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!
