How I came back around to AD&D 2e

 I've talked about it a little here and there some time back, but I am so much loving AD&D 2e again nowadays. I grew up with this one(technically my first game was 1e, but I was like 8, was given a character and had no idea what I was doing), but 2e was what I cut my RPG teeth on, as have a lot of folks my age. And while I thoroughly enjoy some modern systems-I had my fun with 3.X stuff(is that even modern anymore? It came out in 2000, IIRC, so with 26 years between then and now, that's as much time as the OG in 1974 and the original 3.0, so probably not), Starfinder 1e is probably one of my fav of the newer systems, and I have had some real fun games of Pathfinder 2e-I am finding myself sorta pining for those old, nicely modular mechanics. 

I think there's a few reasons for this, and I was trying to get them together. I think I somewhat managed. 

The 1989, First Edition PHB on my floor. Along with some random bits, dice, and a copy of Dark Medieval Times which is a suitable soundtrack for such. 

1. Sometimes I think you get in the mood for Less Is More. I think this is a big crux of it. A lot of modern games actually grant tons of wishes and requests that we had back then when we were younger, and then some! Lots more playable races that aren't 'special cases' like the Complete Book of Humanoids; a lot of modern games DO have the 'Normal Spread', but even the normal spread is more extended now, and then there's so many more, which while still falling under more uncommon types of races or ancestries, are less 'taboo' to bring in. 

The old days, of course, had some of these special cases. Sub-races of the demihumans became a thing, the aforementioned Complete Book of Humanoids, hell, 2e even had an entire campaign setting called the Council of Wyrms where everyone was playing dragons. 

There's also like, a plethora of classes or whatnot nowadays in newer games, and all the other stuff. Characters start OUT as straight-up heroes. Not the 4d6 drop low 'heroic stats', which were more just averaging 13 to 15 in 2e with very few bonuses, but straight up heroes. You're EXPECTED to have at least one max stat at the start in Pathfinder 2e, and AD&D 5e caps PC stats at 20, and you come out of the gate sometimes with a 17 or 18(after bonuses, if you use point buy, or even UP to 20 with rolling.) Back then, we'd always try our best to houserule stuff to allow folks to get better stats. 

As time went on though, I feel like all the stuff we used to houserule in becoming the norm made the 'norm' less...something. It's like having a favorite dish that requires you to get this one thing from a restaurant but then add some of your own spices to it, but then every single restaurant in the city starts selling it, and then more places sell it, and then this is just "the norm" now, and then it kinda takes OVER the restaurants since that's what more modern people want, and you kinda miss when it was just something special. 

"But Azzy, can't you just play new games like old?" Well, see part 2. Plus, when games give me things, that aren't 'optional'(technically everything is optional in a TTRPG but you know what I mean, I think? Speaking purely in what's provided from the rules framework, and going from there), I don't like to take them away, because games that *start* with stuff, and then get them taken, feel much worse than games that start with some things, and have optional rules to add on. Maybe it's mental, but it is what it is. I can mentally adjust to playing one game of AD&D 2e just using the corebook, DMG, and MM with no optional rules, then go to another table that brings in the optional Complete books with all the optional rules, hit another table that uses the base 4 class Complete books and some optional rules, and then bounce back pretty easily, because subconsciously I know that the framework is built on those 3 books. It's a me thing here(this post is purely me discussing what I like about AD&D 2e.) 

2. The games have a lot of fun mechanics, while not being completely overloaded with them...but it's still not rules-light.

FWIW, I like some crunch. Rules-light stuff is fine for oneshots or whatnot for me, but otherwise I kinda need some things to mess with. AD&D 2e has this, and it has it in a great way; the base game is fairly moderate in terms of crunch(I'd consider it a middle ground game), but you can make it so modular with optional rules. A lot of rules that are 'normal' nowadays were optional back then-even critical hits. Yeah, I don't think I ever played an AD&D game without crits, but they were definitely optional(and a lot tamer back then, if played by the book, but a lot of GMs I knew buffed them. I think they're fine as is-double the weapon die, then add extra bonuses.) Death at -10 was optional(also used all the time.) Encumbrance, even *proficiencies* were optional(also pretty much always used to my memory-hell, we used to give both 2nd skill and non-weapon profs, I still do.)

Go through the PHB and DMG and you'll see all kinds of optional rules. and they even have *levels* of them, like Encumbrance. Again, I think starting with a solid skeleton and then adding on what you want, feels way better than starting with a well-loaded thing and then flaying stuff off of it. See above; the game can be played so many different ways. 

3. It's not based on big setpiece battles. 

Again similar to 2, I notice new games have this habit of making even like, normal battles just these big setpieces that can take most of the night. It's *about* the tactical combat(to be fair, D&D started out as the Chainmail wargame, so that part connects! there was a time where D&D was kind of about that tactical combat. Even 1e still had remnants of it, which was why a dungeon like Tomb of Horrors was sort of a big thing at the time.) 

Once again AD&D 2e shows it's colors as incredibly modular here. if you want to play the game like an old-style wargame, it's possible to do that; if you want to go completely theater of the mind, you can, or if you're like me, have cool looking minis and monsters and terrain, but play it faster and looser with the battles. Maybe just count basic distances and ranges, and 'okay, yeah, there's something like a tree you can hide behind' or 'there's a hill here, yeah you're far enough above to get high ground bonus', but not razor-technical stuff. 

Quite a few modern games are based not only heavily on more strict measurements(again, almost wargame like from the older days), but also the abilities are built far more...mechanical. Like even non-magical classes have abilities that feel supernatural or out there or like 'powers', and everything is balanced extremely tightly, and there's even 'patches' for TTRPGs nowadays(yes, these existed before in the form of errata...but there was something different about it.) I know that modern games try to get the role-playing aspect in, but there are times where I feel like they are pressing heavily toward a more gamified feel somehow. (Yes, again, D&D was based on a wargame, but I'm just trying to figure out why it came around full circle.) 

4. The Settings!

2e had a plethora of settings. My favorites were Greyhawk(1st) and FR(2nd), but Birthright was really neat(it was almost GoT-ish), Ravenloft is a classic, and even dipping into a little Planescape and Spelljammer was neat. I admit I'm not a Dark Sun fan, but I've never really been big on post-apocalyptic stuff at all; it is something that, besides Hokuto no Ken and Vampire Hunter D, just does not stick with me. Cyberpunk I love, post-apocalyptic wasteland stuff, not so much. But 2e has so may cool setting box sets and books(I'd love to own some of the box sets again) that for me it's a mighty selling point of them. Plus there was still Mystara, and I also found this game to be extremely great for just writing your *own* adventures in. 

I can't quite put my finger on it, but some newer games feel somewhat more tied to their narratives. It's absolutely, 100% possible to still write your own worlds in these, but I know when I've talked to fellow DMs, there's more moving parts to it. Often nowadays games have a lot of abilities, builds and backgrounds baked INTO the games' base settings so heavily that you need to go back and refluff stuff, or sometimes just change it entirely. AD&D 2e was written to be as setting-neutral as possible in the core books(players themselves would debate if Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk was the 'de facto' setting, with FR somewhat pushing ahead in these old forum discussions, but the DMG/PHB were close to setting neutral.) This makes it easy, again, to plunk all your own stuff in without having to really refluff *anything.* 

There's probably more reasons that I'm not thinking of, but these all came to mind pretty easily. Oh, the books look mighty nostalgic, too. I mostly really enjoy how the PHB is written(see below, though.)

2e is by no means perfect. The books sometimes come off as written a bit strangely; I'm not sure why the DMG needs to keep reminding me that 4d6 drop low makes super heroic characters(it...really doesn't, the average scores are around 12-14, with a bit of a higher instances of low-bonus scores than the others, but it's not that extreme), and that I should try to browbeat the players into accepting bare minimum scores(I really never understood that part of the DMG.) We even liked playing the occasional old-fashioned 3d6 in order game of 'Ordinary people becoming heroes', and as I said above, I think some of the very modern games overcorrected by *expecting* players to always have their prime stat maxed. But 4d6 drop low, or the Method 6 point buy, hardly made OD characters in 2e in our experience. The Monster Manual, to boot, is still filled with some real 'Fuck You' monsters in it. The 'DM is having a Very Bad Day' monsters. In newer games, these monsters are generally just loaded with a lot of numbers. Back then you had level-draining monsters by like, level 5. Kinda bullshitty, I know, but admittedly I didn't lean too heavily on these until later on(and we did houserule in saving throws for these.) 

The RAW also tended to be awfully strict with alignment, which we quickly loosened up in home games. Chaotic Neutral became more of a free spirit(which to be fair, became the main way to describe CN in 3e and beyond), instead of the 'crazy person' 1e/2e used to use, and Paladins definitely had an easier time(they had to stay LG, though there were some houseruled variants of NG and CG ones over the years.) We loosened things up enough to make in-party fighting less a thing. 

There were other odds and ends, like the Identify spell taking forever and a day, and Wizard spellbooks being a bit on the convoluted side(we generally ruled, for simplicity's sake, that you could cram a whole lot of spells into one or two spellbooks rather than the insanity the book suggested.) 

But all in all, I just found that nostalgic urge to come back to the old times. Plus I've been painting up a bunch of minis from Brite Minis, which have a wonderfully Ral Partha style vibe, and I've been doing it in sort of that old-school style(albeit with speed paints), for what I hope to be an upcoming game later this fall, so there's that. I do love many new TTRPGs, and play them when I can, but lately I've just needed to dive back into the days of the Group of Hearty Adventurers(aka: the GoHA.)

I'll be back, btw, with a report on how that 'I'm Just Painting a lot of old-school looking tribute minis' goes soon! 

Night Lords Completed!

 It's been a minute(about a damn month) since I updated this blog, so I figure I can now do a drop here! (I did say 'updated when I feel like it.' I would make a terrible content creator. Not that I would WANT to be.)

So in some basic news: minion has started school yet again, I am back to being a bit busier, FFXIV Evercold looks amazing and I've been playing that more again in evenings, and I'm still painting every night, for at least some time. Also, I have yet to hear an album better than Via Doloris' Guerre et Paix, yet this year so it becomes ever closer to my AotY award.

But here are the Night Lords! I don't get a whole lot of time to tabletop game, and that time is spent more TTRPG than wargaming, and wargaming is more skirmish based on the odd time I do it, and these would never be legal in GW rules but they'd be played casually with friends. Mostly they'll play the role of 'AD&D 2e Enemies' or something, or a table OC or whatnot. 

It's a unit of 5, I named them and gave them little quirks. Apologies for the picture quality; I am still rearranging my space to get A. A new art desk and B. A better picture corner. 

First up is the leader, Radek Farkas. He's a big, black metal looking lad with corpsepaint. (3 of these have long hair attached for that grimdark aesthetic which as most know I enjoy a lot and is my main painting style.) 

Second is Lucian Kovács, his 2nd in command. He might be a little crazier. Around his waist is some of that hand-made skin cloak material. These two look the most 'corrupt'. 

Dorian Stan is the 3rd guy and he's kind of obsessed with medieval style stuff for some reason. Slightly cleaner armor, goes with an axe, and has a hand made skincloak as his accessory. 

This guy is Andrei Zurvat, who went all in with the guns(this is a very melee-heavy group except for him, though he does have the bayonet.) I guess because he chose Ork Boyz as his primary rivals, he likes the dakka. 

(I don't know where his other pictures went, I thought I had more!) 

   

Finally there is Atilla Herczeg, the lightning claw specialist, who is also pretty crazy probably.

And a few group shots of the gang! 

These guys were built from 4 boxes(5 if you count the Deadwalkers), and a paint list that is very long(including oils, enamels, speedpaints, regular acrylics, effects paints, pigments). I have the latter scribbled down, I might list it in another blog later if I get around to typing it up. I think I mentioned it last month, but the boxes used were Night Lords Nemesis Claw Kill Team, Chaos Chosen 40 and AoS, and Chaos Possessed. (I'll be seeing what else I can make after this, but I'm taking a little break from Warhammer based models for now, save for using a couple for test colors.)

This was a hella fun project to get to personalize. For now I'll be probably working on some AD&D minis from Brite Minis, who does these awesome, almost Ral Partha-like miniatures that seem perfect for old school tabletop, and I'll probably be messing with the drybrush-speedpaint combo for them since I've been wanting to practice the grayscale drybrush(or, well, grisaille, which it's been known as for centuries. I wonder if the inventors of 'glazing color over grisaille' would recoil knowing it's now known as 'slapchop', lol.) This is mostly to serve as a palette cleanser and to mess with some other styles before I jump back into the Heretics, which I have lined up. (I have been doing a lot of color testing for the Artillery Witch, and I think I have my scheme for her, I know the Priest is going to be inspired by the Dark Bishop from DD: Dark Arisen, and I have a bit of an idea for one of the Anointed that is a shout-out to FFXIV in terms of kitbashing.) Also think I wanna do some terrain building again, since it'll give me more excuse to try to get the bi-weekly(I'll take monthly at this point) AD&D 2e game off the ground. I've been cooking a 2e-based blog talking about it a bit(the game itself, not the still not existing campaign). 

Oh yeah! Speaking again of FFXIV, here is that chort color scheme I was messing with. I think this is going to be good for when I get around to Great Unclean Chort. Eventually. For some reason.

Even threw together a little Clyteum-inspired basing scheme. Being a Lord of Plagues he looks more menacing than our round boi but I think the color scheme works shockingly well for a Nurgle bunch. 

Alrighty, and with that, I think I dropped enough stuff here for now, I'll hopefully update this again sooner than later this time. I'd like to try to update this thing more often but you know how it is.

'Til next time! 

Night Lords kitbash and paint underway!

 So the custom Night Lords are underway. It's been taking awhile-I've been working bit by bit each night. It was slower to start, since I had to rummage through several boxes. The idea behind the crew were that they were Chaos-corrupted, possibly against their will(given the Night Lords don't really care too much about the gods), but then just managed to fight it off somewhat(mentally, at least), and just went on being Night Lords. 

I mean the 8th Legion aren't known for their sanity ANYWAY but, hey. 

So they're built from a mix of Chaos Chosen(40k), Chosen(Age of Sigmar), the Night Lords Nemesis Claw box, and the Chaos Possessed. I like the Chosen and Possessed bodies since they're bigger than the standard Space Marines; I was almost getting a Primaris box too(I still probably will, for more future parts), but I managed to get what I needed. (Also plan on getting some Havocs for kitbashing something.) Also have a box of Deadwalkers from AoS for parts; they're great for heads and hands to throw all over the boys in Midnight Clad.

I made up five models(I have a sixth that I started to build, but he's going to be more a shout-out to Nightmare from Soul Calibur rather than a part of this particular unit), and have still been adding bits and pieces to them. Heads and backpacks, and bigger pieces of flayed skin, are going to be added to the models after main base-coatings are done, and I'll be doing them separately. Three of them are getting long metal-style hair(because of course.) One is going to get the skull-head corpsepaint(they are all getting some manner of corpsepaint-ish stuff), and one is fully helmeted. Two of them are more mutated than the others; they have the special Possessed legs. 

Here's a few random WIP pics from over the past couple of weeks! I believe I started them around two weeks ago. The first picture was the very first mock-up of the first 3(with sticky tack), and it moves forward over time, down to some head swaps and color testing and the like. 

I took some time to test colors. I do think it's going to be the pure Liquitex Prussian Blue ink over a zenithal white, but the combo of Highlord Blue speedpaint with some of that same ink is also very nice. I also am trying out both black and decayed metal, obsidian black and aged metal on the trim. (Black metal + Oily Steel will be for stuff like weapons.) But without overthinking it, as of now it'll be the ink. (Inks are quite cool to paint with I discovered-very saturated colors!)

I am finishing up pre-weathering today, and hopefully priming them tonight! I'll hopefully get the drybrush in too so tomorrow I can set up to start the official painting. That said, I might do base mock-ups first, but I'm unsure about that yet. I kinda like the idea of tying them into their bases, and I'm not in too much of a hurry to start painting them(I'd hope to get them done by the end of the month in case I want to bring them to a convention), but I'll see what happens after tonight and tomorrow. 

Anyway, 'til next time! 

Saint(And Court Warband) Now Complete!

 Well, been a minute since I updated-but as I always say, I update when I feel like it. 

Finally finishing my Court warband felt great! I of course don't really have any time to play at the moment but we all know that most of us in the hobby paint 90% of the time and maybe play 10%. (And then that 10% has to be split between different TTRPGs/wargames or whatnot.) 

I took some somewhat passable pictures; I do promise to one day get a really proper setup to do this to take better ones, but I always manage to find something else to do. So here we go! Starting with the Saint, and then I re-uploaded some pictures of the rest of them. I'll get a picture of the entire troop together somehow. 

Quite the gang; I think my favorite is the Sorcerer, and it seems to be a lot of others' favorites as well. It's that satanic album cover appearance methinks. 

As of now, I started working on a Heretic warband, though slowly; I did the five basic troopers. No real kitbashing on these guys-I went with pre-weathering instead, which I think works just fine for them. I used the usual acrylics, Dirty Down and Villainy Inks with a touch of oils, but wanted to purposefully keep these simpler. I kinda dig how they turned out!

Took a break from the Heretics to begin some of that corrupted/possessed Night Lords kitbashing using the Nemesis Claw box, along with Possessed, and Chosen(both 40k and Sigmar). I'm having fun going through the boxes to find stuff, though this will definitely be a decently longer project, to do the whole lot of them. I'm just going to start with a small squad-I have three so far(just jammed together with sticky tack) that I dig, and I'm going to figure out a couple more, but they're going to have a whole lot of other stuff added, so that'll be a 'more to come' project. (In the middle of grinding cosmic tools in FFXIV.) I'll take a few pictures of them when they're assembled(pre-painting), right now they're a bunch of half-cut up and tacked together things. I'm still getting down the poses! 

Alrighty, I'll be back hopefully sooner this time. I'll be going to Ropecon this year(RPG convention), not sure if I'm entering any painting competitions but I might consider it depending on how these kitbashes turn out. I'm also considering for Mordheim, instead of undead, a Carnival of Chaos warband, thanks to Kefka Ultimate stuff having been posted so much this month. 

'til next time! 

Praetor Complete! One more to go for the Court

Since I was working on both at once, I had finished the Praetor, as well! This lad was a bit intimidating at first, but as I went along, got easier. Just as the rest, mixed brands of acrylics, ABT 502 oils, Villainy Ink enamels and spirits, as well as the usual Dirty Down effects. Did minimal kitbashing on this guy-added the heavy metal hair that I like to do for the uncanny look, plus a scraggly beard since Praetors are what happens when a devil mates with a hyena or jackal apparently. The model had taken some battle damage in the same incident that cost the Pit Locust one of his wings, so I had removed the rest of the sword and whipped up a scourge. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out!

The base was kind of inspired by the Paris Catacombs. 

Included are a couple of shots with a black background as well! (I will be getting an even better setup for pictures in the near future.) 

I definitely enjoyed this in the end and got to experiment with more colors-I really like Umbral Nightshade, and look forward to using it for some Undead stuff, too. 

Also recently got a box of Possessed and Chaos Chosen to kitbash into the Night Lords to make a sort of 'Corrupted Night Lords Kill Team', which will be very very black metal inspired as well. Some of those helmetless dudes are *definitely* getting corpsepainted. (No idea of what order I'm doing these in.) Also-also, I ordered up some Ionic paints to try them out; I heard they are quite saturated, and the Rotting Yellow and Rotting Flesh colors seemed to be up my alley(as did Frost Blue and Phthalo Blue, both of which I can utilize in ice stuffs.) Also grabbing some more ABT oils-I can certainly use Reddish Brown and Phthalo Green. They aren't due in until June, though. I kinda want to test out Bear Cavalry and P3, too. (I've also somehow fallen into Paint Experimenting mode, since I seem to be getting certain favorite colors of each brand now. It was only a matter of time. 

Anyway, I'll be back around with more stuff when I think of it or I get this Desecrated Saint done! (It's all primed and about to be drybrushed. Basecoats on the main body to start tomorrow, but he's got the big body rack that's getting done separately. Yeah, that bastard is a 2-parter.)

'Til next time!