It's not known how much of that material came from Gary or others, but when AD&D was being produced, the section on psionics may have been done by someone other than Gary (as he never liked the end result). Tim Kask edited material that Gary gave him which ended up in Eldritch Wizardry. It's highly likely that Cook, or someone else would have had to produce the majority of a 2E, even if Gary stayed at TSR under Williams (Bizzaro Universe).Įven the psionics section of 1E probably wasn't designed by him. By the time he was talking about 2E (and even a potential 3E) in those Dragon articles, he was already too preoccupied with the business side of things. I don't entirely agree that the 2E we got (which I did play a lot and enjoyed) is what Gary would have produced, even if he was fully committed to the role of designer. After all, AD&D 2E was started by Gary in 1984 prior to the publication of Dragon #90. However, the key thing is that David Zeb Cook was the third employee hired by Gary and worked closely with him for years while having access to Gary's notes shows that the AD&D 2E that he did was what I believe that Gary would have approved of if he was still with the company. He didn't want to have another lawsuit on his hands. After he was sued and threatened by Lorraine numerous times he got shy about discussing it. THAC0 was a vast improvement over the Combat Matrix.Īs for what Gary would have written for AD&D 2E, no one knows. No longer did you have various fighter types using different hit dice or to hit rolls.

The entire unified class archetypes and putting in the existing classes was a brilliant move. It is also more approachable then the other versions of (A)D&D that came prior. David Zeb Cook and his team did a great job taking what was written by Gary and clarified it to be useable at the table. That's why the text and tone is uneven in all the books. Remember, AD&D 1E was Gary's work and he helmed it. Only when other authors get their hands on the material does his ideas shine through perfectly. Can you imagine the challenge of going through his notes for AD&D? From reading about what was planned for Temple of Elemental Evil is that the writer had to go through 300+ pages of handwritten notes by Gary. The entire rewriting and making coherent rules was a challenge. My own opinion is that the rush to put out more material to make money for a company that was growing very fast, or when it was in financial distress (Unearthed Arcana) often resulted in a lot of questionable content, if not out right useless additions that many people just did not use at their table.ĮDIT: Here's a link to some research the Greyhawk Grognard did on Gary's possible 2e (the link in the Dragonsfoot thread was broken). If anyone thinks TSR's business side wasn't making the same kind of financial decisions as WoTC in regards to publishing material, even in the early days when Gary wasn't busy with things other than designing material for the games, I really think they should take a look at both the material published and the reception to it.

In the case of AD&D it was also to make some sort of unified rules for convention play (as a number of the early modules published for it were originally used for tournaments). The AD&D 1e rulebooks and even the supplements to the 3 LLBs of OD&D were not just attempts to make the rules more coherent (which in retrospect I don't think were nearly successful enough at accomplishing, i.e.: initiative), but to make TSR money. He played by his own house rules since the beginning of D&D and was always changing things when he felt it was appropriate.

Keep in mind that when Gary spoke about D&D online he had a tendency to give different answers to the same question depending on who was asking, or what he thought at the moment. Some of it you've already posted about, but also stuff that he discussed online. Old Dragonsfoot discussion about Gary's ideas for what 2e might have been under his direction. Hey JamesDixon, thought this might interest you.

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