D&D rule books/sites/articles?

Alistuspallo

I have played RPG games for whole my life, although I'm not the biggest RPG nerd out there. I like to think that I know the rules in general but I have gotten an urge lately to really get to know all the differences and changes between the rule sets and so on and so on.

That's why I'm asking from people who know more than I do for book(s) or sites where I could get my hands on this kind of stuff and get more insight on all of this. Who knows, maybe one day I would be able to even put up a pen and paper game myself.

Anduine

A fair bet would be to use a combination of wiki, the wizards of the coast site and forums, and ebay/amazon to get any desired physical copies of books.

The differences from 1 - 2 - 3 are *substantial*, and you undoubtedly are undertaking a great investment of your time, albeit a rewarding one.

Moomintroll

I got the second edition books recently to run a couple of games, aside from the monster manual I'd say they do not make interesting reading material if you aren't planning on running a game.

Alistuspallo

Thanks for the answers, I know it's a time sink but for me it's more of an eternity project to get understand the world of D&D bit better. Will start looking into it one of these days :P.

AndreaColombo

@Alistuspallo - The Baldur's Gate games are (sometimes loosely) based on 2E AD&D rules, which were out in the second half of the '90s. You can either purchase a .PDF of the manuals, or get the real thing second-hand from sites like eBay (which is what I did).

Start off with the AD&D Player's Handbook, which is the base of everything. If you don't want spoilers, stick to that. If you don't mind spoilers, get the AD&D Monstrous Manual too. You can easily skip the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide as it won't give you any more insight on Baldur's Gate than the Player's Handbook.

Keep in mind that the AD&D manuals exist in two versions, and the most recent version has black covers. The Monstrous Manual was split in two books and may not be the easiest to find.

Drugar

If you want a resource for D&D v3.5, check http://www.d20srd.org/
All the rules are on there since the system is Open Source.

It doesn't explain them much though.

Bjjorick

i'm a level 12 vice president.....

seriously you talking about it being an 'eternity project' reminded me of the futurama episode where fry and qualye and others get stuck in eternity and pull out ADnD books/charts/char sheets and start to play for eternity. good times

beerflavour

If you want some compilation of older AD&D rules have a look at this

http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/index.html

I bought me some AD&D rule books in the past, but informations on many non-standard classes / non-standard races are scattered along a lot of additional books. But the player's handbook (PHB), the dungeon master's guide (DMG) and a monster manual should cover the most important aspects of the rules.

beerflavour

AndreaColombo said:

...

Start off with the AD&D Player's Handbook, which is the base of everything. If you don't want spoilers, stick to that. If you don't mind spoilers, get the AD&D Monstrous Manual too. You can easily skip the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide as it won't give you any more insight on Baldur's Gate than the Player's Handbook.

...

The dungeon master's guide contains informations about optional combat rules (e.g. critical hit rules) and expands on magic item creations, spell research and creating new classes or races. For an understanding of the basic game those aspects are not necessary.

Chippy

Handbook:
http://merung.net/DandD/tsr2159---2nd-edition-Players-Handbook-(revised).pdf

Oriental Adventures:
http://www.nj-pbem.com/adnd/tsr2018-Oriental-Adventures.pdf

Thief Handbook:
http://www.nj-pbem.com/adnd/tsr2111-PHBR2-Complete-Thief-Handbook.pdf

Non-Weapon Prof's:
http://www.oyla.de/userdaten/852/58368/pdf/The_Complete_Nonweapon_Proficiencies_V1.2.pdf

Not sure if other material is available through the main site Oriental Adventures is from, because I find it difficult to comprehend.

Alistuspallo

Wow, I have to say I'm impressed because of the amount of answers. Thanks a lot! Will be a really good start.

On off topic, have to mention that I already like this community quite much better than any other so far. I wasn't expecting so many answers and thought I would get at least a few along the line "f*** off, this ain't your place if you don't know this" etc etc. After having played some mmorpgs here and there during the last 5-6 years, this is so refreshing for not having kids who has just hit puberty taking their problems at you...no offense to anyone if there are younger people here too. So, thanks for this too!

Since there are so many answers already, hopefully this thread can be help for someone else in a situation that I am. If I get even more answers, I'll just make some kind of compilation of the sources given here and putting them up on the original post or something.

Alistuspallo

Chippy said:

Handbook:
http://merung.net/DandD/tsr2159---2nd-edition-Players-Handbook-(revised).pdf

This link doesn't work, says the file doesn't exist on the server. In case you know another place, can you add it if check back on this post?

Chippy

Alistuspallo said:

Chippy said:

Handbook:
http://merung.net/DandD/tsr2159---2nd-edition-Players-Handbook-(revised).pdf

This link doesn't work, says the file doesn't exist on the server. In case you know another place, can you add it if check back on this post?

Sorry about that - you need the entire address including

-(revised).pdf

at the end of the link, so if you copy and paste it, it should work. I got that from another poster on the featured requests forum, but have forgotten their name/post, so apologies and all credit to them.

Alistuspallo

Ah right, quite stupid of me. Thanks for the correction!

Justywusty

If you're a new DM, start with 1st or 2nd edition, in my opinion. 3rd and 4th seem like they were created partially as a ruleset for game adaptations. Or maybe I'm just old fashioned. 2nd is far from perfect but it's my favorite, and not just because of nostalgia. (btw 2nd edition is the ruleset that BG1 and BG2 are based on. Though Throne of Bhaal could be considered 2.5 maybe?)

AndreaColombo

beerflavour said:

The dungeon master's guide contains informations about optional combat rules (e.g. critical hit rules) and expands on magic item creations, spell research and creating new classes or races. For an understanding of the basic game those aspects are not necessary.

That's precisely what my post implied (I do own the AD&D DMG).

Alistuspallo

Justywusty said:

If you're a new DM, start with 1st or 2nd edition, in my opinion. 3rd and 4th seem like they were created partially as a ruleset for game adaptations. Or maybe I'm just old fashioned. 2nd is far from perfect but it's my favorite, and not just because of nostalgia. (btw 2nd edition is the ruleset that BG1 and BG2 are based on. Though Throne of Bhaal could be considered 2.5 maybe?)

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I'm not that much new to RPGs, I know the rules in general. Just want to get into details to understand the bigger picture in whole...or how to put it.