Why I chose AD&D 2e

 In running 1e I ran into a consistent set of problems in my games that I just wanted to remove. The Half-Orc race, the Assassin and Monk classes, the wild power level of the Paladin, and Psionics. There was a lot I liked about 1e, too, such as the existence of Paladins, Rangers, Druids, and Bards, the really technical nature of stats, it’s reckoning of time and combat, and the attention given to equipment and weapons. I was considering cutting and splicing it all together into my own shitbrew, but then I found a game that does just all of that already; and that is AD&D 2e.

2e is not perfect - it’s reckoning of the combat round and weapon speed factor is inferior to 1e, it jettisoned the weapon vs AC table in favor of a much simpler damage type chart, replaced the table of repeating 20’s with THAC0, made character creation for Magic-Users, Clerics and Thieves more complicated by essentially adding subclasses, and incorporated the infamous non-weapon proficiencies.

For NWPs, I straight up will not use them, as I hate skill systems in D&D’s rigid class based game. The M-U (now called Wizards) spell school choice and the Cleric sphere choice is not something I personally like but players like having more options and it adds a bit of flavor to the classes. The Thief class benefits greatly from the points system. It’s going to be very hard to let go of 1e’s extremely technical combat, so I probably won’t.  Other than that, everything else from 2e flows seamlessly from 1e, so I don’t anticipate any conversion issues.

I envision my 2e game as playing very differently from my 0e one. My OD&D game is all about free form actions and occasionally instant death, where every action is adjudicated by out-of-game logic, while my AD&D 2e game will be beholden to the dice mechanics and graven rules.

The Monstrous Compendium is actually really neat, too.