AD&D 2e question

dutch206 · Post by **dutch206** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:05 pm

What's the difference between the second edition rulebooks and the "revised" second edition rulebooks for AD&D? I have the originals, so do I really need the revised versions?
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:47 pm

Errata. There was a lot of it. Plus they changed the layout a little bit. Do you need it? After all these years I think "no" is a pretty safe answer.
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:32 pm

Covers, and mostly nothing else -- they never did include 99% of "errata" as there, officially, is hardly any (they don't even acknowledge the missing chart from the PHB...) so they basically changed some art: a few interiors and the covers. Oh, and they dropped the "2nd edition" from it, and just called it Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Wow! They totally C&Cd it.
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:36 pm

serleran wrote:
Covers, and mostly nothing else -- they never did include 99% of "errata" as there, officially, is hardly any (they don't even acknowledge the missing chart from the PHB...) so they basically changed some art: a few interiors and the covers. Oh, and they dropped the "2nd edition" from it, and just called it Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Wow! They totally C&Cd it.

That was only 1% of the errata? Dang! Good thing for TSR the internet messageboards weren't so heavily travelled back then!
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:52 pm

Heh, well, they were also known for sending cease-and-desist letters to certain places to stop discussions, as well... at least, for a small period of time. So, yeah.

I don' claim to know exactly how much errata was, or was not, added, but I wouldn't say the majority of the revised changes had anything to do with errata -- it was more of a break the past and move forward kind of thing, in my opinion.
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moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:54 pm

It was also a way to put out new supplements! Skill & Powers for example brought in (er... recycled) some material in previous supplements and some of the material found in the various 'Options' books paved the way for a few things you find in 3rd Edition.

However, Serl is correct -- there is very little from the core books that is different from the older ones. Some people prefer the layout in the newer ones others avoid it like the plague and cling to the older ones. I've got a set of both though I only have one Monstrous Manual (black binding) since I decided to part with the Binders which formed my Monstrous Compendium.

M
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K2h2m3 · Post by **K2h2m3** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:45 am

I have to agree with both moriarty and serleran for thier expressed opinions.

Frost · Post by **Frost** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:40 pm

A bit off topic, but I liked a lot of those "options" books that came out. They cleaned up a lot of the good ideas that were poorly executed in the various "Complete" books. "Combat & Tactics" was excellent.
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dutch206 · Post by **dutch206** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:41 pm

Thanks for the Info. The more I think about gaming, the more I realize what a genius EGG was. Old-school rules!
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:20 am

TheFrost wrote:
A bit off topic, but I liked a lot of those "options" books that came out. They cleaned up a lot of the good ideas that were poorly executed in the various "Complete" books. "Combat & Tactics" was excellent.

They were good, in and of themselves. I think TSR should have never put out the "revised" 2nd Edition books, took all the Player's Options books and made a new edition focused around those. Couldn't have been any worse than the end result that happened anyway.

skathros · Post by **skathros** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:05 am

Didn't the revised books drop the "binder" for a traditional monster book?

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 1:18 pm

skathros wrote:
Didn't the revised books drop the "binder" for a traditional monster book?

Yeah. They dropped the binder format with MC15: Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix II: Children of the Night - the last binder expansion. Almost immediately after this came out:

This came out shortly after that:

I always like the binder. But man, they should have went with 1 monster/page. That would have made things much nicer and kept true to its original intent.

moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:48 pm

I grew to despise the binder.

I'll grant the concept was cool but I also lugged that thing around a lot when I was younger since I was a 'DM on the move'. The Binder held up but I have to say it could have been A LOT more sturdier that it was. Though pretty, it was a pretty cheap binder. The number of appendixes grew to a bit tiresome for me too. Though in functionality, there were advantages to the binder, in practice I would have preferred they do a book from the get-go.

M
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 2:09 pm

The best thing about the binder: you can remove anything you don't need / use. If you're taking the book around, you have the whole book. But, if you're only going to use 10 creatures (say, for a wandering monster chart), if you have the binder, you can just remove those 10 pages and stick them with your DM notes and house-rules. That is why the binder is better -- at least, that's what I think was the intended way to use it.
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