Editing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was developed from the Dungeons and Dragons game in the late 1970s. It allowed for more versatility in making characters and more detail and depth than the basic game had.

= From Dungeons and Dragons to ADVANCED Dungeons and Dragons = 
D&D went all over the place. There were tons of books and finding rules for everything was sometimes a chore. Especially the options that separated race and class, alignments, and finding all the monsters stats could send you through 30 books. Gary Gygax saw fit to begin compiling all of the info into easy to search, themed books. 
==Monster Manual==
He started with the Monster Manual (1977), going through all of the books he could find and compiling them into one book that was useable in D&D, alphabetized, with illustrations and in hardback. The book was still useable with D&D so nobody raged at this. 
==Players Handbook==
Next came the Players Handbook ([[PHB]] in 1978, which compiled all the races found in Blackmoor and [[Greyhawk]], and all of the professions. It separated these and expanded the previously human only rules for having a separated class. (Meaning that your Elf was no longer a Fighter/Mage by default) It added more options, detail and equipment, and allowed you to create a character that was technically usable in D&D. It was still compatible and there was no [[rage]].
==Dungeon Master Guide==
The meat and potatoes of the game along with all those nifty new rules in the PHB, came in the DMG. Guidelines for creating dungeons, populating them, filling them with treasure, combat matrices for characters and monsters, and wrapped all the stuff that seemed arbitrary in the MM and DMG up into a solid RPG. 
==Other books, and more==
Soon more books came out for AD&D; Fiend Folio, Deities and Demigods, Manual of the Planes, Unearthed Arcana,Survival Guides etc.

==Gameplay==
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons played much like the original D&D game (not to be confused with Basic, which was not compatible) which consisted of playing the role of your character, and resolving actions with a chance of failure by using dice. 
Players first create a character using the rules found in the PHB. The Dungeon Master then inserts the characters as appropriate in his campaign, whether homemade or manufactured world or a simple module or one shot adventure.

==History and Longevity==
Depending on how you count, AD&D 1E came out in 1976 or 1979. It lasted to 1989, which means it lived to the ripe old age of 10-12, which is actually pretty old for an RPG (albeit, not one that costs so much, to be fair. Other RPGs that offer core in a single volume are usually much cheaper than  AD&D, even then). It saw many issues in that time, from being falsely linked to a boys disappearance in 1979, being linked to a suicide (google Patricia Pulling) and being the centerpiece for the now infamous Chick Tract: [[Dark Dungeons]]. Still through it all, TSR saw money come in. When issues arose in the company between Gygax and two other board members, one of the board members sold his stock to a [[Lorraine Williams|cunt]], and rather than ride a ship he thought would sink, Gygax sold his stock to the rapacious she-bitch as well. In 1989, the decision came to publish a new version of AD&D, to limit Gygax's royalties ostensibly. 

=Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition=
This edition added a whole lot of modular rules and fluff material. The core methodology of 1E was still in place, slightly more basic in scope. It also added a huge amount of optional rules from Unearthed Arcana and the Survival Guide books. For the most part, the core books work as described above, so this is what's different:
==[[THAC0]]==
2E took the combat matrices and made them uniform in function. Every class or kit in the game falls under one of 4 categories, and each category has a different rate of improvement. Fighters, obviously, get the best rate, while non-physical fighters get the worst.
==Complete (insert something here) Handbooks==
There are a lot of people who want to play something unique, detailed and some people who just want the various bits of fluff to help describe their characters. The Complete Series Brown books detailed limited aspects of the 2E game rules, added optional rules, and player kits to play specific versions of a class. Other resource books that used the same format followed, like the Arms and Equipment guide, Of Ships and the Sea, and others. The Historical Reference books (referred to as the green books) allowed players and DMs to approximate historical situations using the AD&D 2E rules.
==Box Sets==
Well, 1E had box sets as well, but they really became prolific in 2E. The box sets offered new worlds, new developments in some worlds, and fluff the likes of which are hard to match even today. Masque of The Red Death, Planescape, and Dark Sun are notable campaign setting box sets.
==Where's the Monster Manual?==
Early in the 2E cycle, TSR decided that instead of releasing book after book of monsters, they would sell a huge binder with the basic monsters in it, and sell packs of sheets to fill it with. Each box set would have sheets with monsters specific to the setting in it, and "galleries" of NPCs and special monsters. They called the binder the Monstrous Compendium, and they eventually released a second binder anyway. It was still much cheaper than publishing books.  Eventually TSR would listen to demand and release a basic Monstrous Manual with the most common critters in it. After the cessation of the binder production, new printings of box sets would have little paperback supplements to the monster manuals instead of the punched sheets.
==Devils and Demons==
After the mess from Patricia Pulling and Jack Chick, Lorraine Williams decided to have Demons and Devils pulled from AD&D 2E. The designers snuck them back in, but changed the names to tanar'ri and baatezu. Most players referred to them as Devils and Demons though, until the new names gained more proliferation in TSR branded novels.
==Whar da half orks?==
Lorraine thought they were ugly. Seriously. Unpleasantness on the part of the player was nixed. It's the same reason the Assassin class went buh-bye.
==Whoa, at least there's fluff.==
If 1E lacked fluff, 2E had too much. From specific campaign setting spell books like Pages from the Mages, to the Book of Artifacts, Encyclopedia Magica and the Priest and Mage Spell Compendium series. You also had Dungeon cards, Racial supplementals, etc.
==OPTION BOOKS==
The Option series brought in several piecemeal procedures for character and scenario creation. Due to a no-playtesting policy at TSR, many builds under the OPTION books can be horribly broken. Allow these at your own risk DMs.
==Longevity and History==
The game had amazing product and lots of fluff. However the business plan was pretty shit. The combination of high quality materials, low relative selling cost, the glut of settings and material for them, the broken gameplay issues later on due to the no-playtesting policy,  and TSR basically wrote it's own ticket to failure. Still, the game plodded on for an amazing 11 years.

[Category:Dungeons and Dragons]