What's 2nd edition ad&d like my dudes? good or bad?

what's 2nd edition ad&d like my dudes? good or bad?

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It's fun, as long as you don't try to use all the rules all at once. Every long-time DM has their favorite bunch of rules that they use and ignore the rest.

It's almost interchangeable with AD&D 1st edition.
They only made the shift to dodge Gygax's royalties on the core books.

1e has compelling explanations and abysmal organization.
2e has dull explanations and you don't need to cross reference 5 pages in 2 books to learn how each thing works.
Pick your poison.

They came from a time when RPGs advertised their "high" rules count, but despite that they're actually ruleslite.


I personally think the Basic line had TSR's best products.
Rules Cyclopedia is nice, but most people swear by B/X.

Good and bad.

The good: the rules are nearly the same as AD&D 1st edition, but cleaned up and streamlined. If you play 2e with all of the options "turned off" (and options include things like proficiencies/skills, individual initiative, and classes other than F/M/C/T), you have a game that is very simple and streamlined and playable, a lot like basic D&D (but with more spells, monsters, and magical items).

The bad: the one way that 2e doesn't play like 1e or 0e is the way experience is handled. In 0e and 1e, the player characters are *adventurers* seeking treasure. And so you get 1 XP for every 1 GP of treasure recovered, plus a pittance of bonus XP for monsters slain. 2e grants the bulk of XP as "story awards" for quests completed, deeds done, plot-points reached; or for actions taken that comport with your class and alignment. This latter method, "role-playing XP", is crazily subjective and difficult to keep track of, including such items as fighters getting extra XP for foes defeated, thieves getting XP for money stolen for themselves (bad idea!), and mages for learning spells, crafting items, etc.

Basically, 2e takes a very concrete kind of game award that incentivizes adventurers to do adventurer things, and it swaps it out for vague, nebulous "do whatever and win" things. Add to this the fact that the text is CONSTANTLY harping about good role-playing, being in-character, not power-gaming or meta-gaming, and you can tell that 2e was pretty much the point at which D&D finally disappeared up its own ass (the process started with Dragonlance and Unearthed Arcana in the 1e days).

And worst of all, when 3.0 came out and offered the rallying cry, "back to the dungeon!", did they go back to XP for gold? Nope; they went with the video-gamey "all XP is for winning encounters" mechanic which has been a cancerous blight on RPGs ever since.

tl;dr: Gee, thanks, Zeb; you went and ruined D&D for the rest of ever.

are you seriously endorsing gold as XP?

Well, like Churchill said, "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Gold for XP is (appropriately) the democracy of XP mechanics.

montie?

Ok time for an off topic shitpost... what the fuck have they been feeding that pig?!

It looks like some sort of demonic gray sausage! I'm certaain he's just waiting for that bucket to fill up with more immortal souls damned to hell for gluttony so he may pork out on them.

If this was a boss in my campaign I think I'd just try to run...

The rules are ok. Its impossible for me to fairly critique them because I am extremely familiar with them. They are weird, and there's a ton of "player's option" that needs to be ignored. If you just go by the core rules, it doesn't have a whole lot of bullshit you have to deal with. Just thinking about making a 3e character, with all the related skills and feats, makes me want to throw up a bit.

The actual appeal is the amount of good settings and lore they released for it.

Something to note about 2e is that its a lot harsher. Lots of monsters with disgusting stat and level drain attacks. So the DM has to be aware of what he's running.

Different user, but I would endorse it. The idea did always seem strange to me, but when you think about it, it really does reward more interesting behavior than XP (primarily) from killing monsters.

The relevant thing here is that 3e is based around XP for defeating encounters (primarily combat). 2e is actually just based around DMs handing out XP points more at whim. Look at how much XP monsters drop. Then look at the XP tables. Then do the math as to how many hundred trolls you need to kill to level up through combat at mid level.

> implying the only relevant possible goal of roleplaying is making money.

Christ, you're an idiot.

1. Pretty good for playing D&D. Has a good middleground between 0e's flexibility and 3.5e's excessively convoluted bullshit. The combat system is still pretty shit, but D&D was never good at combat. Power curve is a bit more exciting than 0e, whether or not that's good for your game.
2. Pretty shit for actually making a story, in the same way all D&D is (that is to say, it's perfectly serviceable, but it really depends on the DM's ability to write and direct, as opposed to more modern games with story tools built in).
3. Actively rewards being a power-gaming munchkin. This is, after all, D&D.
4. Adventure resources vary WILDLY. This is the same system that hosted Ravenloft and Dark Sun, but lots of the adventure stuff is pure shit - Gyagx's stuff in particular. If you don't want to homebrew everything, it may take some effort to find good resources. That said, there's tons of fan-made stuff that's quite good (and better playtested than official stuff).

D&D wasn't written to cover every possible form of adventure. GURPS came later.

The need for cash is universal and easy to understand. Besides, the main goal of characters in Appendix N fiction is often getting wealthy. Dungeon-crawling scum-of-the-earth sword-slingers, cutpurses, heretical sorcerers, even crusading priests of some obscure god need money to survive.

D&D isn't "generic universal roleplaying", you witless twat. It's a game about exploring dungeons. The only relevant possible goal of exploring dungeons full of monsters and deathtraps IS making money (and finding magical treasure).

If you're sending your players into dungeons on "missions", congratulations Mr. Railroad Engineer, you're doing it wrong.

>D&D isn't "generic universal roleplaying", you witless twat. It's a game about exploring dungeons
i believe that even D&D and much of its gamer base has long outgrown that niche

It's weird, but it makes sense for a game that's predominantly about dungeon crawls, where encumbrance matters. Remember it's not just any gold, it's gold you take out of the dungeon - getting the gold out of the dungeon might be equally as hazardous.

I wouldn't recommend it for all fantasy games. You're not going to get something anywhere like Lord of the Rings, which features noble heroism against the forces of darkness. Gold-for-XP works in games about tomb-raiding, for heist-style movies.

>Gold for XP is (appropriately) the democracy of XP mechanics.

You're telling me a system that was used once for two editions of a single system and that most people widely agree is a bad system and is completely unheard of in modern systems is "the democracy of XP mechanics"?

Defeating encounters does not neccesarily mean kiling everything. Bypassing or talking your way past someone who wants to kill you is just as valuable as killing them- perhaps moreso if you avoid critical wounds or gain a new ally in the process.

from the perspective of a 5e babby

shit don't make sense and is needlessly obtuse at times. Why the fuck was THAC0 ever a thing? whats up with all the bizarre race/class/alignment restrictions?

youtu.be/PDCZLsGLKaQ

however there is a lot more character options in total which is cool, and the whole thing has a more classic fantasy feel which I dig

>what's 2nd edition ad&d like my dudes? good or bad?

Back in the day? It was fine.
These days? Needlessly convoluted compared to everything else available.

You misunderstand him and the quote.

The quote isn't saying "democracy is good, all other systems are bad!", it's saying "democracy works and that's more than you can say about dictatorships/communism/whatever other system."

Gold for XP isn't good, but it worked, which is more than can be said about XP for encounters, which promote power-gaming and combat over roleplaying.

inb4 you chimp out at me for being an ~2e apologist~ or whatever, I don't even like PF or 4e and I doubt I'd like any other D&D edition 2bh, they're overdesigned imo

>Its impossible for me to fairly critique them because I am extremely familiar with them
quite the opposite, you have experience and knowledge, so you should be the one to explain and critique them all at once

>which is more than can be said about XP for encounters, which promote power-gaming and combat over roleplaying.
THIS OBVIOUSLY DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH XP GETS AWARDED FOR EACH.
is that so hard to comprehend?

>they're overdesigned imo
t. grognard

You know 2e has Gold for XP too, right? It's an optional rule, but it's still there.

As a 4e/5e babby, I don't understand how race/class restrictions ever worked, either.

>Here's this additional race you can use
>but you can only be a fighter
>wait come back why arent you buying my magazine

This picture made no sense, but when you look at the bucket, oh lord!

Pretty good as long as you don't succumb to supplement bloat.

And wait untill I endorse level caps and race as class!

Only nonhuman races could multiclass. So you had greater versatility, but limited levels (which matters a lot in AD&D 2e). Anyone could dual-class but you had to not use the original class until you exceeded it in levels of your new class.

>Anyone could dual-class
Only humans can dual-class.

Im the 5e babby but im pretty sure you have that mixed around

Im sure this was good fun and all back in the day but I look at half of 2e's rules and I just don't understand why they exist

Balancing. Non-humans have level limits and class restrictions because they get lots of other goodies to make up for it. Just look at 2e Aasimar as an example of what happens when you start removing those: If you allow Aasimar, nobody is ever going to play a regular human again.

Level caps are actually a really shit way of dealing with that problem, though. No effect until you hit the cap, then boom.

It works well for Dark Souls

It's a 16th/17th century Wunderkammer painting of a fuck huge pig. They considered it a miracle and answered the question of why it was so fat with "GOOOD DID IIIIT".

If we are talking about playing older editions, then no. Complaining that old D&D editions don't support a variety of different goals for players is like complaining that Counter-Strike doesn't give enough backstory about the hostages. Counter-Strike is a game about shooting people, so hostage backstories are a complete waste of time, D&D was about getting gold, so that's what the game was focused on.

Man, this guy is salty.

Story based XP is good. When an arc is over you get a level. What's the problem?

Not everything in this game is about different ways to murder things or acquire stupid shit.

Pretty much this - if you are OG and wanna go back to the mid 90's, feel free to play 2nd. 5th really is a good successor to 2nd and I'd much rather play stuff in 5th because it's simply an easier game to run, especially online.

I'd love to play the 2nd edition modules I missed out on, but only god has that kind of time.

that will teach em!

>I'd love to play the 2nd edition modules I missed out on, but only god has that kind of time.
...and NEETs. God and NEETs. Coincidence? I think not.

You have to enforce level caps in 2e. Otherwise subhumans are better than humans.

They are pretty high, anyway. Usually around 15 for the class the race is best at. And, if I'm remembering correctly, its a level cap, so you can just multiclass if you're planning on playing a very high campaign. 2e is D&D, so it gets broken at high level anyway.

>You have to enforce level caps in 2e. Otherwise subhumans are better than humans.
i believe the point was: not exactly stellar game design

Just to extend this, only humans could dual class, not anyone. As dual class you could use original class abilities prematurely but there was a severe XP penalty, no XP for the encounter, only half for the adventure. Once you left a class, you could never go back.

To dual class or multiclass you needed high ability scores (17 or better).

>Usually around 15 for the class the race is best at.
Yep. But half elf bards were unrestricted.

>Otherwise subhumans are better than humans.
Which makes them superhuman not subhuman.

I'm going to be playing a 2e game soon, and I've been told the DM transplanted some of his dusty old homebrew from 3e because his group is used to it. Most of it seems to be pretty minor tweak, but there's a bit where it says that unmodified armor class always stays 10 points ahead of unmodified THAC0. The campaign will be low on magic, but since you can pretty easily get those ten points from positive dexterity and mundane gear, how badly is this going to fuck over the math?

The original word Gygax used was "balance", but I think that's come to mean something a little different from his original intention.

The idea behind demi-human class restrictions (and going a step further in B/X to race-as-class) was to emphasize that they weren't human. Their cultures, mentality, and habits were significantly different to the point that certain traditions are unheard of - the rules worked in concert to suggest an implicit fluff. Gygax was also concerned with answering the question - why are humans dominant? The answer was that demi-humans had a different psychology or entrenched cultures that made them less versatile and adaptable than humans.

Many players didn't agree with that fluff, but the idea was that your race meant something very significant in the rules sense.

>your race meant something very significant in the rules sense
Meant nothing until you got arbitrarily gimped at your xp cap.

I'm always perplexed how elaborate the reasoning behind most of d&d's strange design decisions was, yet how utterly awkward the mechanical implementation was. I know they were literally inventing the wheel 30 years ago and had no one else to rob for ideas, but how hard was it come up with something that wasn't outright retarded? Even the basic math was dumb, apparently assuming no one is going to live long enough for their saves and attack bonuses to break the rest of the game. Or something.

RPGs by nature don't really have anyone look over the math. The problem is we also have little in the way of survival as to how the rules were actually applied in practice. There's lots of gaps the farther back you go as to how consistently rules were applied and what houserules patches if any were used. Comments by still living players who played in Gygax's games, like Mike Mornard, suggest that games were played with players mapping and each player often took a large contingent of PCs - typical Gygaxian dungeoneering parties were maybe 3 or 4 players playing 10-12 characters - more of a skirmish wargame rather than a tale of heroic individuals.

The broken math of the rules might have been obfuscated by the actual way in which the game played out. It didn't really matter that characters might be slightly restricted - you might be playing an entire entourage as a whole.

Most early D&D players also came from wargaming roots accustomed to patching unexpected scenarios with on-the-fly rules; and an expectation that it's better to have a functional rule or ruling now rather than later.

The idea of "polished" game design never was an objective in the first place because half the fun was making the games - in the same way that half the fun of miniature gaming is painting the models.

>Meant nothing until you got arbitrarily gimped at your xp cap.

Means actually nothing, but its always in the back of your mind even if there's no chance your characters even reach level 15.

On that note, don't forget that your Thri-kreen is going die of old age at 35. Might have to get those old age stat modifiers handy before that, though.

bump

>getting xp for completing quests and objective instead of the amount of gold plundered is bad

How is this bad? It's a hell of a lot better than gold = xp

It's good if you stick with core rules and don't use most of the optional rules.

I dole out XP for getting gold and acting according to character when it is detrimental to the players own progress. I find it has worked infinitely better than XP for combat.

That's not how it is in 3e though. It's not much different than 2e, just less systematized.

It's bad because quests and objectives are effectively arbitrary and gold is not. The former is the first step on the slippery slope to railroading; the latter is conducive to sandbox gameplay.

Don't forget: the placement of treasure within a D&D dungeon is procedural, not arbitrary:

(1d6) (Dungeon Contents) (Chance of Treasure)
1–2 … Empty … … … … … 1-in-6
3 … … Trap … … … … … … 2-in-6
4–5 … Monsters … … … … 3-in-6
6 … … Trick/Special … … N/A

>anything that a GM determines instead of game mechanics is railroading
i think the procedural method of D&D dungeons is designer railroading because they are using predefined probabilities of finding treasure. how dare they?

This is a great post. It is sad to see it ignored.

That's psychotic, though. You could go through the most brutal gauntlet of challenges and never learn anything from it because it happened to not pay well. The vast majority of heroes in fantasy literature would be completely shut out from gaining xp.

And then what the fuck do you do with that gold? You quickly reach the point where you can't carry it all, and you have nowhere to keep it until you hit 9th level and the fighter suddenly becomes a feudal lord somehow regardless of his background or goals. Can you even spend gold without losing xp? If so, and there's nothing to spend your gold on, do you still get xp for carrying a cartload of gold out of a dungeon and then dumping it on the ground?

The problem is that a lot of campaigns ended before even reaching the racial level caps. Before the cap, nonhumans are simply better. After the cap, they're somply unplayable. There is no single point in any campaign in which humans and nonhumans are balanced.

It's really nice. Unlike more recent D&D games it isn't as important that your stats be high. It's easier to die, but because of that encounters feel more gritty, which can be a good or a bad thing. Memorable moments include my elf spotting a locust swarm on the horizon, and desperately trying to warn the party through her language barrier. Or a small scale goblin seige on a farmhouse that we were staying the night in. (We were staying in the barn actually, but being the good souls that we were we stopped the goblins from getting into the house, at the cost of my elf characters life)

If you don't mind learning the rules, it might be a good idea to give it a shot, just to see how D&D has evolved over the decades. Because of the more lethal battles, you learn to fight smart.

Gold for XP is one of the best things about old D&D. It rewards more interesting behaviors than murdering anything, and gives more freedom for actually lethal encounters.

It's so square and flat. Like it's been bred for neat packing.

Multi-class gives you a character that's roughly on terms I think. I don't have the XP charts handy, but a 12/15 fighter-mage is pretty solid.

Multiclassing effectively extends the racial level caps by 1 or 2 levels, while making nonhumans even more powerful before they hit the cap especially elven fighter/magic-users and half-elven triple-classed a abominations. And after the cap the situation is exactly the same.

There are plenty of other RPGs and storygames out there for people who don't like D&D, user.

For someone who cares as much as you seem to about character goals, I recommend FATE.

Up until a point it will emulate the characters upgrading their armor and rings. After that point, classes and monsters with good BURRIT0 will become untouchable by attacks made by anyone else. Lack of magic weapon might make that point come sooner rather than later, until that's been tweaked, too.

I kind of like the idea of martial specialists being able to reliably waste dabblers.

I understand the need for ass-patches. What I don't understand is leaving ass-patches in place for decades on end. Did Gygax never ever have a party that hit high levels or never used humanoid opponents, so that lopsided number scaling never became an obvious problem? Did none of them ever stop to think, 'I need a mage for 95% of everything, maybe I should distribute some of that goodness to other classes for the sake of redundancy'? Who decided that institutionalized laziness should be the defining trait of the franchise? They can't NOT have noticed some things don't work as well as they could. My useless 12 years old ass noticed.

I give rewards for meeting goals, treasure being one of them, but yeah, it's the least bad of all approaches. It also makes it easier to craft scenarios where god guy, strong guy and sneaky guy are all equally important.

>I understand the need for ass-patches. What I don't understand is leaving ass-patches in place for decades on end. Did Gygax never ever have a party that hit high levels or never used humanoid opponents, so that lopsided number scaling never became an obvious problem? Did none of them ever stop to think, 'I need a mage for 95% of everything, maybe I should distribute some of that goodness to other classes for the sake of redundancy'? Who decided that institutionalized laziness should be the defining trait of the franchise? They can't NOT have noticed some things don't work as well as they could. My useless 12 years old ass noticed.

The whole point of the demi-human level limits was so that smart players *wouldn't* play non-human races. Conan and Elric didn't have any hobbit friends.

And LFQW is a 3rd edition thing. It doesn't happen in TSR editions for a variety of reasons.

>so that smart players *wouldn't* play non-human races
As mentioned above, this is a 100% worthless measure unless you know the game is going to go past your racial cap, and even then you might be able to wing it for a while. It's a fix that fixes nothing.

>And LFQW is a 3rd edition thing.
Wasn't talking about that. I was talking about attack bonuses scaling until it doesn't matter whether you're naked or decked out in divine artifacts, and high-level characters being more or less immune to spells and special attacks that allow saves. And about how 3e, shitty as it was, made the first real attempt to streamline and unify game mechanics. The entire construct is inelegant as fuck.

Look at it this way, guys.

The racial abilities of elves in 2E were a leftover from a Chainmail playtest when an elf player complained that he should be immune to sleep spells. That's all it was - a player demanded an ability, and it was added to the official rules with no other consideration.

Yes, I can see that, so can everyone else in this thread. The question was why is that thing still there, untouched, since before my father's beard went grey.