Friday, March 11, 2022

For Gold & Glory: Why Play 2e?

Let's hear it for the AD&D 2e love!

...

Why is it so silent?

In a world where retro-cloning anything AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) or B/X is hip and cool, one would think a retro-clone of AD&D 2e would be a "thing." But there are a lot of mixed feelings around AD&D 2e that muddle the discussion, which needs a little discussion, especially when it comes to a retro-clone such as For Gold & Glory.

For us, AD&D 2e was a clean-up of the system from the AD&D 1e days. It was sort of a cleaned-up, organized, streamlined, and better playable AD&D. It did not feel like it changed much from AD&D 1e and all our old stuff worked with it, so it did not feel that controversial to us. It felt like how people played AD&D 1e, balanced, clearer, and included a lot of the best content introduced in the AD&D expansion books and Dragon magazine over the last 10 years.

Did it see much play at our table? For the official settings of the day, such as our clean-room version of the Forgotten Realms (minus all novels, GMNPCs, and Elminster insanity) and Dragonlance - yes, we played it, and it worked very well. AD&D 2e was the simulationist, realistic, less overpowered, less Monty Haul, less power gamed version of AD&D. However when you think back to the time this was played and released, there are a few other things worth bringing up.

Many better games were out in the 1990s that changed the way we played games: Cyberpunk, Champions 4th Edition, Vampire, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Rolemaster, Shadowrun, GURPS 3e, Battletech, and a few other greats. The fact that AD&D 2e did not change made the game feel like it was stuck in the past, so it saw less and less play at our table compared to all the other cool things we liked to play. But to us, AD&D 2e was still the fantasy standard-bearer.

Also, AD&D 2e cleaned up the game. The game hid demons and devils away. Half-orcs and assassins were done away with. They cartooned the monster art and removed nudity. The 1990s started in the end half of the Satanic Panic of the late 1980s, and things such as the Judas Priest Trial were going on. So TSR, minus Gary Gygax, cleaned up the game and redesigned it for a younger audience. The game felt sterile in a way and more like happy problem-solving Gandalf than angry naked demon-slaying Conan.

This brought a lot of new players into the hobby, which was a good thing.


We Ignored the Railroad

As AD&D 2e went on, we lost interest. We felt the modules were too closely tied to the novels, and they were these railroaded fiction wanna-be experiences that universally sucked. And we felt TSR gave way too much power to the novel writers, which made sense since they were pulling in the money, and different parts of their game worlds became set-in-stone and unchangeable depending on what author "owned" that part of the world. And this led to the terrible Forgotten Realms GMNPCs, the feeling the player characters were unimportant, and if any world-threatening plot a DM came up with would be quickly solved by the characters in the books.

"That can't happen here! Elminster would teleport in and stop it!"

We heard those stories but it felt hard to believe other people would let their games get ruined like this.

The GMNPC version of FR was never our experience since we skipped the novels and expansion books. This was because of those other games taking our time and us not seeing much value in "other people's campaigns." Our campaign that started in the Gray Box of the Forgotten Realms was our first priority and love, and we skipped ruining it with the metric ton of terrible ideas floating out there. All we really owed were the PHB, DMG, and the loose-leaf monster book and we kept our AD&D 2e game firewalled off from all the stupidity that followed.

By the end of the 1990's we walked into comic book stores and heard stories about the unbalanced builds in the "Complete X" series and how hardcore players could do this or that and we skipped those too. Why would we pay money for an unbalanced and power-gamed version of something that worked great? This is also something I feel TSR (and Wizards) did at the end of the lifecycle of an edition, they release these overpowered splatbooks that fundamentally change the game, complicate it, power game it, and are fun for a little while before they ruin the game and increase your interest in a new edition that "does away with all that OP garbage and cleans things up."

For AD&D 2e, we stuck with the core books and we were happy for the 10 years of the game.


Removed Content?

Also, on the removed content - we didn't mind it. It was always there if you just opened up that copy of the AD&D 1e DMG everyone had and it worked just fine since the power level of the game did not fundamentally change between editions. This was still AD&D. And they came out with 2e versions of all of the demons and devils anyways in the plane expansions (renamed), so nothing was really lost. The For Gold & Glory game has topless and nude art, but since it is from public-domain collections, it is all classical art tastefully done.

While I like my demons and devils in my OSR games, the one thing removing them did for us was reduce their importance in the game - and that was a good thing. You could no longer say "a devil did this" and have an easy excuse for evil, and enemies that were simple to almost a cartoon degree in motivation. NPCs with evil intent became the campaign's big bad guys, and terrestrial monsters were threats again. A dragon meant something. A high-level evil sorcerer was the story's big bad guy.

The game felt much more grounded, NPCs mattered, and the normal set of monsters took greater importance than planar threats. This is why Old School Essentials appeals to me too, that game feels grounded and elevates the importance of the classic "game world" experience.

Contrast this with later editions and you see D&D 3 blow the door open on the outer planes, D&D 4 assume the planes are the normal post level 10 progression of the game, and in D&D 5 it feels like it is normal for a game to start on a plane and never visit a traditional campaign world ever again. To be fair, AD&D and D&D 5 still have that "normal mode" assumption of play, with the real difference being D&D 5 having more of a melting pot of planar lineages and that Post 2e open-door planar assumption.

AD&D 2e started with the basic six or so traditional races on an Earth-like world mixed with the normal set of monsters and magic, and let you go from there. The original Forgotten Realms campaign guide locked the world off from Monty Haul characters coming in from other game worlds (and planes) and imposed strict power limits. This was a feature that appealed to us strongly since we had our fill of AD&D 1e player character gods with armies of dragons, djinns, flying castles, and tens of millions of gold pieces stashed away.

And by the way, all that came back in style with D&D 3e just a few years later.


B/X With Dark Souls Challenge

AD&D 2e felt like that same "reset" and "refocusing" of the rules onto the great campaign world experiences of the game, the high-level monsters were made more powerful, and the game felt balanced - and challenging again.

This is one of the huge differences between B/X and AD&D 1e retro-clones and For Gold and Glory as a 2e retro-clone - the high-level monsters are tougher here and can put up a good fight against a party.

Ancient Red Dragon in FG&G? 23 hit dice (104 hp), though you have the option for using d10s or even d12s for HD in this game, so the average hp could be 150. A whopping negative 11 AC. And a breath weapon that does 24d10+12 damage. Spells. Magic resistance. Special attacks and defenses. Yeah, that is not your typical AD&D 1e ancient red dragon, not by a long shot. That thing is like an M1 tank that could one-shot vaporize high-level players, even casters, and laugh off attacks - even magic ones.

You see these powerful monsters carried through to D&D 3e, but player power is scaled to a higher degree and to a point where you get those invincible players at a high level again. But remember, you are trying to deal with the above dragon using AD&D style characters with the old hit point and armor ranges. Even compared to the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, this is tough!

And tough is good.

In AD&D 2e you get these wonderfully overpowered "normal world" monsters (with options to further strengthen), and the challenge level gets to that Dark Souls level of feeling, which I absolutely love. Even a dragon of lesser age and power is still a giant campaign-level treat, and you go down the line with all the monsters and they are like this higher-powered base level of challenge. Frankly, I love strong and threatening monsters. A lot of B/X games adopt that weaker power baseline for characters to elevate monster power and keep monsters on the original B/X power level and design. AD&D 2e deals with the problem by rewriting the monsters to be dangerous again given the AD&D party power baseline.

It is a huge difference, one worth considering alone when choosing a retro game to play.

AD&D 2e refined the monster fighting experience after 10 years of AD&D and B/X and it is easy to forget the designers made the game fun again by bringing the challenge back to the game.


B/X with Added Complexity

All that comes at a cost, and yes, the FG&G or AD&D 2e is fundamentally a more complicated game than B/X. This plays like end-of-lifecycle AD&D, the more refined, tougher, and balanced version that we knew at the end of the game rather than the beginning. There is a lot in here, a ton of optional rules and modifiers to track, different skills to consider, and as a DM you need to pay attention to play monsters and NPCs correctly.

This added complexity opened the doors to games like GURPS and Rolemaster. And B/X sidesteps all of the complexity and baselines the game back at the early 80s baseline. But at this point, I played so much B/X that I missed the evolution that AD&D 2e brought into the game. I feel those improvements and tweaks add more than they take away in complexity. It feels and plays like a mature game.

But in a way, to be "playing" AD&D in the 90s, the 2e rules were the way to go. Accessible, streamlined, and balanced better than what came before - but based on a lot of experiences gained playing during the 1980s. Yes, you gave up a few things and there were quite a few things changed, but for the better, since the game opened everything up to a larger player base and younger audience.

But for us, the balance was back, the tight focus on game worlds was a huge plus, and the challenge was great.

And we made the right choice ignoring all the BS that came after.


Why the Appeal?

This is why I feel For Gold and Glory appeals to me so much. It calls back to that era where the play of the game mattered and the OP elements were done away with. It doesn't simplify the game so much you lose some of those "late AD&D" elements that evolved into the game because a lot of players wanted them and played with them. There are not too many options, and you can't play as a dragonkin, tiefling, or drow from day one, and those are special and unique to a world setting. If one shows up as a player character? That is a huge thing, worthy of an epic Lord of the Rings sort of tale.

Yes, I love my B/X games.

But For Gold & Glory?

The game feels special for all the right reasons and hits all of the notes that I loved about the original AD&D 2e rules. And best of all, it discards all the Forgotten Realms style GMNPC insanity and railroading which came after. And I can support an OSR community by choosing this instead of AD&D 2e reprints, where the money goes to a billion-dollar corporation instead of a community of creators and fans. While I still may pick up an AD&D 2e Monster Manual reprint, my support will be in the OSR and I will wait for the community to build the parts I am missing - or do it myself.

As this is the AD&D 2e reset I never knew I was looking for.

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