DCC vs. Second Edition

If I had to keep one game for fantasy, would it be Second Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics? While my love of a combined Second and First Edition is strong, the fun factor of DCC can't be discounted.

DCC has far, far, far better support than Second Edition, and even ongoing and regular crowdfunding projects, and if there is only one reason to put Second Edition away, this would be it. DCC's support is better than 5E's at the moment, with giant adventure modules released regularly and a steady stream of smaller adventures with varied and imaginative settings.

With the 5E market, I see a lot of overwritten, expensive, and too-flashy pretentious junk. Everything feels like it is "please like me" overwritten, Chat GPT fluff text trying to sound intelligent, but delivering walls of text that make my eyes glaze over. Even the D&D corebooks are like this, with massive amounts of text to describe ideas that should just be left to the player's imagination.

DCC tends to keep the writing tight, using tables to deliver information, and being economical with their word count. What DCC does in a single chart and paragraph, 5E takes two pages of text to provide the same idea. 5E is one of the worst bloated games ever written, with reams of paper used to fluff the books for a higher MSRP and deliver little actual content.

When in doubt, add 100 pages of ChatGPT text and raise the book price by another $20, and we will make back most of that in profit. Paper is cheap. Concise and efficient designs aren't.

How did we get to the point where brevity is a money-losing strategy?

With Second Edition? I am either playing BX adventures, which are not bad, or recycling AD&D adventures. The support is "sort of what you can find or convert in." It is not bad, but it is not dedicated support. There are a few adventures written for For Gold & Glory, and they are nice, but they are still nowhere near the support DCC regularly receives.

On the other hand, every adventure written for BX, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and any other retro-clone is compatible, and it gets easier if they support descending AC. So, really, you do have pretty good support if you expand your thinking and pull in adventures from BX. These work well for FG&G, and really, this is the OSR; your choice of rules is how you express yourself today, and that is cool.

It comes down to a few things. Can I get the full rules to a new player for free in PDF form? Is the publishing license open and free for anyone to create under? Is the book attractive and invites new players to join in and have fun?

FG&G hits all three points perfectly.

And there are some amazing ones. I like a lot of the mega-dungeons written for these games, and each one is easily a 10-year campaign. There is an open question of "Are mega-dungeons too much?" I love how huge and expansive they are, but there are times I prefer a larger campaign area with a few dozen medium-sized dungeons rather than one huge, multi-level monstrosity.

Second Edition has the nostalgia factor, while DCC gives me a tribute band experience, not bad, but not the real thing. There are some tribute bands of classic acts that are better than the real thing. As age takes its toll on these bands, the tribute bands can play with an energy and technical level that shocks me. I don't know the hard-working tribute bands; they pour a lot of heart into what they do, struggling and endlessly compared to the real thing, but putting in the time and effort just out of pure love.

DCC hits that same level of respect from me. This is a group of hard-working people who love the hobby as it was and are trying their best to bring back those days with fun, imaginative ideas. As a tribute band to old-school play, DCC hits all the right notes and brings me back to those days. With the Second Edition, I am playing a game that has seen better days, still the beloved original, but there is a danger here of my memories clashing with the reality of a game that has seen better days and fallen out of active support.

With DCC, every class is designed for maximum fun at the table. They are great class designs, and they have that "instant fun" designed into them, so if you sat down at a random table in a convention to play DCC, you are guaranteed to have a good time. With the Second Edition, it is the slow grind, and while I appreciate that, in today's world, where lots of things ask for our time, I will gravitate towards an instant-gratification game more than a slow grind.

I still like Second Edition; it is the best version of the game for me, across every edition Wizards or TSR put out. For the classic feeling and play, little matches it, and they loosened up the racial level limits to a point where they don't matter as much (or could be ignored), and the story XP is a solid system that is like a lot of the modern XP systems we have today. Taking away "gold for XP" and boosting moster XP makes a huge difference in motivation and why we play. The second edition is 100% compatible with anything made for the first edition or AD&D, so it is a solid choice.

For instant gratification and fast play, DCC wins.

For campaigns and classic play, the second edition, using For Gold & Glory as my rules, wins.

Second Edition Bliss

BX, BECMI, 0e, and White Box tend to be too simple for me. I see most of YouTube going crazy for this easier-to-play system, and yes, they play fast and don't require much rule support, but a lot feels missing. What will always be true is that the BX system as a "base compatibility layer" is the bedrock of gaming, a standard set of math and numbers that all games can communicate with and use.

The one thing Wizards did to "own the game" was break backwards compatibility, which was a sin, and it destroyed D&D. We have the scaling damage of 3.5E, the insane triple-down hit points of 4E, and the doubled hit points of 5E.

There is nothing wrong with the original math. THAC0 is laughably easy; don't listen to the clowns out there. Roll a d20, add the target's AC to the roll, did you roll THAC0 or higher? You hit.

Of course, you are using descending AC too here, but there is nothing wrong with that either. The better the armor, the less of a to-hit bonus you give your opponents. It is simple. Do you have AC 0? The entire world gets no bonus to hit you.

In fact, you can pre-adjust THAC0 for your melee and missile attack adjustments, and it gets even easier. My 6th-level fighter with a THAC0 of 15 has a +1 melee-hit bonus from STR, and a +2 sword. My base THAC0 is now 15 - 1 - 2 = 12. Have fun adding that proficiency bonus, ability score bonus, and weapon modifier to every attack, 5E players. Even if you make it one number, you are still adding it to every roll in 5E and comparing it to a floating target number.

5E is more math versus a floating target number (AC or DC).

With THAC0, my target number never changes: I only add a number from 10 down to 0 (or lower in rare cases) to my attack, then check my THAC0. I attack an AC 3 creature with my THAC0 of 12. Roll a d20 + 3, beat THAC0.

Also, with the second edition, you lose the demons and devils in the game. OSE does not have them either, and that has not stopped that game. They are the same as in the first edition, so port them in from that, and adjust the XP awards to the second edition standards. Or, use the renamed ones out of the AD&D 2E Monster Compendium and Outer Planes Appendix. They are all there; you just have to do a little finding.

Personally, our Forgotten Realms game ran fine without them for a decade, and I liked having to be creative with other monsters and not fall back on the same old tired enemies. Let the mastermind be a red dragon this time, or an intelligent purple worm. Use an NPC. With Tieflings everywhere in 5E, I am tired of modern D&D proving the Satanic Panic right, and they have become as exhausted as the Drizzt trope. Sorry to burst your ideal character bubble, but everyone is playing them, and they are tired now.

Plus, if you remove them from the "normal world" when demons do show up, it feels special again, and not everyone is playing one. Let evil be evil, and stop co-opting it.

I like For Gold & Glory, the beautiful, free second-edition retro-clone. The book is far better organized than the Wizards reprints, and the core-book art is superior. I will give the 2E Monster Compendium scores on better art for plates of each monster, even if they are slightly cartoony. FG&G does the job, feels like classic AD&D, and the PDF is free for everyone.

Why am I buying BX OSR games when I have this? Designer hubris? To say I "have something" and try to use that as an influencer? Why is it that on YouTube, most OSR influencers are trying to sell you something while ignoring the free games? Why is it Labyrinth Lord versus Dragonslayer all of a sudden? Are we all dumping OSE, which is also an expensive version of the game, for some reason?

The ads were bad enough on there; now all the videos are ads.

OSRIC is free. FG&G is free. Even Basic Fantasy is free.

Are we in this for the game and community, or are we here to sell people things?

Another great thing is FG&G's compatibility with the 2E complete guides, which give us "subclass options," or what we call character kits, to flavor our character classes without creating new ones or piling on complexity. A gladiator or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit; it is simple and easy, reducing rules bloat. These books you need to buy from Wizards, but they are worthy and an improvement over the first edition.

I love character kits over 5E's mess of subclasses. This is a much cleaner design, and it works perfectly. I never want to see hundreds of character classes and subclass options for each one in a game ever again; it is a terrible mess of a game design that reminds me of tangled, knotted, dusty, and filthy cords behind an entertainment center. 5E's design sucks, and it is far too complicated for its own good.

A gladiator, cavalier, or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit. No new classes are needed. The design achieves flavor with minimal rules interaction, and is a modern, object-oriented design that is clean and simple. There is a beauty to 2E's design that has never been replicated, and certainly not by the BX-obsessed OSR. Many OSR games will create a gladiator and barbarian class, just to fill books and sell you more stuff.

Yes, I am calling this out, but the OSR suffers from many of the problems that ail the 5E design community. Where simplicity, inheritance, and elegance can solve a problem, many OSR games do the same exact thing that 5E does: create classes to please the collectors, sell books, and bloat the game until it becomes unplayable.

Character kits rock.

THAC0 is the better system.

The second edition wins on solid design principles.

The AD&D 2E monster book is also a purchase if you want the product identity monsters; for FG&G comes with plenty of monsters of its own and is compatible with all of OSRIC's monsters, too. For that matter, all of BX is compatible too, just make sure descending AC is supported, as it should be. If you look around, you will find literally tons of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry monsters that are directly compatible with second edition, and there is no shortage of foes to fight.

We have bards here, too, so that is not a reason to skip out. In fact, bards are a more challenging class to play, and I like that design since it forces you to have a high degree of player skill and leverage your roleplaying chops, which you should be doing as a bard instead of falling back on designer gimmes and free magic powers. I would not let an inexperienced player choose a bard in 2E; this is for skilled players only. As it should be.

Add the second edition's story XP and increased monster XP on top of what is already the best version of the game, and you have pure gaming bliss.

The Birth of Subclasses

During the life of AD&D 2E, they released these books in the "Complete" line, which introduced "kits" for the various classes, allowing you to flavor your class along a particular theme, such as a pirate, swashbuckler, barbarian, or gladiator. This was the birth of the subclass, and also a lot of the "spin-off" classes, such as the barbarian in later editions.

The kits were a small collection of proficiencies, suggested gear, and minor bonuses for a particular character type, and they were cool and fun. They were not that complex or in-depth, and they did not have leveled bonuses or ability progression. All they were was a set of modifiers, kit abilities, limitations, and other modifications.

Subclasses that become treed progression paths and that load new abilities on you every few levels are far too much overkill for a fantasy game. In the end, a barbarian should be a "fighter kit" and not its own class, and the barbarian with subclasses feels like going into far too much depth for a game that is supposed to be simple and straightforward.

Subclasses these days feel too overdone, and classes that should be subclasses (barbarian) end up being their own class. There is something to be said for "keeping all fighters under fighter," using simple kits to flavor the fighter, and keeping the core class identity strong. We end up with a bloated game that is not easy anymore, and classes that go too in-depth with subclass progression, and the complexity shoots out of the roof.

I could say even Old School Essentials suffers from the "too many specific classes" problem, too, along with many OSR games that just keep adding and adding without putting a foot down to keep the game's design clean, streamlined, simple, and uncluttered.

Kits are "class flavors," and they work well that way, and help us differentiate one fight from another. Yes, there can be more generic fighters, but gladiators are a special flavor of fighter; they are still fighters at heart and should not stray too far from the core fighter concepts and core abilities.

And they are optional. Can you be a "gladiator" without them, just using the core book? Yes, pick a fighter and say you are. Do these add flavor? Yes.

These books work perfectly with For Gold & Glory, the 2E retro-clone that stands out as a perfect, community-supported, throwback 2E set of rules with one of the most generous redistribution policies I have seen in the OSR. One of the things I love about AD&D 2E is that TSR positioned the game as a competitor to GURPS 3E in the late 1990s, and they made an honest attempt to be "everything generic fantasy" by splitting out the D&D, setting-specific, and generic fantasy parts in distinct lines of books. This wasn't TSR "dividing the market" more than it was "making sure the core line of books could be used with any specific setting." The "Complete" line of books could be used with the Forgotten Realms just as well as they could with Dark Sun.

Contrast that with today, we get new 5.5E Forgotten Realms books with subclass options that everyone will backport into every setting anyway, and all of a sudden, everything is a mixed-up mess in a stewpot. Today's organization of books and setting guides is one long run-on mess of content.

I love the organization of the product lines in AD&D 2E. It makes sense to me: I can focus on a specific setting, have the rules-sourcebooks that support it, and a core of the 2E rules forming the foundation. The idea that TSR published too many campaign settings is a simplification; they should have just focused on the Realms and Dark Sun, possibly combining Birthright and Greyhawk, and the Realms and Spelljammer.

Then again, Dark Sun never really had a great direction in 2E, and the setting feels like the lore ran dry, and nothing interesting was happening after the dragon kings were deposed.

Ravenloft should have been expanded to a whole world to take on Vampire: The Masquerade, along with a LARP option. This is where they lost a lot of ground in fantasy role-playing in the 1990s. Vampire and Magic: The Gathering were the death of D&D.

The Complete books work perfectly with FG&G, and if you want a source of "subclass-lite" kits for your game, check these out. I like this design theory; they aren't writing hundreds of pages of new classes, and the kits aren't all that complicated. They serve as "flavoring" for a class that can seem a bit dry and dull, turning it into something unique, special, and fitting its purpose in the world.

And you are not supposed to use everything in every Complete book. If you have a gladiator-themed game, just use that with the core rules, and don't try to use everything in every book. Again, the design theory feels like GURPS: you don't use it all at once; just stick with the core rules and drop in the bits you need. Again, this is unlike 5E these days, where our character creation tools bloat and die with too many options. I have had new players get scared off by those bloated tools in my 5E game, and I dislike them.

If you play a lot of 2E and are looking for optional expansions for FG&G, check this line out. These are worthy.

Second Edition was Player Empowerment

The moment we realized that the XP for GP system was thrown out for AD&D 2nd Edition, it changed the entire game for us. We became fans again. The "natural assumption" that experience means reward and story progression, rather than "cheating by finding a 50,000gp emerald" and rocketing up the level chart, made us reevaluate the game's core assumptions, and the system became fun again for us. Here is an example of why.

Let's use Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy for this one, and assume we are the referee laying out a sandbox world. Now, this is how I would never lay out a sandbox world, so this is just for our example. Let's say our party consisted of your typical fighter, mage, thief, and cleric foursome. We decide what the maximum level of the players will be in this sandbox, say, level seven, and then go to the XP charts. 

We see that 80,000 gold pieces per character are needed to get everyone to level 7, which is level 8 for the thief, but it is close enough. Multiply that by four, and then we have 320,000 gold pieces of loot we need to spread through the world to get them there, and we can assume they will miss a lot of loot so we can be a little on the generous side, or "place unfound loot" in their path if they miss out on the 10,000 gp they walked by in the last dungeon.

We get minimal XP for monsters, so it is better to steal the loot rather than kick down the door and fight. This encourages creative thinking, which is a benefit. Wandering monsters give us minimal XP, too, so the fewer we meet, the better off we are. Wilderness encounters are the same, just a waste of time.

We are living in a BX, BECMI, 0E, and 1E world here. Gold and loot are experience. Rob, cheat, lie, and steal your way to fame and glory. Avoid fights. If it isn't bolted down, take it and sell it; every gold piece helps. Rusty weapons? Take those too, if we have the weight allowance. Also, for the most part, ACKS follows this model too, though it has the advantage of needing all that money in the domain game.

And, as a referee, I would stop handing out treasure; progression would all but stop. I can stop a campaign's progression dead in its tracks with a GP equals XP game. I just get stingy with the loot.

The key takeaways here are that the referee has strict control over progression through loot distribution and that fights are best avoided. Wandering monsters and random encounters are terrible things.

Back to the Second Edition, and I refuse to play the POD reprints as I fully support the community games. I recently watched a YouTube video by a noted OSR creator who said there is "no need" for retro-clones these days, now that you can buy the originals from Wizards. He is 100% and utterly wrong for saying that, as retro-clones are needed to protect against "future shenanigans" by Wizards, and also, there is NO WAY you can legally publish an adventure and say "this is for AD&D" or anything other than the current, supported version of 5E these days.

The community relies on retro-clones to publish new material for these rule systems. Do I want to publish and sell an AD&D 1E adventure? Use OSRIC. BX? Use OSE. Second Edition? Use FG&G.

You can't go on the Dungeon Master's Guild and write AD&D and BX adventures. They must be for 5E only. Until Wizards releases the previous editions of the rules to Creative Commons, supporting retro-clones and holding them up as "the definitive edition we should be playing" is the best way to go. Also, the POD reprints have errors that have not been fixed.

I take it a step further and play the retro-clones, and choose to talk about and only support them. This is how we immunize the community from a future OGL Crisis, and this is the only sane position to take in these "corporate times" of greed. To just say "buy them from Wizards" does a massive disservice to the entire community of creators, third-party adventure and expansion creators, and the entire market as a whole.

I can publish an adventure for OSRIC and sell it.

I can't publish an AD&D adventure at all; there is no way.

I am not sorry for calling this out, nor pushing the clones over the originals. We got into the OGL Crisis because of this laziness, and it will happen again the day DM's Guild goes away. This is gaming: every service and site gets cancelled someday, and all your digital content is lost, so you will need to repurchase it somewhere else.

When that day happens, all the people playing the POD reprints will flood YouTube to complain and be milked for outrage clicks, and I will be over here happily still playing and creating for my retro clones. I will get so much time back in my day, never need to watch the hundreds of hours of anger, and be happy with what I have.

All because of making the right choice today.

While I may use AD&D 2E PDFs in my games, For Gold & Glory is my Second Edition core ruleset. OSRIC is my 1E, forever, even with the sacred words of Gygax in print. I do not care, and I am making the right choices. If enough people do this, it creates the change we want to see.

Do you want to create change?

Or do you want the world to continue down the path it is on?

Be the change you want to see.

Back to the subject. The XP we get for a hill giant in BX and OSE is about 650 XP for defeating them, divided among party members, so about 150 XP. When your next level is over 20,000 XP away, that is a drop in the bucket, and given this is BX, and we could be 15,000 XP away from the next level, this would mean defeating 100 of them (with no treasure), just to reach the next level. Monster XP is near-worthless in BX games. There is no way a party could even fight 100 hill giants, even one at a time, without taking losses, not to mention that it would take forever.

Hence, treasure is the XP equalizer.

How about First Edition? In OSRIC, we are better off with the hill giant at 1,800 XP. Now we are getting somewhere. With 450 XP per party member, we are still talking about needing 33 of them (minus treasure) to clear that 15,000 XP. That is still a steep hill to climb without finding treasure, so even in OSRIC, it is better to avoid fights and just grab the loot.

Second Edition and For Gold & Glory are the moments when everything changes, and they did for us. Even though they stripped out half-orcs, demons, and assassins from the game, this was still the best edition of AD&D we ever played, and it got us in the game for a full 10 years. We skipped 2.5E and just used the core rules, which are beautifully preserved by FG&G. We could still back-port in the missing elements from 1E, and when Planescape 2E came about, the demons were back under new names and management.

What about the Second Edition?

No XP for treasure. None. It is an option in the DMG, but discouraged, and it is not mentioned in FG&G. You do get "Story XP," which should be equal to the XP gained for overcoming encounters while accomplishing that goal, and the degree of challenge. The language is essential here! Overcoming encounters also means surrender, fooling them, helping them, turning them into allies, or any other way an "encounter" can be "overcome."

So the hill giant in FG&G is worth 6,000 XP, nearly ten times the BX experience amount. Double that if you defeated the hill giant in a quest where the beast was attacking a village, and you were helping people or doing something heroic. If you convinced the hill giant the town wasn't so bad, and got the townspeople to back off, and they all lived happily ever after? Guess what? You still got the full 12,000 XP, split among you.

The encounter was overcome. The story goal was completed with a positive outcome.

And you didn't need to grab a single gold piece to earn those XP. You never needed to worry about treasure, and its importance was secondary. Mind you, it was still nice to have, but having the game's focus shift from acquiring gold and wealth to heroism, accomplishing quests, and story goals was huge for us. This, even though the rules were 99% the same as First Edition, was enough to make us fans of the game again.

And let's factor in random encounters now. Overcoming random encounters on the path of completing a story goal means the XP value of those encounters, already very high, is added to the story XP for the quest. So that pack of hyenas you fought on your way to the hill giant cave as a random wilderness encounter? It counts toward completing the story, and the already high XP is doubled when the story is finished. Are the cave beetles encountered as wandering monsters in the cave? They all count.

Zero gold pieces were gained here.

Note, in FG&G, magic items do give XP. This is the only exception to the XP for treasure rule, but the XP values are about on par with defeating a monster, so it is a minor adjustment, and certainly nothing you can depend upon for leveling. Still, that XP does count towards "story XP" when they are calculated.

As a referee, I do not need to place 320,000 gold pieces around my sandbox to account for leveling anymore, nor do I even control progression all that much. Most of that is in the player's hands, with the monsters they defeat and the stories they undertake, which could also be their own stories and goals.

This is another essential thing. Story XP is not just "referee quests" but can be a part of a character's personal storyline, goals, and motivations. If a character starts a self-initiated "revenge arc," it could create Story XP for the various milestones and story points along the way. Never in the First Edition did they do this, yet it is possible in the Second Edition.

If players just wanted to "wander the map" and "kill everything," well, then that playstyle opens up, too. It is a bit pointless, but it is an option. Story XP will double progression speed, but they are free to wander the map like Grand Theft Auto and cause chaos if they want.

FG&G and the Second Edition rules do have the problem of "not needing money" at the higher levels. There are no prices on magic items here, nor were there in Second Edition AD&D, which openly dismissed the idea of "magic item shops" in the DMG. Is gold not being important really a problem in Second Edition? The entire concept of wealth as advancement was removed from the game, and characters had minimal need for wealth beyond hirelings and gear.

You have to remember: Second Edition was positioned as "the game for the novels," and the novels weren't about gathering all the gold to get progression either. In the novels, the characters performed heroic deeds, learned, and grew stronger, but never really reflected the original game's "gold for XP" concept. So Second Edition simulated the NYT Bestseller novels of the 1990s pretty well, and that is what the game was built for.

If there is no dominion game, and you don't need to buy magic items worth hundreds of thousands of gold, what do you need gold for? Gold is only required to buy a few things: travel, hirelings, mounts, and pay for lodging and supplies. You could run a "low wealth" game in Second Edition and never affect progression, player power, magic item availability, or any other part of the rules.

That is a feature, not a drawback, since chests full of gold tend to weigh down a party and limit their ability to travel and adventure. In a more story-focused game like Second Edition, if we need to get to "Danger Falls" to save the princess, we hop on our horses and head out. Who cares about securing 30,000 gold pieces of treasure in a bank or stronghold? Let's just focus on the story and go!

For groups wanting a more story-based game that focuses on heroics and not wealth, the Second Edition was built for that exact purpose. This may be the game you were looking for but never knew you wanted.

There is no way for me to stop progression in a Second Edition game as a referee, nor should there be. The game goes from referee-controlled to player-driven, with a much stronger focus on story arcs, quests, plots, and goals. The world and the NPCs become much more critical, along with factions and their motivations. If Orc barbarians are burning the northern villages and sacking towns, there is some instant motivation for players, and no treasure needs to be dangled in front of their faces for the players to want to jump in.

All the players need are goals and stories to go out and be heroes.

These will be driven by the NPCs, factions, and centers of civilization in the world. This is how the referee controls interest and drives player agency.

The rewards will be in the stories the characters tell. Not in the loot locked up in dungeon rooms.

And your characters are free to go wherever adventure calls them to.

First and Second Edition is Where it is At

Many people are returning to the First and Second Editions. This all mixes with the BX, White Box, 0E, and other old-school gaming crowds, so the movement is vast and mostly cross-compatible. I get the feeling Shadowdark kicked this off, with the 5E players discovering the amazing old-school play style, becoming addicted to it, then wanting something more profound, going to higher levels of play, and adding more crunch and depth.

The only place you go after Shadowdark is BX or the First Edition. White Box and Zero Edition are also strong choices, but if you want to find the heart and soul of the hobby, you will pick up a copy of OSRIC or For Gold & Glory and stick to the classic TSR version of the game as we knew it in the 1980s and '90s.

I support the community edition games, not the reprints, since I support those who use these systems to write expansions, adventures, and create new content for these classic games. This is not possible with either AD&D 1E or 2E. So, either OSRIC or For Gold & Glory are my jams —what I talk about and what I play, even though I can get (flawed) POD reprints of the originals.

First Edition is what the Stranger Things kids would have been playing, not 5E. If the whole series followed 5E rules, then none of them would die, and they would be multiclassing to hell to break reality. Most of them would be warlock/paladin characters with a level of fighter to get action surge. Money would be meaningless, and they would be stopping the show every 10 minutes to rest.

Yes, there are level limits for non-human characters in First and Second Edition, but remember, non-humans are the only ones who can multiclass, splitting their XP between two classes and advancing in each. Yes, you have level limits for non-human characters, but you get to break the rules in fantastic ways. By the time Wizards released 3E, this went away; we lost much of the appeal of non-human characters, and it began the slow progression towards the current "races are meaningless marshmallow shapes" trend we see today and the blandification of D&D.

How non-human races and multiclassing worked is an original Gygaxian design feature, not a mistake. This has its roots in the original "race as class" system in the original B/X rules, and it was significantly expanded in First and Second Editions. Instead of Elves being only fighter/mages, they can be a cleric, fighter, mage, thief, or ranger; and Elves can also multi-class as fighter/mage, fighter/thief, fighter/mage/thief, or mage/thief. So, in BX, they only have one option, whereas in 1E/2E, they have 9 options, 4 of which are compelling multi-class choices.

Non-human racial multiclassing is the expanded BX race-as-class system and is meant to be balanced by racial level limits; otherwise, a multiclass Elf would reach an insane power level. There is something to be said for raising the non-human level limits on single-class choices, but the system defaults to multiclassing for PCs, while more single-class options are available for non-human NPCs.

As for choosing between the First and Second Editions? Start with OSRIC and the First Edition. If you want bards and to lose Half Orcs, assassins, and gold-based XP, go for Second Edition with For Gold & Glory. We stopped playing First Edition, and picked up the Second Edition, and liked it much better because of the "Story XP" as the game's default. The game had moved away from the rampant greed of the original and shifted more toward adventure and storytelling, closer to the novels and tales of heroism.

The tonal shift between First and Second Edition got us back into the game. Yes, this is nearly the same set of rules, but the change in tone was significant and a statement of what the game expected from you as heroes (or villains). Monster XP was dramatically raised, and it told us to "get out there and fight!" All of a sudden, we were no longer avoiding fights or stealing bags of gems; my party was getting into dangerous, thrilling, stand-up fights with dragons and other monsters.

Since "story XP" often equaled (but could not go above) the XP gained from fights, if you were fighting monsters as a part of a goal, story arc, or plot, you essentially doubled your XP by taking missions. Gold was still valuable for trading for magic items, spell research, and other costs, but it was not the driving force behind the game anymore. You could be a lone wanderer, finding magic items, and going around helping towns like Robin Hood, and not have much wealth, and still gain levels like you were wandering around an RPG or MMO.

The effect of this change was dramatic, pulling us back into AD&D.

The game was about storytelling and heroism again.

We ran a Second Edition Forgotten Realms campaign for years, and that was a fun game. The Forgotten Realms died for us with D&D 3E, and Greyhawk and its super-characters had returned. By the time D&D 4E came around, the Forgotten Realms was a zombie corpse ambling around and trying to find its head. We never played a 5E Forgotten Realms campaign, and Baldur's Gate 3 is not the world I knew, nor one I really want to experience, having played the original.

Starting with 3E, the game's focus shifted dramatically from the adventure-oriented storytelling of 2E to hardcore personal power. It has gotten worse and worse over the years, to the point where the sole driving motivation behind D&D these days is individual power, character builds, damage per turn, and character builds designed to cheat the rules.

If you played in the 1E and 2E eras, you know that the game was completely different. And let's not talk about the 2.5E era right before the end of TSR, when they were throwing everything and anything at the game to try to revive the system before the company's bankruptcy, and the insane amount of rules bloat introduced in the Options books.

If you started with 3E, you probably have no clue about the subtle shift between 1E and 2E regarding motivation and the game's tonal focus. You were on board the "character power train" from the start and probably think 5E is the best version ever. Because 5E gives you "the most power."

The game was never about that.

For us, 2E gave us "the most story," and that is what we wanted.

For Gold & Glory and the Classic Feeling

The more I read this game, the more I like it. This is the definitive implementation of the Second Edition. Like OSRIC, it does not go out of its way to expand the game, and it presents as complete a core experience as it can manage. Unlike OSRIC, it includes the improvements from the Second Edition and all the core classes we know and love today. And it maintains perfect backward compatibility with OSRIC and Adventures Dark & Deep, as well as with existing 2E books.

Why not just play First Edition? The differences are minor, but the addition of bards and removal of assassins puts the game in line with the 1990s experience. The games are interchangeable, but Second Edition has the refinement and familiar feeling of when we took the Forgotten Realms seriously, and it captures that time for me. The art in FG&G also doubles down on a serious, tonally medieval period and a classic world, and that makes my heart sing.

Also, FG&G has increased XP for monsters, and the Story XP system is preserved —an additional difference between this and First Edition. Second Edition adventures could be more goal and story-based than their "XP for gold" First Edition counterparts. In fact, 2E removed XP for gold and only included it as an optional rule in the 2E DMG, discouraging its use.

FG&G assumes no XP for gold.

You only get encounter and story XP here, and this changed our perception of AD&D away from "kill for treasure" to a more adventure and story-based game, with awards for goals and heroism. Second Edition is the version we got big into, just because XP for GP was removed from the game.

There are also minor changes to monsters, standardization of THAC0, and a general cleanup and presentation of the rules. FG&G takes that a step further and pulls off an amazingly organized OSRIC-like presentation of the game. Best of all, the PoD reprints of the monster books are all 100% compatible, even though the game comes with its own bestiary.

There is nothing wrong with THAC0.

Can you not do simple subtraction?

A THAC0 of 19 trying to hit AC 9?

19 - 9 = 10+ to-hit.

Or do what they do in ACKS and add the target's AC to your to-hit roll, and aim for your THAC0 number. A THAC0 of 17 and fighting an AC 6 creature? Roll a d20 + 6, and meet or beat 17. There is no subtraction required here, only addition, and the concept that a lower armor class gives less of a to-hit bonus for the target. What number do you need to remember at the table? Only one, 17. Add the target's AC to the roll.

Think of AC as the to-hit bonus for the target you are attacking. The lower the number, the less the bonus, and the harder it is to hit. The higher the number, the easier it is to hit.

It is so simple, it is stupidly easy. I find this system far easier than some of the ascending AC systems out there, especially those in 3.5E, where AC numbers can reach 30 and higher.

In fact, THAC0 is easier than 5E to hit rolls. In 5E, you are rolling a d20, adding a modifier, and comparing against an AC value that can float, so you have two sides that can change. In THAC0, the number you are trying to roll or higher never changes, and you only add the target's AC to the roll.

THAC0 is easier than 5E.

If you want demons and devils, you will need to port them from First Edition or get the Outer Planes Appendix for 2E. It is a minor gripe, but it is nonetheless there and easily fixed. For us, we never had infernal creatures in our 2E Forgotten Realms campaign, and that allowed the other bad guys to step up and take more active roles. There is something to be said for not allowing demons and devils to run around your campaign world like it was a plane of hell, and limiting them to either direct summoning or being gated in for a limited duration of time. Doing what Pathfinder 1e did by letting demons wander around like MMO mobs is sort of lame and removes how special and rare they are in the game.

Oh, and the demons and devils are renamed to silly names, a 2E-ism that I equate to them being called by different names due to a cultural belief. It is simple to just call them what they are.

The Forgotten Realms started in AD&D First Edition and became mega-popular when the Second Edition and novels came out. And the world during that time was still a standard, human-dominated, classic, AD&D-style world with racial level limits. The world was not filled with cartoonish character races; it had real diversity in skin tone, cultures, and people within its human population. The cartoonification of racial options in the modern setting erases all these wonderful human cultures that used to be paramount in this world, and turns the setting into a parody of fantasy tropes.

I would rather have the original diversity of this setting instead of these D&D 4E transplant cartoons. I remember when 4E came out, and we could not wrap our heads around where to put the new races of Eladrin and Dragonborn; they were just there because Wizards said they were. They fit better in the D&D 4E world of Nerrath, to be honest.

In our games, the darker-skinned human traders and adventurers from the Southern continents were a force to be reckoned with, with equally powerful mages to match Elminster. They had adventurers and heroes who would show up in my adventures and campaigns. These days? Here are some kobolds, goblins, orcs, and dragon-men for your diversity.

The cartoonification of the modern D&D setting is killing the game and turning every world into the childish, goofball Happyland of McD&D. It is also killing real-world diversity and representation in this world in favor of everyone playing a cereal mascot.

Teiflings are not normal, everyday inhabitants of this setting, and they would have a taint of evil in their blood. They would not be readily accepted by most populations. This is another reason not to let demons and devils freely walk around, and take the focus off of them in a classic throwback 1990s 2E game.

The current Forgotten Realms is unrecognizable—it is no longer the classic setting.

Part of me wants to remember and play it as it was, but the other part of me is ready to toss the world into the trash, knowing it will never be the same again. I could do better, create better, and have a world consistent with First and Second Edition games without all these modern distractions. It does make me sad since 2E FR was one of the best fantasy settings of all time.

While the monsters in FG&G are the pared-down 2E core set, I can pull in monsters from any 1E or 2E book, and they are perfectly compatible. Only the XP needs to be recalculated with the tables in FG&G. The Adventures Dark & Deep Core Bestiary is a massive tome, and a perfect match for this 2E-flavored game. All my 1E and 2E games sit on the same shelf, and are an enormous library of games to play, from the more story-like 2E, to the classic hardcore 1E, and even OSRIC finds a home there alongside my (flawed, but still appreciated) 1E reprints.

All of them work together beautifully. Do I want a hardcore 1E game? OSRIC. How about an expanded 1E game? Adventures Dark & Deep. The game of novels in the 1990s? For Gold & Glory. Swords & Wizardry hangs out there, too, still compatible and still amazing. My First and Second Edition books make a highly compelling gaming shelf, full of fun and options for adventure.

A stack of classic adventures sits at the ready. All of them work perfectly with any First or Second Edition game, and for that matter, all my BX adventures for OSE and Labyrinth Lord work flawlessly as well. Why not play BX, White Box, or 0E? I get the meaty, gritty, chart-filled, Gygaxian classic 1980s and 1990s feeling and flavor here—the original recipe D&D taste—and it is a great time.

The older I get, the more I realize that most of the games they keep rereleasing and rewriting can never hold a candle to the originals. The best old-school is the old-school. The originals, but the ones crafted by the community to be around forever.

OSRIC.

For Gold & Glory.

Adventures Dark & Deep.

I have OSE and Swords & Wizardry, too.

Something tells me the best games we already had were the ones we had when the hobby was still new and electric. Just as the 1980s and '90s produced the best music and movies, the best decades also made the best games.

Why No Dwarven Bards?

At first glance, the Second Edition's limiting bards to humans and half-elves makes no sense. Why can't I play a Dwarven bard? Or how about an Elven bard? That should make sense.

But when I think about it, the abilities described in the human and half-elf bard do not make sense for Elves and Dwarves. With a Dwarven bard, I would want new powers, like ones useful in drinking games, telling bawdy jokes, throwing axes or darts, brawling skills, and weaving epic tales by the fireplace. They would not have any magic and could be a blend of thief and fighter. I call this new class a songsmith and create a new class for this tradition.

Similarly, an Elven bard may never touch arcane magic and instead pull from druidic spell lists and be a half-thief, half-druid. The answer to this problem lies not in "letting everybody be anything," but in recognizing that the classes represent long-standing traditions within those races that are part of their culture and heritage. For these bards, I would create a class called a lyricist and fold in the traditions of the Elven life, nature, and their history and lore.

The songsmith and lyricist are superior choices to the Dwarven and Elven generic bards. This also preserves the current bards as Human and Half-Elven traditions, further strengthening them as "their own thing."

The same thing goes for every race and class you would want to add to the core system. The Dark Elves may have an entirely different set of classes that only they can become. This is a problem you can't "cheaply solve" by allowing everyone to be everything. While there may be some backgrounds that are universal to Dark Elves and everyone else, such as fighters and priests, there are likely a bunch more that are better suited to their own class designs.

Dark Elven ranger? No, how about a spelunker? A spider tamer? An inquisitor? We don't have bards down here; we have fate weavers. And each one of these classes is unique, with special abilities and spell lists, and not just a renamed version of other classes.

If you stop, consider the culture, think, and come up with unique and fun designs that fit the race and roles in their society, you will always get better designs and a superior experience.

D&D 3E (and 3.5E) went a long way towards destroying the traditional notion of fantasy classes being a part of heritage and culture. They took the cheap way out of letting anyone be anything, just giving up on worldbuilding and crafting a setting through the rules, inviting in 101 fantasy character races that are just marshmallow shapes.

D&D 3.5E marked the beginning of D&D's decline. It is still the best we ever got from Wizards, but the design decisions that "opened the door" for anyone to be anything started to homogenize and gentrify the game, ruining it. The Second Edition preserves the worldbuilding inherent in the system and still retains a part of the "race as class" aspects of BX through level limits.

Wizards did this since the bard class went from one page of rules to four. All of a sudden, creating a new class for every tradition was out of the question because the game would blow up in size. So they made their bards "one size fits all" to increase class complexity. What was once a rogue subclass that shared features with rogues became a huge monolithic class that had to do everything for everyone.

In fact, the Wizards' design theory is inferior to the original second edition design. It is a fast-food bard character class that has to serve everyone and everything.

If anyone can be anything, everything will be bland and flavorless. You will have no worldbuilding. Your fantasy game will go from feeling like a unique time and place to a freeway where everyone rushes to get where they want to go. Dwarven wizard? Why not? All of a sudden, Dwarves aren't suspicious of arcane magic. Halflings can be barbarians. Drow can be paladins. Let's give up on worldbuilding, shall we?

There was an unspoken rule that races had their own class choices. The base books were the "human starting guide" by default, and you could expand from there.

Part of the original D&D mythos was its inherent worldbuilding.

D&D 3.0, and later revisions, came along and wiped all that out.

ACKS gets this and ships with so many great racial character classes that give each character race flavorful options and classes that fit within their culture. This game understands that the class and race options presented are worldbuilding, and it is one of the best at creating a coherent, logical, and strongly themed setting where your imagination can run wild.

Another game that does a fantastic job of creating a setting through its race, background, class, and skill options is Rolemaster. The game creates powerful combinations through its interlocking systems, allowing you to build great combinations or other ones that will be more of a challenge to play. There is worldbuilding here, stating that different races and backgrounds have deeper roots in various traditions and pursuits, and that these will synergize strongly with each other.

I have a soft spot for the original First Edition rules, and this lives on through Adventures Dark & Deep.

However, the Second Edition rules are those of the 1990s —the classic TSR fantasy novels and all the great paperbacks that came out during that time. This is the origin of all the modern character classes, roles, and options. We do not even have Half-Orcs as a race option in For Gold & Glory. We just have the classics, and the classics define the world we play in.

For Gold & Glory is the heir to the legacy of Second Edition AD&D.

The worldbuilding and spirit of that game live on here.

Bards: Classic vs. Modern

The bard character class has gotten worse over the years. We were first introduced to the bard as a "half caster" class in AD&D 2nd Edition, and today we know it as the excellent game, For Gold & Glory. If I am playing a bard, I will go back to the source implementation and stick with a solid Second Edition retro-clone.

The Second Edition's bard character class is not an easy class to play! The ability score requirements are high, and you can only be a human or a half-elf. The idea of dwarven bards, half-orc bards, and all sorts of other bards was never a "thing" back in Second Edition.

If you want the "modern" bard, the mix-and-match races and classes, play 3.5E and never go any further. This is still a good version of the class, but beware of the infamous "Wizards' bloat," where the 3.5E bard takes 4 pages of text-heavy rules just to describe the class, whereas FG&G does it all in just one page. The Second Edition has a BX-like simplicity to the game, even though it is a repackaged First Edition and shares all the complexity and depth.

I love you, 3.5E— you are the best version of Wizards' D&D ever made —but you are horribly, terribly overwritten and a mess of unorganized ideas and concepts. The game is barely playable without cheat sheets and lengthy FAQs. You are unplayable without a copy of the 3.5E SORD, explaining things the designers failed to lay out clearly in the rules.

Um, where is our 3.5E retro-clone?

Typically, the OSR would jump in on a project like this and knock out a few million on Kickstarter, but we have never gotten a great 3.5E retro-clone yet. Pathfinder 1e needs to be sunsetted, and the time is right to rebuild a classic game, strip out the accursed OGL, and make it open for everyone to play and create for. If you do end up writing a 3.5E retro-clone, please do not clone the word count.

In the Second Edition, bards are arcane casters. In the Third, you begin to see them as mixed arcane and divine casters, where they have healing spells. This is where the entire class starts to go off the rails. No longer do you need to play smart, figure out how to make a limited power set work for you, and lean heavily on your bard abilities. In the Third Edition, magic (and the written rules) starts to replace player skill. And you begin to think a bard can replace a cleric, which is just wrong.

A well-played Second Edition bard takes a lot of player skill to make it work; it is not an easy class. Your "party strength" will decrease, since you do not have a pure thief or mage in the party anymore. The bard will constantly need to prove themselves through creative play, a design choice I like. By the Fifth Edition, forget it, the player pandering has taken over, and the bard class is equal to or stronger than most pure caster classes, with better and more flexible powers. There is no such thing as a well-played Fifth Edition bard since the class is so easy.

Back here in Second Edition, if I had to pick one: bard, thief, or mage? That is a tough choice to make, and the bard always comes out second or third, depending on the amount of social roleplay we expect. Is this a dungeoning game? I would go for the thief. Is this a long-term campaign? Then, the mage. Only in social games does the bard begin to creep up in desirability, and then we factor in the far more desirable ranger for exploration campaigns.

And forget letting a low-skilled player pick a bard. This isn't some sort of gatekeeping; it is just that the class isn't for novice players or players unwilling to make it work. You need to be an excellent player to turn a class that has a very narrow and specific power set into an asset, and there will be moments where you will change the direction of the campaign.

Player skill matters!

But, a Second Edition bard in combat? Chainmail, no shields, and a bow, and you are not a front-line fighter. You can't shoot your bow and sing, so to grant the inspire courage bonus, you need to be performing for three rounds, and the bonus begins on the fourth. The fight could be over, and you haven't even gotten to the chorus yet. You don't get spells until the second level. But join the club, in Second Edition, everyone sort of sucks; you just suck a little less in a few social areas.

But again, this is what makes Second Edition fun. You are not over-reliant on "the designers giving you powers and abilities." You need to use your brain for once, and not your character sheet. You are a second-level bard. You know one first-level spell per day. You have a few thief skills and no backstab. You have a few specific class abilities. How do you make yourself useful?

Go to the armory and start buying weapons. Get a bow and help out as a ranged attacker. Lean heavily on your lore, counter song, and hear noise abilities. Be the person who can help identify magic items. Know your ultra-specific class abilities and use them every chance you can get. But for the most part, you will be a second-line melee fighter and primary ranged attacker.

Put your delusions of grandeur away and learn how to contribute to party damage without special, flashy, overdone player-pandering powers. In many regards, you are like a ranger or paladin, someone with a few special tricks that needs to be able to fight in melee or put out consistent ranged damage.

Everyone needs to worry about gear, encumbrance, and hand-to-hand combat. You need to be smart to make a limited set of powers work. The designers are not shoving powers at you to make the game easy and constantly distract you. If I play a bard in 5E? I can mostly ignore the equipment list. If I play a bard in 2E? Chainmail weighs 40 pounds, and I am already pushing toward becoming lightly encumbered. I may go for leather or studded leather and carry gear and treasure.

I need to make wise choices here, not just "armor up to the max" like you do in modern D&D.

In the First and Second Editions, your gear and speed of movement are a part of your "character build," and each piece of gear you can carry is like a specialized power. Do you have a rope and a grappling hook? No climbing skill rolls are needed, and even the other characters in the party can climb a rope. That rope is a "get out of jail free" card you can pull in specific situations that mostly lets you bypass needing to make skill or ability rolls.

Modern D&D (3.5E and beyond) tends to "screw the players" and assumes you need to constantly make skill and ability rolls to attempt actions with equipment. In classic D&D (1E and 2E), equipment works like a "modern game character power" and mainly does not require a skill roll. You pay the price in hauling that rope around and suffer encumbrance penalties, guess what? That rope will work wonders when you need it to. That rope is now part of your "character build," and you are free to use it in whatever creative way you want to, and I, as the referee, will be very generous when it comes to you using it.

This is a huge, huge difference between classic D&D and modern D&D.

In modern D&D, they need to use skill systems to weaken equipment, and they ignore encumbrance rules to do so. What "gives you power" is what "the designers grant you," like they were benevolent, all-controlling gods. Equipment is often used to gatekeep skill rolls, preventing you from even attempting the action without it.

In classic D&D, equipment grants special character powers and replaces the modern design theory of "designers giving you toys" like you were children needing to be entertained. You pay the price in hauling backpacks filled with junk, tracking the weight, and balancing your load and treasure-hauling capacity, and you get instant, no-roll-needed benefits. Don't have equipment? Okay, give me an ability score roll and pay the price for not having the right tools for the job.

There is such a stark, fundamental difference here; I do not know why more people do not see it.

And if you want to play bards and modern character classes, go back to Second Edition and try For Gold & Glory. I would skip 1E clones that try to remake bards, and just experience the classic design again. You may find you like the gritty, innovative, creative play style here better than you do, with game designers consistently tossing toys and powers at you to try to please you.

Second Edition rocks, and it improves on every concept and design later ruined by overgenerous game designers in 3E and beyond, while still giving you the OG modern classes and roles. This is where modern gaming originated, and it is the purest form of what we know as D&D today.

AD&D 2nd Edition vs. For Gold & Glory

There is a good portion of the community moving to AD&D 2nd Edition as their old-school game. This is a solid choice, but for many reasons I would still base my games and creative work around For Gold & Glory rather than the AD&D 2nd Edition reprints.

The best reason is the open license. If you create material or adventures for FG&G, you can share and sell them. You are not allowed to do this for the AD&D 2nd Edition game. Just in supporting a community of creators and players, it is always better to form ranks with the open gaming movement. Do you have an adventure or campaign you have written? Have  you created new character options, spells, or monsters? You can sell and share it here!

The PDF of For Gold & Glory is free, and there is a nice all-in-one hardcover option. A free PDF will help me immeasurably at getting new players into the game. There is nothing to buy! Let's play. I can also just give the PDF out for free, the license says I can just share this with my friends and pass it along.

REDISTRIBUTING For Gold & Glory™
This entire, unmodified book can be redistributed either as a free pdf or as an at-cost print on demand. If you offer a print option, you are forbidden from making any profit from the sale. - For Gold & Glory, page 367.

Few games let you do that. I want to hand this out to a friend to get them started? The license allows redistribution, as long as it is for free.

Yes, the AD&D 2e PDFs are 9.99 each, and you can get soft covers. Who knows how long these will be around, and the monster books are the best buys for the few monsters outside FG&G's generous selection. For the money, ability to share, and value, FG&G beats the reprints, hands-down.

The only thing the reprints have at the product-identity monsters and spells. Get the 2nd Edition Monster Manual if you want them. But again, the art, while nice to have, is all that comic-book style. Also note that demons and devils have been erased from this edition due to the Satanic Panic. You need to buy a few more books to have these, and they are the silly renamed versions.

You can always pull them in from any AD&D 1e or first-edition source, too, and this is where the excellent Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary is highly useful. ADAD is an S-Tier game, but it is huge and has a lot of add-on content. I can see wanting to stick with a 2nd Edition subset of stuff to keep the game and world simple. This is going to be a go-to resource book, though.

 

The art in the FG&G book is far better than the reprints. I love the choices of classical art, and FG&G seems like a much more mature, serious, and impactful game than the often comical and garishly colored AD&D 2nd Edition books, and some of the pieces in the TSR books are so bad they hurt my eyes to look at. Some of the pieces in AD&D 2nd you can clearly see the artist went out of their way to avoid drawing faces. Some of the pieces are classic reprints, but they are very hit and miss. Compare that with the piece above, by a true classical artist, and FG&G stands shoulders above the amateur-looking TSR books.

The layout and clarity of the rules is also far better in FG&G. The fonts are better, the use of color is better, and the book is cleanly presented and easy to reference. It is a beautiful book, without any of the silly, kids-cartoon races of modern D&D, which I feel distract from the story and game.

The FG&G art is awesome in every way, evocative of a realistic medieval world, and it is not pushing talking houseplants or puppet PCs in my face. I am seriously starting to dislike the "goofball" new fantasy backgrounds, which are childish and lack seriousness. This is a game without Tieflings, as having the blood of Satan in you instantly turns you chaotic evil and makes you a monster. Dragonborn would be of the blood of dragons, and the allies of those serpent beasts - not player characters. It feels like a classic all-or-nothing here, without the constant cosplay and pretend-ism, and that is a welcome change.

You could have them in your game, but if you are playing second edition, you never really did. For nostalgia's sake, leave the special backgrounds to the Wizard's editions.

The AD&D 2nd Edition books are way overdone, too fancy for their own good, with strange font choices, giant curly title fonts that are hard to read, too much color on the page, and distracting, red and black, double-bordered tables with too light of a font typeset. Some of the longer paragraphs are unreadable due to the sans-serif nearly hairline-thin fonts.

I love the serious tone of FG&G, and it does not feel like a lightweight game. Your characters are these actual wizards, knights, rogues, and witches of old. The game looks and feels like a classical bible, and in every ways sets a more serious and grounded tone than modern games, which tend to be goofy and more like Cartoon Network than a tale feeling based upon a realistic world.

I love that wizard. He is so cool. That would be my character. He has a stars and moons robe with zodiac symbols all over it, and a suspicious look in his eye like, "Get away from me!" He should, he only has a d4 hit die.

Where AD&D 2nd Edition has that goofy cartoon style, FG&G feels grounded and realistic, and it has the clearly superior license. The second edition is what many remember fondly, and it is nice to have an OSR game in this space, especially one so generous.

FG&G is the better game, one that gives me a serious feeling and weighty presence to it. It is much like ACKS II in this respect, and that mature and grounded tone brings my games to another level.

Even though the rules are mostly the same, presentation matters a great deal here.