Advancing Your Game Why You Should Consider AD&D 2E in 2024! (And How You Can Get Started at Any $$)

Back in the 80s even though nearly everyone first started with Basic D&D (because you could get the boxed set so cheap and for a while it was everywhere) the game everyone actually played was AD&D. Instead of buying the expert set, everyone bought AD&D manuals. We all had other RPGs but AD&D was the only game everyone knew.

The thing many people miss about AD&D is that the rules were not what we loved. It was the lore. All those crazy magic items, dungeon crawls, monsters, spells etc. etc. etc. They fired up your imagination.

This may be the best description of OSR play I've ever heard:
'I like that I feel I can try anything.'
Sometimes less is more and a lack of options in front of you creates the most interesting choices. When you have a mechanic for everything it can lead players to search for answers of what to do on their character sheet rather than what their character would do.

You can get the pdf of the Dark Sun setting manual on Drivethrurpg for around $10. The printed versions there are cheap too. Forgotten Realms setting is there as pdfs around $10 too.

The only thing WOTC and current editions of D&D have over TSR era D&D and OSR games is higher production artwork. Besides the eye candy, they have nothing that makes them better.

Aaah my beloved 2nd Edition! Great video mate, takes me back. Maybe i should dig up my books and dust them off. How compatible do you think it would be with B/X, out of interest? It seems pretty similar at first glance - just more advanced 😅

Haven't yet decided what route to go getting these but I'd love to read them. I actually have the MM pdf. If dtrpg had them pod as hardcover I'd probably jump right in. I think I can't get the og's as I doubt I could get them in good shape as the ones I threw away 😭

I'm not entirely sure I'd prefer to play 2e comparing to BX but who knows.. It would be really interesting to see how different it would actually feel in comparison. The nostalgia factor is surely there for it is the edition I first got my wife into rpg's (quite a few years after I actually got my set). Thanks for the presentation and showing off that really nice collection! 😁

Still haven't got around to it! But this is getting me excited nonetheless

Hopefully, I'll get to it one day!

Loved it in the 90s. One of my most successful D&D campaigns in 44 years. Tried going back to it during Covid but it did not work. I'm not the same person I was in 1994. My tastes have changed too much. I prefer simpler and more streamlined systems like Dragonbane, which does low-level gritty D&D very well.

Is WotC the license holder for these? They're always trying to monetize DnD, so why not bring these back into print? I know they weren't written for their precious One DnD, but money is money, and people still play these. My 2 cents.

Great stuff, sir! Thank you 👊🤓
Would you consider covering 2E in deeper dives, and maybe give us kinda how you run it (houserules, initiative, what you use and what you don't from "RAW")?

that is more for my "personal culture".
OK.
ODD is unreadable and you cannot play it without seeing it played firstly.
ADD 1e is a chore to read. Not only because of Gygax's style but because it is everywhere.(that and it is a wargame and not a RPG)

So I see why 2e as a bare minimum.
But why not 3E???
3.5e??
4e???
5e???

or wait a tad bit and go to 6e.

To be clear I never read or played 4e.
I scrumed over 5e. And reread it when BG3 came cause people around me knows I do RPG and deduced I was a champ at 5e... and asked questions... Go figure XD
I ain't a Dnd fan. Never was. Never will be.

I am just curious what motivates 2nd e vs 3rd e.

NB : while not a fan WHATSOEVER of DnD Pralinor as I said was my character in DnD 2 edition, the few time I played that game. And Ed Greenwood... Man that guy can write lore as a champ.

I suspect those ebay prices are going to creep up a bit after this video. ;P

2e was where I started. Complete nostalgia. But, man, those revised black border books by TSR had some of the worst art in the history of the game. Terrible perspectives, unfinished and detailess drawings. They look amateurish.

The question this brings up in my head is this: am I going to admit to myself that I'm totally going to end up buying these books, or should I keep acting like I won't for a few weeks??
No need for me to even say as much, but this was off the chain and I miss me some old AD&D. It's like an old DKs record. Sure it might seem out of place now, but back in the day? Brilliant!

absolutely agree, dnd is the major influence of all ttrpgs [in my opinion] my own game included, although ive dropped many of the mechanics and went with something of my similar but different, as well as dumping the traditional stats and just using modifiers, cheers Keep 'em Rollin'

2E is my game. If you use VTTs FantasyGrounds has 2E licensed content and Foundry has a compatible ruleset for it the game (tho no content).

Personally I prefer 3e, probably because I've played it the longest, but I still have my 2e core books and it's quite playable.

I started with BECMI/BX and then 1e, But I played the heck out of 2e so many cool settings

I started with AD&D 2E when I was a teenager and unfortunately our dungeon master moved us to 3rd edition. A few years ago I managed to get an original PHB and Arms and Equipment guide for $10 total and both looked as if they were seldom used. Since then I have managed to track down almost the entire line and glad I did. I wish this edition got more love.

Great video, I'd like to try AD&D someday

Another great source to mine stuff from is Hackmaster 4e.

I don't see anything here that really makes me interested in playing AD&D. Knave 2e, OSE, Shadowdark, and WWN can play any of this material without being bloated and poorly written.

What is the draw of this over WWN or OSE Advanced, for example?

Great video. Still play 2e to this day and is still my fav edition. Love this game!

did 2nd edition ever publish material for special domain priests? As the PHB for 2nd edition simply suggests the priest player and DM just make something up on the fly

what were the tweaks in FG&G? I have the book and didnt notice the differences. All I noticed was that they migrated some content from the handbooks into the core rules

I was debating whether to get 2E and then I watched your video and had no more doubts. The core books arrive tomorrow, and I can't wait to have some good fun. Thank you so much for your videos Justin! 👍👍

Loved box sets

Your making want to go back and play Second edition.

Player from the 90s too. I did exactly that: I just bought the 3 main books to revive the old times feeling after being playing 5e (and previously Pathfinder, and 3.5 before that came up). I'm feeling a unexplainable feeling reading the books and thinking I'll be DMing them very soon to my wife and friends!

When 3rd ED came out, I bought the DM's and Player's Handbooks.
I read them in one night. Took them back the next day and haven't touched anything from WoTC.
2nd ED Forever !

I'm surprised you didn't mention the historical settings.

Great video. I'm an old schooler and had the famous red box in the mid-1980s learning how RPGs actually worked but at the time I didn't have a group. And this was when I was in 7th grade which I then eventually played Marvel Super Heroes with a cousin for a few years. However, fast forward to the early to mid 1990s during art school, I managed to get into 2nd edition AD&D with a group of friends that was right in front of me. We had a blast as I was the DM the entire time. I do concur that this was the best supported version and I had 3 sets: Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft and Planescape. Best part? I still have all these books with me. I was contemplating getting reprints of 1e AD&D but decided it would be pointless because 2nd edition is what I played in as familiar ground, despite owning the 'red books'. I played a bit of 3rd when I moved to another state and also 5th edition very briefly with other people as a player. They were okay but not the greatest. I ignored 4th edition despite the temptation to upgrade. I'm most likely thinking of Old School Essentials to be safe as the next acquisition to my collection ( recently got His Majesty the Worm ). Otherwise, 2nd Edition was MY world and sticking with it until WOTC gets their act together to clean up the D&D product line.

What is the best adventure module to start a group’s 2e journey? Preferably, starting at Level 1.

Best edition hands down. Great video. Everyone should play 2e at least once, because we all know it won’t just be once.

Great video! I love my older edition books for tips n tricks from GMs of all editions!

Inspired me to recheck Ad&d 2e. Thanks!

Started my career playing 2e dnd when I was 10, over 20 years ago.
I'm running my players in 2e for the last years now

Just found my 97 Ad&d books. Players and 2 dungeon master. Also a 1st edition volume 1 that I wrote my name on like an idiot. Still going to have fun. Looking to trade extra dm guide for monster manuel. No need for 2.

2e was probably the cleanest edition for making your own setting.

Love these videos

Never stopped running 2nd ed, my group voted after 3rd and never swapped. Still have a 2nd ed game going, and the list of players wanting to join is 6 deep on the waitng list.

Ad&d 2e the best edition of all ! By far. I leave d&d with the 3rd for Rolemaster and Hero System and never come back.
Big Hug from Québec.

I grew up playing AD&D 2e, but lately I've seen a lot of things just saying how it's worse overall than 1e.

Truly a gorgeous display of AD&D box sets!

Can you go in depth on how to run a game for your kids? especially the 5 year old going for Advanced D&D! My kids are 9 and 6 and I always think they wouldn't be able to grasp the complexity of even B/X and how deadly a dungeon can be.

2e is my favorite edition hands down of D&D or rather AD&D!

Recently bought the 2e books. I've wanted to play 2e for a long time but was never able to convince my group to go for it. I'm not a purist in any edition, my 5e has a lot of Pathfinder (1e) in it, my Pathfinder has its own house rules. And for the last few months (since I got my hands on the 2e PHB and DMG) my long running 5e campaign has had a lot of 2e inserted into it. I'm sure I'll have a few house rules in 2e just like I have with every ttrpg I've played, but I honestly can't wait to finally get to play 2e. My current 5e campaign is far from over, but I've already announced that the next campaign will be in 2e.

I started playing 3.5 in 2014 (my freshman year in college), the next year my group converted to 5e, and I started DMing in 2016, discovered Pathfinder 1e in 2022, got into playing solo RPGs in 2023, which led me to discovering a lot of gems in other editions. I finally got my hands on the 2e core books earlier this year (2024), and realized pretty quickly that this was what I'd actually been wanting for a long time. 3.5/Pathfinder was too high fantasy for me, even though I have a lot of praise for that edition, 5e (2014, I didn't bother with the new sourcebooks) is like playing a game on story mode with all the cheats enabled, and also the turns take so incredibly long. 2e seems to fit what I've really been looking for.

One thing, the Monstrous Manual does not have the wilderness encounter tables! The Compendium I does have those, and the additional sheet-packages for the binders have their setting specific additions, just like some boxes like From the Ashes has some more. So if you want the random encounter tables for 2e, get the Monster Compendium, print/have them printed on 160g or thicker paper and put them into a 3 or 4 ring binder. This is the way of 2e "monstermanualing" - I print those pages I need for my campaigns out and have a complete binder just for that campaign, and I can put some nice full color dividers into it. So, when I do an arctic campaign (Howl from the North, Icewind Dale etc), I put scandinavian/subarctic beast in here, same for a trip to the Scarlet Brotherhood, the Sword Coast, Kara-tur etc. Or I do a 2-20-random table myself. The random tables for dungeons are included in the Monstrous Manual, but it is sort of a best of of the Compendiums. If you can get a Compendium 1, I adivice to get one. Or get the PDF and the supplements significant to the respective campaignsetting.

Good stuff for sure. I have a slightly unusual history with D&D since I started playing right around the beginning of the 2E era, when it and BECMI were the "current" versions. But my very first exposure was via a secondhand copy of the 1981 Basic rulebook and most of the older players in my area swore by 1E AD&D. So, in practice, I tended to play a motley mix of all four games. Nowadays, I still largely play that way, except using OD&D (via Swords & Wizardry) as a base with which to sprinkle in choice bits from all the other TSR editions, old Dragon issues, etc. TSR's (A)D&D is, and always has been, one grand sprawling game to me.