Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition
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Tabletop Roleplaying Games · Dungeons & Dragons
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition (AD&D 2E) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of heroic adventure, published by TSR in 1989 and designed mainly by David "Zeb" Cook. Work began in 1987 with a small TSR team led by Cook, and Steve Winter and Cook redeveloped the edition after Gary Gygax, who wrote the first edition, left TSR in 1985. The Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide sold over 400,000 copies in their first year, though lifetime sales fell short of the first edition, and the Dungeon Master's Guide won Origins and Gamer's Choice awards. TSR re-released the core books in 1995 with new covers, art and layouts, and the line was succeeded by Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition in 2000, which was revised into Dungeons & Dragons 3.5.
The system directly evolved from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition (1977). It was designed to work with first edition rules, but its information was streamlined and clarified.
Description
Players take on adventurers drawn from a set of races and classes, and the Dungeon Master (DM) runs dungeons, wilderness and, in later years, whole settings. The edition shifted the game's feel from 1960s and 1970s sword and sorcery to medieval history and mythology, and it stressed heroic roleplaying and teamwork. Demons and devils were removed by name and renamed tanar'ri and baatezu.
The second edition grew far beyond a single fantasy world. TSR added settings such as Ravenloft (horror), Spelljammer (science fiction) and Dark Sun (apocalyptic), each with its own rules supplements. The game asks a table to keep a few tables and a fair amount of arithmetic, and the many optional rules mean the DM should decide what is in play at the start of a campaign.