What were the improvements from 1st to 2nd Edition?

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:19 am

DragonLance was and is awesome because you get to play minotaurs, who either have no INT penalty or no WIS penalty depending on which version you're using, coupled with crazy STR bonuses: they are ultimate minmax machines.

Minotaurs in the setting are this insane combination of :sparta:

and

and samurai, which is kind of awesome in a setting where everyone fears you and is just trying to get along with hugs and love and the power of GOOOOOOD. How ridiculous are they? They have a subculture that worships good gods that practice martial arts (the Kazelati), meaning that in 2e you had an excuse to use Oriental Adventures rules in addition to being a 20 STR single-class Cleric. Or, if you were even more hardcore you were from their DL version of Rome and were an armor-wearing wizard using fighter weapons.

Other than that? Fuck if I know, man. Minotaurs. Stop right there, you're home.

Plus, because it's so fucking stock you can kick holes in everything and stomp through the setting's poorly-constructed world and have a great laugh at the chaos you cause. Of all possible settings DL ascribes to the Evil is Dumb idea so much harder than everywhere else that if you're a hard-charging protagonist with a decent ability to affect change in the world (ie, minmaxed) you can really fuck up the NPCs and their basic supplied storylines in hilarious ways.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:20 am

Well the problem with that is that i could already just say my character was a noble and new how to behave in a court, or was a cobblers son. What i wanted was something to help me with how to resolve whether i remembered the correct formalities for presenting myself to the king of Aggrandium, or whether i could repair the damaged boots of flying we had found. The system they presented for rolls i felt went the wrong way, making the basic stat roll the norm for a killed attempt whereas that should have been the untrained roll. To my mind anyway.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:24 am

^^

"I need the system to tell me what I can remember, or what to do because I cannot think for myself!"

Glad I read that prior to clicking the ignore button. Roleplaying really is rollplaying with some people.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:29 am

shadzar wrote:"I need the system to tell me what I can remember, or what to do because I cannot think for myself!"

Huh? His two examples were remembering court etiquette and repairing magical objects.

How would you "think for yourself" to repair magical objects, or personally know etiquette in a fantasy world without your DM telling you?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:19 am

Because under secondary skills, as a cobbler you would know how to fix the boots. Noble/rich wasn't an option for obvious munchkin reasons. Courtesan however may have been, so knowing diplomatic means would have fallen under it. You just know. If is part of your character's character.

The entire system of NWPs/skills was unneeded, as you could always hash it out with your DM during play, as is roleplaying.

I am not going to post form AD&D CR CD-ROM the entire optional chapter, but if you read it then you could see how to do it other than with NWPs. Choosing to use NWPs over secondary skills, and then bitching about them is pretty stupid. They were optional for a reason. You could have chosen the secondary skills rules, or gone with neither.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:56 am

shadzar wrote:^^ "I need the system to tell me what I can remember, or what to do because I cannot think for myself!"

Glad I read that prior to clicking the ignore button. Roleplaying really is rollplaying with some people.

Can I ask why you think there should be a system for combat then? Why not just describe how your character will swing the sword and let the DM decide if it hits. Or maybe you think the DM just deciding is unrealistic or unfair? In which case why does this not apply to the 2 actions i described?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:34 am

Because unlike those skills such as building a fire, you cannot just speak it through.

Why don't you ask the people that wrote the game.

BTW, some games do just describe what goes on. IIRC, it was a big part of the Storyteller line of games.

souran · Post by **souran** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:01 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
souran wrote: DL also kept saying that player characters should be doing these world changing things but then was more stock than even FR. Its badguys were bad because there boss god told them to be bad because she represented bad stuff.
Is there anything good in Dragonlance? Why isn't it dead yet? What's the appeal?

Even series like the Inheritance Cycle and Twilight have some sort of hook, even if it's a stupid one. What's Dragonlance's?

Dragonlance had and has a couple of cool features

1) a world thats both big enoug hand small enough to actually explore. Unlike the realms which is fuck all huge, a good DL game could actually GO everywhere and most places had a something that was uniquely theres.

2) It actually tried to make the Gygaxian D&D alignments into a religion that is neither retarded or outright immoral.

Remember in 2e dnd true neutral usually means "you try and hold the balance between good and evil" Because Gary wrote the game in the late 60s and 70s when moral relativism was at its height.

This means that there is an awful lot of stupid with the D&D alignments. Most of them do not represent a philsophy coherent enough that a person could make a life around it much less a religion.

DL came along and said "ok, even though all the good gods and evil goods are always fighting, they are all part of 1 religion. Also, elves, dwarves and the rest are worshiping the same gods under different names." Basically, even good characters were stupid to not give approapriate worship to evil dieties if doing something that the evil diety had control over. Quick example: sailing. An evil diety is the good of the sea. Even good characters should offer a tribute or she gets mad and destroys your boat.

Anyway, even though they started the process of unstupidifing the D&D alignment/relgion mess they then turned around and rushed back in again with more force than ever.

3) It was the first world that had real novels published for it. Not just modules, although the first novels were a combinatino of novelizing transcrpits from sessions and a lot of author's privlege. It had books that people could read that had nothing to do with D&D really. They were terrible by any standard, but they were there.

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Nov 03, 2009 5:39 pm

souran wrote: Quick example: sailing. An evil diety is the good of the sea. Even good characters should offer a tribute or she gets mad and destroys your boat.

Yeah, I always hated that other settings weren't like that. Sure, Pluto was a jerk, but you still left him a gift if you were about to undertake a business venture in hopes he'll bless you with wealth.

In my main world, the dominant religion makes sure there is a place for all of the standard religions (I use the draconic pantheon for the campaign setting). Which means there are totally small chapels dedicated to Falazure and Tiamat in the basement of the temple of Io.

souran · Post by **souran** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:17 pm

Well,

weather you like ebberon or not it does have one feature that makes a LOT more sense than most D&D worlds.

Ebberon has a pantheon of gods, both good and evil but it also treats its religions like they are something people who were not completly insane might worship.

So there are good and neutral dieties and they form a colledtion and you worship the whole collection offering specfic gifts at appropriate times.

The evil dieties are are actually evil and have cults and whatnot as usual.

However, most civilized places do not have open worship of evil dieties. People pray to the good dieties to protect them from the evil dieties.

Anyway, /end rant.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:18 pm

souran wrote:Well,

weather you like ebberon

It is neither 1st or 2nd edition. So if we want some weather on it, then piss on it and call it rain.

souran · Post by **souran** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:33 pm

shadzar wrote:
souran wrote:Well,

weather you like ebberon
It is neither 1st or 2nd edition. So if we want some weather on it, then piss on it and call it rain.

Look, just because you have a love affair with a 20 year old system doesn't mean you have to be ignorant of what the content of newer systems are.

All I was saying is that ebberons religions work more like a religion we would recognize.

Whatsmore, even thoguh both hackmaster and castles and crusades were basically the "pathfinders" of 2e dnd they both saw that the game had some areas that could use improvment. You asked what changed and what was wrong. Don't get pissy when people answer.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:01 pm

I think you are in the wrong thread. Eberron, has nothing to do with changes form 1st to second edition, is what I was stating here.

I didn't ask what was wrong in this thread, I have just been supplying information I have at hand about the changes and a comment or two on the DL setting.

Eberron, has nothing to do with 1st or 2nd, and I am confused as to how its religious workings has anything to do with them...I see you responding to a comment made by Count, but not sure what it really has to do with the worlds of 1st or 2nd edition?

Are you saying that since 2nd edition didn't change the 1st edition religious system to something more like real world religions, you have a problem with it?

I would have a problem with ANY game that tried to emulate real world religions in a fantasy setting, because that only asks to have problems from people, which there was enough of for D&D with 1st edition by the Jack Chick crowd trying to assign devil worshiping to D&D.

Why Baatzu(sp) and such replaced demons and devils in name in 2nd to get AWAY FROM the real world religions.

Having demons and devils back in a later edition is fine, but why would you want to emulate a real world religion at all, since it is a game of fiction, fantasy, and make believe?

Is that what you meant that you would have preferred 2nd to emulate real world religions more closely?

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:19 pm

Shadzar this board is composed mainly of people who play 3rd edition, so if any mention of 3rd edition content, rules or setting information gives you Nerd-Rage (and that certainly seems to be the case given your previous posts) you might not find this board for you.

Souran was responding to a post about religion in Dragonlance by comparing it to religion in another setting. No-one else seemed offended by this.

shadzar wrote:I think you are in the wrong thread.

I don't think its Souran that's in the wrong thread. Your "I hate 3rd Ed." thread must be elsewhere.

Oh, here it is

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:09 am

So. How about some 1E D&D bashing?

Hate levels are running dangerously low.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:35 am

Well, I guess it'd be fun to try to list all the ridiculous/contradictory/unworkable/implausible 'rules' in the AD&D DMG.

I'll start with.

Recommend training costs are more than what a character could probably find at low levels....too lazy to look up the numbers now.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:43 am

Wow reading this thread is really bolstering my hatred of 1E.

I think you're right on the training costs. Particularly at 1st to 2nd, PCs aren't going to have that much gold because if they did, they would have levelled up already from the gold bonus XP.

I'll add the alignment change rules: your PCs are roleplaying character growth, make sure they suffer an xp penalty for it.

Bobikus · Post by **Bobikus** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:51 am

I do love how shad kept bringing up the "rollplaying" thing against DnD when AD&D even had two pages of tables for rolling the personality traits of npcs.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:45 am

Good lord, man, Shad's most recent post in this thread is from 2009.

Calm down, already, hate the edition, not the poster!

How about them 2 pages on diseases, all of which curable by Cure Disease, none (almost none?) of them even possible to get from anything in the MM or anywhere else. What's up with that, eh?

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 6:57 am

I remember the 1e Monster Manual had completely seperate rules for unarmed/subdual combat specifically dealing with dragons.

The idea was to beat the crap out of a dragon and force it to let it be mounted. That lasts sentence kinda sounds horrible now that can read it...

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:04 pm

THAC0.

There, that should keep it going another year.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:41 pm

I know that the horror that is the 1e DMG has been gone over in great detail.

Racial level limits.

Also, monsters made of arbitrarium.

These were worse in 1e than 2e, IIRC.

But they were still bad in 2e.

Kind of like THAC0, as Roy mentioned.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 2:45 pm

Doom wrote:How about them 2 pages on diseases, all of which curable by Cure Disease, none (almost none?) of them even possible to get from anything in the MM or anywhere else. What's up with that, eh?

was this in the 1st edition DMG?

Bobikus · Post by **Bobikus** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:09 pm

The 1E DMG has probably more tables than the 3.0 core books combined.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:59 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So. How about some 1E D&D bashing?

I'll work on it, but I'm a little busy at the moment. Ironically, that damn thread about a D&D cartoon put a seed into my head to make a first edition "Radio Play" for script frenzy. I never realized how many brick walls there were in that edition.

(Interesting fun fact, if you go down to negative HP you either have to find a really high level cleric or you have to spend an entire WEEK at the local rehab facility, only the high level "heal" spell will eliminate this requirement, even if one was magically healed to full health.)

Of course half of the problems of 1E are true gems for running jokes in a plot line. Like the fact that infravision was incompatible with illumination (it took a while for it to kick in when lights are out so any human with a torch was a pain in the non-human ass).