Yes, it's time again to dig into the problems that 2nd edition created. So far we've seen how the rules discourage proper timekeeping, thus destroying game balance and making independent player actions impossible and how the rules disallow things that go against "the plot" the DM wants, thus making the game about the DM and not the players. In this part I'd like to go into what I call the "ruins" of 2nd edition. By this I mean rules that only exist due to being in 1st edition, but which have been removed of all support in 2nd edition. They are a bit like a mall with only a couple of open stores; technically they serve a purpose but they are a shadow of their former self and are on the way out.
One clear example of this sort of thing is the idea of followers. Followers certainly satisfy the "must be in OD&D, 1st Edition and BECMI" test. The original rules are a bit vague, as they are about many things, though we do explictly have clerics attracting armies of "faithful" men at patriarch level. In 1st edition we get more explicit rules for when and how Fighters, Clerics, Rangers and even Thieves and Assassins can create dominions to attract followers. BECMI makes this a choice for every class; when reaching name level you can make a stronghold to get followers (among other things) or you can be a "traveling" hero to gain other benefits (which is necessary for those wanting to be a sub-class of Druid or Paladin (though the rules are vague about what type of followers each class will get.)
Now unlike many of the things that we've seen before, 2nd edition includes follower rules and does not advise you to not use them. It is not like timekeeping where it says you could keep accurate records, but then gives several examples of just "skipping" time without any effect. It's definitely not like the assassination rules, where only the bare minimum rules are included and all the advice says that players should be punished for even attempting to use them. The 2nd edition table for followers are actually more detailed than what you see in OD&D or BECMI. We get exact class levels, equipment, etc. Fighters even get troop composition, so there can be a difference between gaining a group of knights, savage berserkers, or even mystic fighter/mage elves. This happens in 1st edition too, but 2nd edition has different (and more exotic) follower options. For example, having a group of elven fighter/mages is not possible in 1st edition.
There's just a couple of small problems. The books never explain how you get these followers, and what you do with them. For example, with a fighter we are told that he may attract men at arms and other followers only if he has a "castle or stronghold and sizeable manor lands around it." But unlike OD&D, 1st Edition and BECMI, there are no rules provided for building castles or comments on how PCs might earn titles of nobility, claim abandoned castles, etc. I've been told that these rules appear in DMGR2: The Castle Guide. However, I do not think that most people were aware of the existence of that book. I played 2nd edition when it was still in stores (after having been introduced to the hobby through the Basic Black Box and the Rules Cyclopedia, i.e. revised BECMI.) Anecdotally, I never saw any of the "black book" Dungeon Master Resource series in stores, including The Castle Guide. This is in contrast to things like the "brown book" class and race books, which were very common to see. I even saw some of the "green book" historical reference series. The Core Rules program that I discuss here contains all the "brown books" but none of the DM Reference books, including the Castle Guide. I've never seen an advertisement for this book in any of my 2nd edition books, even though there are plenty of advertisements for things like the Player's Option books or campaign supplements. So if someone wants to claim that 2nd edition isn't deficiernt in stronghold rules because they are contained in the Castle Guide, I can only say that for all effective purposes that book was not used. It certainly wasn't treated as a "core" book. So we can't judge the rules based on it.
As I mentioned earlier, I came into the game through the Basic Black Box, and then the Rules Cyclopedia, then 2nd edition afterwards. Because of this my group was at least aware of mechanics for creating and maintaing strongholds (it's Chapter 12 in the rules cyclopedia.) When we played 2nd edition we based our expectations on how followers should be used on the BECMI rules, but we quickly gave up on this. In some ways it feels wrong to use BECMI rules in 2nd edition, even if they are functional, and the modules we used from Dungeon and from stores never referred to these rules, so eventually we just ignored them. If we hadn't have come from BECMI we would have given up even earlier. To continue the anecdotes, in Player's Option (which was treated as "core" after it was released) the game added a point buy system for classes which effectively let you delete existing features for new features. After we started using these rules everyone always ditched the ability to attract followers, and I would be shocked if this was not a common thing that most people did in 2nd edition.
Before I did a deep dive of the books (for historical purposes) I would have said that the follower rules only existed because the designers felt obligated to keep them from 1st edition. You might compare with the saving roll tables; even in 2nd edition there is a tendency to treat them as much more general than they were in Chainmail, so that for example a saving throw versus breath weapons could be used to dodge a boulder or a saving throw versus paralyzation, poison or death magic might also be used to resist being crushed by a falling wall. That is, in theory they were becoming very close to the generalized "will," "fortitude," and "reflex" saves of 3rd edition, but they keep the old names (I suspect out of tradition.) In the same way I thought followers were there simply because they had been before, but in reality the designers wanted to ditch them. But after my deep dive, I think the situation is more complicated.
The issue is that the follower rules are more detailed in terms of which followers you get, whereas if they were simply there out of obligation they would have been copied wholesale from 1st edition. But they can't be an honest attempt to develop the rules, becuase 2nd edition is lacking the actual mechanics to make them work. So what's going on here? I can think of two explanations, which are not mutually exculsive. The first is the cash grab explanation. Certainly TSR moved more towards a "consume product" model in 2nd edition, which is obvious simply by looking at the large number of supplements available for 2nd edition when compared to 1st edition. We have tons of campaigns (nine "main" campaigns by my count, and then there are "subcampaigns" like Maztica and Kara-Tur for Forgotten Realms, and the Historical Reference series on top of that.) This isn't even getting into the variety of classbooks, magic supplements, etc. As I mentioned in the previous part, some of these supplements cover what were previously core rules. For example, the mass combat rules are almost completely missing from the core books, but there is the "Battlesystem" rules which are sold separately. Sometimes rules also show up in campaigns. For example, Birthright contains rules for ruling Domains and leading troops in Mass Combat, though these rules are wrapped up in the specifics of the campaign setting (where having certain royal bloodlines gives actual magical powers to aid in ruling.) This all could have been a sales strategy. That is, if someone complains that the follower rules are weak, the owner of his hobby shop could say "oh, then you have to buy these books too..."
This sort of strategy is certainly something that the TSR of that era might have done, and is consistent with how they marketed their books. 2nd edition was definitely the edition where you never had a complete collection. That is, while you might have the complete experience of BECMI by buying the five leterred books (and a lot of people would question if "Immortal" is necessary), in 2nd edition even if you bought the PHB, DMG and MM you would always wonder if that was truly enough. However, I do not believe that this explanation suffices to explain what happened with follower rules. For one thing, you would expect to see a statement along the lines of "if you want to have a more robust follower experience, buy..." but this never happens, not even in things like the Player's Option books late in the line. For another, there are more "ruins" of follower and domain rules throughout the core books. For example, when discussing hirelings, the DMG comments that a paladin might want to recruit 300 peasants to work the fields for his castle. The fact that this is a paladin is notable, since paladins do not get followers. So this asisde only makes sense if players are expected to build/obtain castles for reasons other than activating their followers ability. It's also notable that this example does not occur in 1st edition, meaning that it was specifically selected by the designers.
We see something very similar for mass combat. There are no attempts whatsoever at providing rules for mass combat; the closest we get are siege damage roles. Even here we are told:
"In these situations [i.e. sieges], the overall employment of siege tactics should be secondary to the thrill and glory of the players going "mano-a-mano" with their foes. In other words, the battle should be the background against which the players act."
This is getting us pretty close to the advice often given for mass combat in modern RPG gaming, where the PC party will fight a few "boss" soldiers as a battle rages around them, with this small scale combat determining the large scale. That is, mass combat should be handled more like Dynasty Warriors than Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Indeed in 3rd ediiton the very idea that mass combat is possible is basically dropped, without even a Battlesystem or Birthright for "optional" rules. However, there are still "ruins" of mass combat ideas. In particular, the DMG lists 19 classes of soldier hireling, such as archer, light infantry, heavy cavalry, etc. These are further broken down by historical examples. Thus an "irregular infantry" could be a Scottish Highlander, Viking Berserker or the more obscure Zaporozian cossack or Hussite cepnici. Each type is broken down like this, with weapon and armor information for each. This is very different from 3rd edition, where the best you'll get for hireling troops is something like a brigand captain.
On a superficial level the 2nd edition troop descriptions actually read similarly to the troops in the non-fantasy portion of the Chainmail rules. There's just one key difference: the Chainmail rules provide explicit mechanics for using these troops in an army versus army situation, whereas the 2nd edition rules do not. I suppose you could equip each member of the troop like a monster, then run combat with the normal rules using hundreds of combatants, but it should be obvious why that is not feasible. So why then does 2nd edition go into such detail about troop composition?
I believe that the answer can be summed up as "world building." A recurring theme of 2nd edition is to take actual mechanics that have real impact for the players, and change them into set dressing to "make the world come alive." For example, in the first part we saw how one of the reasons that 2nd edition advises you to have an accurate calendar is so that you can have in-universe festivals at the correct times, and so that you can use a non-standard calendar to stress the foreign nature of the world. It does not spend much time at all on using calendars to manage multiple parties. (For example, if one party is in the wilderness for two months, and the other party gets into some political shenanigans at home right as that party leaves, then the first party cannot come back to intervene until two months have passed for the second party.) After all, to even have the possibility of such things, there must be multiple "plots", and since it is unreasonable for a DM to write more than one "plot" this means that at least one of the parties is doing the wrong thing, which shouldn't be allowed. You could just throw out time keeping beyond the round to round or turn to turn level, which is essentially what 3rd edition did. But 2nd edition prefers to reinterpet the rules in such a way where they become a device for the DM to show how clever his worldbuilding is.
You can see the focus on "worldbuilding" over "game mechanics" clearly in the "Money and Equipment" section of the 2nd edition DMG. There is a long discussion about the different types of money and monetary systems which occurred throughout history, as well as the troubles that a mercenary group might have in fairly dividing treasure if they get a spoil of coins from many different empires. This includes a long list of real world currencies, like the Byzantine besant, Italian florin, and Roman denarius. It is suggested that the DM create his own fantasy empires with their own unique currencies to spice things up for the player. But when it comes to actual game mechanics these are likely going to be converted to some common GP system, since otherwise the game will turn into a trading simulator. Sure you could have the players try to figure out if they can find an optimum exchange rate for your fantasy empire's coins, or maybe even concoct an arbitrage scheme, but this takes out far away from where D&D had been previously. In any case, 2nd edition doesn't actually provided any mechanics for currency exchange rates, finding money changers, etc. leaving it up to the DM to create a system of trading and financial mechanics out of whole cloth. It's not going to happen. What's left over is some world building flavor. For example, "you find a cache of three hundred coins, but as these are from the trusted Merchant Kingdom of Valassia, they are worth 1.5 GP each instead of the normal 1 GP!" It's effectively the same as saying that the players find 450 GP, but with some information about the world.
Now you could object that there is a difference in the weight of the coins. This is true, but encumbrance in 2nd edition is an optional rule. Even if you do use encumberance, it is calcualted as follows:
"To calculate encumbrance, simply total the pounds of gear carried by the creature or character. Add five pounds for clothing, if any is worn."
It's unclear if currency is counted as "gear" and none of the examples show a calcualtion of the weight of the PC's currency. Furthermore, I can't find a listing for the weight of coins in the PHB or DMG. It's possible that I missed it in some obscure section of the rules, but they don't appear in the weight lists for equipment, nor is anything said about it in the encumbrance rules. In contrast 1st edition is clear that 10 coins weigh one pound, and BECMI even lists weights in terms of coins. (I.e. 1 encumbrance unit = 1 coin, or one tenth of a pound.) 1st edition considers the effects of treasure weight. For example, in the "Placement of Monetary Treasure" rules there is a discussion about how PCs will often be unable to transport a complete hoard in one haul, which is especially troublesome since other monsters or competing adventurers might take what remains between trips! Note how this is player focused: the players now have a problem and must come up with a solution. (Possibilities include being satisfied with the little they can drag off, focusing on the most valauble and portable items, hiding what they cannot carry with them, leaving a guard, etc.) In contrast having different types of currency is DM focused, in that it simply is there to inform the players about a world that a DM has created. There is little that the players can do in response to finding multiple types of currency other than say "oh neat, there are multiple nations that make coins." (Again, you can't really have them have an adventure where they need to exchange the coins, since there is no mechanical support for that.)
EDIT-8/3/28: It turns out that in the "treasure table" section of the DMG that 2nd edition does list a weight of fifty coins to the pound. Interestingly gems, which are discussed immediately afterwards, do not have weights listed. Since this information is tucked in such an out of the way place, I'm not sure if it was included to be used with the encumbrance rules or if it is simply there for world building purposes.
Now we can get back to the topic of troops. The probable reason for having so many troops types in the 2nd edition DMG is so that the Dungeon Master can flaunt all the different types of nations that he has created in his fantasy universe. They are not given usable stats since the purpose of something like an irregular infantry unit is not for the PCs to lead it into battle against another army. Rather it is for the DM to say something like "you see before you a troop of gibbering savages donning the skins of wolves and with blue tattoos visible on their otherwise uncovered skin. You recognize these as the fierce Dauklothi Deathwatch warriors from the frozen isles far to the north." It is just set dressing. The PCs will only be allowed to purchase such troops if the story demands it. And if the story does demand that they lead a successful siege to confront the villain in his dark castle, then the siege portion will be assured of success, since the plot only cares about the final showdown. There used to be legitimate opportunities for mass combat. Even BECMI's lame War Machine Rules still ended up with a series of battles that the players could win or lose, and which were affected by tactical considerations. In 2nd edition those concerns are gone, and armies only exist for storytelling purposes. The players are now less like Aragorn helping to plan the defense of Helm's Deep, and now like audience members watching the Two Towers. Or perhaps like gamers watching a cutscene in a Two Towers videogame adaptation, before they are allowed to interact again in a pre-determined "boss battle."
This gets to the heart of what went wrong in 2nd edition: 1st edition is more about having a game where the players struggle to succeed (by obtaining treasure and glory) against a hostile environment. 2nd edition is about being shown a world by the DM, and being able to interact with premade plotlines. Now you don't have to run a 2nd edition game like that, but the way that the rules are set up and the advice that you are given heavily pushes you towards that style of play. And by the time we get to 3rd edition, it's practically the standard.
That covers most of the major issuse with 2nd edition. I might come back to this in the future to discuss what 2nd edition did right or specific problems with the end of the line (such as Player's Option) but I think this specific series of articles will end with this third part.
July 28, 2023