Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Back in Print!

A couple weeks ago it started with the Monstrous Manual (the Premium cover edition), and today it is followed by the Dungeon Master's Guide and Player's Handbook. This is pretty much the edition of D&D that was my sweet spot from 1989-2000, the version of D&D that defined more closely than anything what I think of the game, and what I expect of it. While people feel nostalgic for D&D in the 70's and 80's, I tend to feel that nostalgia for this edition more than any other. As a teenager my time with AD&D 1st edition abd B/X D&D was formative, but I was never quite on board with the specific assumptions of the earlier edition....I wasn't a fan of much of the hard-coded limits and default expectations of  1E, with weird class/race restrictions that were justified due more to implied expectations of the genre that wouldn't necessarily fit all instances of the fantasy genre regardless; barely a nod to skills until well after I had stopped playing AD&D 1E, and lots of grizzly little mechanical systems that were tiresome.

AD&D 2E didn't shed all the grizzly little mechanical systems but it made effort to shore up some of them (THAC0 becoming default, for example), and it tonally shifted to a heavy emphasis on narrative adventuring and heroic exploits over merely being a tool for exploring dungeons*. The game's 2nd edition actively encouraged people to think outside the notion of the murderhobo*, and it was exactly what I needed at the time it came out, when I was in my first year of college. Sure, I was deeply immersed in Runequest and Dragonquest....but everyone I gamed with desperately wanted the AD&D experience, and it turned out so did I.

Anyway, these reprints are soft cover editions of the premium releases a few years ago. The soft cover element is no doubt there to help collectors distinguish these copies from the actual high-quality premium hard covers, which is fine....it also lets you keep the price down on the POD version and have some easy copies for the game table. The other downside is these are the "2nd print" versions, which contained the later format and art of subsquent book releases from the mid-nineties, and therefore your appreciation for the look may vary. Although I never had an issue with the look and style of the reprint editions, I admit my personal nostalgia firmly lies with the 1989 originals. Except the Monstrous Manual! That was a major improvement in terms of art, and the mere fact that it was an actual book instead of a ridiculous three ring binder. I understand the idea of the three ring binder....but in actual use it took too much abuse too quickly, and frankly was never as useful as it seemed like it should be.

As usual, I am left wondering if I could talk my fellow gamers into diving back in to the glory days of AD&D 2E for a while....I feel like a campaign or two down nostalgia lane would be kind of fun, maybe...





*AD&D 1E was never exclusively about either, of course, but it's focus and underlying implied universe defaulted heavily to a playstyle that I equated with how I experienced the game as a kid and teen. As such, by the time I was in college I wanted campaigns that were more interesting than that, and 2E provided lots of tonal support to that effect. It was this tonal change that for many 1E fans made 2E a hard game to shift to, of course, but it was also what led to many others like myself returning to the fold.

The Optics of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia Reprint Are...Weird...

I got my copy of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia in this week, along with the Creature Catalog, and while it's exciting to have them, the sad truth is that the scan used to make the print copy of the Rules Cyclopedia just wasn't ideal. It's readable....I guess....but the scan quality is just a bit fuzzy, almost like you're trying to read something with heavy bleed-through or shadowing effects. On the PDF (which has the same effect) I didn't really mind it because I could expand the PDF to make it easier to read, but the print edition (being "locked in" to a certain size and all) sort of hammers home that this is an issue.

Not for everyone though! Some people on the rpgnow.com listing for the Rules Cyclopedia are saying they see no issues. I'd love to find out if this is an eyesight thing or if it's an actual print issue (I have heard Lighting Source, which does the POD for OneBookShelf, has more than one printer and results can vary).

But for now, the problem is: I'm finding the book hard to read, and when I compare it to the Creature Catalog, which is also a scanned image print, the Creature Catalog is easy to read, clean, and causes no headaches at all.

On the plus side, I suspect this means original copies on Ebay will stay a strong commodity! But for me, I think I'll be dumping my copy of the Rules Cyclopedia on Ebay ASAP.

EDIT: someone suggested I contact OneBookShelf about the issue, which I did, and their continuously amazing customer service was great. OBS remains top dog on my "best customer service online" list, forever.

D&D Reprint On Demand Report: Spelljammer and Ravenloft

Three more books from the POD option at dmsguild.com came in today: Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill, Spelljammer: Goblin's Return and the first-time-in-print Scourge of the Sword Coast. I won't focus on the content, but instead on the quality of these print editions:

Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill

I couldn't resist this primarily because I never owned the original, and I always wanted to investigate the first module to outline Mordent, one of my top five domains in Ravenloft. The cover and binding of this module is great, and it's a bit thicker than the old 1E modules were, mainly due to being perfect-bound on heavier quality paper. The cover and back look great.

However, the interior looks a bit faded to the naked eye, although I noticed it less once I put the reading glasses on. The net effect is that some pages....many....just look a bit "off" in that way a print from a scanned copy tends to be. This is unfortunate. It's not bad enough to make me regret the purchase, however....or the advantage of an inexpensive new copy over hunting for one on ebay. The back contains reprints in color of the handouts and maps for the module, and they actually fare much better, being legible and useful.

Spelljammer: Goblin's Return

I owned this one long ago and ran it once. Like Ravenloft II, the module's color cover looks great, and it's thicker paper and perfect bound spine mean it looks just a tad thicker than the original (which was itself a big book at 68 pages including fold out ship cards. The cards are in the back, and remain in full color, albeit standard, slightly washed-out colors instead of the glossy cardstock of the original.

The print in this module suffers from the same problem as Ravenloft II: a bit light, and feels like a bit washed out in a "print of a scan" kind of way, but the problem once again more or less disappears for me with my reading glasses on so I'm not 100% sure it's me or the book itself. I'm leaning to "book" though because of the next module, which serves as a great control....

Scourge of the Sword Coast

This was the third module to be released in the 2013-2014 D&D Next playtest phase, which means its at once compatible with D&D 5E and also contains some interesting artifacts in its design from that formative phase of 5E, including some interesting monsters stats. The book's never been offered in print before, but it was clearly laid out and designed for print; the POD version looks awesome, and the version I got (the deluxe premium color paper) is crisp and sharp....and the fact that it looks so good and is also so readable is a good test to confirm that the lighter print of the other two books is a real problem, and not just an issue with my eyes.

As a side note this module is a direct sequel to the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle module, which was a Gencon special with playtest rules and a level 1-10 quartet of scenarios. This is another great candidate for a future POD edition. I actually ran the entire Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle as a level 1-10 campaign in the first half of 2015, albeit ported from the Sword Coast to the Silver Coast of Pergerron. Good module! But not sure how viable Scourge of the Sword Coast is as a direct sequel, since it's aimed at level 2-4, and takes place after the last scenario in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, where the PCs would be pushing level 10-11.

Overall

I think for the price all three POD books above were worth it, but if you're a collector I'd keep hunting the originals, especially Ravenloft II and its large map of Mordenshire. For Goblin's Return, this module would be perfect if you want to run it....and more than sufficient if you're collecting Spelljammer for fun, but maybe not ideal if you want a "first printing" level of quality. As for Scourge of the Sword Coast....if you had the two prior print release modules from that era (Murder in Baldur's Gate and that other one with the drow elf and the crystal shards) then this is a must-have, and contains plenty of useful stuff to crib for 5E games.

Reviewing the Print Edition of Hollow World (Updated with Pics)

Hollow World is one of the first reprint-on-demand books available at Wizards of the Coast's dmsguild.com site, and also the first one I ordered to check out the quality of the print. The book arrived today, and here's the lowdown:

What is it?

If you're wondering what Hollow World even is, it's a sourcebook for a literal hollow planet in a D&D setting called Mystara, although the book provides guidance on placing it at the heart of any fantasy realm if you so desire. The setting is one of D&D's more unique visions: a domain of lost kingdoms and fallen empires, a population of each sequestered away inside the hollow planet, with a strange day/night process, in which ancient Immortals have decided they will keep a record of these fallen empires. The many empires of the Hollow World are based on analogs of ancient civilizations of Earth, and in their default setting represent a who's who of the ancient history of the B/X universe of Mystara.

My suggestion is to grab the Duchy of Karameikos from the Gazetteer series to establish a "locale" for PCs to be familiar with on the surface world, then let them stumble upon a means of reaching the Hollow World from there (the core book includes scenarios for just that purpose).

Hollw World contains a lot of useful information for a B/X or BECMI era D&D game, but you could easily convert this to D&D 5E with minimal fuss, mostly through substitution (i.e. use the appropriate D&D 5E monster stat in place of the one in the book). It would also run just fine with current OSR systems like Labyrinth Lord, White Box or Swords & Wizardry Complete with almost zero fuss.

Print/Paper

In the original release it was a boxed set with three books and a fold-out map set. The new print on demand edition is a single soft-cover volume with a full color interior on nice quality paper...the description on the product page says its standard heavyweight, but not premium...but it looks pretty damned good.

Resolution

The resolution/quality is pretty much perfect. This does not look like a print from a scanned copy....it looks as good as any current release. It's got a tiny bit of that POD-level graininess (mainly to color illustrations) you might be familiar with, but I had to really stare at it a while to notice. The readability of this is A+ though. Only exceptions I can note are a couple regional maps in the Player's Section are too dark for my tastes.

Functionality

The core three books of the original boxed set are bound in one volume. In the back are eight full color pages of the Hollow World maps. It's a very usable format. You will want to either grab the old BECMI rulebooks to run this baby, Labyrinth Lord (or similar) or pull out D&D 5E and start converting (my plan).

(UPDATE!) Some Pics:

I have many more of these new reprint-on-demand editions on the way. Hollow World has bolstered my confidence in the anticipated quality!

Wizards of the Coast offers up print on demand at the dmsguild.com

Exactly what the title says: head on over to dmsguild.com here and take a look, Over a dozen books are now available in print format options, including the Hollow World, Secret of Bone Hill, Dragonlance Adventures, Uncaged: The Faces of Sigil and more! The options appear to be based more on what they could produce print-ready scans for, rather than any particular structure to the releases......but damn, this is more than enough to be excited about, already.

I'm going to order something....probably Hollow World....and see how it looks on arrival. Trying hard to remind myself that I can be patient, POD doesn't go out of print.....

Hey look! White Star's in print (also: Class Compendium and Tranzar's Redoubt)

If you're like me, you've been waiting for White Star to get a POD version on rpgnow. Well, it's up so excuses are gone for why I don't have it. I went ahead and ordered copies of Tranzar's Redoubt and Class Compendium in print while I was at it.

I really need to get my B/X S&WC hybrid game going soon. Maybe Sunday afternoons so my wife can play (she loves S&WC).

Also, really interested now to finally see what sort of lighting in a bottle White Star managed to capture. I've seen a ton of praise, a load of PDFs, the thing has hovered in rpgnow's top 10 slot for what feels like a lifetime, and literally only one negative review from someone who I know tends to prefer a more "D&D 3.5/4E" approach to his games. So...I'll write more maybe next week after I get a proper read-through this weekend.

Class Compendium, also by Barrel Rider games, is a Labyrinth Lord and OSR-compatible class book that looks damn meaty, been waiting for it's print option for a while.

Tranzar's Redoubt...I don't know what it's about yet, just that it has some cool art:

Player's Companion is now available in a POD format - Stars must be right

This is how the Old Ones build their evil cults. They do things like actually get an official D&D book into print on demand format for the starved masses who would really like to not have to make bootleg versions through Lulu (or just deal with PDFs). Pretty soon they'll be offering us PDF versions of the core rules in some easy to use format, and then they'll start hitting us up for minor sacrifices....nothing big at first, but gradually it'll work its way up to full-on humans.

Bad news, I'm telling you!

Anyway get it here now before the human sacrifices start! We must tell our Dark Masters to do more of this in the best way we can: by showering them in blood and money.