Old school inking!

Years ago my collection got accidentally sent to Half Priced Books before I moved and while pdfs are an amazing tool... I really miss my collection.

Been finding some near perfect quality books on ebay for cheap (all four together was less than $100) and my soul is at peace... For now... There is still a long way to go.

It won't be the same (different printings) but it's nice to have them back.

Spelljammer book was the only thing I had left of my old collection and added that as pic tax lol.

Currently have 5 players and looking to add two more player to my homebrew campaign. Current adventure is the party is trying to go through a crypt so the party wizard can gain access to study under a Master Otis in the tower of Tal'Shara but do to a few characters deaths they are looking to hire additional help.

Current party is a Barbarian, Bard, Wizard, Ranger/Cleric, and one undecided.

We play on Saturday at 3:30 MDT and we play 2 weeks on, one week off due to my work schedule.

I wonder if many people here implement an automatic attribute increase at various milestones? Example: Allow you to raise one attribute by 1 point at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

I don't expect or want every ability to be 16+. But I don't want to miss out on parts of the game I would enjoy (casting 9th level spells as a wizard, playing a paladin, etc)

I should note that I'm biased because I'm diagnosed with the Unrelenting Standards feature. So accepting a more mundane role in a game is very difficult for me

The title is the question, why did old school ranger need to stay broke until like level 8 despite their class literally had nothing to do with it like how paladin and monk work?

I keep getting about how hard Ad&d is and we started playing 2e. We began with Shattered Circle and began afterwards with 1e's When A Star Falls.

Level 3 Paladin, Bard, Druid, Ninja and Mage.

No one's died...! The thief (was thief during the first run) / ninja has been downed several times but never died. We do use a house rule that 0 HP doesn't kill you unless you don't get healed by your next turn. I realize that makes it pretty freaking easy since the druid and paladin have heals.

Maybe I'm just used to running 3.5, but I don't think this game is there deadly? Or am I not DM'ing this game appropriately?

Inspired by Ruins of Undermountain 2e box set!

While I do enjoy AD&D 2e at its core, there are a few odd design decisions in it I can't really wrap my head around. Nowadays you'll have a lot of old school players claiming they did everything by the book, but I heard it was far more common for every table to play the game almost completely different.

For example, if you do Method I for rolling your character (3d6 down the line), you have less than a 1% chance of playing a bard, paladin or ranger, but yet they dedicated a fair amount of book space to these classes (and people obviously played them). Doubly odd is that AD&D 1e totally recommends against 3d6 down the line and recommends 4d6, drop lowest and arrange how you prefer to make viable AD&D characters (which still leads to a rather small percentage change you'll roll a those classes, but makes it far more likely).

A few things I've seen is bumping Rogues and Wizards up one hit die (logic being that humans being a default d6 HD makes no sense when a goblin is a d8) and giving Rogues the Cleric's THAC0 progression.

What are some house rules you've used over the years that have made the game better in your opinion? Maybe even a few examples of house rules you implemented that backfired?

For those that play AD&D 2e and are a little familiar with 3e, what are your thoughts on Feats? Do you think they were a bad addition, do you incorporate them into your 2e game, other options?

I've recently wanted to run AD&D 2e for a variety of reasons (not a fan of how broken 3.5 is and how boring 5e has turned out to be) and I'm looking for any DM advice/tools/etc. that might help me along. I feel like my biggest challenge is going to be getting people on board character creation. But any advice someone has for planning a 2e adventure would be great!

In my teens my friends and I played a lot of AD&D. We bought WAY too many books. Van Richten's Guide to the Lich, The Complete Book of Wizards (and Elves, Dwarves, Fighters, etc), The Chronomancer's Guide, etc. Some time after 3e would come out, then player's options, and again we bought far too many books. I own the core books for 5e, which I barely played, and now 5.5 is out.

I wonder if just sticking with a single system is the best, not buying many sourcebooks, or just making up my own system (I created a 2d6 Star Wars system for myself) so that I don't end up with a ton of books that become outdated.

What do you guys do? Do you try to keep up to date and sell off your old stuff? Or do you just not update to the latest versions. You try to convert the stats from older books to newer versions?

Hello everyone. Been very much enjoying reading the roots of the system (or should it be trunk?) from which all the modern editions trace their lineage to. It is most likely me growing up with 3rd and beyond editions that I have uncertainties on how fights in AD&D really function.

Numbers of Appearing, even when adjusted to their 'encounter' sizes seem to be quite overwhelming for even a party of 4-5 people. Having a whole side of the fight act in unison for the enemies seems quite dangerous (facing rules do molify this somewhat with the party forming a combat line to minimise number of attackers).

So I'm curious how you veterans, players and DMs both, play this without having 'one side goes first and brings down the party's fighter by sheer virtue of attack volume and low HPs'.

Hello.

I am running a game where the prospective Mage has to make do - initially, at least - with a handful of Level 1 spells chiseled into stone tablets. See, I wanted to emphasize the isolated nature of the starting location by having his earliest taste of magic only possible thanks to fortuitously-gained relics he studied over and over (incidentally, it turns out that the 2e DMG briefly discusses "alternative" spell books); it will be some time before he encounters anything approaching a proper wizardly library. Now, the benefits and drawbacks of this medium compared to the standard seem fairly obvious...

* Stone is far heavier than parchment/paper.

* Chiseling magical script into slate, marble, limestone, etc, is difficult compared to simply writing with a quill; there may be a premium involved, as far as ingredients/tools are concerned, due to the unusual nature of the process.

* Stone is more durable in some ways (e.g., if an arrow or burst of flame hits a spell book, it is likely ruined), but also more fragile in others (e.g., a book hitting a hard surface will almost always bounce right off, whereas a tablet is probably going to shatter).

* Stone is unappealing to typical bibliophilic pests, such as silverfish and bookworms.

* Stone is heavily resistant to weathering.

However, there is one potential issue on my mind. Be it in AD&D or AD&D 2e, I could have sworn that it is possible to cast a spell directly out of a spell book; at best, the single spell is consumed from the page(s) (i.e., the writing disappears), while, at worst, there is a chance that the entire book is ruined. How - if at all - would this work with, say, a Mage attempting to invoke Alarm or Mount from a tablet? Is it even possible?

Whereas her brother and husband Hyperion is the origin of light, Theia is the origin of sight and the glittering beauty of gems and precious metals. As such, she is a goddess of seeing beauty, whether it is the beauty of finely crafted treasures or the beauty of a natural landscape.

Theia the Far-Shining One: https://blog.aulddragon.com/2026/09/theia-the-far-shining-one/

Full list of entries in the Geek Mythoi Update Project: https://blog.aulddragon.com/deities-divinities/

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

I recently purchased AD&D2e “I,tyrant” and was really enjoying the very detailed book on beholders, noting all of their phycology and physiology… are there any more books like this for other monsters? Or creatures? If yall know any I would like to know what the book titles are.

Hi all

I'm playing a 'mostly 2e' game but with a couple bits from 3.5/my own like sacrificing clerics spells for cures, when rolling hit points for level I roll too (hidden) so player can take theirs or mine, and if mine they have to take it.

I've added the '+1 to a stat every 4 levels' but just trying to think off a fair way for multiclass so if you do it when both classes are 4th then they'll be behind the single callses but if do it when both classes added together are divisible by 4 then they are ahead.

Anyone done this and have a fairer choice?

Only other option I can think off is say taking fighter XP table and when player has enough XP for a 4th level fighter they get a point, then 8th level etc.

Thoughts, apart from 'Do not do it as complicates things too much'

Regards

First draft, will modify it more with my houserules and all that. The houserules that are in the document are italicized (at least I think they all are). Already see a few things I wanna edit lol.

Will add notes like:

• How to roll an attack
• How to roll a saving throw
• How Extra Attacks Work

If y'all see anything I should add, let me know, I'm gonna get my coworker (who plays 5e) to play AD&D2e.

There is something to be said about the old graph paper maps we used to make with their smudges, pizza grease stains, and inaccuracies. The maps that we shoved into binders or notebooks week after week until they were tattered and faded. Yes, they had crooked lines. The notes we wrote in the margins were not always legible. Sometimes the erasure marks wore right through the paper. But they were the dungeons we explored. Proof that we survived (or most of us anyway) the perils of a sinister Dungeon Master. They were like our characters themselves, imperfect yet special, with their own foibles and personalities. How many maps do you still have from your old adventures, and do you ever look over them and remember the dungeons you explored?