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by Christopher Askwith
The Wheat and the Chaff
This open-ended series of articles looks at games that are related to Magic and its field: RPGs, other CCGs, some computer games (not the M:tG ones, mind you), miniatures games and strategy board games. This month's article focuses on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Second Edition. History: In 1977, E. Gary Gygax, founder and head of TSR, took what existed of the Dungeons and Dragons game system that he and David Arneson had developed, and formed the original version of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This consisted of a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide and a Monster Manual. Roughly no more than forty products, consisting of expansions (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance), sourcebooks (Oriental Adventures, Monster Manual II, etc.) and numerous adventures were published before the AD&D design team decided it was time for a change. The AD&D Second Edition team was headed up by David Cook, and produced an initial core set of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and two Monstrous Compendiums, smaller versions of the original Monster Manual. These all were published, along with accessories to update Greyhawk, the Realms and Dragonlance to the new rules, roughly in 1989. Since then, the Second Edition has ballooned into a gaming phenomenon currently unequalled by any other RPG. Likely as not, such is the way things will stay for a long, long time. Of course, that wasn't all. A string of new campaign settings (Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Spelljammer) set off the first wave of new expansion. Handbooks designed expressly for each class and race (or for two races in the case of Gnomes and Halflings) appeared, as did accessories like the Tome of Magic, Book of Artifacts and Castle Guide. The Monstrous Manual arose as the number of Monstrous Compendiums reached eight. Later, Spelljammer was phased out, replaced by Planescape, and Ravenloft got a facelift. In the meantime, Red Steel (which has more or less disappeared) and Birthright appeared. The core set got a quick facelift in a reprint that, while it didn't change the rules, did present a new face to them. Dark Sun was also given a facelift to conform to changed psionics rules, and the expansion continued. AD&D's existence was threatened as TSR suffered major losses from the rapid rise of (surprise!) Magic: the Gathering, but M:tG's owners, Wizards of the Coast, bought out TSR and brought new life to the flagging franchise. And so the situation remains today.
Pros AD&D is also quite comprehensive. With three products (PH, DMG, MM), it is possible to do just about anything. The accessories and campaign settings add further flavor to the game but are not required to have a wide selection of spells and items. The variety doesn't neccessarily hurt, though.
Cons In conclusion, AD&D is a great game, and I would personally recommend that those interested in simply becoming players get only the Player's Handbook and Complete Class/Race Handbooks. If you want to run a game, well, you'll need a lot more products. As a last note, now that WotC owns TSR, think we'll either see AD&D expansions based in the Dominia settings? Or how about Mt:G expansions (as if we need more of those) based in AD&D settings? I'll leave you with that.
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