By: Anthony Robinson

Anthony Robinson — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:54:46 +0000

Thanks for the THAC0 reminder. I'd take issue with your claim that 2E was a massive redesign–it really wasn't. The more massive redesign was from ODD / LBB to AD&D, aka 1E. The changes from 1E to 2E were mostly cosmetic. They got rid of a lot of the cool stuff (lots of demons, half-orcs, assassins, other opportunities to be evil), and added a skill system that didn't really do much–it was more decorative than anything else. While I owned the 2E books, I always continued to play 1E (i.e. I kept half-orcs!) BUT I happily adopted THAC0. THAC0 was not an entirely new mechanic, as I remember it. Rather, it was a way to take all the charts of earlier editions and compress them into a neat mechanic which was mostly already there–i.e. underlying the unwieldy charts. If I recall correctly, we were using THAC0 before the official release of 2E because it had been introduced in various guises in certain mid-80s modules as an "optional" rule, and I'm sure it showed up in the pages of Dragon magazine before its official reveal.

In any case, the key "feature" of 2E was an emphasis on "world making" and narrative story-telling in the support products produced by TSR during the late 80s, early-mid 90s. There were suddenly numerous boxed campaign worlds to choose from, and the "authorized" style of play had shifted abruptly from the free-form "sandbox" style of earlier editions to a more story-oriented campaign model. Neither model is better than the other, I might add–just different.

Comments on: What’s Your THAC0?

By: Anthony Robinson