I'm a former 5e DM who got into the OSR after becoming disillusioned with it. I've explored OD&D and Basic pretty thoroughly and have run B/X some. I like the simple gameplay and unobtrusive rules of Basic, but, at the same time, I am leery of the "just wing it" philosophy for situations that fall outside of the Basic rules.

I'd prefer to have more consistency and mechanical depth when I need it, and from what I've heard, it sounds like 2e might fit that bill.

Based off what I've said, would you recommend 2e? I've heard the base game is fairly simple and comparable to Basic D&D, though I don't know how true that is. The main thing is I'd like to retain the simple gameplay and straight forward character creation while having more tools to resolve unconventional situations that come up and run a world.

If I were to try 2e, are there any core rules books you'd recommend beyond just the PHB, DMG, and MM?

Thanks.

It seems I have a player character who owes a powerful magic user a monetary debt on which he intends to skip out. I warned him that obviously he's dealing with a powerful magus who would have means of enforcing the debt or punishing those who don’t pay. He replied, "GAME ON."

So, I've basically been challenged to do my worst. What arcane maladies shall I rain down upon him?

Details of the situation:

• The unscrupulous mage offers to teach spells in exchange for 100gp per spell level or that many fingers sacrificed (what he does with the fingers is a mystery). The PC requested a 3rd-level spell, declined to lose 3 of his fingers, and agreed to pay 300gp within 3 weeks, with the further condition that he will not leave town. However, he intends to leave town imminently.
• The mage would obviously have a means to collect from and/or punish defaulters, but would not use a method that would lose money overall. So, for example, he wouldn't hide a sepia snake sigil (100gp ingredients cost) in every spell he taught just to punish the 1 in 100 that defaults on their debt.
• In my game, explosive runes also requires costly ingredients (200gp worth), which I had to institute after it was getting abused by a player in a previous campaign, so that spell would be unprofitable as an enforcement method as well.
• The PC has an amulet of protection against scrying, so anything that relies on scrying or ESP would be blocked.
• The transaction has already taken place, in which the PC and the magus met in person. Touch spells or spells hidden in the PC's spellbook are on the table if they could have been cast covertly at the time. Otherwise, it will likely have to be cast at a distance unless the mage can find the PC and teleport to him or otherwise get near.
• The mage can cast spells of any level.
• We're using AD&D 2e spells, but I would accept any spell from any edition or supplement.

Ideas, fellow GMs? Do your worst!

Hello,

Here is the latest in my AD&D series from my YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/XvvDuELvqLY

Thanks.

The final elemental power is the enigmatic Elder Elemental God. Imprisoned in times long past, it can still manifest to a degree on the Prime, which encourages its followers to try and feed it power and weaken its bonds still further in hopes of releasing it.

The Elder Elemental God, the Lord of All Matter: https://blog.aulddragon.com/2024/12/the-elder-elemental-god-the-lord-of-all-matter/

Full list of entries in the Monster Mythology Update Project: http://blog.aulddragon.com/monster-mythology-update/

If you’ve been enjoying these entries, please consider supporting the project on Patreon or Ko-Fi (links on the blog). Thanks!

Does anybody know of a few decent christmas/holiday AD&D one shots? i am looking for a fun couple hour adventure, and everything i can find seems to be 5e based.

Has anyone seen or devised an "order" that protection spells take effect? Example - Mage casts Prot from Normal Missiles and Stoneskin on himself. Archers lob arrows at him....does the Prot from Normal Missiles take effect first stopping the arrows without using a Stoneskin? Does Stoneskin come first, losing the appropriate number of "charges"? Same with MR, say he also has an Ioun stone giving MR....MR first, then Prot then Stoneskin?

I am parting with the remainder of my collection (some 300 items) due to lack of time and I’m looking for a good new home. This ain’t cheap, but it is a treasure trove of 2nd edition D&D books. I will make you a good price however, especially if you are a collector yourself. Located in The Netherlands.

Please DM me if interested

I'm asking overall but also a bit extra for rules in combat and classes.

Hi all,

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I have a lot of used AD&D 2e products that I’ve picked up over the years. A few box adventures of varying sizes, some booklet modules, a few campaign setting boxes, etc. I recently bought the hardcover PoD for Night Below, and I’m astounded at just how much STUFF is in there! From the looks of it, the original boxed adventure would have contained monster tokens, a pile of fold-out maps, some battle-maps, a stack of player hand-outs, and of course the 3 adventure booklets. None of the boxed adventures I’ve got contain anything near that much stuff (ruins of undermountain and return to the tomb of horrors are the largest in my collection) and so I’m wondering, were there other boxed adventures that contained as much material as what’s in Night Below?

I'm going to start a new campaign and let my players combine any race with any class, pick multi or dual-class path option at character creation, and get rid of racial lvl limits. One question remains: how exactly do I buff humans, so that they too can have some unique racial traits? I thought about doing it "Skills & Powers" style with some "DMG" & "High lvl Campaigns" flair, and give them at least 20CP to get: +5% XP bonus & two free Proficiencies (Weapon or Non-Weapon) at the cost of 5CP per proficiency slot. What do you guys think? Too much / too little? Also I'm sorry if similar subject was discussed here on reddit before, would appreciate a link! :)

I’ve recently just had a bit of nostalgia and was going down memory lane, I owned the 1st volume of Encyclopedia Magica as a teen and sold it as a late teen for weed money. Anyway a little guilt and fondness took me down a rabbit hole and I found a set of all 4 encyclopedia’s on eBay for $350 USD + shipping. Then I started exploring the wizard and priest spell compendium’s as I was so curious but couldn’t afford any of it. Everything is so expensive on eBay, are those prices inflated or is that genuinely what they’re worth, doesn’t matter cause I bought both sets but holy did I splurge

How do you deal with charge and movement in surprise rounds in adnd 2e?
Say a band of orcs come out of the mist and surprise the party but are not surprised themselves.
Can they charge the party? Can they even move? It says you can do all your melee attacks, or two arrows. But doesnt write a line about movement

Is there any good "lore wise" explanation of why would "Protection from Poison" be a Wizard only spell?
RAW Priests get "Hold Poison", "Neutralize Poison" etc., but not "Protection" - why is that exactly?

Had a question come up during our game yesterday - Druid cast Wall of Thorns, trapping a bad guy between us and the wall. The bad guy was a Shaman that had cast Free Action on himself before coming around the corner and engaging us (he new we had priests that had already held one group). Would Free Action (spell, ring, however) allow for passage thru Wall of Thorns similar to how it allows you to move through Webs?

The decision game time was no - no more than Free Action would let you walk through a magically created wall of stone.

Opinions?

I just had this bright idea the other day for how I could finally roll some dice with my kids, in a setting they're interested in. I immediately took to the World Wide Web, and found lots of character builds and ideas of varying quality... for 5e.

Before I set about homebrewing it all myself, has anyone here ever run an AD&D (or B/X, I suppose) game set in the Mario universe? If so, do you have any notes, stat blocks, or other material that I could, ahem, borrow? This also seems like something that Dragon Magazine definitely would have published back in the day.

Failing this, anybody have a good, reliable guide for back-converting stuff from 5e?

Gabrielle from Xena Warrior Princess. I see bard, fighter, monk, Chakra healer. What does everyone else see?

I can see the underlying logic of the other classes’ weapon lists, but the druid one has always left me a little confused. Why scimitars but not other swords, for instance?

Hello!

Hope you all are alright

If this lovely community could help me with the following:

1. Is there any website/document with a quick way to check the AD&D 2e rules from the PHP, DMG and TOM? I like the original book, but for today's standard I find it very wordy and not a good formatting. I'm looking for a reference that gives me in a few words all the main rules of the game like initiative, multiple attack, spell and etc...

2. Is there any good database for 2e with magical items, spells, monster and etc that consolidate multiple sources into one?

Thank you!

Tell us what your favorite level 1 adventure is and why?

In the 2010s Wizards of the Coast published a freely downloadable, high-quality pdf of Tsojcanth illustrations to go with with the original AD&D module The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. It had a whole html page about it. Now in 2024 I can't seem to find it anywhere, online or offline. Did someone save that website link - that we could perhaps re-access via the Archive site?

When someone in the party hits 18 dex or when someone get a cloak of eyes, does this mean that the whole group now is immune to surprise? I know some monsters have bonuses to surprise but what about the robe of eyes? Or is does this character have to be the one in front, searching?
I am curious about the case where players are walking around in a djungle or ruin