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Just starting to get into Deadlands, glad to find an expert online!

I'm dead serious never played nor even think i'd like any tabletop games but this sounds just way to cool to ignore it i hope i can find anyone who likes this in my city

Grace is gorgeous

I HATED THACO! Even though I had a -2 when I was playing a level 7 fighter, still hated THACO. I always just assumed that I only ever hit when I rolled a 16 or higher on the d20. My DM never explained it to me in any way.

Been playing since 1979. Honestly i like all editions for different reasons.

As a Redwall mega fan. This setting is everything!!!!

I literally just bought this from a thrift store, unopened. It’s my first campaign. I am so lost.

Why are we comparing 2E and 5E when Moldvay Basic/Expert is the best edition.

The risk of dying and having to start a new character made 2nd edition fun and challenging, 5th edition is definitely playing on easy mode. Having played and GM'ed both, 2nd edition is for more serious players that like strategy to overcome obstacles and developing their characters based on the risks they've taken and the challenges they've overcome. 5th edition is more for players that want a low key narrative experience that everyone can play.

I liked Advanced D&D E1. I played when advanced just came out and we had players/DMs who knew basic. So it was always a hybrid. Which soon became Advanced rules with some of the basic stuff. More character building if I remember correctly. That was a long time ago. We didn't have sex restrictions or some other limits. Combat I think is over explained and made a little confusing at first. I can't remember how it read before. But, everyone grasped it by the first game day. READ 5E if never played and it's a lot more confusing. Being honest. Action, reactions, bonus action. And still have initiative and AC. To me not as different on concept depending how looking at it and trying to explain it. I think combat when a lot smoother. We still had to wait our turn but it was more like. Roll and do this and done. Not the let's make characters super heroes compared to the original game. I think spells were even smoother to use or something back then. Some just seems to much more workable quickly. I honestly can't remember the limits on spells and how it worked back then. we played a LOT. almost every weekend and we would do the module that day. Or 2 at the most. we had lots of 6 to 8 hour sessions. So it seemed strange that I hear how it took years to build up to level 20. We had 4 DMs who played and 2 or 3 others off and on. I loved writing modules back then. I quit for a long time. I was doing a story that was a parody to the Alice in Wonderland. After I finished that my goal was to do a story that orcus and asmodeas were actually working together to stay in power. I was also starting to think about connection modules/game together. I loved Strahd back then. So in early games they can find a letter from there. Or A map that mentions there. Even a book on a shelf. Lot's of little things that later if they hear the name or place it is connected. Which eventually was going to lead to the demon/devil alliance. Was going to do the 9 hells as a story. and the Abyss as another. Then something together. Which I thought of using Tiamat and Biomet in. Which could of been used to tie whole thing together. Dragons trying to put an end to the whole thing. Already was going to have a town that was dragons in human form. Where half the town was dragons who cared about the humans they knew. Never did get them all finished and sold all my books and stories. The person's wife left and he killed himself. I think she destroyed everything. I still regret not keeping it all. Wanted to see about eventually publishing some. Or run parts of it thru Dragon Magazines we had back then.

Yeah, noooo. If your dice are so fragile you can't roll them on a normal table or dice tower, they are no good.

As someone who came in with 3.5e, I had heard all kinds of horror stories of how overly complex and byzantine THAC0 was from my fellow 3.5e players. Then I went back and actually read it, and it was basically the same system. In 3.5e, you roll 1d20, apply your BAB as a modifier to your roll, add your Strength/Dexterity modifier (and attack bonuses from a magic weapon) if you have one, and compare against the enemy's AC, and if it meets or beats that number then you hit. In 2e, you roll 1d20, apply the enemy's AC as a modifier to your roll, add your Strength/Dexterity modifier (and attack bonuses from a magic weapon) if you have one, and compare against your THAC0, and if it meets or beats that number then you hit. It's exactly the same level of complexity.

Have you done one of these on 2e yet?

THAC0 fixed some of the issues with AD&D 1e. 5e, and I think D&D2024 (or whatever they wish to call it) is a layer cake with complexity. I would say THAC0 is easier to deal with compared to number of rules that can not combat down from what I seen. Which is probably why the looking edition is going vtt, and Hasbro are attempting to lock ppl into subscriptions.

Without original "White Box" pamphlet version, we don't get AD&D, which is just the original with expansions. Without AD&D, we don't get 2nd Edition. Without 2nd Edition, we don't get 3rd Edition or 3.5. Without 3.5 we don't get 4E. Without the rebellion against 4E, we don't get 5E. So, without AD&D, the real basis of the modern game, we don't have D&D. Having started back in the days of THE WHITE BOX (and I still have some of the dice from 3 White Box sets) I know that this is all fact.

Individual initiative and speed factor are optional rules in 2E

5e is superhero where 2e is a Hero

Never used weapon/spell speed

I’d argue that 3d & later editions cater more to the, “I do want to earn anything g, I just want the rewards for the work I’m not doing” mentality. With all wounds healed after a long rest and the ever higher hit points of characters the mortality has dropped to ridiculously low levels so as not to offend those who get triggered whenever actually presented with consequences for decisions made and actions taken. This is why I don’t play 3d or later editions and am perfectly happy when the snowflakes don’t come back; either you understand that this is a game or you don’t.

A good 2e DM will also reward players for good role-playing, clever ideas, thinking outside the box, etc. except this was entirely at the DM's discretion and there was no fixed system for doing so.

Trying to understand why people hate THAC0 is harder than actually understanding THAC0.

1st edition Ad&D is where I started at the age of 5. I made a human cleric because half-elves could only take 5 levels in cleric, and half-orcs were terrible unless you were a fighter/assassin. No other races could be clerics, so human it was. I loved mapping dungeons by description on graph paper and healing my party while swinging a mace, but 2nd edition came out right around that time (1989) and felt better to us. Also, 2nd edition relaxed racial class restrictions and removed gender-based ability score caps. I fell in love with playing my 2nd edition gnome illusionist/thief and have tried every edition since. I would never choose to go back to 1st edition, but I would gladly play some 2nd edition if my group ever wants to play a retro game.

I hated it as an old player. Always tried to get people to play RuneQuest or later GURPs, champions or any other game. Average people do not go adventuring. If they do they die. People also develop skills unlike what happened pre 3 ed.

01:15 Skills, in the guise of non-weapon proficiencies, were introduced to AD&D 1e in the Oriental Adventures (1985) rules (primarily to cover social interactions), and various other supplements (e.g. Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide) included suggested non-weapon proficiences suitable for those particular environments. OA also had weapon proficiencies and specialization.

I was hoping you'd go more into the pummelling, grappling, and overbearing rules as part of the explanation of combat procedures. 🤣

it will never cease to be funny how people react to the prototype of TTRPGs not making the fantasy concession of female humans having the same strength as males like it's the biggest sin commited by that mess of a game.

01:35 Only fighters were eligible to have 18/XX exceptional strength, keeping a differentiation of the classes.

Best explanation of THAC0 ever. Not even Gary used the weapon speed factors. I asked Luke Gygax about it. He said they were a concession to the wargamer crowd. Great stuff! --Professor DM, Dungeoncraft.

Very thorough. I designed for 2nd edition and you know it better than I do. Bravo. --Professor DM, Dungeoncraft

I'm at least 15 years older than the guy making this video, so definitely not a "young'un". My first game was in 1978. Replacing THAC0 was the single greatest advancement in the game. Yes, it was easier than everyone makes it out to be, but it was not intuitive at all, it was a major hurdle in onboarding new players, and perhaps most importantly, having AC improve as numbers reduced ran counter to every other mechanic in the game, where "higher is better". THAC0 was stupid. Good riddance to a sh*t mechanic.

I started with 2nd Edition. What I liked was the skill exclusivity. Wanna track in the forest better have a ranger. Need to sneak in a city better have a Rogue . I liked as a melee character the chance to disrupt a spell if my initiative was within their casting time. Plus I liked the Lore more back then. 5e is great in that I can make the chuck norris of rogues. Both are good and it’s hard to find a 2nd edition game anymore.

Advantages of 2nd ed DnD. Less marvel comics like powers fluff. But seeing all of this THAC0 defense reminds me of battered wives trying to justify their abusers behavior. Can it be worked sure. Should it be worked when it is inferior to the current system? No.

I liked the class kits.

Nah. THAC0 definitely had to be fixed. If you're expected to do algebra to play a game, it's no longer a game.

I think you could roll your ability’s with 4 D6s ,then taking out the lowest number

I had to go to Freeleague Publishing games, to get my HardCore games Back.

I played under 2E a lot when i was younger changed systems as time went on. still don't like thaco. not because i don't understand it just don't like it. ps no groop i have played in used race limits on Leveling. no group i was in required 3d6 in order. even in 2 editions the gm's i played under wanted you to have a chance to play the charicter you wanted to play. pallys were still rare as frick.

rolling down is antiheroic

I am not a new player and I don't like any of the versions of D&D. 5e is probably the best version but it's still not that great. THACO was fine but it's complicated for no real reason. Personally, I hate Hit Points, that is what kills D&D for me.

I started on Rolemaster. 2e was the super easy kids version of a RPG that didn’t have enough tables 😂 I guess everything is relative. DM/Play 5e now because it’s impossible for players to die and there’s a 7 year old at the table. (that and “dad I want to play a bunny person” “no sorry babe, you have to pick from this official list of …wtf!!? Okay you’re a bunny person?”)

bit of a weird edit/cut where you repeat at 6:08 and 6:15

nice overview.

I'm admittedly in the THAC0 camp myself. Not because 5e (technically what started in 3e) is bad, but that there's an inherent bounded accuracy that doesn't break as much later on. It also simply relied on a DM just telling you the armor class of the thing you are fighting, instead of (weirdly) keeping it secret now. Also: Getting an 18 in your Str also didn't mean that you instantly had +4 to hit, but had a sliding scale.. I can see why some would actually find that oddly complicated, but I grew up on it so I'm used to it. I'm also a huge fan of the roll under method. Having the DC based on the ability took a lot of work out of my hands. Scaling a ladder in the rain? Roll under your dex. Scaling a ladder in the rain during a hurricane? Roll under your dex but add four to your roll. I think you got it right, too. 2e was based more on survival. Every level was deadly in its own way. You started as someone who knew how to swing a sword, or cast a singular spell each day, which has a feeling of rising from mere beginnings, and you just as often found ways to avoid fighting if you could. It also allowed for dungeon-crawls in their primordial form. Having to actually plan out moving around dungeons and how supplied you were was a real thing back then. 5e is much more in the line of starting as a super hero. I don't mean this as a bad way, games where you start off far more able to fight, survive, and front-loaded with cool abilities are fun in their own right, but they are vastly different than the grittier survival of 2e. It allows for more high fantasy tales and solidifies a lot of the skills and abilities under a d20 instead of varied tables and dice arrays. And it allows the characters to stand out from the common folk a lot more. Dungeon crawls don't feel anywhere near as meaningful, but the ability to have amazing set-pieces and shorter 'burstier' dungeons with short-rests and recoveries means that the story itself can be moved along quicker. Both systems have their merits. For my group and I, we... play Pathfinder 2e, but when the itch hits us, we go back to 2e D&D for that 'survival' feel :)

Hindsight is always 20/20. Back when wargaming was the ONLY kind of gaming, 2e was a blast. My Math score in school went up a full letter grade after I started playing D&D because the game made me think quickly. However, think about many of the old gaming tropes. The dungeon was almost always near a town because after a room or two, the party had to leave and rest. You really wanted a Thief and a Cleric because the former was the only one who could find and disarm traps and the latter was the only one with healing spells. Some unlucky player always had to make maps as you went along (I could have retired if I'd invested in graph paper stocks!). Now, there are online resources for everything from making maps to writing block text. Kids these days don't understand the struggle lol!

As someone who hates playing 5e and has played all editions from 2-5, among other rpgs, I can say that Thaco is in fact, "needlessly complicated." The mechanic has been streamlined as mentioned and that's all there is to it. It's been tweeked to be better, so why fight it? Here are some comparisons between the two. Thaco: 1) you must roll a d20 2) add or subtract modifiers. 3) you must subtract this result from your thaco value. 4) this is your final result, does it hit? Accending ac 1) roll a d20 2) add or subtract modifiers 3) this is the final result, does it hit? Yes it's only one less step, but it's just that, one less step. All that having been said, I prefer 2e over 5e any day, but that doesn't make thaco better than accending. Just because it's old and "old editors loved using charts," it's no excuse. It is objectively worse. There is not a single thing that it does better mechanically than accending ac.

I actually prefer 3rd edition, not 3.5, but 3rd over both the older ADnD and 5th. I've played 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. 4th was too simple for me, 2nd was good but I didn't enjoy aspects that severely limited equipment different classes could use. However, once Paladins could be races other than human.....it started to lose a bit of its truthfulness to fantasy genres.

You're making Thaco too complicated. The only thing, you as a player, needs to do is tell your DM what AC you hit. No adding, no subtracting. If you have a Thaco of 18 and you roll a 16 you hit AC 2, etc. The DM knows what the AC is and will tell you whether or not you hit. Any temp modifiers can also be done on the DM's end by adjusting the monster's AC. The player should never have to adjust their Thaco unless it's a permanent bonus like level advancement or a magic weapon bonus. This is why Thaco is easier than ascending AC, the work is done for you, and if taught correctly, is barely math.

The stats rolled method was one of the options presented, and it was the most hardcore of the options. Typical result was similar to how 5E does it if you roll and don't take an array: Roll 4d6, and drop the lowest. Also, the stats in 1st and 2nd Edition were GOOFY. Let's say you rolled straight 14s in all of your stats. "Mr. Above Average Guy or Ms. Above Average Gal". In 5th Edition, this would actually be viable. In 2nd Edition, you might as well have rolled straight 10s if you were certain classes, because there was no difference. Dexterity and Constitution didn't start giving a bonus to AC/HP until 15, and Strength didn't get even get a bonus to damage until it was 16, or a bonus to hit until it was 17. And then you had "Extraordinary Strength", by rolling a d100 percentile to your Strength, but only when you had rolled an 18 for it, AND you were a fighter-type class. Also, the Non-Weapon Proficiencies were extraordinarily determined by your starting stat. Let's say that you're a Wizened old Blacksmith with an 11 Strength who put 6 extra ranks of training into Blacksmithing (basically his entire career). You're still not as good a blacksmith as the novice who just started but has an 18 Strength.

Still play 2nd Ed AD&D and still think it is better than any editions after it(it is better!). I’ve played 5th with some friends and while I’m having some fun, it’s too easy. I think it’s just to simple and almost impossible to die, which means there is no sense of peril or risk involved. Experience and leveling up is also too easy in 5th. I’ve played 7 games and I’m already a 5th level Ranger! I do have some house rules(doesn’t everyone?) for my 2nd Ed games: I don’t use weapon speed for initiative unless the PC or NPC are not proficient with it. Magic Users and Clerics don’t have to memorize spells. If they know them, then they can cast them. They are still limited by their level per the number they can cast. Spell slots at a higher level can be used for lower level spells and are doubled. For example, if a Wizard can cast 4-first level spells and 2-second levels spells, and his second level spells aren’t very useful, then he can decide to cast 1-second level spell then borrow that magical energy and cast 2 extra first level spells.

I almost subscribed, until I heard you say, "Species." Sorry, no sale.