Player's Handbook, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Tsr 2101

Dungeons & Dragons

by David Zeb Cook

This is the indispensable encyclopedia of fantasy role-playing and also the perfect companion to the referee's 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Everything players need is how to determine a character's Strength, Wisdom, Charisma, and other abilities; the difference among the various fantasy races, from elves and halflings to dwarves, gnomes, and others; complete rules for character improvement; the most advantageous mapping and combat procedures; and much more, all in this easy-to-use, revised version of the classic role-playing rulebook. With this 2nd Edition, the best-selling role-playing game in history gets even better!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Gaming, Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Reference, Fiction

Hardcover

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

David "Zeb" Cook is an American game designer best known for his work at TSR, Inc., where he was employed for over fifteen years. Cook grew up on a farm in Iowa where his father worked as a farmer and a college professor. In junior high school, Cook playing wargames such as Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps. "I was primarily a wargamer, but there wasn't any role-playing available then," although in college, he was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game through the University of Iowa gaming club. Cook earned his B.A. in English (with a Theater minor) in 1977. He married his high school sweetheart, Helen, with whom he had one son, Ian. Cook became a high school teacher in Milligan, Nebraska, where his students gave him his nickname of "Zeb"; the name derives from his signature, which is dominated by a stroke resembling a 'Z'.

Reviews

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book that started the long and painful descent of Dungeons & Dragons, the thorny path that led to it forgetting what it was, a path it is still not done treading. The path leading out of the dungeons, out of the strongholds and domains, out of the traps and puzzles and tight player-centric gameplay - and into the realm of interactive storytelling, railroads, and long-winded waxing poetics of things that do not concern the game itself.

And yet it's still my favourite to play, to introduce new players to old-school gaming, and to base my own houseruled-to-hell stitched-together abominations on.

First, it is still AD&D. Mostly everything that made AD&D great - the player skill, the ruling not rules, the light approach to balance, the thick atmosphere and the high tension, the feel that you could die at any moment if you do the wrong thing - still hold true here. The few things it got rid of, such as assassins and gold-for-experience, are easy as pie to slap back in. The core mechanics are the same. But it's tighter, more streamlined, easier to figure out, especially if you're new at this. The text and the instructions are clearer. The classic Gygaxian prose has its place, but it's not so good at helping you out if you don't know what you're looking at. And the newer players may grouse upon THAC0 and its uninituitiveness, but they have not known the horror that was attack matrices - I don't miss those.

Second, a lot of the things it adds are actually a lot of fun and can bring new dimensions to the play if used well. You can't spend all your time in the dungeons, after all. You'll want to take a break, take your characters to new sorts of adventures and challenges. You can take the game out of the traditional sword-and-sorcery and take a stab at other things for a while: it doesn't do them especially well, perhaps, but the opportunity is there. I also like the bard kits and the priest spell spheres.

Third, some of the best settings in the history of the gaming. Forgotten Realms started its decline with Time of Troubles, and my personal favourite - Wilderlands of High Fantasy - went forgotten... but Planescape adds a whole new layer of weirdness and opportunity even if you ignore all the plot, Ravenloft's gloomy horror combined with dungeon crawls is a match made in hell, Al-Qadim is a whole new and underappreciated setting and feel that I'll never get tired of, Dark Sun is cheesy and grimdark and so much fun, and Spelljammer is just what the doctor ordered if you're a fan of Moorcock. If the first edition brought in the gameplay, then the second added some context and story to the mix - places for you to be, things to do, people to get trouble with. It's great.

Fourth, I find that it's a good middleground, compatibility-wise. Pretty much any system from before it, and most retroclones, work with little to no conversion at all. I could take the party from Stonehell straight to Barrier Peaks, from Fever-Dreaming Marlinko to Veins of the Earth, it all works. And since it starts to grasp on the new style of gaming as well, it would not be too difficult to convert the 3rd or 5th edition adventures either... if I ever found one that was worth my time.

Finally, it buffed up giants and dragons. They can now actually challenge the party without me having to play them smart. I am not a smart man.

2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons did a great deal of harm to the system and to the hobby in general, I think. But on the whole, on its own and taken out of that depressing context, it still holds up pretty well.

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gets four stars from me, but a lot of that might be nostalgia because this is the first real tabletop RPG that I truly got invested in way back in the early nineties. There are some issues with this edition, such as race-locked classes (which some people might like. To each his own), and alignment has never been a very good system for determining something as complex as morality (even though its use continues to this day).

I will say that AD&D 2nd edition has some of the best art in all of gaming, and some incredible settings were released for it.

[Tim S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although AD&D 2e is often dismissed by the gaming community -- too new for old school ‘grognards’ who enjoy the random charts and seat-of-your-pants amateur charm of the earlier editions, and too old for d20 new schoolers who like greater specificity and balance in their rules -- I still find it to be one of the strongest versions in the game’s long history. Simple, easy to teach, with more options than basic without becoming overwhelming (unless you let it), it also benefits from an extensive library of supplemental texts and adventures.

While it’s certainly possible to argue that 2e eventually went offtrack from a gamer’s perspective, focusing too much on colorful settings and too little on practical adventure modules, all while allowing the rules to bloat through an overload of ‘splat’ books and kits, the core rules still offer a rather tight and flexible game. The trick was always just to use what you wanted to use.

For a young kid this book -- plus the somewhat less useful DMG and rather cool Monster Manual (where else can you get hundreds of pages of imaginative monsters with their own ecological write-ups) -- was like an imagination machine. I never played as much as I would have liked back then but this book was a constant presence for much of my adolescence.

[Taddow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and this was the main edition that I spent my AD&D time on. Many nights of great memories with friends from the past and present spinning tales about heroes of sword and sorcery vanquishing foes from lowly goblins to the avatars of deities. While I doubt that I will ever play 2nd Edition again, it played a major part in shaping my skills as both a Game (Dungeon) Master and as a player of RPGs and I will cherish every moment I spent playing it.

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a very long time, this was the door to the fantastic realms of AD&D. It is very difficult to find one not being used for long hours, stained by sodas, marked with pencils, covers worn and pages yellowed. I owe a great deal of my creative skills to the constant use of this awesome book.

[Jodie Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the beginning of my love affair with Dungeons & Dragons. I cut my teeth on Palladium Books games, but coming home to Northern Michigan in the late 80's there was only D&D on the shelves of the local bookstore. I remember spending countless hours with this book, and have never looked back since.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. It's not meant to be read cover-to-cover, but I did... twice. It was that captivating for my imagination. Sure, it was more "formal" than the 1st edition but it was much clearer. Loved the hours of fun it gave me and the fantasy dreams I've had. Yea, I'm a nerd for this.

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Book Went Everywhere with me
18 January 2013

Well, it looked like it took TSR 12 years to actually get around to revising the Dungeons and Dragons game system to actually make it a lot more playable. I must admit that when they did release this edition, and I managed to get my hands on this book (and boy was it popular when it was released because I remember all my friends commenting on how it was pretty much about time that they tossed the first edition and produced something that worked) I was absolutely chuffed. Finally, I noticed, you could actually play a bard from scratch without actually having to get through two classes to possibly reach the status of a bard (if the game even lasted that long).

I sort of chuckled when I read the Goodreads outline of this book. An encyclopaedia of fantasy roleplaying and a perfect companion to the Dungeon Master's Guide. Well, first of all, this is not an encyclopaedia, it is the basic, indispensable rulebook if you wanted to play the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition game. In fact you can get away with not having a Dungeon Master's Guide. Okay, not every player requires a copy of the Players Handbook, but having multiple copies (maybe one for every three players) is very useful. I still remember times when I had a group of five all fighting over who gets to use the Players (as we would call it).

I think I still actually have mine somewhere, but then I am not quite too sure about that. I remember getting to the point where I was so comfortable with 2nd edition that I did not feel that it was necessary to change to a third edition (until I actually saw 3rd edition and noticed that it was a lot better). At this stage though the game was still developing, and there were still a lot of areas that needed to be ironed out. First of all they did not have skills so it was still very much based on combat ability. It seemed that the game was more focused on combat than adventure, though if you wanted to do something, such as climb a wall (well you could, but that was limited to the thief) you had to maybe make a dex check, or even say 'you are not a thief so bad luck'.

I also remember that when the made a transition to 2nd edition they released it with a huge fanfare which included three novels about the Time of Troubles in the Forgotten Realms (when the gods were tossed out of heaven and told to wonder around the land until the people who stole the twinkies owned up and said sorry – gee, even the gods in the Dungeons and Dragons worlds act like a bunch of babies, much like some of the players that I know), and these novels also had three modules that were based around them as well. However, I while I must admit that 2nd edition was heading in the right direction, it was not until 3rd edition was released 11 years after that, that I can say that Dungeons and Dragon really became a decently playable system.

[Gabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes. I have read the Dungeons and Dragons "Players Handbook". What you gonna do about it? Nothing! You know why? Because I have a +5 cloak of protection against people who are too cool for D&D.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have crystal clear memories of snagging this as the Waldenbooks in Meriden Square mall with my girlfriend (who bought her own copy) and the two of us reading them over Roy Rogers fried chicken at a different spot in the mall. Easily a top 10 date.

So it's weird going back to it today and finding it so... anemic. It's everything I wanted from D&D at the time - it was so much cleaner, better organized, with a more open authorial voice, and a smattering of new rules that powered some of my favorite college and immediately after gaming - but coming back to it now 32 years after its writing and 27 years after playing it with any regularity it's hard to muster up the enthusiasm.

Part of this is while it did organize all the rules, and even clarified what some of the intents were, it never explicated some of the broader play goals of the people in Lake Geneva about henchmen, hirelings, land clearing, depersonalized power bases, etc. In part because the game had been out in the world for so long unsupervised that most people playing it didn't do _any_ of that stuff, being well in the throes of the Hickman revolution of ensemble hero narrative styles that eschewed all that wargame stuff. So that left this clarification as neither fish nor foul.

In part because the authorial voice is so much more open, aimed at high school freshmen, rather than Gary's "I'm an autodidactic smart person and I bet you're one too and I'm going to trust that you can keep up" that makes the last edition more enjoyable to read. Is it frustrating as hell that Gary never explains what any of the literary or historical referents are and trusts you to have read them or to go out and read them? Kinda... But reading 2E's attempts to give historical grounding to a game built on pulp fantasy constructed out of historical parts, and stopping to explain so many things, feels worse looking back on it. This is me being a little uncharitable between the thing seared into my brain at age 12 and the one that I analyzed at 18, but its still true.

I do wonder what Zeb Cook would have come up with if he had far fewer restraints on what 2E was allowed to be. This is the guy who introduced Non-Weapon Proficiencies via Oriental Adventures and created the elaborate game world of Planescape, so he knew where D&D needed to change and what it could do, but was always hemmed in. It's a shame no one dropped a wad of cash on him in the last decade to make an OSR AD&D 2E just to see what it would look like.

[Roxanna López · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to confess that I love the game inmoderately and so my rating for the book. The font is very small and some of the descriptions are repetitive and not as clear as they could be. On the other hand, wow, what amazing illustrations, and what a wonderful game!

[Mark Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up playing board games against myself. My sister wasn't much into them and whatever friends I managed to scrap together for a year or two before we moved again were either disinterested from the get-go or quickly became disinterested as I beat them mercilessly at whatever we played.

I also grew up in a world of imagination which almost universally drifted to war. I'm not sure why, but my games, movies, books, shows, and idle imaginings only seem to have real staying power if they are somehow associated with combat. One of my earliest memories is drawing viking ships battling on the ocean... and so it went from there.

When I encountered my eventual group of best friends in 7th grade (many of whom I still talk to regularly), they were clustered on a table in the cafeteria playing something with sheets of paper, pencils, dice, and a set of weirdly-sized books. I drifted over, watched for a few minutes, and became instantly hooked.

I only got to play my elven druid with his scimitar and panther a few times before their existing game master moved and the game ended, but endless class periods passed remembering every item of gear, every chunk of quantified capability that the numbers on my crumpled character sheet represented.

Despite being new to the group, within months I was the new game master, spinning worlds, races, gods, ages, and cultures out of nothingness. We played straight up through high school graduation gathering in my friend's garage attic after school every night and sometimes 12-16 hour long weekend sessions. How I did it without burning out I don't know, but I do know it for the first time let others into the private universes I'd constructed, gave me something to look forward to, a group to be myself with, and a place of refuge both physically and mentally.

Middle school was miserable. The trailers we bounced between were places of endless chore lists, terrible food, random hours-long barely-coherent suicidal rambles from an older brother out of his mind on who knows what. Our mom, when she was there, we hoped would take off on one of her regular days-long absences since when she was there it was either panicked, shouted orders to fix the latest crisis or the house filling with drunken bar dregs that'd be invited over to keep partying when the bar closed Friday night and that would sometimes linger until Monday came and swept the last of them away.

D&D was an escape hatch to an alternate reality where such concerns were irrelevant and, for a time, I could forget the misery and uncertainty of my home life, to practice being someone more powerful, resourceful, and strong than I felt.

The actual rules had some issues, especially compared to more modern rule systems, but that's like saying the pioneers' covered wagons were inefficient compared to modern moving trucks - it's true, but without the former to explore the terrain and settle the unknown the latter would likely not come into existence.

Roleplaying games remain an important part of my life even if my playing time has vastly dwindled. The problem solving and social skills, the lessons on story structure, flow, pacing, and engagement, the friendships that remain to this day, all products of that time spent around a table or sprawled across an attic or living room.

[Jim Syler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Edition AD&D is a classic. Many still believe it is the finest version of Dungeons and Dragons ever published. 2e (which it was notcalled at the time) has advantages and disadvantages compared to other editions. D&D gets simpler and easier to play with every edition, at the cost of realism and complexity. It also gets more restrictive in some ways, to ensure that advanced players don't overpower the game with their detailed knowledge of the rules. 2nd Ed (which it was called) has the beloved lists of non-weapon proficiencies, minute-long (as opposed to the more plausible six seconds of later editions) combat rounds, THAC0, and a dice system that requires you to remember whether you're trying to roll high or low on any given roll. Combat takes a long time while being more difficult to describe than in later editions, as there's no battle mat and (unless you're a spellcaster) your options in any given round are very limited. On the other hand, it's a much more open system than later editions, with a lot more left up to the players' imagination. Since there's no battle mat, the DM and players have a much freer hand to describe the action, and many other aspects of the rules support this kind of imaginative looseness. At the same time, of course, that makes it much easier for power gamers to break the game.

Second Ed has its pluses and minuses, but it remains in some ways the most iconic version of D&D. It is fairly interestingly written for a rulebook, and is a monumental effort for one single individual.

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

It didn't really take me 15 months to read this; I had "it" finished in only a few months, off and on, but the prospect of reading over one hundred pages of spells was a daunting task a year ago, so I took it only a few at a time and finally polished it off last night (as of this writing). While I didn't officially start with AD&D 2E, having read a number of Basic and 1E reference books alone in my youth, many from the library, I believe, if memory serves (and it does, but it doesn't do dishes), I didn't really play any modules or games until First Quest in the 2E rules universe. Thus, for me, as with so many, the 2E universe (most likely the most expansive - and expensive - of the rules iterations) will remain primary in fondness and nostalgia. There's just something about the font, color schemes, and formatting that brings back occluded memories of simpler times. Surely that is incorrect, as my life is far less full than it once was: I don't have to get to school at 6:30 to set up the drum line, my Friday nights are not spent carrying drumline equipment all over town, my Saturdays aren't spent on endless parades and marching band competitions, my Sunday afternoons are not spent in rehearsals, and I get to grade homework instead of do homework now. But still, we'll call them simpler times. I recently had the chance to look over some 3E and 4E books, and while it is likely my nostalgia talking, they didn't seem all that impressive. The d20 system, while perhaps simpler, does not appeal to me. I'm certainly no fan of rolling a so-called "4-sided die" (one of the most nonsensical objects ever invented), but there's something enjoyable about grabbing a bunch of polyhedral dice (certainly not what we called them "back in the day") and creating a story. I don't have a gaming group or anything now (not that I ever did), and while some may consider soloing AD&D modules (playing both the DM and the players) cheating, I'm too old to be bothered by that. Sure, it makes finding the secret treasures a lot easier when you know where to look, but the point as always is to create characters, create stories, exercise one's imagination, and have a good time while doing so, and that's what I'm doing. True, this review hasn't said much about this, but I suspect you know about the AD&D Player's Handbook by now. If not, just go get one on one of those "get other people's old stuff" sites and read it, find some modules or a First Quest box set and make some magic (almost literally). (Note: No Christian integrity was harmed in the making of this review.)

[St-Michel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, so yes, to the average worldly citizen and reader, I am a nerd. I have actually read this thing cover to cover, but hey, so what. I'm an RPG/Fantasy fan, and seriously, the world of Dungeons & Dragons opened up a whole new depth of fantasy to me that Tolkien didn't even dare breathe. And so for that, I greatly appreciate it.
Now, as a RPG rules book, well for one, I know it like the back of my hand. It's a great introduction to the world of roleplaying, but, as hard as TSR tried to cover it all, there's a lot of inherently flawed and rather unwieldy rule sets inside, namely the NWP's. Nonetheless, for a time when there wasn't near as many gaming companies as there is today, they produced a valiant effort and definitely got the job done.

[Marc-André · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most imporant book of my teenage years and probably the best edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Many memories.

[Abraham Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

another good rpg book!

[Dan Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I had a dime for every hour of enjoyment and imagination this book had brought me, I could retire and play more D&D.

[NextDream · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi Edición favorita de D&D, tiene reglas muy solidas y permite mucha customizacion y transfondo sin dejar que los personajes se sientan reales, como pasa en 5ta Edición que un pj lvl 5 ya es prácticamente un super heroe de marvel. Acá por mas niveles que tengas, las cosas no dejan de ser una amenaza.

La única razón por la que no le doy 5 estrellas es porque este manual no es suficiente para jugar por si mismo. Probablemente te haga falta leer un manual de monstruos de AD&D (puede ser 1ra o 2da edición, es intercambiable) y el manual de dungeon master.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it back in the day when we played a game or 2 (7th? 8th grade?) and then again a few years later for fun. It was a solid book when combined with some of the multitude of supplements that were published for 2nd edition (I had 3-4 class-oriented supplement books plus several volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica which was a fantastic set of tomes and was written with 2nd ed. in mind I believe although could really be used in almost any way).

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive and welcome revision of the AD&D system, bringing much-needed clarity, simplifying areas which had simply become overcomplicated, and making sensible decisions as to which rules are truly essential and which are optional. Full thoughts on TSR editions of D&D: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...

[Panczito · Rating 2 out of 5]

System archaiczny, fajnie napisany, wiele kulawych mechanik mimo to w pełni grywalny. Wielki sentyment i klasyk

[Dan Bonser · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Player's Handbook!

[Argel Zubiaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empecé a jugar D&D con esta edición y me trae muchos recuerdos, un excelente juego de rol que todo mundo debería de conocer y jugarlo al menos una vez en la vida.

[Joseph Riina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean, it's nice to have a version of AD&D that reads like an actual ruleset and not a haphazard collection of notes, but man by the end it just gets way too into the weeds of things

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it…sometime in the 80s

[Rodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too old for me, I guess

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic Premise: Rules for making and playing a character in D&D 2nd edition.

This was the very first roleplaying book I ever bought and I read it cover to cover when I first brought it home. I wanted to know EVERYTHING. It made for dry reading at times, and the rules were a bit convoluted (I still have nightmares about calculating thac0 sometimes), but I loved it. It has some iconic art in its pages and I will always remember this book fondly, even if I have vowed never to attempt to play this rule set ever again. 2nd ed is clunky and it doesn't allow for much character customization. Skills advance unevenly and cap out strangely with no way to change that, classes cap out based on obscure factors, class progression was clunky, and heaven forbid you wanted to try something different. The customization and streamlining of the game into the d20 system was both a blessing and inevitable, given the frustrations of 2nd edition.

2nd ed will always hold a place in my heart as the first RPG I ever played, with many dear high school and college memories of friends I haven't seen in years. That's where the game needs to stay.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly a more balanced, logical work than the First edition. Equally ot it's pluses are its lack in charm, whimsy, and, frankly, fun. The first edition handbook was a strangely enjoyable read for a compilation of rules for a game. This is much more effective at accomplishing the purpose, but does it with less style.

[Nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can tell which book Ive used by the front cover pictures! More like a refference book but a must have for roleplayers.