2nd Edition's 2nd edition

My booty

Today I found these in a local second-hand book shop.

I did buy the PHB and DMG for AD&D 2nd Edition when they came out in 1989, but I really can't say I was particularly impressed. The binding and paper quality wasn't nearly as good as my old 1st Edition books, and I didn't really think much of the layout aesthetic. I did import one or two 2nd Ed. things into my AD&D campaign, but we pretty much just carried on playing AD&D as we always had.

By the time this edition was published in 1995, I'd dropped AD&D entirely and was using the Hero System exclusively for all my campaigns. I didn't even really know this edition existed until just a few years ago.

Anyway, I bought these out of a sort of archaeological curiosity, just to see what TSR thought might revive their sadly sagging fortunes in the mid-'90s. As with the first version of AD&D2e I bought, they don't really excite me much. They're not terrible, but the paper feels even flimsier than the earlier version, and though there's a lot more colour scattered through the pages, the illustration seems, for the most part, a bit lacklustre. The organisation and layout is OK, I suppose. There are some semi-useful bits and pieces of reference info in there, but nothing makes me sit up and say "What a fool I've been! 2nd Edition is clearly the One True Way!"

I'm glad to have them in my collection though.