Heretical Thoughts

Was the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons really that bad?

I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago, when I was going through my collection of TSR D&D products while compiling the Top 10 lists I posted last month. I no longer own almost anything from the 2e era except the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monstrous Compendium, so I don't have a lot to go on. However, in flipping through them, I wasn't overcome with revulsion at the 2e rules, which, by and large, weren't all that different from their 1e counterparts. They're a little looser and more flexible in places – combat particularly – but, re-reading these books for the first time in perhaps a decade, there wasn't a lot I found inherently objectionable.

On the other hand, the presentation of 2e left much to be desired. I'm not even talking about the banal, occasionally conversational way in which it was written, though, to be fair, that is a disappointment, especially when compared to the glories of High Gygaxian. I'm also not talking about the awful layout and graphic design, with its awful rounded fonts and use of blue as a splash color, though, again, these weren't appealing choices. No, the bigger issue, I think, is the artwork, which is almost universally inferior to that of 1e, despite the fact that TSR now employed artists who were far better on a technical level than their predecessors. Despite this, there's very little inspirational in the art of 2e. I mean, take a look at this:

That may not be the worst piece of art to appear in the 2e Player's Handbook, but it's one I've always found off-putting and indeed more than a little silly, despite my fondness for small dragons. In my opinion, it's also pretty emblematic of the artwork we get in second edition: technically good but overwhelmingly mundane.
I wonder how many people's opinions of AD&D Second Edition are rooted largely in its artwork and overall presentation. As I said, I found the rules better than I recalled their being, before the endless churn of Complete X Handbooks and ever more esoteric settings obscured their clarity. Gary Gygax's original rules are still very much present in 2e. I'd suggest that, unless one is devoted to weapon speed factors or segments, it's perfectly possible to use 2e to play a game that is functionally very close to the Gygaxian original. I'd also suggest that, given the changes Gary himself envisioned for his own second edition, very little that lead designer David Cook implemented in the published second edition is too far beyond the pale. Indeed, I think Cook was probably a lot more conservative in his own rules changes than Gygax would have been, had he stayed at TSR long enough to complete his own revision.
But 2e's art and presentation are real problems, at least if you're someone whose conception of fantasy is more steeped in a pulpy, pre-Shannara mold. If one's tastes tend more toward fantastic realism, I would wager that 2e's illustrations were probably very much to your liking. If not, they're distracting at best and repellant at worst. That's too bad, I think, because, as I've noted, I don't think the rules of second edition AD&D are themselves a serious step down from those of first. At the same time, I can hardly fault anyone for disliking the look of the 2e books enough not to give their content a fair shake. I think esthetics are important, vital even, and that's especially true when dealing with imaginary places and creatures. Art helps draw one into fantasy, which is why it's key that it be appealing to its intended audience.
I can't shake the feeling that AD&D's second edition is more disliked in retrospect than it was at the time. I think some of this dislike is bound up in the publishing trajectory the game later took, with endless supplements and settings, as well as the sense that Gary Gygax had been ill-treated by the very company he founded. If so, this isn't fair to the game David Cook actually designed, which is somewhere in the vicinity of 80–90% mechanically identical to 1e, just better organized and explained. Certainly there are aspects of 2e that I'm not fond of, but many of these elements are optional and, once again, I don't think it's any mark against 2e that TSR would later over-emphasize these elements to the detriment of the solid foundation Cook laid down in 1989. 
I played 2e when it came out and into the first half of the 1990s, though not as extensively as I played 1e. I remember having fun with it and indeed being quite impressed with it upon its initial release. My eventual drifting away from AD&D had very little to do with the game itself and much more to do with the fact that, by 1994 or so, I was simply tired of D&D (and traditional fantasy more generally), which I'd played more or less constantly for a decade and a half. Paging through my old copies of the 2e rulebooks reminded me of all of this and I'm glad of it. I'm in no danger of ever playing Second Edition again, but I'm glad to have been given the opportunity to re-evaluate my feelings about an edition of the game that I sometimes think gets more grief in old school circles than it deserves.