Tell me about 2e Veeky Forums what kind of games it did best?

Did you use just the core rules?

Core rules, DMG, all the class books, and that combat book I forgot the name of

D&D games. I've played every edition, and 2e remains my favorite. D&D is D&D. The editions are not nearly as different as we pretend that they are. The real difference is in the published (or homebrewed) material for them.

And 2e blows other editions the fuck out, when it comes to published material. There has never been a single setting that beats the 2e settings. Never a single published adventure that beats the 2e adventures. It is the objectively-best version of D&D by every possible standard, unless your standard is "hrrr I want magic robot people!" because you're fucking terrible.

yes, but often not entirely fair

Anything with dungeon crawling and exploration as key elements of the campaign

>Tell me about 2e Veeky Forums
It's literally just AD&D.
>what kind of games it did best?
Fine-tuned for dungeon crawling, but all the published modules were Epic Fantasy for some god-forsaken reason.

What editiom can do epic fantasy well?

What is your favorite 2e material?

Is it still good if you don't use moduals or official settings?

Combat and tactics? If so it was a great book, especially for martial classes

High power games and nation building, on a small scale. You could have a massive disparity in levels and power between characters, but everyone could bring something to the table. The game was pretty modular so it was easy to draw in rules and systems from various supplements or game worlds, even converting b/x stuff, AD&D or similar systems wasn't hard.

Low level was basic adventuring fare. Less focus on heroism, unless you were playing a Paladin or rp'ing something, more on going out in search of adventure or wealth. Mid level, things picked up. You could round out deficiencies in the party with henchmen or hirelings, instead of going on adventures, you went on expeditions. High level, a lot of class types got followers, so you would go from playing a thief to a thieves guild, from playing a cleric to playing a temple, from a fighter to a lord with a personal army. Rangers got a bunch of stealthy followers or magical critters as pets, Druids got a bunch of lower ranked druid peons, not counting the animal pets they could have by this point. Long range magical transit, magic item creation and raise dead came online at about this time.

You could run a level 1 character in a party alongside higher level adventurers without much trouble. It would not be fun if characters were way higher level, but catch up did not take long. That's more difficult to do in 3rd edition, unthinkable in 4th edition, where everyone goes up in levels at the same rate. In some cases you would have to retire characters if they had maxxed out their class, which could happen if you were playing a demi-human and the DM wasn't using house rules to allow progression. So your halfling fighter would max out their potential at 8th level or so, not even high enough to get a personal army.

Don't even get me started on the powergaming side. 3rd edition gimped a lot of the common AD&D tricks, even if it introduced a bunch of new ones.

Selljammer and Dark Sun both tie for "I want to do a spin on generic fantasy."

But FR wins, for me. I could run nothing but FR for twenty years and never have to revisit a single location or plot, if I don't want to. I'm sure of that, because I've tried it out.

I'm not fond of FR, too many cooks and Mary Sue dmpc's rubbing their dicks all over everything and stealing player spotlight. I'll take shit from sourcebooks and modify it to suit my own campaign world, but that's about as far as I'll go.

> I'm not fond of FR, too many cooks and Mary Sue dmpc's rubbing their dicks all over everything
It's how you play it. You can just set all that shit in the background, and make your own stories in the world. If the PCs keep bumping into Drizzt then that's your fault .

Pretty this: I don't think I've even referred to Drizzt or not-Gandolf since I was 15. The gods are remote and none of that stuff ever actually takes place. Power everything down a few notches; ye ole sheriff is level 3, not 15. The gods don't get directly involved and add some depth to the pantheons (i.e., Auril is prayed to at shrines in the north by leaving fresh flowers/fruit for her. Not out of devotion--just fear).

You wander into the Cormanthor and evil ghost elves will fuck your shit up. It's not just a place to pilfer magic items. The underdark is mysterious and weird.

Some of the modules are really good. The official settings were for the most part open-ended enough that you could drop your homemade adventure and party into them without more than telling them which gods had temples nearby for priest creation.

Against The Giants module, hands down.

Core rules and proficiencies. We omitted most of the optional rules and speed factors, as the potential extra damage of a bastard sword or greatsword was considered to be a necessary benefit of being a fighter that should not be nerfed.

You had to work together just to survive. If you left with anything, you were happy. If you got TPK'd, you blamed the dice, in the interest of preserving the amity of the few people willing to play with you.

It's not just the special snowflake dark elf. There is too much shit from too many people. I liked the original boxed set, but I don't like the overly detailed glut of products that followed. I'll happily used published material, but I can't remember not 'frankensteining' stuff into my own settings. I guess I consider world-building part of play. Much like I don't like pre-set characters, I don't like overly detailed campaign settings. Something like Ravenloft is different. Various Domains might be detailed extensively, but you can pick and choose whether to use them or not due to the nature of the setting. It helps with the mystery and exploration.

>Never a single published adventure that beats the 2e adventures

Yeah nah. I used a lot of b/x or AD&D shit for my 2e campaigns. Descent into the Depths of the Earth is my favorite series. Vault of the Drow is so cool it's probably responsible for all of the masturbatory Drow shit in Forgotten Realms. I pretend Queen of the Demonweb Pits doesn't exist. Inferno is great. City State of the Invincible Overlord is mandatory if you plan on running city adventures, just for all the cool reference material contained within. I ran The Lost City mashed up with Caverns of Thracia as some weird ass pulp fantasy adventure taking cues from 70's Dr Who and Conan stories.

Any with a good DM

One of the great things about 2e was that you didn't have to thoroughly immerse yourself in it. You could have other hobbies too. If someone came in talking about their half-vampire half-dragon wunderkind/mage/assassin with elemental bloodlines and an interplanar background and dual major in necromantic theory, you didn't have to know what he was talking about because that was all fluff and he was a poorly equipped human mage for game purposes.

Dont you guys think the score modifieres are kinda of strange? like only 18 gives you a +1?

Strength? I guess. Different stats do different things. Strength is for carrying stuff. Con is how many times you can be rezzed and your chance to survive it. An 18 wisdom gives you a big bonus to resist mind control, a lot of bonus spells if you're a priest. Intelligence is languages/non weapon proficiency if you're not a mage. A charisma 18 means you can have more than a dozen henchmen and their morale will be fanatic, the bonus to reaction checks means that pretty much everyone wants to be your friend unless you're swinging a sword in their face. A +1 to hit from strength might seem insignificant in comparison, there is a ceiling on AC, so massive attack bonuses aren't as crucial to your success.

The percentile strength stuff is pretty weird from a mechanical standpoint. I would have preferred flat, consistent stats. I like the way Hackmaster handles it though.

>common AD&D tricks
Which were?

There weren't any in AD&D, aside from Dart fighter (5 attacks at +1 inititative, meaning you could literally skewer high level wizards to death before they cast a 2nd level spell).

Ravenloft and Dark Sun. 2e is pretty much the Dark Souls of D&D, where the game is actually challenging.

Everything pre 2e was challenging

If only core, chargen was pretty straightforward for that era. If using any of the expanded material then it would be the settings hands down. Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape, Spelljammer, etc. That said, the best settings D&D has ever had are the Known World (from BECMI/RX which got fucked over when they transitioned it to being a 2e setting called Mystara) and PoLand (unironic opinion, the Points of Light setting is pretty solid and if you read about all the crazy shit that goes on in that world you would wonder why anyone would want to be an adventurer).

Just pick one of the regions/kingdoms/whatever and never steer from it. Remember, Salvatore thought FR was only the islands off the Sword Coast because there was a novel set there before he wrote the Icewind Dale Trilogy. When he found out it was this gigantic ass setting, he tried to find a small corner of the world to write his story in and chose Icewind Dale because why not?

Funnily enough he only inserted Drizzt into the story because he was told to implement drow in some way because of how popular the G series modules were becoming.

As a player I always felt kind of lost in 2nd edition. There didn't' seem to be a lot of continuity in the rules and the guidelines were even less help. If you ever strayed from strict adventuring or even just the adventure at hand things felt hollow. If you wanted to cultivate the setting there weren't a lot of DIY options as a player. In the end if you wanted to build anything of your own design you had to throw a lot of money at it and the price was always something the DM pulled out of his ass.
I was really disappointed in my ability to effect the world I lived in with 2nd edition. Even with all the followers, castles and thieves guilds in 2nd edition, that kind of shit never meant much to the game. It all just seamed like token flavor. Second Edition was easier on the paperwork for DMs but the villains also lacked depth. It was difficult at times for a DM to create any connection between the NPCs and players.

Third Edition was a paperwork headache for the DM and the players but people got invested in the setting (literally). If you were a mature enough gaming group to carve out in game down time and your players did their homework suddenly everyone was building the world. The magic item creation and the crafts really gave players the ability to develop and gave everyone a solid grasp of what was actually possible in this world.

To me if you are world builder 3rd edition is still the best.You had a lot more freedom in sandbox settings in 3rd as a DM and a player. Ya combat took forever but lets not lie and say it was any shorter in 2nd edition.

What I will concede to 2nd edition, is that the modules and big box adventures were beautiful. That shit could keep you entertained for decades and there was never any shortage of it.

When people died in 3rd edition it was because someone wasn't doing their job. When people died in 2nd edition it was really random.

TL;DR: I had a bad DM

>If you wanted to cultivate the setting there weren't a lot of DIY options as a player.

Yeesh. between Birthright's everything, Spelljammer's everything, Dark Sun's trading and army building, there's a lot going on.

You mean like rocket tag? 24/7 stoneskin? Simulacrum armies? It all depended on what setting you were in and what sourcebooks were available. I'm not even talking cheese, just RAW stuff from AD&D. A 1st level illusionist was a murder machine due to the way illusions worked. A druid had to have a high charisma to qualify for the class, so any animal pets they had would have seriously high morale, add in that the majority of unspent gold was lost for priests and they had no reason not to buy a pack of hunting dogs.

If you want to get into esoteric dumpster diving, plane shifting to the deep ethereal so you could cast 10 rounds of buff spells relative to 1 round of time on the Prime was fun as a Cleric. You could build your own classes with the Player's Options stuff. Play weird mutant critters from the Book of Humanoids.