D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[Minigiant]

I played it as a player
I liked my campaigns as a player
I thought the rules as a player was silly
I enjoyed AD&D 2nd Ed after my DM house rules it like crazy.

 

[the Jester]

Played it, liked it, but largely felt that it was a mildly revised 1e with all the edges sanded off. No demons or devils, no assassins, no half-orcs... ugh.

 

[R_J_K75]

Whew, I don't know, 2e had multiple products a month for a LONG time between the different campaign settings (Birthright, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Plancescape) and heavy, heavy Forgotten Realms support and the PHBR series plus things like the Character screens and kits. There were a lot more adventures than people realized. Then the DMGR series. 3e we had 2 a month I think it was with support for setting limited to Eberron and Forgotten Realms. It might be pretty close though. I know for a short time we were getting two books, either generic or FR/Eberron and an odd adventure or map pack towards the tail end when they brought back the adventures more seriously. The tail end of 2e after the WOTC buy out we had FR, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, plus generic materials like the Monstrous Arcana and Monstrous Manual Supplements.

Now Im curious, but I have a 7PM game to prepare for or else I'd look into the comparison. Out of three sessions one PC already died, hopefully the dice roll better tonight.

 

[R_J_K75]

Thac0 was a headache, though.

I NEVER got THAC0, ever. For every character I played I had to write out a full to-hit chart for it to make sense, and updated the chart on my character sheet every time I got a THAC0 improvement on my character.

Sshhhhh!! Don't say that too loud, I made the mistake of mentioning my dislike of Thac0 once, and the Thac0 police quickly posted a stern explanation exactly how the rule works, signed with a snarky...See not so hard. Regardless I still don't like Thac0.

 

[R_J_K75]

Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue. Officially made as a Realms product, but overall an awesome D&D book in general. It's the absolute best "book of stuff" for D&D. It's not about weapons and armor, but the zillion other everyday things that you might want to shop for in a D&D world, in a very period-looking book that intentionally evoked the look of a 19th century Sears Catalogue, with prices and descriptions for everything you could imagine. Even 30 years later they still have never even come close to topping it as an equipment guide for D&D.

That book is awesome. Around 1997 or 1998 I scoured gaming stores and online stores for quite awhile. I finally found it and think I paid $40 for it then. Still among the few dozen other 2E settings books still on my shelves. I want to say that some of the more mundane equipment made its way into the complete books later.

 

[wingsandsword]

You know the much maligned sanitization of the game was very short lived. When did the Outer Planes Appendix come out? I think 90 or 91? It was before the compendium was changed to Monstrous Manual. I always thought Ta’anari and Ba’atezu, Yugoloth, were much more evocative names myself than Type 1 demon etc.

I was talking largely of the sanitization that was written straight into the core rulebooks, that wasn't out of the game until 3e came out in August 2000.

. . .like removing assassins from the core rules, because that was a class based around killing people for money (as opposed to adventurers who kill monsters for treasure, which is TOTALLY different apparently), or as I noted, the idea in the core rules (widely disregarded) of a campaign world having specific Gods being an optional rule instead of vaguely defined generic "Good" and "Evil" being the focus of worship. That was still in the core rules when they were reprinted in a revised edition in 1995 (the 2e PHB that's still on my shelf).

The planar sanitization was blatantly over by 1999 since they had works like A Paladin in Hell or the Guide to Hell, but they definitely had elements of it in the core rules the whole time.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I still reference this product to this day. The food and drink section provide plenty of great little details to bring the Forgotten Realms to life.

As an aside, if people are looking for a good "how much does this cost?" list, the original Hackmaster (PHB, I think) is a good resource for that, too.

Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue. Officially made as a Realms product, but overall an awesome D&D book in general. It's the absolute best "book of stuff" for D&D. It's not about weapons and armor, but the zillion other everyday things that you might want to shop for in a D&D world, in a very period-looking book that intentionally evoked the look of a 19th century Sears Catalogue, with prices and descriptions for everything you could imagine. Even 30 years later they still have never even come close to topping it as an equipment guide for D&D.

 

[billd91]

I really enjoyed 2e when it came out. There were details I didn't like here and there - the ranger was weak for its requirements, the bard needed a boost, tracking as a NWP was gated to boost the ranger which was a bad decision since any benefit should have come from the ranger direction, and the saving throws needed reform because they were still a mess - but overall I liked the backward compatibility plus the clear improvements like re-regularizing surprise and making the effects understandable, I liked specialty priests, NWP, and thief skills. Plus, there were lots of really good items published at the time - some of the complete handbooks, Al-Qadim (which made masterful use of kits), and some of the Oriental Adventures materials.
I didn't like Players Option, though. The first one I picked up was Skills and Powers and it cured me of any desire to really delve into the PO line because it was so problematic.

I liked 2e to the point I was really skeptical of 3e. Fortunately, I found the 3e news site started by Eric Noah, and the information on the design won me over and got us playing the newer edition. That said, 2e is in my top 3 editions of D&D. That top 3 is 5e, PF1, and 2e, in that order.

 

[Wolfram stout]

Played and DM'ed a lot of 2nd edition. It was, to us, basically 1ed with THAC0 and Kits. We never used Power and Skills. As a player, my character sheet (or session sheet) would have a to hit table so I could quickly call out the AC I hit. As a DM I would have a master sheet with the characters THAC0's and chart. Some players were aces on using THAC0 to call out the hit, others never bothered and would only call out their modified roll.

I can't see DMing it ever again or playing really (but would not turn down the oportunity). But certainly have nothing but fond memories of those games.

 

[Blue]

Perhaps my best D&D campaigns were in AD&D 2ed. It was defiitely my peak RPG in terms of time invested - we'd regularly do 10-14 hours marathons on a saturday, and potentially play other nights of the week.

But that was all the time we had, the group we played with, the DM running a rich world with many different groups active in it. The system was the best we had at the time, but I have no wish to ever play the system again as the both the mechanics of how to play have matured and also what I look for in a game has changed over the intervening years.