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?

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...

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...

Don't post, buy

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.