out of curiosity how many people still play 2nd edition. im hoping to start a new group after a couple of years of not playing and im going to use the 2nd ed as i prefer them. i know everyone want to get with the times but i can seem to find any support for 2nd ed is there any on here?
My group still plays a campaign that started 3 years ago (actually, my character is older than that, from another BR campaign). 2nd edition rules are used in general, but with some of the skill and party combat system from the 3rd. Just some minor tweaks that fit in nicely.
Some of the published game material (plots, not rules) is successfully ignored by our DM and we sometimes use Planescape to jump into other settings for a brief adventure. I’m thoroughly enjoying this campaign; our DM has always been an outstanding DM compared to his PC career. 
Most of the material has seen a conversion to a 3rd ed here, but there is always the old published material. The contributions on the wiki may need some conversion to the 2nd edition if you plan to use them. I think the majority, if not all the new stuff is written for the 3rd.
I play in a AD&D 2nd ed BR campaign. We started circa 2000 and are getting very close to the end. Teodor Prokiev has issued a challenge to the Gorgon. We have just found Teodor to tell him that the Gorgon accepts it. Meanwhile the Gorgon “swept” his armies down into Anuire, decimating all before him.
Oh, and Cerilia is being converted into the dark side.
Oh, and Manslayer, the Spider and who knows who else have been killed by an “unknown assailant”.
Stuff happens… cause our great DM says it does.
But we have pretty much stuck with AD&D rules, with a few character specific tweaks. Personally I think the AD&D rules for Shadow Magic/Seeming are lacking because it is hard to work out formally how to add them to a character and how to develop skills and spells to counter Seeming without embracing it. And I am not talking about “seeing through” the Seeming. I am talking about protections and dispelling, i.e. preventing it from working.
Sorontar
2nd edition all the way here
Tried 3rd edition and didn’t really think it added anything to the game except more paper work…(something that Birthright already has an abundance of)
Also only been playing AD&D again for the last 4 years after a break of about 15 years so my group and I have stuck with what we know.
2nd here to. But with ALOT of houserules.
ad&d 2nd bring more fun for my group.
I USED to play 2E before 3E came out, but it was already HEAVILY modified…and I adopted 3E as soon as it came out.
I see absolutely no reason ever to play 2E again…3E works better in all possible ways…especially when there is little magic used and players tend to be of low level.
We use a weird combination of B/X/Rules Cyclopedia that has had the skills chapter of Paizo’s Pathfinder plugged into it. We also use 2E spell lists if any extras are needed beyond the ones given in Classic (B/X/RC).
Not sure if that counts.
I usually run a heavily mod’d 2e with 3.0/3.5e game.
pure 2nd ed right here, dont like 3rd or 4th, especially for BR
So I admit I haven’t done much since last year, so I guess I still qualify as 2ed. My “usual guys” went to 4th edition, but they’ve played with another DM… I haven’t kept up, mostly because of my attachment to BR (and lack of time to switch over to a whole new system)
I played 2nd till 3e came out, and then switched since I liked the simplifcation of the mechanics (no more THAC0 tables, X+ savings throw tables, etc). But when 4e came out, I was so disgusted I reverted all the way back to 2nd edition and dug up all my old resources from the 90s. I was reminded about how many outstanding accessories and resources they had. For the video-conference game I run now, I use modified 3e rules, but drawing on converted 2nd edition material.
2nd ed with some house rules
I’m intrigued. Disgusted by what? If you play low combat, as I do, sure 4e isn’t the way to go, but neither is 2e, with no skills at all. If on the other hand, you play combat intensive, 4e is certainly more robust (unlikely to produce wildly different results if you re-play a combat, or to achieve accidental TPK because you made the encounter slightly too hard) than either 3e (which has to be the most brittle combat system invented) or 2e.
So I must presume there is something else that disgusts you. I can imagine some places one might recoil at change (magic?), but I am curious, disgusted by what?
I’m currently in a 2e Ravenloft game because the DM isn’t familiar enough with the 3e rules to run it and he doesn’t want to touch 4e with a 10 foot pole.
I for one felt 4ed wasn’t for me (I won’t say “disgusted”, but I can relate… rather “un-impressed”) ; My main frustration is rule complexity – and I wish someone at wizard would find that fine line between realism and simplicity of game rules; I don’t think we need all those new classes… I had my pet peeves about 2ed too mind you (like why bows take 2 extra slots for specialization instead of 1 like all other weapons), why racial ability modifiers, why Prime requisites… I guess I was more in favor of dummied-down rules, and same went for combat… but then what I liked were spell components (bat guano for fireball spells), and just about anything that gave the rules “flavor”: It just felt like a DM should be a pro on spell components, monster’s tactics, and storytelling rather than having to be a bureaucrat.
… yeah, but oddly I’m still a fan of Thac0.. though I remember screaming for TSR/Wizards to get rid of it!
… Ok, I’ll shut up now.
Unfortunately that fine line is not so fine, in fact it appears to be wider than it is long. Some people want a very simple resolution system, other people want to model combat styles, different weapons, kinds of hits, and so on. Then there are people like me who complain about the probability distribution.
2nd edition is what we use here, namely because we have most of the 2nd edition books.
Personally, I find that 4e has its merits, especially when compared to 2nd edition. The problem is that some of it is so radically different from the previous edition(s) that it no longer exactly feels like D&D but just something vaguely similar. Namely the race changes and the mechanics lending itself mostly to high fantasy play only which is fine if it’s FR (although don’t get me started on how they ruined much of the setting), Eberron, and even Dragonlance and Greyhawk. It really doesn’t lend well to the low magic settings like Birthright or the other genres like Ravenloft or “Planescape” (or whatever can be salvaged of it in 4e).
I use the 2ed rules when I play birthright. I got out of playing AD&D when I was in college did model war gaming instead during that time. I didn’t play D&D again until I went to a convention with a friend to help setup stuff and played the 3.5ed rules. Which I thought had some cool things for combat but just slowed down the character creation process and added extra detail that could over whelm someone who was not familiar with the D&D stuff.
Since than I have started playing birthright again and use the 2ed rules for playing. And I have all the 2ed stuff already instead of buying books from a store or digging around on Google for house rules on 3.5ed. I am glad that birthright.net has started to make changes for the new version, and I have incorporated some stuff into my 2ed games from it.
Thanks