How 2E is going

We have played 2E now for two weeks and are enjoying ourselves.
Relearning THAC0 was not hard at all.
The changes I made have not shown any issues so far (though I powered down the free arcane missile mages gets to non-scaling 1-3 damage) and have been well received so far.
Since we only have three players, each one is controlling two PC’s. But since it’s 2E, it’s pretty easy to handle two. Hell they could each probably handle 6 on their own.

Our cast (if I remember correctly):
Dale - Aerol, a human ranger, and Stanley, a human paladin
Aaron - Arya (yeah I know), a halfling rogue, and Brandon a human cleric
Will – Grum, a dwarven fighter, De’Aire a half-elven fighter/mage/priest
I don’t expect this campaign to go too long, perhaps until my vacation in August. Afterwards we’ll move to something else.

So far we’ve just done some intro stuff to get ourselves re-familiarized with the game.
The first night included creating characters, a pair of hippogriffs, some zombies that were once a guard patrol (or bandits dressed as guards), some lovely stirges, and some guards that taxed the party but were actually bandits.
The second night included a fair amount of role-playing in the town of Winter’s Respite in which they received standard and simple quests that level 1 parties tend to get. Specifically help guards, protect the innocent, kill evil monsters, and contact a group of dwarves reported nearby. The party did contact the dwarves who had a run of bad luck while looking for, and finding, the iron mine they were camping near. The party agreed to help them in return for a set of dwarf-sized plate mail and to talk with Sir Broderick (the effective sheriff of the town since the last sheriff was run off for being corrupt).
The party fought some beetles and had to rest afterwards (fire beetles can hurt, and the water beetle never touched them with its 3d6 damage pincers).
When they went back in they smelled blood behind a stone door.
It wasn’t blood. It was rust. Rust cause by my favorite monster (and some skeletons that were mining iron ore for the rust monster).
The party’s first actions were to close the door, but the rust monster won initiative.
At first they were able to fight the monster solo, but the skeletons were able to re-open the door after a few rounds.
By the end of the fight two suits of splint mail, 2 javelins, and two swords were rusted away.
The back and forth of the fight was nice because it kept the challenge going even at level 1 (which is usually pretty boring in 1/2E).
The skeletons didn’t hit often until the armor was rusted away, then that PC was hurt pretty bad.
At least half the PC’s dropped once.
At the end of the night Grum, Brandon and Arya leveled.

These fights went fast.
Between low hit points, no combat grid, and no special powers, the combats lasted 5-15 minutes. The only one that was longer was the rust monster fight at 20 minutes, and that was because the rust monster was AC2 (think AC18 in 3E/4E) and the party had to use backup weapons.

It has been a refreshing change so far.
We’ve been rolling random encounters, making the “5 minute adventuring day” pointless.
And we’re having fun.
Maybe at level 7 something will change, but for now it’s all good.

Why 2E?

On multiple entries to this blog I panned AD&D 2E as the worst edition of D&D (until 4E stole that crown).
So why would we choose 2E to play now?
For one, it was the worst at the time, but it was by no means unplayable or truly bad.
The reign of AD&D 2E was full of many books and campaign settings that were released in a seemingly unending stream that only a truly dedicated (and rich) gamer could ever hope to use all of these books.
Many of these books were not worth spending the effort to read or money. (I found out much later that TSR was so poorly managed, which is why so much junk was published.)

But some of my best memories of D&D were with 2E. (And some of my worst were with 1E, which I liked a lot in spite of that.)
Back when I started playing with the group that would evolve into this group, they had so many people that they decided to split the group up into a good campaign and an evil campaign. I think this was probably around 1995.
The good group was run by Dale, who ran a Ravenloft campaign. The players were generally people who preferred good-aligned PCs.
The evil group was run by a jerk (and felon), and I was not surprised who went with that group. I believe it was set in the Forgotten Realms.
I chose the good group because there were too many people in the evil group that I…didn’t care for. I believe I played a cleric of Gond.
The good group did not win. The evil group most definitely lost. (I kind of think of it as a social experiment.)
On just the third night of the campaign the evil group tore itself apart. In the end they only had one PC alive.
They all had agreements and deals with one another to backstab one another in the event of XYZ.
When the smoke cleared, the evil group wanted to have their lone PC duel the entirety of the good group (who were all alive and doing well…even if it was Ravenloft).
I convinced the good group to politely decline with a “no thanks”.
They attempted to get us to change our minds through clever tactics like “Aw c’mon you cowards” and “What are you afraid of?”
My reasoning was pretty simple: We had nothing to gain, they had dignity to gain, and the price of doing what they did should be left as it was. We won because they failed and we had no reason to give them a chance to erase that failure.
That left two bruises on the egos of the evil group’s players.

Then there was Craig’s first attempt at running a game. It was fun and he put it together quite well. We were a bit over-powered for him, but not really. It was also the highest level 2E campaign I had legitimately leveled from 1 to 15.
There are other stories, both good and bad from all editions.
Hell, if I had my way we’d do a BECMI/RC game, but that’s unlikely.
In the end, 2E has a lot to draw from, good books and bad.
When I ran some 2E campaigns, I really didn’t need to prepare as much as I did for the newer editions with less reliance on a rules-heavy setup and a more freeform system.
There was also much more role-playing than I’ve seen recently.

One thing that 1E & 2E can do that 3E on cannot…deal with missing a crucial PC.
If your healer (and sometimes tank) doesn’t show up, you’re in bad shape in big 3/4E fights.
In 1/2E, fighters come aplenty and there are usually backup healers.
Why? Because multi-classing allows for it without a huge sacrifice.
Ah, wizard/cleric, fighter/mage/cleric, and fighter cleric, how I love thee.
And don’t give me any of that malarkey that multi-classing is overpowered. I’ve played this game for a long time and I’ve seen more overpowered combinations in 3/4E than I have in any 1/2E multi-classing.

So why not playtest D&D Next?
Because I disliked 4E so much that I don’t feel I can give 5E a try.
Matt, the owner of Yottaquest, told me how much he and the other players liked D&DN and gave several examples of improvement.
All I could say in response was “Meh”.
Maybe the game has improved and I’m too old-school, or too unwilling to care, but meh.
It’s Hasbro/WoTC’s job now to make me want D&DN.
They need to reach out to me and prove that what they’ve done is better.
Not player accounts. Not ENWorld stories. Not advertisements.
They need to send me a direct e-mail and prove it.
Beyond that then I won’t give a rat’s ass about D&D Next until it is released and every single one of the players in this group say it’s great.
We gave 4E a more than fair chance. The ball’s in your court WotC. I’m not making any effort in this.