Prophet_of_Menoth Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Bought the base set for 2nd ed AD&D at gencon. Been reading it on and off for almost a week..... My brain hurts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lars Porsenna Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Fun for the time, though the skill system is at best an afterthought... Damon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morganm Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Between Nonweapon proficiencies and THAC0 it's no wonder your melon is mushy. Are you actually going to play or run some 2E games? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prophet_of_Menoth Posted August 20, 2008 Author Share Posted August 20, 2008 I bought it because I have a friend who knows the system. And I would like to learn it so I can run a Diablo 2 campaign module I found at a garage sale. Thaco isn't really the problem. It's all the relearning I have to do concerning ability scores and skills. I was taught on 3.0 so this straight out of left park. We played in a one off session at Gencon which turned into a TKing slaughterfest of epic proportions. Still kind of fun though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morganm Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Probably easier to just convert the module to 3.5 than learn 2E =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Jack Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 Yeah, it's definitely easier to have gone from 2nd to 3rd than the other way around... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buglips*the*goblin Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 If you really want an aneurism... read 1st Edition. It's like 2nd, only messier. 2nd is easy if you're used to it, but coming off the new stuff it's probably a bit crazy. I actually prefer 2nd, but that might be mostly because it's what I'm used to and having spent a grand on it during the 90's I have little compulsion to change to a new money pit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decado Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 1st Edition rocked. 2nd Edition was lame and watered down. 3e skill system is a huge improvement over what they did with 2nd Edition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Star Drifter Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 My only gripe about 2nd was the Player's Handbook. Glossy white pages. Dark shiny ink. Bright blue decorations. That color scheme always gave me a headache. Third edition with those nice, lightly colored earth tone backgrounds was pure bliss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madog Barfog Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 Probably easier to just convert the module to 3.5 than learn 2E =) Personal opinions to the difficulty/merits of various editions aside, it's going to be easier to convert this module than to learn a new system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akela Posted August 22, 2008 Share Posted August 22, 2008 Personal opinions to the difficulty/merits of various editions aside, it's going to be easier to convert this module than to learn a new system. Agree Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prophet_of_Menoth Posted August 25, 2008 Author Share Posted August 25, 2008 I kind of like the challenge. So far the only problem I have had after figuring out how AC and THAC0 worked is that all the stuff for character generation is all over the place. Saves for example, took me forever to find them. But when I did they didn't seem all that bad. I will have to agree that of all the D&D I have played (I even played some basic 1st ed D&D some odd summers ago) that 3.5 is probably my favorite version of it. Of course my favorite system of Wizards is probably the d20 modern stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buglips*the*goblin Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 In '94 one day when the gaming store was packed with people, I decided to have a little fun and in my best "clueless noob" I asked what page Saving Throws were on. I was greeted with an immediate chorus of "101!". I don't care for 3rd or 4th edition myself, but at the end of the day the rules are only rules, and little more than suggestions anyway. In 18 years of play we never once hit a wall of limitation on creativity, smoothness of gameplay, or story. Any rules system is only as strong as the people who play it. Granted we had to discard some stuff, make some stuff up, but it worked and it was fun. After almost 2 decades, it was time to quit. A new edition wouldn't have prevented that. Life happened. People got careers, families, what have you. People who cut their teeth on 1st Edition griped about 2nd. People who came up with 2nd griped on 3rd. And now the cycle of life continues. There's almost a Zen entropy to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buglips*the*goblin Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 I liked to play different stuff, try to push some limits. Rules, stats, etc. were only a route to that goal. My most interesting character was "Just A Fighter". A straight-up, no frills, basic fighter from the PHB. He washed up on shore with nothing, not even clothes, on the Sword Coast after fleeing the tyranny of his island homeland. He met some people and off they went. His was a tale full of allies, enemies, traitorous friends, madness, and futility. It was epic, one of the best remembered characters from the years we played... and still just a plain old fighter. Didn't need any feats, tweaks, boosts, kits, or anything else. The goblin Buglips, who was a regular old evil goblin and one day a voice came into his head and told him to be good. The voice was a near-dead god, who had reached out with his waning strength to find a new mind to take up the word and restore belief in him. To bring him back from the dead with faith. The mind he reached was a goblin. So off Buglips went to discover firsthand the meaning of GOOD and preach the word. Fighting prejudice, his own alien upbringing, and overcoming a hoard of misunderstanding. Because a voice in his head told him to. Good characters never come from rules, good characters come from good imagination. Seeds of inspiration. They can exist in any edition, and if they can't then they probably aren't real good characters at all. They're dependent on 'goodies', 'stats', and 'powers' and become the essence of munchkin gaming. My old DM put it best when I asked if I could import a Tiefling into the Forgotten Realms since nobody wanted to play Planescape. He asked me if I'd still play it if it had no powers. Not only would I, I'd play it if I had severe penalties! If you can create something so interesting you'd play it without any benefits outside the fun of just doing it... then you're there. That's roleplaying. That's the sweet spot. Rules and editions are just the framework to bring it to life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristof65 Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 Good characters never come from rules, good characters come from good imagination. Seeds of inspiration. They can exist in any edition, and if they can't then they probably aren't real good characters at all. They're dependent on 'goodies', 'stats', and 'powers' and become the essence of munchkin gaming. While I agree with the spirit of this statement, I'm taking it to task for the letter of it. There are many good character concepts out there that have a very difficult time working in certain game systems. A high power mage in low magic game setting. A half-orc in a game that has no stats for half-orcs. So on and so forth. The game mechanics should mesh well with the game setting. If they do that, than any character that meshes well with the setting should mesh well with the mechanics and vice versa. When applied strictly to D&D, yes, across the 4 (or 5, depending on how you count) editions, any character doable in one edition should be doable in another, because the settings will be relatively constant between editions. But broaden the spectrum across game systems, and a good character concept in one system that may not be able to cope well or even exist in another doesn't invalidate it as a good character concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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