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NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:46:55 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: edition wars
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 10:46:54 -0500
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On Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:55:26 +0100, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 11/9/2024 2:47 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>> 
>> Even when playing later editions, I _still_ use some of those
>> guidebooks as helpful references (namely, "DMGR1 Campaign Sourcebook
>> and Catacomb Guide" which is chock full of good advice for a DM
>> running a campaign, and "DMGR3 Arms and Equipment Guide", which is
>> just a useful (if not historically accurate) visual reference to all
>> those fantasy weapons in the game.
>> 
>
>
>Well, these books are fantastic resources. And I also use some more ADnD 
>2e books to work out stuff, only really good adventures are a bit rare 
>(and when I tried to point out some good ones I just realized those were 
>all 1e rereleases)

2nd Ed definitely was better when it came to campaign expansions than
with its modules. There were a handful of great adventures ("Dragon
Mountain", "Planescape: Dead Gods", "Rod of Seven Parts") but on the
whole I remember the edition more for its stuff like the
aforementioned "DMGR3 Arms & Equipment Guide", "Ravenloft Boxed Set"
and "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog". 

Which was fine with me, because that was the era when I pretty much
stopped using retail adventures and started building up my own
campaign worlds. I still _bought_ them, being the good little consumer
(as "research" and "inspiration", I told myself) but most never really
interested me enough to run them.

     [Some were just horrible, though. Pretty much everything 
      Dragonlance did in 2nd Ed was just _awful_.]

But I'm not really surprised. The game itself was changing. Early 1E
adventures were either extremely simplistic, or often whole
supplements unto themselves. They were good not so much for their
adventures but because of the realms they described for us. But with
TSR putting out more stand-alone campaign material, the modules
focused more on _just_ the adventures... and those just weren't
satisfactory on their own.

TL;DR: don't disagree with 2E modules, but I think it the decline has
less to do with the system and more to do with how the industry was
changing overall.