        ==================================================
        Results for Rating Form #2: Core 2nd Edition Books
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          Compiled by: brooks@odie.ee.wits.ac.za (Goth)

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                          Points Ratings
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In order for a product to appear on the points rating table, it must
have at least five votes. Products are listed in points order, from
highest to lowest.

     /-------------------------------------------------------\
     |                        - Key -                        |
     |                                                       |
     |  Score = the product's average rating                 |
     |  Low = the lowest rating anyone gave this product     |
     |  High = the highest rating anyone gave this product   |
     |  Voters = the number of people who rated the product  |
     \-------------------------------------------------------/

Product                                     Score  Low  High  Voters
-------                                     -----  ---  ----  ------
Player's Handbook (2nd Ed)                   7.9    3    10     90
Monstrous Manual                             7.4    0    10     73
Dungeon Master's Guide (2nd Ed)              6.7    2    10     89
Tome of Magic                                6.4    0    10     80
Legends & Lore (2nd Ed)                      5.2    0     9     46
Book of Artifacts                            5.0    0     8     42

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                             Comments
                             ========

This next bit is a selection of comments people have sent in. I've
removed some remarks which were very similar, especially for products
which provoked large quantities of comment and I've done some minor
editing for grammar and spelling. Other than that, this is how they
were sent in.

General Comment on 2nd Edition Material
---------------------------------------
I'm happy with the products in general. I use them all from time to
time, with varying degress of success depending on what I'm looking
for, but if I can't find it... I make it up. After all, that's what
the game is all about, right?

The PH and DMG are over wordy, long winded, and obviously written by
a committee. The Handbooks are the same, only moreso, and obviously
intended merely as a ploy to relieve the consumer of their $$.

Both the PH and the DMG were pretty damn good, if not absolutely 
spectacular. TSR's quality slide came later. The MM is quality stuff,
but it's the same old quality stuff all over again, in hardcover.
They seem to have tried to get some of everybody's favourite monsters
in it, but I preferred the old MC Appendix format. If you couldn't
care less about a given world, you didn't buy the Appendix for it.
Now, when TSR puts out new campaign settings, expect to see a whole
SERIES of hard-cover MMs to deal with the best critters from these
worlds MM2, MM3, MM4, MM5, ad infinitum.

Generally, I think the 2nd Edition campaign settings are of much
better quality than the 1st edition. The designers have learned to
put relevant material into the boxes, rather than what they think is
interesting. 

I'm not really into 2nd edition. I do think that there are some
improvements in the rules, but that overall, it costs far too much to
justify buying all the stuff. Our group is still using 1st edition
with some "home rule" changes mixed with a few 2nd edition things we
liked.  

A good revision of AD&D, but some oversights and unnecessary
material.

The basic rules got the points they got just because of nostalgia,
truthfully I think they should never have been published.

The core rules are, well, the core rules are quite essential. They
definitely are not spectacular or anything. There are many
improvements over the original rules, and some annoying things.

My only comment is that there is no need for seperate players' and
DM's books. Other RPGs don't need them. Champions is a good example
of a "one book system".

Perhaps TSR should spend more time facilitating storytelling instead
of burdening the system down with more rules. We're bright enough to
add our own bells and whistles; we just don't have time to create our
own gaming systems from the ground up. 

I'm not much of a second edition fan, but I use what parts I like...
few though they are...

The group that I play in still uses mostly the 1st edition. We use
the 2nd edition mostly just for non-weapon proficiencies.

If the typos were removed they would be excellent purchases.

Generally, the consolidation of all the information is quite good.
Explanations are clear and concise.

You need to have the Player's Handbook (2nd Ed) and Dungeon Master
Guide to play the game in the beginning but once you have learned the
system you can always improvise. I almost never use the L&L,ToM or
BoA.

Player's Handbook
-----------------
By far the best book TSR have published, but certain ambiguities like
thieves being able to backstab with ANY weapon they can wield
(missile attacks) tend to mess things up.

The PHB is very well organized and very complete, and is worth the
money to buy it. The only problem is that some of the rules are
unclear, and it is aimed at a much younger audience.

The 2nd Edition PHB is much better than first edition.

The second edition PHB is a vast, VAST improvement over the original.
Clear concise rules, intelligent reworking of Gygax's infinite
tables. My personal favourite is the THAC0 system. Much better than
the attack matrices. Two minor beefs: the rules for illusion magic
are scattered in two or three places in the book, and the system is
silly; four die rolls or so just to determine whether the orcs
believe in that giant boulder rolling towards
them? Please.

Well written and coherent. A huge improvement over the first edition.

The PHB contained some good stuff, like the revised proficiency list.
And some bad stuff... the cheesy secondary skill list (I absolutely
hated it!)

More complete and friendlier than 1st Edition, though I had a first
run copy and the errors through it didn't help, plus the binding
isn't as good as on the 1st Edition books - but this criticm can be
levelled at all the 2nd Edition books in general.

You need somewhere to start. This was a good one. I had a later
version that missed some of the problems in the earlier printings so
some folks rating on these mistakes might differ from mine.

Very useful, although directed at a younger audience than the 1st
edition. There are a few annoying errors and ambiguities.

The Player's Handbook was okay, but some of the rules blew chunks.
They stripped out a lot of what should have been in it so they could
make more money on supplements.

I think the Player's Handbook is too messy - info should be more
organized and all tables in one place. For example if I want to know
a daily movement rate I must scan a lot of text in order to find the
fact. Too few prices.

This one's more organized than the 1ed, and vital combat rules are
present here, as they should be. The Ranger is a bit too weak when
compared to the Paladin, especially for the same XP. The Illusionist
has been castrated in 2ed after losing his special prerogative to
powerful illusions, and he, like some of the other specialists (e.g.
Diviner) is too weak in an adventuring situation, or has limited
specialist spells (e.g. Necromancer). The new bard is good, but I
question why a bard would more likely have climb walls than, say,
move silently. A good job of unmunchkinning the Unearthed Arcana
rules.

The worst problem with the Players Handbook is that it gives too much

information to players - informations they shouldn't have. Why should
a simple starting player know that much about spells and undead
creatures?

The PHB clears up a lot of the ambiguities that there were in the 1st
edition, but to be honest, with the exception of the thief, I just do
not like the way that they have revised the classes.

The PHB is an essential. If you are never going to DM, this is really
the only book you NEED. It got only a 9 because there are always ways
to improve on things.

The PHB is of course absolutely essential to playing the game.

The Player's Handbook is the essential first book; even after all the
supplements, it still contains the essential information and leaves
out the less important stuff. (The only exception to that being
non-weapon proficiencies, which have become more significant in the
game than when the 2nd ed was first published.)

After having played a lot of different role playing systems I'd say
the the Players Handbook is the easiest book to use ONCE you've been
playing for a year or two :) Its orginization is lacking to say the
least.

This book heralded a whole new look and style and a complete
revamping of the rules of AD&D. It showed gloss and sharp layout and
set the standard for the RPGs of the 90s. It was FAR easier read and
comprehend, contained everything a player needed to begin play at a
basic level, and featured all new art. The reason I haven't given
this a 10 is because of the quality of materials and editing
problems. This book has been reprinted several times, each time with
minor corrections. Also, the first few printings were done with cheap
covers and binding that fell apart too quickly. The most recent
printings have been with more durable stock, and they've taken to
printing all their hardbounds this way.

Well, it's certainly better written than almost every other book,
though the beginning is kind of stupid. I also wish the later
chapters on time, movement, vision, and light were clearer, and that
there weren't so many "See the DMG" bits in there. Surely, TSR can
correct most of this with their flashy new release.

Dungeon Master's Guide
----------------------
I think actually that the 1st Edition DM's Guide was just as good, or
perhaps better. Of course the 2nd Edition Guide was much more smooth,
and efficent but, there were some major mistakes. The 2nd Edition
version didn't have the lists of all the monsters, and their hps like
the original -- that was a mistake... Although the charts and tables
were pretty good. Although in both editions, the DM's Guide dosn't
tell a newbie DM how to DM well.

The DMG contains useful information but it just waffles on about many
things and doesn't clarify a lot. I personally run my games without
one.

The 2nd Edition DMG can't even compare to first edition. It went from
a wealth of information to a dearth of the same.

The DMG is fairly good, but severely lacking in information compared
to the first edition (but its organization almost makes up for that
loss).

I find the DMG slightly less necessary than the PHB, and find myself
referencing it far less often.

Nowhere near as complete as the 1st Edition DMG, and missing those
nifty little cartoons. Might be more user friendly, but somehow I
feel I'm getting ripped off when the DMG shrinks so much.

Many of Gygax's sillier ideas are better forgotten. Random creation
of dungeons?

*ick* It was just a reprint of the Players Handbook plus a few other
things that you needed, so were forced to buy the damn thing.

Although the DM's Guide is improved over 1st Edition, a few of the
miscellaneous tables could have been left in.

What happened to all the information?

There was nothing in here worth having, since they moved all the
charts and tables for combat to the PHB (well most). This book is
pretty pointless, there was nothing new from the original DMG in it,
but a lot was lost.

The DMG is a bit general; I need more exact info. It also lacks
complex tables as in PH.

Too thin. That's the biggest problem. It lacks advice on campaigning,
and on adjucating high-level situations. Needs more rules on
developing spells and magical items. Also, it seems ridiculous that
this book didn't include at least 1 or 2 first-level adventures.

Half of the DMG is PH. It doesn't even give advices to new DMs!!! I
use the DMG only for the magical items.

The DMG contains little information of value, period.

I am an experienced DM, so I thought I didn't need the DMG much. I
was right.

The DM Guide is also still appropriately titled, considering its
content:  necessary for a DM, not a necessary consult for players.

Giving the DM his own book is a good idea but not with the kinds of
stuff they put in there. Why not have all that stuff in the Player's
Handbook?

Whereas the DMG of first edition provided just about everything a
dungeonmaster needed to run a game, the second edition seemed to
strip a lot of the meat out of the DMG. It became basically a
handbook with rules for experience, magic item creation, treasure and
magic item description, with a few odds and ends about spellcasting
and combat and movement thrown in as filler. Instead of producing a
definitive dungeonmaster's guide, TSR threw this thing out and then
subsequently published the CASTLE Guide, the Sourcebook of Catacombs,
and the other Dungeonmaster Handbooks. I would have gladly paid 30
bucks for a more comprehensive DMG about 3x as thick as the wimpy
thing that came out.

The Dungeon Master Guide has lost a lot since 1st Ed. When I recently
bought the 1st Ed DMG I was pretty shocked to see how *big* it was
compared to my 2nd Ed one. When I say big, I mean big in ideas! It is
great. I now regard my 2nd Ed one as fairly skimpy, hence the low
score...

Great for $18; I've always wondered how it's just as cheap to make
this as it is to make one of the CHBs... why not hardbind about 3 of
the CHB's together, take out all the crappy parts, and sell it for
$20?

Monstrous Manual
----------------
The Monstrous Manual is good, but for more common animals, the
lack of an illustration or text details is annoying (meaning it is
still necessary to own the Compendiums). Also, quite a few of
illustrations are recycled black and white artwork (and it shows).

Great art work, but I liked the binder better... I could pick out the
monsters I wanted and save time fumbling through books looking for
info when I needed it.

It is just another ploy to make us spend money on stuff that we
already have (why couldn't TSR just put a book out in the first place
- AARGH!)

When will TSR make up their minds? The MC was an okay concept (though
lacking an overall index (or section ones for that matter)). Back to
the ol' MM. Wait for FF and MMII to reappear.

Monsters specifically from Ravenloft or another world in one common
book? NEVER.

I much prefer the Hardbound version to the loose-leaf.

In short, I bought the Monstrous Compendiums. A great many of them.
I believed in that product, and now TSR has ditched me.

The Monstrous Manual is the most useful book for a DM to have... it
has all the monsters you normally use (I've never really needed the
compendiums)...

The Monstrous Manual gets it's high points because of Toni
Di'Terlizzi's fabulous art and for being one of the most thorough and
still compact monster guides to any game.

The Monstrous Manual is a a beautiful product, the best of the lot,
as it's a complete summary and has some fabulous art. 
 
Until the Monstrous Manual came out, I still stuck by my good ol' 1st
Edition MM and MM2, except for a few products.

Far better than the original MC's, but still lacking the character
and inspirational qualities of the original Monster Manual.

With this, TSR hit new lows. To put out all the Monstrous Compendium
crap, then to switch back to the hard covers just to rehash the same
stuff, but to make it look like something new is LOW. The only
redeeming value is that it is useful to have if you didn't blow the
cash on the MCs.

The MM lacks a rolling chart for random encounters and therefore gets
a very low score.

A must to have. Good descriptions on ecology and habits.

I don't have this one, but the colour art seems nice.

A fine book in fine price. The essential AD&D supplement.

The Monstrous Manual (hardcover, 2nd Edition) is excellent,
especially with the new color art.

The Monstrous Manual I own and use (for travel), but I preferred the
looseleaf format for monsters over the perfect binding. Now, we have
a bunch of the same monsters described yet again.

What the hell is this?  You go out and buy all the Monstrous
Compendiums and then they completly change the format on you!!!  This
is complete garbage.  If it weren't for the fact that they have the
same style and ease of use as the originals I would have scored it
much lower.

I liked the whole Monstrous Compendium thing. I resent the fact that
they've abandoned it without even an acknowledgement. However, the
Monstrous Manual (basically a revamping of the original Monster
manuals) is an excellent resource for game play. I have all the
monsters I would normally need within one hardbound, and all the
illustrations are in color.

I only use the basic monsters in normal play, with none of the
specialities.... Most of my baddies are NPCs as they are so much more
versatile and unpredictable. If you see an orc you generally know
what you are getting yourself into. But when you encounter another
nondescript man, dwarf, elf, halfling etc, they could be death
incarnate or just some drunken bum, peasant of no interest or threat
to the players. The players do not know this until they have made
some attempt with communication.

The colour of Monstrous Manual, is a great addition. It helps for
more accurate descriptions, as well as helping miniature painting.
Not bad, not bad. Still not perfect, and I don't really think it
should have to be this long... it IS "Monstrous."

The Monstrous Manual is very good, with color pictures for almost all
the monsters, although the best is the Invisible Stalker. However,
too much information is shortened to fit it all on one page.

Legends & Lore
--------------
It's missing non-human deities, and xps for defeating avatars. Use
the 1st Edition version instead.

Legends and Lore is very useful, I use it for all the gods in my
campaign, with different areas (northern etc) having the different
myths.

Good, but does not correspond at all to the Complete Priest's HB with
regards to spheres, granted powers, etc. Works good as a base for
making your own priest-classes.

Thank God! They took away the stats for the gods. Always bothered me
that the 1st edition Deities & Demigods book gave stats to the gods
so the players could go out and kill them. Now they are once more
gods. No stats. You can't kill 'em damn it! Let the players have a
crack at an avatar if they want to do some deicide. =) I was annoyed
to see the Babylonian and Finnish mythos' excluded from the 2nd
edition book though.

Again, I dislike the whole idea of giving divine beings stats for
munchkins to beat.

Legends and Lore is not all that essential, especially if you have
the Complete Priest's Handbook.

Legends and Lore is an interesting book to read but I've found that
some of the powers given to specialty clerics are too unbalancing in
game situations.

The 2nd Edition Legends and Lore definetely improves the gods over
those of 1st Edition and a neccessity for playing.

Sad... just plain sad. What they did to mythology in this is an
abomination.

The LL book took out a lot of what was good from 1st, such as the
"How to become a god" parts.

The priesthoods are good, especially if you use the TOM sphere
allowances published in Dragon Magazine. However, probably only about
10% of this book would be useful to any one DM, except as inspiration
for granted powers.

Full of great ideas. Very inspiring but some priests are
"unbalancing".

The revised yet again Legends and Lore is not necessary.

L&L is OK. If you wanted to run a FR campaign this makes a good
referance 
tool.

This was a better priests' handbook than the priests' handbook.
Unfortunately, it didn't introduce any new pantheons, just revamped
the ones we had in first edition.

Legends & Lore was not very good. It only had details for Earth
mythology.  I wished it included the other worlds such as Maztica,
Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Greyhawk, etc...

Tome of Magic
-------------
Wild Magic is a cool idea, but just how many new spells do we need,
anyway?

The Tome of Magic IMO was totally useless. They didn't need more
spells.

It gives me the definite feeling of being an outside job. It doesn't
have the AD&D look and feel, quite. It does an okay job of
filling in some nooks and crannies, but the new spells for wizards
are too few and seem to focus on the off-beat more than the useful.

It adds immensely to mages and clerics, and fills in some very
glaring gaps in the priest spells, such as faith magic, co-operative
magic, and the quest spells.

I love wild mages and the new priest spells. I find myself using the
mage spells slightly less often, and the magic items rarely.

Good points -- wild magic, bad points -- gives clerics too much power
unless you have a strict DM. Sorta like the 1st Edition UA but minus
the munchkin classes. I woulda liked more on the research side of
magic.

I love the addition of Wild mages from the Tome, the elementalists
wizards are also pretty good. The only problems with the book is the
magic items are either way to lame or powerful (mostly) and quest
spells are pretty useless, they give what DMs have been giving for
ages but usually in the form of an object that can perform such
spells at certain times.

A lot better if they didn't try to introduce so many useless spheres.
Thanks to Dragon Magazine for realigning some of these spheres to
specific gods.

The Tome of Magic is excellent, if only TSR bothered using the new
spheres introduced there in later products.

The Tome of Magic is a great magic supplement

The Tome of Magic had some new spells, otherwise I didn't care for
it.

Adds Wild magic to my campaign and also elementalists. Good extension
spells for mages.

Quite impressive. The new spheres allow specialist Priests to finally
have some powers denied to Clerics without carbon-copying the Druid.
Some of the new spells are interesting, but the magic item section is
rather weak.

No one would buy this if the world designers didn't put those new
schools/spheres in their worlds. It's just a - low quality -
commercial trick.

Each of the books that I have read are really useful, except for Tome
of Magic. The ToM, in my opinion, could have been better filled with
spells and items, as to me it seemed that the extra spells were put
in to fill up space. I do like the Wild Mage and Elementalist Mage
classes, however. 

The Tome of Magic not only added considerably to my friends and my
campaigns but had some _excellent_ artwork.

Tome of Magic is way off cool, with many useless or next to useless
spells (*I* think they are cool, but people who want new killer
spells think it is boring).

The Tome of Magic has interesting and useful ideas, spells and toys.

Here's a GOOD idea! I think they should come out with a Tome of Magic
2!!!

This was an excellent and long-needed expansion on the AD&D magic
rules. Priests have long been neglected (as shown by the poor
Priest's Handbook) by TSR, and this book increased the spell lists
for clerics by 50%. It's still far outweighed by the numerous spells
published for mages, but it was a nice chunk all the same. The added
speres also enabled further customizing of original pantheons, and
thereby the powers of individual pc priests. The new spells for
mages, along with the rules for wild magic and elementalist magic
(brought in from other sources -- nothing new) were also helpful and
expanded on the existing class.

The TOM is just a waste of shelf space.

I don't really see the use of buying this book. Most of what's in
here seems like it's designed to fill up space. There are a few good
spells, but most of it is just making the wizard's repetoire more
complex. The wild mage and elementalist are worthless IMHO.

As for the Tome of Magic and the Book of Artifacts, why not put them
in the PHB and DMG?  Or is it too hard for TSR to combine?

Book of Artifacts
-----------------
The Book of Artifacts was nice, but the rules for magic item creation
were preposterous. No mage in his right mind would spend all that
time trying to make some of the less useful magic items, for *any*
reason.

The Book of artifacts is neat, but there's very little I would
actually use. The magic item creation stuff is invaluable though. 

While I have not purchased it, the Book of Artifacts looks
particularly good and would be a fun resource to have.

Basically OK, contains long-missed guidelines for making magical
items. 

I thought Artifacts had some neat stuff, but was all in all, quite
useless.

Yet another example of stuff that should have been in the DMG, but
TSR saved to make more money. Beyond that it wasn't bad, but if you
had the old DMG, then you already knew most of that stuff.

The information in the back of the BOA on how to make magical items
was excellent.

Adds good amount of detail in designing & recharging magical items.
Artifacts are secondary in importance.

I like the artifact writeups, and they expand well on the material in
the old DMG. But, even more so than for the LL book, only a small
portion of this book will be useful to any one DM. One highlight is
the large number of low powered artifacts, suitable for about levels
7-12.

This will give you all the material for creating a campaign. Much
more interesting for the stories than for the mech. Expensive.

Book of artifacts is pretty useless and its just basically stories.

Not necessary.

What the heck is this crap? Why in the hell would you give out an
artifact to a PC? There is no way in my campaign a PC could have an
artifact without incuring the wrath of a deity or two or being hunted
by other NPC's. As far as I'm concerned this is the most ridiculous
thing TSR has ever published.

Artifacts: I was not that impressed by this offering. It basically
took all the old artifacts from the old (much better) DMG and fancied
up their presentation. It *did* go into magical research and the
possible creation of artifacts, which was more than the supposed
Complete Wizard's Handbook did.

DON'T buy it. It's a snazzy book, well-presented, etc., but I (as a
DM) will probably NEVER get my $20 out of the freaking thing. Not
recommended.

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                              The End
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