Incline Which is better and why: AD&D or AD&D 2nd Edition?

[Dorateen]

I would just mention there were additional racial advantages, notably giants getting -4 to hit dwarves. This was present in AD&D.

 

[Azalin]

Level restrictions were there because dwarves are innately superior, with their constitution bonus, saving throws and magic resistance. Had to even the playing field so human characters could keep up.

That's how its clearly justified in BECMi , better saves and infravision. Although demi humans could still gain combat experience past their level limitations and some extra clan features in the companion set, the one just past B/X . I dont remember 1e offering anything to demi humans , no reasons to pick them if you expect to reach higher levels.
It's Ad&d 2e vs becmi, no interest to pick 1E.

That was the justification but it didn't really work imho,the level restricitons only affected players if they were in a high level 10+ level campaign while they kept the bonuses without any problems in the lower leverls.A 3rd level dwarf fighter would have the racial benefits but face no problems from level restricitons unless you got to level 15 so why play a human.It also made no sense from a logical/roleplaying perspective,dwarfs can't become as good fighter as humans?Hlafings can't become as good thieves as humans?Elves can't become as good mages as humans?

 

[Mortmal]

Level restrictions were there because dwarves are innately superior, with their constitution bonus, saving throws and magic resistance. Had to even the playing field so human characters could keep up.

That's how its clearly justified in BECMi , better saves and infravision. Although demi humans could still gain combat experience past their level limitations and some extra clan features in the companion set, the one just past B/X . I dont remember 1e offering anything to demi humans , no reasons to pick them if you expect to reach higher levels.
It's Ad&d 2e vs becmi, no interest to pick 1E.

That was the justification but it didn't really work imho,the level restricitons only affected players if they were in a high level 10+ level campaign while they kept the bonuses without any problems in the lower leverls.A 3rd level dwarf fighter would have the racial benefits but face no problems from level restricitons unless you got to level 15 so why play a human.It also made no sense from a logical/roleplaying perspective,dwarfs can't become as good fighter as humans?Hlafings can't become as good thieves as humans?Elves can't become as good mages as humans?

Of course it wasnt working, especially when most campaigns were not going past the B/X part. A dwarf in becmi is certainly a better choice than a human warrior, only thing that can moderate it is the setting and people being hostile to demi humans. In DCC it's the same thing but they use a character gauntlet , you have to be very lucky to roll a demi human and those are clearly better still. Lamentation of the flame princess same thing, elf is better by far. It's not working but the retroclones picked it anyway.

 

[S.torch]

The user in question flat out lied about poisons in AD&D 2E. They weren't changed at all. The extent of the changes was the removal of the combat matrixes for THAC0 and the renaming of angels, demons, and devils.

I revised the thread in which the discussion was. The user posting there was Melan. But he posted direct comparisons between what was written in the first and the second edition, and it was certainly different. So I don't see how his point could be false at all.

Another thing mentioned was the removal of the assassin class, for which there were comparisons posted as well.

 

[JamesDixon]

The user in question flat out lied about poisons in AD&D 2E. They weren't changed at all. The extent of the changes was the removal of the combat matrixes for THAC0 and the renaming of angels, demons, and devils.

I revised the thread in which the discussion was. The user posting there was Melan. But he posted direct comparisons between what was written in the first and the second edition, and it was certainly different. So I don't see how his point could be false at all.

Another thing mentioned was the removal of the assassin class, for which there were comparisons posted as well.

Except he only quoted the parts that fit his entire narrative. Why didn't you read my replies to the lying retarded sack of shit? I presented the full rules.

The assassin class is now a kit which I covered. A kit served the classes better. Let me guess you want to see proof huh?

AD&D 2E Thieves are superior to their 1E counterpart due to the simple fact that you can place the points into your thieving abilities as you see fit. They also get Weapon and Nonweapon Proficiencies which were lacking in AD&D 1E on top of their skills.

Assassin Kit gets a +5% bonus to Find/Remove Traps and a -5% penalty to Read Languages. However, their Pick Pockets skill allows them to slip poisons into a target's food and drink which grants them a +5% bonus to their roll.

The Complete Thief's Handbook says this about assassins on page 26. Incidentally, TCTH was published in 1989 as a companion to the core rules published in the same year.

In the AD&D 2nd Edition Players' Handbook, the idea of an assassin has been divorced from any particular character class. Indeed, a character can be any class and still be an assassin; this thief kit simply shows how a thief can be converted into an efficient, discreet killer. Characters of other classes still can (and often will) be assassins, so it would be best not to let down one's guard...

Assassins must have the following minimum ability scores: Strength 12, Dexterity 12, and Intelligence 11.

Weapon Proficiencies: Because of their specialization in the art of killing, Assassins, unlike thieves of other kits are permitted the use of any weapon. An Assassin often selects one favored weapon, such as a garotte or serrated dagger ( or even something exotic, such as blowgun darts with an exotic insect poison from a distant jungle), to use for his killings. If the Assassin achieves infamy, the marks of this weapon may become known as a sort of "calling card".

Nonweapon Proficiencies: Required: Trailing, Disguise. Recommended: Alertness, Begging, Information Gathering, Herbalism, Land-Based Riding, Observation, Tracking, Voice Mimicry.

Special Benefits: Assassins get a bonus to identify poisons that is the Assassin's level multiplied by 5%. Intelligence 13-15 add 5%, 16-17 is 10%, and 18 is 15%. Other modifiers for identifying poisons are based upon the individual senses that can lead to penalties to the rolls.

An Assassin kit could be created from this one for each other other classes if the DM wanted to.

Herbalism is the NWP used to create poisons.

All classes in 2E can be assassins. They do the job differently, but they all have access to Herbalism the NWP that allows for the creation of poisons on top of identifying them.

Removing the parts of the rules to create a lie is a lie.

The AD&D 1E equivalent is a poor class in comparison as are the rules for poisons. You know why I know this? Because I own and played both editions. I was there when AD&D 1E was the standard until 2E was released and we all switched over.

EDIT: Thieves in AD&D 2E get 3 Base NWP slots with their Intelligence providing a bonus to the number that ranged from 1-7. Thus, a 1st level Thief with the Assassin kit has between 4-10 NWP slots to pick for skills from all the categories. The categories are broken up into General, Rogue, Priest, Warrior, and Wizard. Thieves can choose without penalty from the General and Rogue categories. Any NWP from the other categories cost an additional slot. Since Herbalism is in the Priest and Wizard categories that costs 2 slots for the Thief with the Assassin kit it would cost 3 slots.

 

[Old One]

Where did the desire to add a bard class come from? It seems like a total wackadoodle class that nobody asked for and nobody wanted. Is there some famous bard in fantasy novels I don't know about? Besides maybe Fafhrd, who still isn't very much like a D&D bard.

Pre-D&D?

I'd say Irish mythology is the primary source for the original D&D bard (which would explain the druidic influence).

There's also Fflewddur Fflam from the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

 

[Melan]

Certainly, 2e fans are not seething, coping and dilating whenever you criticise their limp-wristed kiddy edition. Look at that guy having a completely normal one.

Drizz'tfuckers.

 

[S.torch]

The Complete Thief's Handbook says this about assassins on page 26. Incidentally, TCTH was published in 1989 as a companion to the core rules published in the same year.

But how I see it, the point it was being made in the thread was that the class got changed and then moved to another optional supplement when in the 1st edition it was in the core rules. The class technically existed, but it was not the same.

Though maybe experience difference on the matter...

Look at that guy having a completely normal one.

But are you not gonna add something more about the subject?

 

[JamesDixon]

The Complete Thief's Handbook says this about assassins on page 26. Incidentally, TCTH was published in 1989 as a companion to the core rules published in the same year.

But how I see it, the point it was being made in the thread was that the class got changed and then moved to another optional supplement when in the 1st edition it was in the core rules. The class technically existed, but it was not the same.

Though maybe experience difference on the matter...

That's because he never showed you the full rules along with his claims about Illusionists. If you want to get technical then there were 7 Assassin classes in AD&D 2E PHB. You had Fighter, Mage, Illusionist, Cleric, Druid, Thief, and Bards that could all be assassins. That's a 600% increase in the amount of Assassin classes. There is the matter of poisons as well.

Herbalism is used for making poisons.

Spoiler

AD&D 2E Poison Rules

Spoiler

AD&D 1E DMG Page 116 Poison rules

Poison: Only assassins of 9th or higher level may concoct "potions" of poison - or any other sort of poison, for that matter. Refer to the section on assassins for the details of special forms of poison. No laboratory or alchemist is needed, but cost and time are found as if a normal potion was being prepared.

Page 20 of the AD&D DMG 1E clearly states that only Assassins of 9th or higher level can study poisons. There are less poisons available for a total of 9 types. Compare that to AD&D 2E you have 48 which is an increase of 533%.

So in AD&D 2E any class that isn't of Good Alignment can be an assassin which is 7 out of the base 9. All of them can learn Herbalism at 1st level to make poisons and apply them to weapons or food or drink or other delivery methods. If you really wanted to have a better assassin then make a kit that gives them special abilities and/or nonweapon proficiencies. All total, the AD&D 2E Assassin is a much better class then it's prior incarnation. Just like everything else that was in AD&D 1E was improved in 2E.

Melanhead is too retarded and dishonest which is why he has to lie about what the rules actually said. I can even put up the pages from AD&D 1E if you want proof for comparison. While he doesn't.

 

[Xorphitus]

AD&D 2E:The Edition of Endless Options was good for making broken characters if you and/or your friends bought or stole all the option books. Also liked the computer core rules & expansion.

 

[Alex]

Which is better and why: AD&D or AD&D 2nd Edition?

BECMI is the best, but any Dungeon Master worth his salt would run some combination of editions incorporating a multitude of official optional rules, unofficial rules from Dragon Magazine articles or similar sources, and house rules.

To be honest, as far as actual rules go, I am rather neutral on what edition to use. I tend to prefer having race and class be separate things; and I am not a fan of having a multitude of different classes. In fact, I think ideally you will have three or four and have different things you could come up (such as assassin or cavalier or jester or bard or whatever) as some kind of specialisation of the base class.

Still, any reason you prefer BECMI over the others? Also, is BECMI and the one from Rules Cyclopedia the same?

I started with AD&D 2nd, but IIRC it basically cleans up the rules, and takes everything developed during the 1st as options and integrates it into the core. Oh and there's Class Kits that are new.

AD&D 2nd implemented one major rules change, with experience points from treasure becoming an optional rule, and the replacement for treasure as primary source of XP being "story awards" for completing an adventure, although this was simple enough to ignore for anyone familiar with any prior edition of D&D/AD&D.

And this was a disastrous idea, to be honest; since it greatly changed how the game is played. To be fair, people were playing it like that before 2nd edition even came out, as far as I understand (I didn't play RPGs back then yet). It bears mentioning that without XP per g.p., or some other objective rule for awarding XP as the main source, the pace of the game will be set by just the DM; and usually the players will always have the same xp values. Especially if new characters start at the same or average level as everyone else.

Still, I think the individual xp for different classes could have been a good idea. The values on the DMG are pretty silly and the rewarded behaviours weren't at all interesting or something you wouldn't do anyway. I think the only thing they rewarded that was halfway interesting was magic item creation; and even then it was very much in the hands of the DM to make that interesting in first place. But I remember Dark Sun having class and race specific rewards that actually added flavour to the different characters and could (unfortunately I never got to actually play Darksun so I don't know how well it worked in practice) into play stuff that would probably be left out.

Fortunately, David Zeb Cook declined to integrate all optional AD&D rules into the 2nd edition core rulebooks, so we were spared cavaliers and thief-acrobats (not to mention the jester, mystic, and savant sub-classes Gygax wanted to create, and bards being revised into a primary class with jesters as a sub-class).

I find 2e to be my favourite edition. Not so much because of its specific rules, but because of a lot of the design philosophy that surrounded it. I think the Monster Manual is a prime example of that, and seeing how it differed from 1e shows the difference in philosophy particularly well. I do think that it unfortunately left behind too much of the dungeon delving and hex crawling of yore; and the episodic way of playing, where PCs were pretty much playing through the GM's story, was sadly pretty much the norm back then. But still, I rather like a whole lot about it and the supplements released at that time.

One rule from 2e that I thought was legitimate incline, though, was the use of spheres in cleric spells in order to change how different religions got access to different kinds of magic. The actual implementation frequently wasn't all that great, but it was an interesting idea nonetheless.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

To be honest, as far as actual rules go, I am rather neutral on what edition to use. I tend to prefer having race and class be separate things; and I am not a fan of having a multitude of different classes. In fact, I think ideally you will have three or four and have different things you could come up (such as assassin or cavalier or jester or bard or whatever) as some kind of specialisation of the base class.

Still, any reason you prefer BECMI over the others? Also, is BECMI and the one from Rules Cyclopedia the same?

The Rules Cyclopedia is a compilation of the rules from the first four sets of BECMI (the Immortals Set from 1986 was replaced by the Wrath of the Immortals Box Set in 1992), though the presentation of the rules was quite different. BECMI explicitly integrated dominion rulership and stronghold building into higher-level play (admittedly the rules for these should be have been longer and better designed), followed by planar travel and even questing for immortality at extremely high levels. More generally, it was a flexible system ("free Kriegspiel") that didn't attempt to introduce rules covering every aspect of the game. Also, it was linked to the best D&D/AD&D campaign setting --- the Known World / Mystara.

AD&D 2nd implemented one major rules change, with experience points from treasure becoming an optional rule, and the replacement for treasure as primary source of XP being "story awards" for completing an adventure, although this was simple enough to ignore for anyone familiar with any prior edition of D&D/AD&D.

And this was a disastrous idea, to be honest; since it greatly changed how the game is played. To be fair, people were playing it like that before 2nd edition even came out, as far as I understand (I didn't play RPGs back then yet). It bears mentioning that without XP per g.p., or some other objective rule for awarding XP as the main source, the pace of the game will be set by just the DM; and usually the players will always have the same xp values. Especially if new characters start at the same or average level as everyone else.

Yes, I think some AD&D 1st edition adventure modules had even adopted this method of providing experience based on completing the intended goals, prior the publication of AD&D 2nd edition. However, this official rules change served to codify such behavior, which probably funneled new players away from the older playstyle towards which they might otherwise have been inclined.

Fortunately, David Zeb Cook declined to integrate all optional AD&D rules into the 2nd edition core rulebooks, so we were spared cavaliers and thief-acrobats (not to mention the jester, mystic, and savant sub-classes Gygax wanted to create, and bards being revised into a primary class with jesters as a sub-class).

I find 2e to be my favourite edition. Not so much because of its specific rules, but because of a lot of the design philosophy that surrounded it. I think the Monster Manual is a prime example of that, and seeing how it differed from 1e shows the difference in philosophy particularly well. I do think that it unfortunately left behind too much of the dungeon delving and hex crawling of yore; and the episodic way of playing, where PCs were pretty much playing through the GM's story, was sadly pretty much the norm back then. But still, I rather like a whole lot about it and the supplements released at that time.

One rule from 2e that I thought was legitimate incline, though, was the use of spheres in cleric spells in order to change how different religions got access to different kinds of magic. The actual implementation frequently wasn't all that great, but it was an interesting idea nonetheless.

AD&D 2nd edition did have the benefit of a plethora of supplemental rulebooks --- 15 in the Complete ____ Handbook line, 9 in the Dungeon Master's Guide Rules Supplement line, 7 Historical Reference Sourcebooks, 4 Player's/DM option books, plus assorted other rulebooks such as the Tome of Magic. There's certainly much worthwhile material to be found in these books, even if the majority is better left unused. And of course the shift in focus to campaign settings that began in 1987 resulted in an enormous quantity of campaign setting material being produced for AD&D 2nd edition.

 

[Ninjerk]

Spoiler

Where did the desire to add a bard class come from? It seems like a total wackadoodle class that nobody asked for and nobody wanted. Is there some famous bard in fantasy novels I don't know about? Besides maybe Fafhrd, who still isn't very much like a D&D bard.

Pre-D&D?

Well, there's Orpheus from Greek mythology:

Don't forget Homer, too. He's sometimes called 'the Bard'. I guess if we are looking at historical figures we could also include Sappho. Really a lot of famous Greeks sung their tales.

Many of the Scandinavian people revered their Bards, the majority of which were semi-retired Vikings called Skalds:

Caesar spoke often of Druids and how they held memorization of songs and legends important for their own Bardic equivalents. He was amazed what a good memory the Celts had since they recited more than put words onto paper or stone. Supposedly Druids were outlawed by the Romans, but Bards allowed to survive.

Of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is probably what really made the Bard popular around the time of early D&D:



By the way, Gary Gygax once told me that he really wanted a Montebank as a character class, but he never got to implement it. From his memory it sounded like it would have been close to the 3.5E Beguiler.

I'd say Irish mythology is the primary source for the original D&D bard (which would explain the druidic influence).

There's also Fflewddur Fflam from the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

Spoilered the posts I'm responding to so it doesn't fill up the screen.

I don't know exactly what inspired the creators and developers of D&D or what or how deeply they read into their history, so I won't speak to their conception of them--only what I've researched about them instead. I'll provide some quotes below with references. Generally speaking, it's best to remain skeptical when such matters are described by the Romans because their writings are viewed by people that know considerably more than I do to be colored by imperialistic motives, i.e. look how these barbarians live, let's conquer them.

To my knowledge, the Welsh have Taliesin as their most famous semimythical poetical/musical figure. I don't know much more about it beyond what intersects with my personal research (e.g. historical kings existence being roughly verifiable based on appearing both in Irish annals, manuscripts, etc. and Welsh equivalents). I was broadly aware of the existence of the similar position in Norse society because of the BG class kits and some sparse mentions in things I've read.

"Bards" under more-or-less that name (more on that later) existed in both Irish and Scottish culture--indeed, the separation of that ethnic group into Irish vs. Scottish is mostly imposed as both groups for long periods of time considered themselves to be Gaels. The term "bard" is actually a pretty low-register term--every town (baile) had its resident bard that composed and recited poetry orally (as there was generally no written culture except in the monasteries and courts) about the general events of the village, region, and retelling of panegyric (epic, heroic) poems. There was a relatively sophisticated hierarchy of professional poets and the ollamhs (plural, pronounced something like "olives") and fìle (can't remember if it's sing. or pl., pronounced FEE-leh) sat at the top of said hierarchy. I believe there's quite a bit laid out about them in the Brehon Laws (there's a public domain treatise on them in English available at archive dot org that was written in the 19th or early 20th century in addition to other sources similarly available).

Some general info from Anne Grant, Essays on the Superstitions and Letters found in The Everyday LIfe of the Clans of the Scottish Highlands by Michael Newton

Spoiler

“It is needless to prove that the Gaels had the greatest value for poetry. Never did any nation encourage or indulge the profession of bards with a more friendly partiality. Their nobility and gentry, their kings, both provincial and supreme, patronized, caressed, and revered them. The bards of a distinguished character had estates in land settled on themselves and their posterity. Even amidst all the ravages and excesses of war, these lands were not to be touched, the poets own person was sacred, and his house was esteemed a sanctuary.


Every principal bard was in the Gaelic tongue called file or ollamh, that is to say, a doctor in poetry. Each of the great files or graduates had thirty bards of inferior note constantly about his person, and every bard of the second class was attended by a retinue of fifteen poetical disciples. …


About a century back [from Dr. John MacPherson’s Critical Dissertations] one of the Highland chieftains retained two principal bards, each of whom had several disciples who were his inseparable attendants. The chieftains of former times, if led by choice, or forced by necessity, to appear at court, or join those of their own rank, on any public occasion, were attended by a numerous retinue of vassals, and by their most eminent poets and ablest musicians. …


The chief bards…followed their patrons in to the field, and were frequently of signal service. It was their business and custom, upon the eve of battle, to harangue the army in a war song composed in the field. This species of a song was called Brosnachadh Catha, that is to say, an inspiration to war.”

A description from Martin Martin (himself a Gael, many writings on Scottish Gaels were made by Anglos with not a small amount of wonder and exoticizing)

Spoiler

“The Natives [of Lewis] are generally ingenious and quick of Apprehension ; they have a mechanical Genius, and several of both Sexes have a Gift of Poesy, and are able to form a Satire or Panegyrick ex tempore, without the Assistance of any stronger Liquor than Water to raise their Fancy.”

A voyage to the Hebrides, or western isles of Scotland; : with observations on the manners and customs of the Highlanders by Louis Albert Necker (a Swiss man, if I'm not mistaken; he's relatively charitable to his hosts, as I've read quite a bit of this one):

Spoiler

“We passed the rest of the day and night at Balaphaitrich, where Mr. Campbell received us with all the hospitality of the ancient Hebrideans. During the repast, which lasted all the evening, a peasant, successor of the ancient bards [my edit: probably a town bard of no rank], came and seated himself near a window, and sung, or rather recited, in a monotonous tone, several Gaelic poems, very different from the wild Jorrams, as the latter have at least in their discordant harshness, a peculiar expression, which is not altogether without its attractions.”

From Scotland in Early Medieval Europe edited by Alice Blackwell, I can't remember which of the many authors wrote this, but it appears on page 27-8, per my notes (not sure if that's PDF page or the page as listed by the document, probably the PDF page for my own usage):

Spoiler

“Gaeldom also had a social system which privileged people of learning and people of

high artistic skill – a poet could have the same honour-price as a king [my note: probably the price paid as grievance within the Brehon Law if they were killed, Brehon Law didn't use prisons as far as I'm aware, mostly restitution], a master carpenter the same honour-price as a lord (Kelly 1988). A major difference from other areas

of Europe was that high status could be gained through acquired skills, and that secular intellectuals were highly valued (Charles-Edwards 1998). The reason for this was

that the Iron Age learned orders were not terminated by Rome, but survived into the

Early Medieval period having been transformed by Christianisation.”

Surprisingly, I don't have any notes here about the utility and power of satire (IIRC I read that the Christian institutions especially disliked its efficacy), but the poets could absolutely devastate the reputation of nobles, often by writing poetry comparing them to "lesser" sorts of trees with qualities they considered poor (IIRC, alder was considered a "low" tree, and I think oak was considered the most noble; there are poems extant in written form comparing revered clan chieftains to the mighty oaks and the branches and leaves being the members of their clan).

I haven't read the Ulster Cycle or other similar tales in detail, so I'm unaware of the mythical archetypes of such a figure, but I assume that they are in there somewhere. In the interests of not completely shitting up the thread with bardposting, I'll leave it at that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Melanhead is too retarded and dishonest which is why he has to lie about what the rules actually said. I can even put up the pages from AD&D 1E if you want proof for comparison. While he doesn't.

 

[JamesDixon]

Melanhead is too retarded and dishonest which is why he has to lie about what the rules actually said. I can even put up the pages from AD&D 1E if you want proof for comparison. While he doesn't.

I already have friends, like you, who needs a lying sack of shit like Melanhead?

 

[Melan]

But are you not gonna add something more about the subject?

Sure, why not.

For all their continuity and rough compatibility, AD&D and AD&D 2nd edition are far enough from each other to be different games. They rest on different literary traditions, their rules serve different purposes, they place emphasis on different sorts of adventures, and they play fairly differently. You can easily see this by their online communities, which generally do not mix or even communicate much.

1st edition AD&D is a single man's vision about a broad, campaign-level implementation of D&D. Its stylistic quirks and idiosyncrasies make it a personal work, even if he did, in fact, get help from a tight design team. Gary Gygax had peculiar tastes in fantasy, even in his generation: he had little interest in Tolkien and other sorts of epic fantasy, and instead liked violent sword & sorcery pulps and books on historical warfare. His main sources of inspiration were Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and Fritz Leiber, although he had more eclectic tastes, and had an uncanny ability to adapt them into the game, from 50s SF blob monsters and flying saucers to Japanese plastic toys.

The resulting game assumes a grittier sort of world with tough, often shady heroes, corrupt civilisation, and rugged frontiers where laws are stern and might makes right; underground empires inhabited by ancient and malevolent civilisations, and supernatural powers - demon lords, devil princes, gods and goddesses - playing chess with their mortal pawns. (In a very Ffahrd & Mouser way!) There is a lot of strangeness on the edges, too. The rules integrate these assumptions into their fabric, from character types with dubious morality (assassins, a focused illusionist class), or an ethical code focused on the swift dispensation of frontier justice (giant-killing rangers, monks, paladins). The game's most important rule declares that advancement is mostly found in loot and plunder, gained by hook or crook. Characters then have to train to advance in levels, seeking out various masters, or competing in bizarre class-centric hierarchies (you will only become Top Druid if you first defeat one of the previous top Druids). There are lots of quirks and edge cases.

The mechanics are often baroque in their totality, but they can be scaled well (this feature is of course shared by 2nd edition). The game comes with a badly edited and rambling but supremely useful Dungeon Masters Guide which offers solid and wise advice on constructing adventures, and setting up a complex, interconnected campaign that's more than the sum of its parts. In its first years, it was also served by a very solid sequence of adventures, which were very thoroughly playtested, and still serve as the most consistently good collection of scenarios for any RPG (except maybe early Warhammer Fantasy and CoC). These modules are slightly different from the campaign-oriented vision of the core books: they are good, but they are often convention scenarios with standalone premises and higher deadliness for competitive scoring.

* * *

2nd edition AD&D is a different beast, an attempt to create a new, accessible set of rulebooks in place of a game that was by then overburdened with unwieldy and dubious optional rules and character options. It was created by a committee, although, to its credit, a committee of experienced game designers who were all old AD&D hands. 2nd edition plays safe while trying to reconcile mutual, sometimes contradictory demands: to consolidate a decade's worth of new materials and popular house rules; to deflect parental and religious criticism from the game and establish it as a family-friendly brand; and to serve as a springboard for several new novel and product lines. It is the kind of compromise that people can accept, but generates little enthusiasm.

2nd edition AD&D's literary roots lie in heroic high fantasy, the popular trilogies, quadrilogies, pentalogies, etc. of the 1970s and 1980s, without the seedier pulps. Best-selling AD&D-branded novels set in Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms were as much a part of this background as things like The Belgariad, Shannara, The Chronicles of Prydain, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and so on. This sort of fantasy tends to draw clearer lines between light and darkness, focuses on heroic destinies, doing the good thing, heroic protagonists and comic relief side characters, typically united against some gathering dark force in a long quest. Its implied world is a fundamentally calm, green kingdom of RenFaire aesthetics, and fundamentally good, or at most mischiveous people, beset by the forces of Evil. This is the baseline mode of 2nd edition, with significant later departures, but dominant throughout the edition cycle.

Accordingly, 2nd edition is a "cleaned up" edition, on three levels. First, it whitewashes the moral ambiguity, earnest violence, and strong weirdness of the earlier game, to focus on more straightforwardly heroic character types. It is squeakier, cleaner, and yes, a little milquetoast. Assassins and half-orcs are right out in the core books (yes, they are brought back in one of those crappy expansion books that came later, and which only Complete Weenies used - looking at you, Mr. Dixon!). It also reduces the specificity of the game rules: the Illusionist and Druid classes, which had had their strictly defined rules and distinct spell lists, are folded into the general Wizard/Cleric character type, where they no longer stand out. This is not to the game's benefit. The third aspect of cleanup, on the other hand, is beneficial: 2nd edition is easier to grok, has more coherent mechanics, a rudimentary but functional skill system, and a combat system that moves from attack tables to THAC0, a badly explained but ultimately quite easy formula. Crucially, though, the Main Rule is muddled: the bulk of experience is now awarded for "story awards" (or whatever they are called), with some for monsters (this has continuity with 1st edition) and some for class-specific stuff. Much less laser-like precision.

2nd edition has cleaner rules, but, at the same time, somewhat less interesting ones. The weakest part of the core game, however, is the Dungeon Master's Guide (now with an apostrophe). This book, simply put, does not teach the beginning Dungeon Master anything particularly useful. You don't really get concrete advice about developing your adventures, campaign worlds, or even that much about running the game. The first edition's massive and packed appendices are not present, nor is its storehouse of good advice. At the table, the DMG's role was mostly as a magic item reference.

This is really quite unfortunate, because while the DMG is lacking, the adventures for the general AD&D product line - the ones you would presumably buy after getting into the game - are not very good either, so they do not establish a solid practical example. At this time, TSR did not do much, if any in-house testing, and outsourced much of its adventure design to wannabe novelists (fruity people looking for their TSR novel deal who created linear, story-heavy junk without much player agency), the RPGA's organised play sections (mainly rules lawyers and turboautists who could rattle off Official TSR Rulings with Mr. Dixon's consummate skill, but tended to lack creativity and imagination), and Dungeon Magazine (fan content, the best of the lot but rarely outstanding). Accordingly, it doesn't have much of a module legacy. Who plays classic 2nd edition adventures anymore? What are these classics even? Hell if I know.

To its credit, 2nd edition, while it suffered from a horrible bloat of barely (if at all) playtested of filler supplements in its day, does have two strands of creative legacy that are worth noting. First is a sequence of campaign worlds, which, while not free from the sins of the age (bloat, a bit of sanitisation), are obviously labours of love in a way the core game really wasn't. People who remember the likes of Al-Quadim, Spelljammer, Birthright, or (the best of them all) Dark Sun remember 2nd edition much more fondly than those who wanted to play "just AD&D, thanks". Second, the second edition era produced a whole bunch of really good AD&D-based computer games. This success story begun with 1st edition-based games (the Gold Box series), but continued well into the 1990s, and included a whole lotta Codex favourites. Not all of them were great (Dungeon Hack and that one stronghold building game were godawful, and Baldur's Gate 1 is a colossal MEH), but the likes of Eye of the Beholder and Shattered Lands have stood the test of time very well.


* * *


So that's the REALLY TL;DR take. In the end, it would be quite easy to run a good game with the 2nd edition rules, but I do believe that if you have 1st edition, it just makes more sense to go with that one, and maybe adapt THAC0 and a handful of simple rules that you like (such as the easier initiative system).

 

[JamesDixon]

Sure, why not.

For all their continuity and rough compatibility, AD&D and AD&D 2nd edition are far enough from each other to be different games. They rest on different literary traditions, their rules serve different purposes, they place emphasis on different sorts of adventures, and they play fairly differently. You can easily see this by their online communities, which generally do not mix or even communicate much.

You know how Melanhead is lying? His fingers and mouth are moving.

They aren't different games at all since they use the same engine to a Tee. This is why you can take a 1E character and play it in 2E or vice versa. They play identically and you know it, so why the lie there Melanhead?

1st edition AD&D is a single man's vision about a broad, campaign-level implementation of D&D. Its stylistic quirks and idiosyncrasies make it a personal work, even if he did, in fact, get help from a tight design team. Gary Gygax had peculiar tastes in fantasy, even in his generation: he had little interest in Tolkien and other sorts of epic fantasy, and instead liked violent sword & sorcery pulps and books on historical warfare. His main sources of inspiration were Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and Fritz Leiber, although he had more eclectic tastes, and had an uncanny ability to adapt them into the game, from 50s SF blob monsters and flying saucers to Japanese plastic toys.

If that were true then why does Appendix N list the very authors you claimed didn't inspire Gary?

The resulting game assumes a grittier sort of world with tough, often shady heroes, corrupt civilisation, and rugged frontiers where laws are stern and might makes right; underground empires inhabited by ancient and malevolent civilisations, and supernatural powers - demon lords, devil princes, gods and goddesses - playing chess with their mortal pawns. (In a very Ffahrd & Mouser way!) There is a lot of strangeness on the edges, too. The rules integrate these assumptions into their fabric, from character types with dubious morality (assassins, a focused illusionist class), or an ethical code focused on the swift dispensation of frontier justice (giant-killing rangers, monks, paladins). The game's most important rule declares that advancement is mostly found in loot and plunder, gained by hook or crook. Characters then have to train to advance in levels, seeking out various masters, or competing in bizarre class-centric hierarchies (you will only become Top Druid if you first defeat one of the previous top Druids). There are lots of quirks and edge cases.

Still present in the AD&D 2E rules set. All of the settings from 1E were moved forward into 2E. There was no tonal shift. Assassins expanded to 7 classes as it's something any non-Good aligned class can do. You have even greater fleshed out alignment rules for both people and societies. Thus, you still had the same thing. Another lie.

The mechanics are often baroque in their totality, but they can be scaled well (this feature is of course shared by 2nd edition). The game comes with a badly edited and rambling but supremely useful Dungeon Masters Guide which offers solid and wise advice on constructing adventures, and setting up a complex, interconnected campaign that's more than the sum of its parts. In its first years, it was also served by a very solid sequence of adventures, which were very thoroughly playtested, and still serve as the most consistently good collection of scenarios for any RPG (except maybe early Warhammer Fantasy and CoC). These modules are slightly different from the campaign-oriented vision of the core books: they are good, but they are often convention scenarios with standalone premises and higher deadliness for competitive scoring.

Gary had great ideas, but was a lousy businessman and writer. At least, you can admit that much.

2nd edition AD&D is a different beast, an attempt to create a new, accessible set of rulebooks in place of a game that was by then overburdened with unwieldy and dubious optional rules and character options. It was created by a committee, although, to its credit, a committee of experienced game designers who were all old AD&D hands. 2nd edition plays safe while trying to reconcile mutual, sometimes contradictory demands: to consolidate a decade's worth of new materials and popular house rules; to deflect parental and religious criticism from the game and establish it as a family-friendly brand; and to serve as a springboard for several new novel and product lines. It is the kind of compromise that people can accept, but generates little enthusiasm.

It's the same beast. Are you saying having a project leader to head up the clean up of nearly 20 years worth of rules from OD&D, Dragon, Dungeon, and AD&D 1E is a bad thing? The same guy that was one of the first employees of TSR and put into the position of project lead to make 2E by Gary himself is a bad thing?

2nd edition AD&D's literary roots lie in heroic high fantasy, the popular trilogies, quadrilogies, pentalogies, etc. of the 1970s and 1980s, without the seedier pulps. Best-selling AD&D-branded novels set in Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms were as much a part of this background as things like The Belgariad, Shannara, The Chronicles of Prydain, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and so on. This sort of fantasy tends to draw clearer lines between light and darkness, focuses on heroic destinies, doing the good thing, heroic protagonists and comic relief side characters, typically united against some gathering dark force in a long quest. Its implied world is a fundamentally calm, green kingdom of RenFaire aesthetics, and fundamentally good, or at most mischiveous people, beset by the forces of Evil. This is the baseline mode of 2nd edition, with significant later departures, but dominant throughout the edition cycle.

Incorrect, the literary roots are the same as Appendix N of the AD&D 1E DMG. In fact, the staff at TSR made that abundantly clear and kept the original settings. It's funny that the liar has to cite two settings created in 1E as a bad thing for 2E. There are still 9 alignments and the DM/players are free to choose to play evil characters. In fact, there was a lot more support for it.

Accordingly, 2nd edition is a "cleaned up" edition, on three levels. First, it whitewashes the moral ambiguity, earnest violence, and strong weirdness of the earlier game, to focus on more straightforwardly heroic character types. It is squeakier, cleaner, and yes, a little milquetoast. Assassins and half-orcs are right out in the core books (yes, they are brought back in one of those crappy expansion books that came later, and which only Complete Weenies used - looking at you, Mr. Dixon!). It also reduces the specificity of the game rules: the Illusionist and Druid classes, which had had their strictly defined rules and distinct spell lists, are folded into the general Wizard/Cleric character type, where they no longer stand out. This is not to the game's benefit. The third aspect of cleanup, on the other hand, is beneficial: 2nd edition is easier to grok, has more coherent mechanics, a rudimentary but functional skill system, and a combat system that moves from attack tables to THAC0, a badly explained but ultimately quite easy formula. Crucially, though, the Main Rule is muddled: the bulk of experience is now awarded for "story awards" (or whatever they are called), with some for monsters (this has continuity with 1st edition) and some for class-specific stuff. Much less laser-like precision.

1. There's the nine alignments that are further fleshed out. Violence is always an option for the players to decide. I'm so glad that you admit that the 7 Assassin classes with their 48 poison types are heroic adventurers. Half-Orcs are still there in the first Monstrous Compendium published at the same time as the other two core books. Are you saying that monster manual is a Complete Weenie book? You certainly love to lie.

Spoiler

Spoiler

2. Illusionists are a specialty mage and in 1E were a sub-class of Magic-User. Druids were also a sub-class of Clerics in 1E. Here's the proof.

Spoiler

Your lies fail to match the books. Here's the actual pages of where those classes appeared in.

Spoiler

Same classes and groupings in AD&D 2E.

Spoiler

You were claiming that Druids and Illusionists were distinct classes not subject to a parent grouping. The rule books for both show that there was no change. Both were sub-classes within their groups. The only difference is that in 2E there was a higher grouping and the prior sub-classes were all equal to each other.

Illusionist spells were still a defined spell list of the Illusionist School of Magic. 2E fleshed out and created the schools of magic that allowed for the creation of other specialty wizards. Druids and Clerics used Spheres to define their spell lists. Thus, they still had the same distinction as they did in 1E.

See page 47 of the AD&D 2E PHB on specialty wizards.

Spoiler

The skill system in AD&D 2E is the same one introduced in 1E in Oriental Adventures and expanded in the Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneers Survival Guide. So if you think that AD&D 2E's system is terrible then you must also think that 1E's is as well. The following extract is from page 23 of the Dungeoneers Survival Guide.

Spoiler

RE Experience awards: You keep forgetting that 1E also awarded experience for "story" progression. I give you page 84 of the AD&D 1E DMG.

Spoiler

Therefore you lied again about how experience is gained. For reference, AD&D 2E DMG has an entire chapter devoted to giving out experience of which 4 pages are dedicated to the actual numbers. In 1E, you get 2 full pages and an eighth of a page for experience.

2nd edition has cleaner rules, but, at the same time, somewhat less interesting ones. The weakest part of the core game, however, is the Dungeon Master's Guide (now with an apostrophe). This book, simply put, does not teach the beginning Dungeon Master anything particularly useful. You don't really get concrete advice about developing your adventures, campaign worlds, or even that much about running the game. The first edition's massive and packed appendices are not present, nor is its storehouse of good advice. At the table, the DMG's role was mostly as a magic item reference.

Now this is a valid complaint. Yes, the DMG does lack the features you state. However, you ignore 12 supplements that more then make up for it. All total the rules for the DM for creating worlds and adventures clocks in at 1,610 pages. Are you going to say that AD&D 1E had more to offer DMs? If you do then you're a flat out liar which we've already established.

This is really quite unfortunate, because while the DMG is lacking, the adventures for the general AD&D product line - the ones you would presumably buy after getting into the game - are not very good either, so they do not establish a solid practical example. At this time, TSR did not do much, if any in-house testing, and outsourced much of its adventure design to wannabe novelists (fruity people looking for their TSR novel deal who created linear, story-heavy junk without much player agency), the RPGA's organised play sections (mainly rules lawyers and turboautists who could rattle off Official TSR Rulings with Mr. Dixon's consummate skill, but tended to lack creativity and imagination), and Dungeon Magazine (fan content, the best of the lot but rarely outstanding). Accordingly, it doesn't have much of a module legacy. Who plays classic 2nd edition adventures anymore? What are these classics even? Hell if I know.

The adventure quality of AD&D 2E is far and above what was done for 1E or even OD&D. That's why they sold so well.

I'm glad that you acknowledge my superior intellect and knowledge of both editions that I'm able to pull the actual pages out to show people where you're lying at. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Also your opinion is not a fact and is highly subjective while also being suspect due to your proven track record of being a liar.

To its credit, 2nd edition, while it suffered from a horrible bloat of barely (if at all) playtested of filler supplements in its day, does have two strands of creative legacy that are worth noting. First is a sequence of campaign worlds, which, while not free from the sins of the age (bloat, a bit of sanitisation), are obviously labours of love in a way the core game really wasn't. People who remember the likes of Al-Quadim, Spelljammer, Birthright, or (the best of them all) Dark Sun remember 2nd edition much more fondly than those who wanted to play "just AD&D, thanks". Second, the second edition era produced a whole bunch of really good AD&D-based computer games. This success story begun with 1st edition-based games (the Gold Box series), but continued well into the 1990s, and included a whole lotta Codex favourites. Not all of them were great (Dungeon Hack and that one stronghold building game were godawful, and Baldur's Gate 1 is a colossal MEH), but the likes of Eye of the Beholder and Shattered Lands have stood the test of time very well.

Bloat was a problem and I accept that. However, you didn't have to own everything in order to have fun. Also, there wasn't any sanitation in the rules. They changed the names of demons, devils, and angels. Muh sanitation!!!1one!

Gold Box Games used the AD&D 2E rules set not 1E. It even says so on the box. When Pool of Radiance was developed SSI was given the pre-production books to use for the game. That's why they all followed the AD&D 2E rules to a Tee. AD&D 1E didn't have a single computer RPG made for it.

So that's the REALLY TL;DR take. In the end, it would be quite easy to run a good game with the 2nd edition rules, but I do believe that if you have 1st edition, it just makes more sense to go with that one, and maybe adapt THAC0 and a handful of simple rules that you like (such as the easier initiative system).

We don't care what you believe. AD&D 1E is a very flawed game and it took 2E to make it cohesive.

It's hilarious that you think that THAC0 is a 2E only thing. It's not since it's a formula derived from and used in the combat matrices in 1E. It just made it simpler to remember as the formula was THAC0-1d20+modifiers=AC hit. Oh so complex and hard to remember how to do it that even Greta Thunberg could do it.

 

[JamesDixon]

Certainly, 2e fans are not seething, coping and dilating whenever you criticise their limp-wristed kiddy edition. Look at that guy having a completely normal one.

Drizz'tfuckers.

Oh you mean Drizzt that first appeared in FR5 The Savage Frontier for AD&D 1E published August of 1988?

Thanks for AD&D 1E inflicting him upon the world.

It's nice to see that you're coping so well with me exposing your lies with the truth.

Speaking of limp-wristed, all that you can do with the facts in my post is rate it with Autism. Cope harder bitch.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

2nd edition AD&D's literary roots lie in heroic high fantasy, the popular trilogies, quadrilogies, pentalogies, etc. of the 1970s and 1980s, without the seedier pulps. Best-selling AD&D-branded novels set in Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms were as much a part of this background as things like The Belgariad, Shannara, The Chronicles of Prydain, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and so on. This sort of fantasy tends to draw clearer lines between light and darkness, focuses on heroic destinies, doing the good thing, heroic protagonists and comic relief side characters, typically united against some gathering dark force in a long quest. Its implied world is a fundamentally calm, green kingdom of RenFaire aesthetics, and fundamentally good, or at most mischiveous people, beset by the forces of Evil. This is the baseline mode of 2nd edition, with significant later departures, but dominant throughout the edition cycle.

On the topic of the literary influences of respective editions of Dungeons & Dragons, it's worth noting that the fantasy literature market changed drastically between the publication of original D&D in 1974 and the release of AD&D 2nd edition in 1989, independently of changes in D&D itself. Although neither Dave Arneson nor Gary Gygax were particularly fond of Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings trilogy had obtained sufficiently popularity by the early 1970s that many players wanted to have dwarves, elves, and hobbits halflings as characters, prompting the inclusion of demi-human options in character creation. However, the influences of Tolkien on game design were heavily outweighted by the influences of many other writers such as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, and Abraham Merritt, among others. At that time, there weren't any other examples of "heroic high fantasy" or "epic fantasy" in the style of the Lord of the Rings, but by the end of the 1970s some writers finally realized they could enjoy commercial success by creating a derivative epic fantasy series (e.g. The Sword of Shannara in 1977, Lord Foul's Bane in 1977), and this snowballed in the 1980s with the beginnings of many more ponderous, LotR-style epic fantasy series (e.g. Pawn of Prophecy in 1982, Magician: Apprentice in 1982), so that they dominated the fantasy literature market by mid-1989 when the three AD&D 2nd edition core rulebooks appeared. TSR itself had, of course, published its own LotR-derived trilogy of novels with the Dragonlance Chronicles in 1984-5, accompanying a series of 12 linked adventure modules.

With the crucial exception of experience points for completing objectives versus obtaining treasure, the differences in game mechanics between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D were fairly minor. However, there was a pronounced shift in the tastes of the fantasy-reading audience in just a decade-and-a-half, spurred by the popularity of Tolkien that already existed in 1974, and D&D/AD&D was swept up in the current without the active intentions of the game designers of AD&D 2nd edition. The changes in atmosphere decried by those who prefer AD&D 1st edition were already established prior to AD&D 2nd edition by fundamental changes in the preferences of fantasy RPG players in general. Although this affected the underlying assumptions of the implied baseline campaign setting of D&D/AD&D and the relatively conventional TSR-published campaign settings that already existed (Greyhawk, the Known World, Dragonlance, the Forgotten Realms), TSR itself started publishing decidedly unconventional campaign settings immediately after the release of AD&D 2nd edition, and these new campaign settings were at odds with the prevailing Tolkienesque fantasy literature: the gonzo Spelljammer setting released in 1989, the gothic horror Ravenloft setting released in 1990, the post-apocalyptic Dark Sun setting released in 1991, and later the tremendous weirdness of the Planescape setting of 1994.

 

[S.torch]

I'm surprised. These are some great post, containing things that I find very interesting. Thanks Melan for replying in great detail. I have to say that I have a particular taste, because I'm both an unconditional fan of Tolkien and R. E. Howard . Despite that their styles are presented often at odds here, I find them to be extremely compatible.

Also thanks JamesDixon for posting that page from Appendix N. Now I give much less credit to people that want to deny Tolkien influence in roleplaying games, though honestly, I already didn't give any.

 

[JamesDixon]

I'm surprised. These are some great post, containing things that I find very interesting. Thanks Melan for replying in great detail. I have to say that I have a particular taste, because I'm both an unconditional fan of Tolkien and R. E. Howard . Despite that their styles are presented often at odds here, I find them to be extremely compatible.

Also thanks JamesDixon for posting that page from Appendix N. Now I give much less credit to people that want to deny Tolkien influence in roleplaying games, though honestly, I already didn't give any.

You're welcome. My only position in this is to state the truth. That's why I get onto Melanhead because he flat out lies about both editions to prop up his favorite which is 1E. I accept that 2E has flaws and could stand for some improvement, but overall it is superior to 1E.

It may shock some people, but AD&D 1E Oriental Adventures was my very first RPG I played. I ran a ninja/mage in it and had a blast. I even remember that character 38 years later as her name was Kanji-sama.

 

[Melan]

On the topic of the literary influences of respective editions of Dungeons & Dragons, it's worth noting that the fantasy literature market changed drastically between the publication of original D&D in 1974 and the release of AD&D 2nd edition in 1989, independently of changes in D&D itself. (etc.)

Yes, I certainly agree with most of this - both about the sea change within the fantasy genre, and about this shift already being underway in the 1970s. EGG's influences came from a previous age (he was almost a generation older than his circle of fellow gamers, and had a personal connection to the twilight of the pulp magazine era), and his tastes were fairly eccentric. Less is known about Arneson, but he is proven to have liked monster movies, Star Trek, and the godawful Gor series (all of these feature prominently in his published work). Meanwhile, even the original Chainmail players and D&D playtest groups wanted to play Tolkienesque characters, and, it is understood, basically pressured Gary and Dave into it. (Hell, for a while, they pressured them into playing vampires, balrogs, and small dragons!) There was clearly some reluctance there, as seen in the level limits, which were originally very harsh - hobbits as 4th level Fighting-Men maximum, etc.

Once gamers got their hands on D&D, though, many were eager to play it as a Tolkien simulator. This seems to have been a major cultural difference between the original Midwest gaming groups and California, where new players mainly came from the ranks of fantasy fans and Tolkienophiles, not OG wargamers. It also explains the rapid disenchantment many would experience with D&D-like systems, since while D&D does a passable job with The Hobbit (which Gary liked), it stumbles with LotR (which Gary stubbornly disliked). It is simply not the greatest vehicle to run a squeaky clean heroic fantasy campaign. This friction continued to be present through D&D's history wherever it got popular ("AD&D is unrealistic because it is not like LotR" was still a common argument in the early 1990s). 2nd edition's style - and some chronologically earlier materials which have led into it, first and foremost Dragonlance - owes much to the course correction towards the new generation of popular high fantasy novels.

Ultimately, there is no harm in liking Tolkien's work (I do), or even trying to combine it with AD&D (now that, I don't do ). However... reading and understanding the original literary works which have inspired the game and its basic assumptions/rules will suddenly make obscure and strange things make a lot of sense, and these works are a hell of a foundation for a functional, great AD&D campaign. They are, we could say, a natural fit.

 

[JamesDixon]

On the topic of the literary influences of respective editions of Dungeons & Dragons, it's worth noting that the fantasy literature market changed drastically between the publication of original D&D in 1974 and the release of AD&D 2nd edition in 1989, independently of changes in D&D itself. (etc.)

Yes, I certainly agree with most of this - both about the sea change within the fantasy genre, and about this shift already being underway in the 1970s. EGG's influences came from a previous age (he was almost a generation older than his circle of fellow gamers, and had a personal connection to the twilight of the pulp magazine era), and his tastes were fairly eccentric. Less is known about Arneson, but he is proven to have liked monster movies, Star Trek, and the godawful Gor series (all of these feature prominently in his published work). Meanwhile, even the original Chainmail players and D&D playtest groups wanted to play Tolkienesque characters, and, it is understood, basically pressured Gary and Dave into it. (Hell, for a while, they pressured them into playing vampires, balrogs, and small dragons!) There was clearly some reluctance there, as seen in the level limits, which were originally very harsh - hobbits as 4th level Fighting-Men maximum, etc.

Once gamers got their hands on D&D, though, many were eager to play it as a Tolkien simulator. This seems to have been a major cultural difference between the original Midwest gaming groups and California, where new players mainly came from the ranks of fantasy fans and Tolkienophiles, not OG wargamers. It also explains the rapid disenchantment many would experience with D&D-like systems, since while D&D does a passable job with The Hobbit (which Gary liked), it stumbles with LotR (which Gary stubbornly disliked). It is simply not the greatest vehicle to run a squeaky clean heroic fantasy campaign. This friction continued to be present through D&D's history wherever it got popular ("AD&D is unrealistic because it is not like LotR" was still a common argument in the early 1990s). 2nd edition's style - and some chronologically earlier materials which have led into it, first and foremost Dragonlance - owes much to the course correction towards the new generation of popular high fantasy novels.

Ultimately, there is no harm in liking Tolkien's work (I do), or even trying to combine it with AD&D (now that, I don't do ). However... reading and understanding the original literary works which have inspired the game and its basic assumptions/rules will suddenly make obscure and strange things make a lot of sense, and these works are a hell of a foundation for a functional, great AD&D campaign. They are, we could say, a natural fit.

It's hilarious that a Hungarian is making comments about what the Midwestern US thought about AD&D/OD&D. None of what you wrote is true about the Midwest. You want to know why? Because I lived there. The most common complaint around the table was not being able to afford X book since it was hard to get ahold of as gaming stores were on average 30-100 miles away. That was usually the biggest city and people didn't want to pay for expensive shipping.

From all the clubs and private groups I played in this was the order of most played settings.

Homebrew
Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk
Dragonlance
Ravenloft
Dark Sun
Spelljammer
Planescape

That's right homebrew settings based upon the creator's likes. Those ranged from based on Conan to LOTRO to Shannara. There wasn't any animosity about LOTR or the lack of it in AD&D. You are flat out lying and making shit up again.

If you want to talk about something then talk about your worthless and pathetic country since you know more about it. Leave the US alone since you haven't foggiest idea about what was or wasn't popular here. Mainly because you never lived there.

Jesus you are one fucking retarded lousy idiot.

 

[Ninjerk]

Thun-der dome!
Thun-der DOME!

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Jesus you are one fucking retarded lousy idiot.

I see Dixon is assmad in another D&D thread again.