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

[Roy]

Ring of Sustenance for the win?

Of course the combat isn't bad. It's mostly dumbfuck mooks who are lucky to have inferior quality weapons. Which also makes the fights pointless, but hey.

[violence in the media]

I don't remember if Rings of Sustenance existed in Dark Sun. The game (at least, as I experienced it run) really did want you worrying about food and water supplies, even at level 12.

[Roy]

I don't remember if Rings of Sustenance existed in Dark Sun. The game (at least, as I experienced it run) really did want you worrying about food and water supplies, even at level 12.

Classic sign of incompetence. Not realizing the game fundamentally changes every few levels.

[PhoneLobster]

The ring I remember from 2e was the Ring of Mammal Control.

A GM rolled up some random junk magic item for a level 5 or so wizard entering a game.

He was all like "hahaha, you got the ring of mammal control, sorry no rerolls sucker!".

If I recall it controlled like some stupid hit dice worth of dumb mammals, at will, telepathically, at range, NO SAVES. The crazy shit I pulled with that ring.

GM "They charge towards you on horse back and..."
ME "No they don't, at 100feet (or whatever it was), their horses try and throw and trample them."
GM "What?"
ME "Ring of mammal control."

GM "With your resources down trapped in the forest you have only a matter of hours to prepare you must find a way to attack the mad man holding your friend hostage, angsty death is almost certain as you attack with no..."
ME "Hey if rodents are like 1 hit point with no listed hit die how many rodents is 40 HD worth? I mean even if it's just 40 that could be a lot of damage per round, but I mean it could be like 400, and the forest is like full of mice and squirrels and crap right?"
GM "What?"
ME "Ring of mammal control."

ME "I polymorph one of the attacking warriors into a mammoth"
GM "An enemy mammoth, that turns to attack..."
ME "His former allies, 3rd on the left."
GM "What?"
ME "Ring of mammal control."

You get the idea. The GM never seemed to, I think I used it juuust rarely enough he forgot it was there. Which is what you had to do in 2e since the game itself basically advised him to punish me if he noticed me succeeding with any given strategy or tool.

[Roy]

Epic Win is Epic. Should we do a 2nd edition satire next?

[TheDarkFuzz]

Dude. Ring of Mammal Control. That's frickin' hilarious.

I think the only one of these settings I've ever even heard of before (besides GH and FR) is Spelljammer, and that from a bunch of people who enjoy GURPS. Miniature giant space hamsters indeed.

[Roy]

Dude. Ring of Mammal Control. That's frickin' hilarious.

I think the only one of these settings I've ever even heard of before (besides GH and FR) is Spelljammer, and that from a bunch of people who enjoy GURPS. Miniature giant space hamsters indeed.

I first heard of that from Minsc.

[Kobajagrande]

If you ignore that stuff, it is apparently possible to have a really fun game there, but every time you mention it, someone will laugh at you for playing a game with miniature giant space hamsters.

And ironically, these are often the same people who agree that BG's Minsc, with his miniature giant space hamster, is the height of all RPG comedy.

Poor Spelljammer. It was too good to be understood.

[zeruslord]

I'd actually like to play a game of Spelljammer if it just ignores the retarded elements of the setting.

[mean_liar]

I don't remember if Rings of Sustenance existed in Dark Sun. The game (at least, as I experienced it run) really did want you worrying about food and water supplies, even at level 12.

Classic sign of incompetence. Not realizing the game fundamentally changes every few levels.

Roy, shut the fuck up with your ignorance of the subject. If you want to wank prolific about things you at least half-know then go ahead, but this crap right here is the sort of thing that makes you look like an idiot.

[Roy]

I don't remember if Rings of Sustenance existed in Dark Sun. The game (at least, as I experienced it run) really did want you worrying about food and water supplies, even at level 12.

Classic sign of incompetence. Not realizing the game fundamentally changes every few levels.

Roy, shut the fuck up with your ignorance of the subject. If you want to wank prolific about things you at least half-know then go ahead, but this crap right here is the sort of thing that makes you look like an idiot.

Dark Sun is a D&D setting. Therefore, my statements are correct and you are made of Fail. QED.

Also...

No, bad liar. Stop lying.

[violence in the media]

Yelling at you aside, mean liar does have a point in that, while Dark Sun was a D&D setting, it did (or tried to do) things differently from just being "in Ravenloft" or "in Dragonlance."

Now, I don't rightfully recall how many of the changes were inherent from the setting, versus how many were a result from the way my DM ran things.

Starmaker can probably correct me, but some of the things I remember (from a campaign I played in some 12-13 years ago) were:

• Preservers took longer to cast their spells, as they had to hide the verbal, somatic, and material components. Or try and pass themselves off as psionicists.
• Defilers got faster exp progression, plus bonus spell power (higher caster level or extra spells or something) if there was some greenery around for them to rape.
• Everyone was psionic in some capacity. Every character rolled at least one random psionic power at the very end of character creation (so that you couldn't intentionally synch up race/class choice with whatever you got).
• Magic items were rare. Metal items even more so. Templars would attempt to confiscate any such items they became aware of on behalf of their respective sorcerer king.
• Unless and until you hooked up with the Veiled Alliance, Preserver wizards frequently didn't have many spells. Often, you'd hit 7th level (for example) and not have any 4th level spells.
• Clerics had some limits on their spellcasting based on their Element. I don't think Fire Clerics could create water at all, for example.
• Your equipment was made of wood, and bone, and obsidian, and broke all the fucking time.
• You were expected to die a lot, and ressurection was unlikely. Hence the character trees.
• There were some shenanigans involving extradimensonal travel. The Gray interfered with it somehow.
• There were some spells that didn't exist, and some that worked differently. Magic and psionics had occassionally strange interactions.

All that said, the overall impression that I got was that the game tried to prevent that "fundamental change" from occuring as you levelled up. A 5th level fighter and a 15th level wizard could very well be in a similar predicament if dumped nude on a rock in the Silt Sea.

[Roy]

And that's just it though. It tried, but failed miserably because you could still do that, and it just made the NPCs and by extension the DM look like power tripping douchebags to try.

And when WotC finally succeeded at making high level just low level with bigger numbers, what did we get?



So I'm very much in the right to call bullshit. And you all should be running away from Dark Sun screaming right now.

And the funny thing? They already had a wank off power trip setting in Ravenloft. And maybe in Dragonlance, if the attacks on it were any indication. Now I understand this was the Death, No Save edition but come on.

[Username17]

2nd edition had the setting explosion, and it was sad. Some of them were honest attempts to reconcile the batshit crazy high level rules with the world. This led to Planescape, Spelljammer, Birthright, Ravenloft, and yes Darksun. Others were attempts to port basic D&D feel into different kinds of fantasy storytelling. This led to crap like Mazteca and Al-Quadim. Others were just the standard nonsense D&D world as drawn up by a different DM. This gave us Greyhawk, Mystarra, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms.

Planescape: Planescape is an honest attempt to run with the fact that all the spokes on the great wheel are infinite and full of pit fiends. And back then there was no restriction on the summoned pit fiends from other pit fiends summoning more pit fiends. The idea was that the crazy extraplanar power of the crazy extraplanar bullshit really was totally bad ass and world conquering, but that it existed as some sort of infinity conflict originating from the dreams and ideals of mortals in non-infinity space. This segregation allowed people to sit around in bars and talk and have this mean fuck all in the face of infinite devil armies.

Spelljammer: Spelljammer is an honest attempt to approach a world where magic users happen generation after generation and make crazy powerful magic items several times during their lives that all last forever. It's a world where these magic things eave the fucking planet in space ships to colonize distant worlds full of monsters, which is coincidentally why there are still monsters to fight. Rather than claiming a bullshit steady state equilibrium, spelljammer posits civilization expanding to the stars on the backs of powerful adventurers.

Birthright: While accepting that high level characters destabilize the planet, there's an arbitrary blood mechanic that keeps characters from achieving high levels unless they happen to be the chosen ones. So the PCs are expected and practically required to over throw the world order, and that's totally fine because the entire world is set up so that is the story.

Ravenloft: The world exists in little pockets of low to mid level gothic horror wackiness and characters are kicked out of it once they win. It's a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end - and none of that involves any high level characters or high level monsters. Problem solved. Forever.

Darksun: Yes, Darksun. The concept is this: the world is a blasted hellscape full of people with DNS psychic powers. Therefore, the really powerful people don't really go outside because there's nothing they want and it's really dangerous even to 20th level characters. The end result is that the world really is a lava lamp where new people go on mid-level murder rampages every day and the cities are small and portable because they are getting wiped off the map all the time. The high level dudes don't interfere with the PCs because the PCs don't have anything they want and there are a thousand threats out there at least as frightening. So instead of teleporting around slaughtering potential threats they just hide in the storm cellar while the various up and comers fight a low level nuclear war all the time outside in the blasted nuclear wasteland.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I bumped this thread for two reasons.

The first one is because 1E D&D bashing is always fun. I wonder if we could get Hicks or FrankTrollman to rant some more. I'm willing to make a donation.

The second one is to ask about Darksun. Okay, so you're a mid-level adventure fighting it out through Darksun. Through luck and persistence you graduate to high level. Now what do you do? Is that the end of the campaign like Ravenloft or do you have more goals to accomplish?

[tzor]

The first one is because 1E D&D bashing is always fun. I wonder if we could get Hicks or FrankTrollman to rant some more. I'm willing to make a donation.

The second one is to ask about Darksun. Okay, so you're a mid-level adventure fighting it out through Darksun. Through luck and persistence you graduate to high level. Now what do you do?

I love 1E debates, in part because I've forgotten so many things of the first game I loved.

As for Darksun, YOU DIE. Darksun (1991) was the precursor to angst games like Vampire (1998). Lots of power but the higher you go the more you become the problem.

[Username17]

Hey, Vampire the Masquerade totally came out in 1991.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Not really sure about Dark Sun in general, but we didn't like playing high level because it meant we were playing the game for a LONG time as well level advance slowly. So by that time, we were ready to start a new game anyway. The DM was getting burned out, someone had a new idea, we wanted to try a different character.

I would guess maybe someone invents heat resistant metal, and just starts taking over the world....or the world of business by selling metal that isn't affect by the Sun of Athas(sp). You could go on a quest to find a way to alter the sun, or to cool the planet. You know those heroic save and better the world kind of things.

[Doom]

High level DarkSun? Use your newfound powers to go to a world that doesn't suck so much.

[souran]

Also,

As a note, 2e dragonlance was only "high powered" because it basically reversed 80% of the 2e changes that created stability and then still tried to play by the 2e rules.

So, race restrictions and human only paladins: gone.

You can once again be a elven paladin/mage. It also was one of the few D&D settings (besides darksun) to have "offical" rules for playing monsters -> as long as hobgoblins and minotaurs were the monsters you wanted to play.

It did some other totally stupid things. They rewrote the mage class so that all mages get there spells supercharged if the moons are lined up and they are a little weaker if they are not. Then they also made every wizard who wanted to get beyond 4th level take a "special test" the reward for which was getting to level 5 and "a powerful and important personal magic item"

So, in DL, if you are a wizard and you "pass your test" which is whatever bogus crap your gamemaster wants, the RULES say you get a kickass magic item. Just because. The thing was, every dm I ever met felt that rings of wizardry or staffs of the archmagi were the appropriate item.

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.

Also, a lot of old DL products would print the stats of the characters from the novels and I new a number of people who assumed you were supposed to play THOSE characters.

Anyway, DL was screwed up in 2e. I always thought it was because it never really was made into a 2e setting, they just put it in a new box and said good enough.

[shadzar]

Anyway, DL was screwed up in 2e. I always thought it was because it never really was made into a 2e setting, they just put it in a new box and said good enough.

Pretty much. But they did try to update kender in the Complete Gnomes and Halflings book...or were those 1st edition?

They made it worse even in 2nd with that DragonLance Saga stuff.

[Lago PARANOIA]

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?

[RandomCasualty2]

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?

Mostly dragonlance has appeal because of the stories associated with it, and because it has different low level foes for people to fight.

Of course, after a few play throughs, draconians get as old as orcs and kobolds, but initially they're a heck of a lot more interesting than default low level humanoids because at the very least they actually have special abilities. Compared to orcs, goblins, kobolds, ogres, gnolls, bugbears which are all pretty much the same, save for some being stronger and having more hit dice.

[Red_Rob]

One of my gripes about 2nd edition was always Non-weapon proficiencies. In concept they were a cool system, allowing you to flavour your character and provide some potentially useful non-combat skills. Sounds cool, no?

However, the execution had one, for me anyway, fatal flaw. In the dark old days of 2nd edition there was no such thing as a unified system or DC's, so no-one really had any idea how to resolve the million and one things that players tend to do in a game session. One of the most common, however, was an ability check. Roll a D20 and get under the relevant stat and you succeed, roll over and you fail. So, if your Mage wanted to cook a nice meal, roll an intelligence check to not burn it, or if your Fighter wants to dance the tango, roll Dex. It was nice and simple, with the stats on a 3-18 range there was usually a nice ratio of succeed<->fail and it rewarded players for doing things the characters were good at.

But then non-weapon proficiencies came along. These also had a roll-under mechanic that was based on your stats, but this time you got a modifier to your stat for having your skill. Sounds good, eh? However, in true Gygaxian fashion, he chose most of the modifiers to be negative or 0. So this means if your mage has cooking skill, he gets a straight Int check to cook a banquet. However, there were no real guidelines for non-proficient characters trying these things. Well, you couldn't have the skills do nothing so that meant that suddenly you had to apply a negative modifier to everyone attempting everything they weren't skilled at! As the skills went down to a -3 that meant an unskilled person had to have at least a -4 or they were better than a skilled character.

This really pissed in my cheerios. A character with an 11 dex already had a nearly 50% chance to fail a simple dex test and now i had to give them a penalty?? Well lets just say that i tended to make everyone's skills at least a +1 bonus and work up from there. At the time it was just a niggle as there was nothing much to compare it to but looking back that is a terrible way to design a skills system.

Did anyone else have a problem with this or am i just griping over nothing?

[shadzar]

You could have used the optional optional secondary skills (professions) rather than the optional NWPs.

Choose blacksmith, and have all the abilities to do what a blacksmith would without needing to roll dice for it if you have the right supplies...a smithy, available to use.

Since that entire chapter was optional, we just used NWPs like secondary skills.

You had a backstory, and what you did, gave you the NWPs for that backstory, but using the concept of secondary skills where you didn't need to roll, but could do the thing is you had the right tools to do it. Making a fire, was one of the easier ones to get, as well basic campfire cooking, etc.

It also let your backstory become a larger part of your character. If you didn't have a skill written on the character sheet, you could just check the copy of your backstory and argue for the ability based on you view, and the table would decide if you had that ability. It could even mean you didn't get the ability when it was most needed because some players may disagree it was there, but it worked the same for all so was fair.

It was houseruling, but the system was optional anyway, so you had to make decisions on if and how to use it since it wasn't needed to play the game.