complete Book of Villains, which has essentially no new rules but is a fantastic discussion of how to use villainous NPCs in a game. Likewise, I'd be interested to hear about which of the green-covered books in a similar style (the ones which were guides to building settings based around particular period in Earth's history) were good.

As far as my own supplement recommendations go, like I say, the Complete Book of Villains is good for GMing advice. The Complete Psionicist's Handbook is great if you want to add psionics to 2E - or even 1E, since in my book it's a far better take than 1E presented. The World Builder's Guidebook and the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook are excellent prep aids - I especially liked that the WBG let you start at any point, whether you were taking a top-down or bottom-up approach.

See my previous post.  I don't know WBG and DBG well enough to be sure, but it sounds like DMGR1, 2 and 5 are similar.  Feel free to ask if you have any specific questions.

I think it's unlikely I'll actually run out and purchase any 2e stuff. Some of you may have heard me whine about running out of room on my bookshelves...and for something AD&D-ish, I've already got 1e, Talislanta, Palladium Fantasy 1e, and Bard's Atlantis/Arcanum games.

BUT, jibbajibba's post on Complete Priest way upthread was pretty interesting. It seems to nicely widen the scope of the D&D Cleric...to me, I think that would be essential as a reason to use 2e instead of one of the above. But having done that, now the other classes might seem too 1-dimensional or underpowered. Thus the question. There are so f-in' many of the other books. (http://www.waynesbooks.com/Guides.html) (And that doesn't even include "optional core" books in Wayne's categorization, such as Tome of Magic.)

Why do we need a special book on what are already specialty classes like Bards, Rangers, Paladins, and Druids?

I guess basically what I'm wondering now, after seeing advice on which ones you like: does it unbalance the game to use a Complete book for one class without using the others? Or were the designers bright enough to make it so that e.g. fighters get proficiencies but also start from a lower baseline?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373522So, what is the best of 2e, rules-wise? Obviously you'd want the dmg, phb, and hardcover mm. The Player's Option books should be skipped. The Complete books are what worry/puzzle me.

PO:Combat & Tactics has some good stuff like expanded weapons tables that fixed damage on some weapons like crossbows, miniatures use, and lots of pretty good rules for combat actions from overbearing to martial arts.  The new combat system that takes up half the book is pretty terrible though.

PO:Spells & Magic doesn't have a ton of good stuff, except for one big one.  In the 2e core books they totally fucked up the priest sphere spell lists.  They gave a lot of spells that should be druid only to priests and vice versa.  Spells & Magic finally fixed the lists.

PO:Skills & Powers just didn't sit right with me.  I read it when it came out and sold it off soon after.  Seemed like they got too ambitious with core system changes.  

The Complete books have a lot of good fluff and the kits are easily modified if over/underpowered.  Kits were originally mostly role-play oriented and didn't have a lot of powerful perks until later.  We used them as they came out and didn't have any problems with balance, although I had to tone down some of the later kits.  

And yeah, Tome of Magic rocks.

Dang, I just noticed that the Historical Reference books cover some bitching historical periods. I may just have to start collecting those.

Quote from: jibbajibba;373531The complete bard has some great RP ideas.

Yeah, i played a bitchin' Thespian Bard for a while.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373595I think it's unlikely I'll actually run out and purchase any 2e stuff. Some of you may have heard me whine about running out of room on my bookshelves...and for something AD&D-ish, I've already got 1e, Talislanta, Palladium Fantasy 1e, and Bard's Atlantis/Arcanum games.

BUT, jibbajibba's post on Complete Priest way upthread was pretty interesting. It seems to nicely widen the scope of the D&D Cleric...to me, I think that would be essential as a reason to use 2e instead of one of the above. But having done that, now the other classes might seem too 1-dimensional or underpowered. Thus the question. There are so f-in' many of the other books. (http://www.waynesbooks.com/Guides.html) (And that doesn't even include "optional core" books in Wayne's categorization, such as Tome of Magic.)

Why do we need a special book on what are already specialty classes like Bards, Rangers, Paladins, and Druids?

I guess basically what I'm wondering now, after seeing advice on which ones you like: does it unbalance the game to use a Complete book for one class without using the others? Or were the designers bright enough to make it so that e.g. fighters get proficiencies but also start from a lower baseline?

Well stuff like the Complete bard that gives you riddle masters, thespians etc, or the complete thief with Spies, acrobats, etc it really is all pretty great for sparking off ideas and the early kits at least where not power creep they were roleplay stuff. From the fighter, the peasant hero gets a place he can hide out and a reaction bonus from peasants, the myrmidon (professional soldier) gets build fires and maybe an extra weapon slot or something. they also show how you can introduce stuff like barbarians, samuria etc etc without having to build a whole new class and without having to give it loads of new uber powers.

I personally would have (and do in play) drop druid as a class and run them as preists of a nature god, so I don't find the spehres too bad. I do think not doing that as an official rule was a bit weak though.

Skills and powers was a great idea poorly executed (unlike Foster I think a fair bit of hte rest of it was pretty well executed) the concept being that you ahve a toolkit that lets you build any class you like. from a points system. So say you play a game based in The Wounded Land you can make a class for Bloodguard, if you play in a renaissance world you can make a musketeer class... etc ... the idea was that you picked HD (d4 thru d12) you picked thaco level advancement 1/1 down to 1/5, you picked spells etc etc ... So the final tool should have been grerat. However, they based hte points for each class on a base class and a preist just had too many. I mean you could make a priest to a god of theives who had thief skilsl nearly  as good as an equiv thief Plus d8hd, clerical spealls etc etc ... and that is broken]

As an idea though I think it works you just need to scale everything so the base classes turn up as you like them and the point socres work out even.

The Player's/DM's Options were a good idea with a lot of implementation problems.  But the core idea of "let's make D&D point buy" was solid.  I wrote a whole "let's fix it and make it truly classless" version my group used that's still up on the Web: http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/classless/

For some reason, 3e was the end of major house rulings for us.  A little of that was that it added some stuff (like perception) we had been house ruling, but also I think that's where it got heavy and complex enough that if you messed with more than adding some feats or whatnot you really threw it out of whack.   But in 2e, it was kitbash city!

Quote from: jibbajibba;373616Well stuff like the Complete bard that gives you riddle masters, thespians etc

And they were the only supplements coming out really so other stuff was shoehorned in - I remember the Bard book fondly because it had a great huge set of tables to generate a very in-depth random PC/NPC.

QuoteI guess basically what I'm wondering now, after seeing advice on which ones you like: does it unbalance the game to use a Complete book for one class without using the others?

As written, some of the Complete books power up characters significantly, while others actually power them down. We could have whole other flame wars about which classes are strongest and why but in my opinion:
*Complete Fighter upgrades the fighter, and is pretty good.
*Complete Bard powers up the bard considerably thanks to the kits - e.g. the Blade, and potentially the Gypsy (free psionic power). Also expands bard multiclass options and race options.
*Rogue is interesting, but doesn't really strengthen them that I noticed. I've heard complaints that the Swashbuckler kit is broken, since it lets rogues get fighter THACO and also keep their faster level progression.
*Complete Priest downpowers the standard cleric and most variants are weaker.
*Racial handbooks have multiclass kits which have often been considered broken.
*Psionics Handbook is potentially ripe for rules abuse, though if you have low-stat games they will futz their power rolls most of the time. So, IMHO its fine as a class as long as you're not playing Dark Sun :)
EDIT: and I have no idea regarding the Paladin or Ranger books.
My favourite other 2e book is Creative Campaigning - lots of ideas for the DM.

I did TONS of picking and choosing from across the spectrum (including the Complete Handbooks and the Player's Option books) and, oddly, never felt like anything got thrown out of whack.

But, again, AD&D2e is the only version of D&D I ever REALLY liked.

Tome of Magic did kick much ass...I loved Wild Magic.