Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1)

This is part 1 of 2 about 2nd edition. Part 1 will focus on the rules aspects. Part 2 on the nebulous 'culture' aspect of 2e.

Out there in real life, I just about made the cut for an elder millennial. But in terms of DnD generations, I am very much Gen X - The Forgotten Generation. 

Sandwiched in between the cantankerous curmudgeons of the B/X and AD&D 1e old schoolers who from their loftily perched blogs, abrasively champion their refined and sophisticated simple gaming ways and dour-weird piss-bag adventure aesthetics (all hail Erol Otus!)

and the guileless charoppers of 3e that revelled in posting "build guides" on message boards for prestige classes and tricked out feat chains, considered Wayne Reynolds real cool and thought planning out their Conjurer 3/Incantatrix 10/Fatespinner 4 15 levels in advance to be a fine act of character development

Is the un-championed generation X of 2nd edition romantic railroaders and the sad fools who learned their naive D&D at the teat of Frank Mentzer coupled with Larry Elmore's ren-faire art. 

Beloved by all except Erol Otus diehards.
One of my favourites from 2e, but there's a few I like more 

If there is something everyone can agree on, albeit for vastly different reasons, it is to casually shit on 2nd edition from a great height. Like the eldest and youngest siblings who are much too different to like each other, but still find kinship in ganging up on the middle child.

And what's not to hate? It's got kits, XP-for-roleplaying, THAC0, Non-Weapon Proficiencies, Skills & Powers, Dragonlance, Tanar'ri&Baatezu and no harlot table in the DMG. Just about the only thing worth speaking up for is the range of settings produced during this era.

Let me start on a tangent to my main point, by saying that 2e is a straight up superior ruleset to 1e (and 3e, for all the old school reasons I won't go into here). For starters, it was written by Dave Cook. A name even most grognards award grudging respect for his B/X work, though for some reason, all the grognards who lament his unpretentious and succinct prose in the 2e core books as prosaic, have no problem with the very same prose when he wrote the Expert set for the Classic D&D line.

My favourite from the PHB!
It always takes me right into the tavern there with them

The two main rulebooks are much better organised and clearer in their writing, free of Gygax' affected, imprecise and self-indulgent prose (it works great for teenagers I'm sure, and people who were teenagers when they read it, but let's be clear - He was a dreadful try-hard writer who sorely needed a harsher editor) and cleaned up of follies like segments, surprise, psionics, alignment languages, bards-as-prestige-class, monks and a host of other accumulated Frankensteinian gobbledygook.

"But kits! The splat! Proficiencies!"

First of all, there is such a thing as good clean splat. The four volumes of the Wizard's Spell Compendium and four volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica is a smordgasbord extragagavanza unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes. And 2e gave us that. So there.

Secondly, let's talk about the depravities of Unearthed Arcana before we go into the the "Complete..." series, shall we? The book that gave us: Weapon and non-weapon proficiencies. Comeliness. Cavaliers, Barbarians, thief-acrobats. Gray Dwarves. Deep gnomes. Gray Elves. Wood elves. Wild elves. Valley elves. Dark elves.

Don't try to deny using it, grognards. Unearthed Arcana was one of the best selling supplements of the 1e era. Everyone's dirty little secret.

Hell. The Assassin, the D&D equivalent of the "X-men comics in the 90s" aesthetic, was in the 1e Player's handbook! Complete with an awfully Gygaxian "minimum fees for assassination" table. gargh.

I think the Myrmidon kit granting an extra weapon proficiency slot stands pretty tame in comparison to the excesses of 1e.

The point here being that what grognards eviscerate 2e for, they wilfully ignore for 1e, as if all these things were never even part of the game.

Here is the thing about 2nd edition that most people seem to overlook. 2e had all those parts, but unlike 1e, 2e was modular by design.

This piece utterly fascinated me as a teenager.
Still does today.

Of course all RPGs are, to some extent, modular by nature. Hence house-rules. And TSR D&D has, by and large, always been modular by intent (though Gygax did shamefully try to claim houseruling was not allowed in AD&D at one point). 

But 2nd edition is the only TSR D&D game that is actually modular by design. A lot of the rules in the two core books are actually marked as optional, and clearly so, sectioned off in blue boxes and clear language to make the case. Moreover, every time an optional rule, such as encumbrance, is mentioned elsewhere in the books, it is clearly emphasised as an optional rule. 

It's one of the defining features of the core books (and a philosophy doubled down on through the various supplements) and something that it does not get nearly enough credit for.

"I don't need a book to tell me what to houserule thankyouverymuch" the grognard indignantly growls. 

Sure, no one needs it. I am sure you're an excellent independently thinking DM.

But having it is actually very helpful, because it tells you which parts are integrated into the core of the system (meaning - if you tamper with this, it could have ripple effects elsewhere) and which parts you can rip out without any concern for ripple effects. And 2e posts blue stickers all over the core books on the parts that can easily be dispensed with and explicitly makes sure that where an optional system interacts with another mechanic, said mechanic works fine with and without that optional system. As an example, this is how emphatic the PHB is about proficiencies:

"All proficiencies are additions to the game. Weapon proficiencies are tournament level rules, optional in regular play. and non-weapon proficiencies are completely optional. Proficiencies are not necessary for a balanced game."

If you go through the 2e Player's Handbook, identify all the parts that are explicitly marked as "optional" and take them out, you end up with a system like this:

• 3d6 six times in order for attributes. No Shenanigans.
• Only Fighter, Thief, Wizard and Cleric as allowed classes.
• Easy-to-learn-and-run side-based initiative and combat
• No Weapon or Non-Weapon Proficiencies.
• No Encumbrance
• No spell components
• no casting times
• no weapons vs armor modifiers
• death at 0 hp
• No weapon speed 
• No critical hits
• no individual xp awards
• no training

What you are left with is a lovely restrained game engine whose parts fit together really well. A base game frankly much superior to the patchwork nature of 1e and a solid peer to classic D&D in the solidly trimmed game engine department.

Yes to all the things about this art piece. Fuck yeah, Easley.

What it has as an edge over classic D&D and 1e is its inherent modularity to add to this base. It's easy to add more complexity where you want because the system is designed for it.

Want more classes? They are right there and ready. No fiddling with conversion if you're a B/Xer. And frankly, the classes are just better designed than its 1e counterparts, Illusionist notwithstanding. Want even more? 

Kits is actually a very good way of adding granularity without adding much mechanical crunch (especially if you aren't using proficiencies) - I would even go as far as saying that they do the job just fine of adding variety on top of just the four base classes (is a fighter with the wilderness warrior kit thematically really different from a ranger?).

I have my issues with 2e. It annoys me that they changed the Morale score, which makes running classic modules an extra hassle with conversion. I don't like proficiencies, which is fine as it is optional, but I do like Weapon specialisation as the Fighter's niche and there are no guidelines for how to use those rules without proficiencies (there really should have been. Not that hard to separate out).

But I love the tight base game that is still so very compatible with everything that came before it. And all the options I have to lay on to it from there. And that "tight base game + options" is actually the default lens of the game. How it wants you to see it.

I don't know that it is a better game than B/X, although certainly less ambiguous in its rules. But it is a strong contender to it for the best version of D&D ever made.

I am going to end this post with that mic drop and see you in a few days with Part 2 where we talk culture.