On 2nd Edition...

If you haven't read this, do so.

Read it carefully, it is very good...

http://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2022/10/blog-osr-module-o5-2e-is-still-not-old.html

I was reminded of a piece I wrote on 2nd Edition, three years ago, when I was still very new to the scene. For whatever reason, I never hit "publish." Thankfully, I saved it, as it is very relevant right now...

Begin Original Post

Written in November, 2019.

(Back when I was still double-spacing between sentences.)

AD&D 2nd....the Lost Edition?

Several months ago I found myself thinking about AD&D 2nd Edition.  Of all the editions, this one seems to get talked about the least.  Browsing the web, I came across an old reference to it as the Lost Edition.

Is it?

This is literally true for me, as it's the only edition that I no longer possess.  I loaned out the books mid 90's, never got them back, but my interest in gaming waned at the time, so.....

When 2nd Edition came out I was in high school.  It seemed then, that a new edition was due.  We couldn't wait.  The big new innovation: THAC0!!!!

THAC0 came to exist as a whipping boy.

No Monk, no Assassin, no Half-Orc.  I completely forgot this happened.  They were added in a later product I didn't own.  Of those three, I really only cared about the Assassin.

Deities no longer had full stats; you could no longer kill a God, just their Avatar, and Specialty Priests were born.  We were cool with this at the time, but in retrospect, it helped kill the Sword & Sorcery aspect of D&D.  There was an over-all grounding of the game into something more, real-world.  This was reflected in the art, which depicted realistic cultures and the challenges of slaying a dog-sized dragon.

Forgotten Realms was quickly becoming the main course.  Many of you like the Realms and that's cool, I wanted to, it just never came together for me.  The original Grey Box was nice though, great Keith Parkinson cover art, but that style didn't carry forth very long.  The art, as 2nd Edition grew (especially with the novels) quickly devolved into photographic paintings of the out-of-shape authors themselves, dressed in Renaissance Festival fluffy-shirts and feathery caps.....ugh.

Demons and Devils became Tanar'ri and Baatezu.  I hated this and consider it the single worst aspect of 2nd Edition.  A serious over-reaction to the Satanic Panic that was, by then, already winding down. There we were, loyal players defending the hobby, and the designers capitulated to people that didn't, and never would, actually play the game.  And ironically, the new kid on the block did everything D&D was ever accused of, and then some...

Enter, The Masquerade, and overly gothed-out people, sitting in proto coffee shops, counting ten-sided dice, lamenting the loss of their souls.....  

I bought very few 2nd Edition modules.  An adventure came with the DM's Screen (I think) and man did it suck.  All story, fit for locomotion.  But the 90's were all about story.  I had friends that were trying to emulate novels.....they should have just written novels.  

But the settings......Planescape......Dark Sun.  Incredible!!!  Well conceived, well written, well presented with gorgeous art.  Tony DiTerlizzi's art was Planescape.  Brom's art was Dark Sun.  I stopped buying Planescape books when they stopped using DiTerlizzi's art, but most of it was out by then.

Splat books galore!  The Complete This, The Complete That.  I never bought any of these.  

In many ways, the game was the same.  Saving Throws were still old-school, class-based, roll over this number, poison, paralysis, etc.  Armor Class was still descending.   Spells and weapons now had speed factors, which added granularity to combat.  Proficiencies (introduced in late 1st edition) became par for the course.

We loved it, I'd be lying if I said we didn't.

So, why is this the lost edition?  Or is it not?  (Someone reading this right now is saying, "Dude what the hell are you talking about, I've been playing 2nd Edition all along!?!?!")  It's definitely the edition that I hear the least about (aside from 4th of course.)  Is it because it's the middle child, crunched between 1st and 3rd, not quite a fulcrum?  Or the end of the beginning, too old-school for the modern gamer, yet not old-school enough for the true grognard?

Maybe it's too tied to the 90's, a decade people have yet to wax nostalgic for.  Before then, D&D was Heavy Metal and Pentagrams, Iron Maiden posters, Black Sabbath and Black Magic.  SWORD & SORCERY!!!  Things changed in the 90's.  Metal became Grunge, Demons became Tanar'ri, Vampires became Heroes.  In every medium, the focus became "character development."

Old school mechanics tempered by storytelling may have tainted 2E.  And yet I remember when 5th Edition was in the works, there seemed to be a consensus that the edition it should emulate the most was 2nd (which I don't think it does at all, I view 5th Edition as a simplified hybrid of 3rd and 4th.)

No doubt there are many players out there that still love it, but other than THAC0 and settings, 2nd Edition does seem kind of.....forgotten.  (There is a clone out there, but the name escapes me.)

So for awhile there, I found myself browsing the internet for good copies of those 2nd Edition books......(oh yeah, not the ugly, black-covered "2.5" edition.)

Had I bought those books again, would I have cringed?  Is there some hidden turd I forgot about?  Or perhaps I'd be blown away and feverishly start creating 2nd Edition content.....

But why even bother now that we're well into the enlightened Age of the OSR, DIY D&D, especially when I already own so many "editions" including great games created by other bloggers and OSR enthusiasts, not to mention my own ability to create?

We'll see.....

End Original Post

That "clone" I spoke of is called For Gold & Glory. I never bought it or the 2nd Edition books.

The intro module was called Terrible Trouble At Tragidore. I still have it in a box, and, holy shit was it stupid. 

Planescape had so much potential. The Blood-War was dumb; you shouldn't ever know that much about demons and devils, they should be vague and terrifying and evil to the core. I loved the art and I'm convinced it is the main reason for Planescape's success. Sigil, conceptionally should/could have been the greatest city/mega-dungeon of all time. 

Some people say Dragonlance was the true beginning of the end of old-school... at least Dragonlance had phenomenal art. Yes, art will always be a part of the equation for me. The art experience of 2nd Edition Core and the books/novels that followed was atrocious. This was mainly a product of the times though. Throughout the 80s, fantasy art became sterilized. Nudity disappeared. The fabulous paintings of the 70s and early 80s were no more, driven away by the church-lady and the corporate desire to be family-friendly.

I would love to see the AD&D hardcovers reprinted with the art of Frank Frazetta and the likes of Simon Bisley... unabashedly, unapologetically, strong and sexy! This would be the greatest thing of all time. Based on that alone, I would play nothing else.

As I said in my last post, it is up to you to un-bland D&D.

Gabor is right, the spirit of 2nd Edition is not old-school... but what you do with it can be.

Clerics!

It is up to you to un-bland D&D.

Clerics are so uniquely D&D (which is the first place I even encountered the word cleric.)

Righteous warriors.

Bane of the undead.

Healers of pain.

Fanatics! Zealots!... At least there's the potential for such flavor.

So MEDIEVAL. Oh how modern D&D has forgotten (more likely -- abandoned/disowned) it's gritty medieval roots -- too European. (Actually D&D is a mixture of Medieval Europe and American Sword & Sorcery.)

I can't imagine D&D without clerics.

I want no part of D&D without clerics.

The MACE is their weapon. What better to crush bone? And as skeletons are the foot-soldiers of evil...  

The undead... turn them you say? Suppose turning undead merely held them at bay, slightly cowering, as if from a bright flash of light, not destroy or cause them to flee. Kind of like the old Hammer Horror movies such a notion is actually based on where turning is usually something you do as you are trying to flee.

Suppose, clerics simply did more damage to undead. Double damage. And this can even increase with levels. So, they're still a weapon and undead are still a threat. In B/X, skeletons are made obsolete as soon as you have a 2nd level cleric... that's no fun.

In my imagination, clerics will always explicitly be a Roman Catholic styled class. I know, specialty priests and all that. And what of weird D&D, Dying Earth as opposed to Medieval Europe? Well you do you. But, I like having the Church, and demons, and witches, and black magic, and plagues, and crosses. All built on top of the ruins of the ancient, weird stuff... 

Sects devoted Saints, Angels, Apostles... 

And yes, CROSSES, not generic, good guy, holy-symbol crap. Actual crosses. And blood spilled in the name of those crosses. Wars and inquisitions. Saints and sinners. Heretics! There is a reason demi-humans live in the shadows of man... with some plotting their violent return.

And no spells. Spells are the realm of black magic (though some wizards may beg to differ, speaking of formulas and such.) Just prayers. And no spell books... Holy Missals.

• Of note: We always treated cleric spell knowledge like magic-users, meaning, you knew what you knew and didn't get to pray for whatever spell you wanted that day. But, if you think about it, a cleric should be able to pray for anything at any time. Their "spells" are direct pleas to their God for help with a very specific problem. Why clerics have to prepare spells is beyond me, unless it involves making sure they have properly memorized a prayer, of which, looking at the real world, there are hundreds, all serving a different purpose. How much time spent to memorize all of those? Most people, who know any, only know a few. 

I love the concept of a squad of clerics, all clad in plate and chain, coifs are a must as well as a common tabard, delving deep to purge the unholy. A medieval crew, not unlike this book: VAMPIRE$.

The type of flavor, devotion, and fanaticism I want, Warhammer does better, Sisters of Battle and such. It is up to you to un-bland D&D.

Just some ruminations as I scratched pen to paper.

9th Grade Lunch Hour Campaign

This was the beginning of the heart of my early D&D years (1987-1991). AD&D specifically.

In the first semester of the first year of high school, we all had the same lunch period (a half-hour labeled either A, B, or C.) 

The same school at the same time as a certain rapper named Marshal.

The year was 1987. (I was introduced to the game back in 1983 with the Mentzer Red Box.)

Players ranged in number from 3-5 depending on the day. The main three consisted of a thief, a mage, and a cleric. I, of course, was the DM. 

Now, there were no dice. This was the 80s, this was stealth mode. We weren't afraid of the, Satanic Panic, but we were afraid of being labeled dorks, so dice bouncing around the lunch room was out of the question. (There was a secret society aspect to D&D in the 80s that has been forever lost.)

I had a page full of dice-ranges written down, a few charts per die type, for example, there were three or four d20 tables that looked like this:

1:2

2:16

3:12

4:11

5:6

6:20

7:1

8:17

9:13

10:19

11:3

12:7

13:14

14:8

15:4

16:5

17:10

18:15

19:18

20:9

I would pick a number on a chart then ask for a number from the player to determine their roll. Every so often, I would create new charts to prevent the players from figuring out successful numbers. Such a system depends on trust. Sometimes we would just flip a coin. (Interestingly enough, the year before, in 8th grade, myself and a different group were already experimenting with dice-less role-playing, something that did not stick with me.)

We had a basic world map, hand drawn on a blank sheet of white paper. We all took turns adding things to it, including additional pages that were taped on. Basically, the world grew with pages of mountains and forests and castles and towns as we passed the map around in between sessions. This was mainly done by myself and the guy who played the thief... speaking of: He was a real world kleptomaniac who would go around stores after school solely for the thrill of stealing. His ultimate dream for his character was to find a, ring of invisibility, his, precious, something I withheld from giving to him for quite some time. He had to earn such an artifact. Often he would ask if he was close to getting one. Often, I would say no. But eventually, in the hall, at my locker, I don't remember, I let slip the place it might be hiding, and the quest was on.

What I remember of the mage was that he wanted to be able to spin his staff like a martial artist. I eventually let him achieve this unlikely skill. He also once had a dream where I resembled Dungeonmaster from the D&D cartoon.

The cleric wasn't what you would call a gamer but played anyway. His "rolls" were always the luckiest and his character progressed the fastest to the slight annoyance of the others. He passed his Test of High Sorcery long before the mage did.

The players started out as a group, but eventually split up and scattered to different parts of the map on their own personal quests. Everyday they would each get 5-10 minutes of time as I went from player to player to player and back again. As I mentioned above, both the cleric and the mage had to undergo Tests of High Sorcery at various towers (a heavy influence from Dragonlance here; can't wait for WoTC to ruin that) and the thief was obsessed with infiltration missions, oh how this guy reveled in being a thief.

I drew no dungeons, there were no maps beyond the world map. All I had were scant notes and prompts as to what might happen. Everything else was in my head. Never again, would I play the game this way. And never again would I play outside of my, or a friend's, house.

It was all cool, but by December I was burned out, and beginning in January (2nd semester) I would pass the reins on to another friend who now shared our lunch. This angered everyone, because honestly, none of them cared much for this guy. They would call me at home or meet with me secretly in the hallway, begging me to take back the reins. They complained that he was turning the game into a fairytale... in my absence, something happened involving flowers, that was their breaking point. He simply didn't have the same source-material pedigree that the rest of us had.

So, I took control again and promptly went on to fail algebra.

Game on!