D&D 3.x 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Celebrim]

So Necromancer Games' (now a legacy part of Frog God Games) modules, "Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel"

It was a great tag line but I don't think they ever delivered on that. I felt DCC did better in making adventures that felt like they could have been published in 1e.

But yes, I ran 3e as if it was a cleaned up 1e.

 

[Voadam]

It was a great tag line but I don't think they ever delivered on that.

I felt they generally delivered on doing megadungeons (Rappan Athuk, Tomb of Abysthor, etc.) with wildly variable deadliness and occasional humor which felt very like the 1e hinted default of Gygax's Castle Greyhawk.

Also the Tome of Horrors was great for bringing a ton of 1e monsters into 3e.

Goodman Games' DCC RPG modules are great for creating a 70s gonzo fantasy sword and sorcery feel with the deadliness of low level 1e emphasized. A bit more of the free-wheeling OD&D scene I'd say than 1e though. More Barsoom mixed with robots from the OD&D core books than say 1e published modules like the slaver series, although probably fitting in with the mood from the Melnibonean Mythos in 1e Deities and Demigods. The 3e Dungeon Crawl Classics line felt to me a lot more like the 32 page modules I had from the 1e era.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

I personally liked both Necromancer and Goodman Games modules. In fact, the early 3pp modules of 3.0 had their charm. Authors not only adhering to the encounter guidelines also but narrowing the effective encounter range (in terms of EL but also frequency of encounters) is what killed the 1E feel. Compare Forge of Fury and the early Dungeon Magazine adventures to the latter 3.5e modules - It's night and day!

I imagine if you went through any module, checked the EL spread, found it wasn't adhering to the EL frequency (5% overpowering, etc.) in the DMG, and fixed it, you would have a much more memorable module. Doubly so if the party could experience anywhere from 1 to 8 encounters per day (with 4 being the average) and therefore had to learn how to conserve, conserve, conserve.

 

[nevin]

I've recently been going again through the old 3rd edition books Manual of the Planes, Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Lords of Madness looking for ideas for a campaign concept I am entertaining. There's a bunch of really interesting content in those books, and it occurred to me that I don't know any other game or even edition of D&D that would let you replicate many of those without very extensive rewriting. Pathfinder 1st edition maybe, but that's still mostly the same game. And that in turn had me opening up to at least entertaining the idea that perhaps 3rd edition might be a game that actually plays decently well if you run it the right way.

I first started to be interested in RPG just a few weeks before 3rd edition came out, and so I actually waited that long to get the new books right on release as the very first game system I would try to learn. I stuck to it exclusively through its entire run and then to Pathfinder for another two or three years. I think I had close to every single 3rd edition book that was released for at least a while before I resold about half of them. (Except for the Prestige Class, spells, and items books.) I've also been a lot on the Giant In the Playground forum and RPG.net (before it went mad). So unlike with all the original OSR discussions where I only had other people's words to go with, with 3rd edition I lived through it all myself.
While I was all in on all of that at the time, I've seen first hand all the stupid nonsense about the reception of, and culture around that game, which at the end of it convinced me that 3rd edition was a complete mess and the d20 system a really terrible engine for "Roleplaying™" Games. (Yes, I partook generously in that OSR stuff that became popular at the time.)

But considering now how the game would play in practice now that I have some 15 more years as GM under my belt with a far broader horizon of what games and campaigns can be, I've actually been a bit appalled at how I remember myself running this game (and Pathfinder) in the 2000s. Man, I was really bad. But so seems to have been everyone else I've encountered in the common discourse around the game back in those days.

I don't really have much of a thesis here on what exactly 3rd edition did wrong and what about it was actually really bad design. But I have developed a hypothesis over this month that perhaps the way I have seen 3rd edition played, and heard it self-reported being played by other people, and the general sense of disappointment I've seen about it in recent years, might not actually be primarily the fault of the game rules as they are designed, but by the way we tried to use them.

Maybe the negative and disappointing experiences many people seem to have made with the game are not because it is a bad tool, but because we tried to make it do things it was not meant for?

One thing that I find to be very noticeable with 3rd edition in hindsight is that there seems to be a very considerable disconnect between the people who designed the main rules set of the game, and the people who actually wrote the majority of supplements over the game's seven year run. Manifested very strikingly here at the introduction to Prestige Classes in the Dungeon Master's Guide:

View attachment 341693
Yeah, everyone who has read more than three 3rd edition books knows that this is not at all how the D&D product catalog evolved after the release of the Core Rulebooks. I'm going entirely by memory here, but the old 3rd edition website had index lists of all feats, PrCs, and spells that appeared in the official WotC 3rd edition rulebooks and supplements, and I am pretty sure the total list of PrCs was over 700. (Also over 1,000 feats.)
WotC was always in the money business, and money is made by selling books. And character options sell books. So as long as players were paying for it, they spewed out an endless stream of races, classes, prestige classes, items, and spells. As I remember it, PrCs were the main selling points of the dozen or so book specifically addressed to players. And of course 90% of them were complete shovelware junk that nobody remembers. But the remaining ones really fed the leviathan that was Character Optimization. In my perception, CharOps became the dominant aspect of the 3rd edition online culture and discourse. I agree that it was a very fun hobby where you can sink hundreds of hours into discovering new unintended combinations of abilities and items that were probably written by two people who had no awareness of each others' works. And it's something that you can argue about and defend in discussions much more so than the vague generalizations of how you prepare adventures. But that was playing with the rules of the game. It was not playing the game.

Okay, rhetoric ramblings aside, my current interest is in re-reading, re-examining, and researching the actually written mechanics of the three Core Rulebooks and separating it from what players in the 2000s thought the game to be or wished the game to be, and what the publisher found to be the most efficient way to sell books. Was 3rd edition a hot mess? Yes. But was it a badly designed game system from the start or did the problem lie with how the game was received?
For a very long time, D&D 3rd edition was widely regarded as the game that can do any kind of fantasy campaign that you could think of. (And even non-fantasy games with the many d20 spin-off game systems.) But I think this can very unequivocally dismissed as wrong. I think pretty much everyone now agrees that no game system is a good for any imaginable campaign. Any good system is still only good at the one thing it is made for.

What I am wondering now is, what kind of adventures, campaigns, and play style is D&D 3rd edition actually best at? What part of the rules seem to have been widely misunderstood or misapplied? And what small tweaks might make a major positive difference?

the biggest problem with 3.0 was that the players found cool stuff in splat books that DM's refused to allow and then all hell broke loose. I had 2 groups, and one longtime player during the 3.0 years almost melt down over my refusal to allow things that jsut didn't fit the game or in one instance were simply so freaking overpowered that I offered to allow it if I was allowed to completely redo the prestige class. I don't think it was as badly designed as some claim. It was however a game that relied on the DM being able to adjust the power level of everything based on what the players were doing. The higher the level of the game the more this became a necessity. I think that more than anything else is what let to 3.5 then pathfinder 1e and then the desperate clawing away from 3.0 to PF 2.0. There may never be another system with the sheer volume of supplements and splat books that 3.0/3/5 had but for some that is the draw and for some that is the problem. I really think that 3.0 is what eventually drove the current large minority on the internet to constantly bicker about Authoritarian GM's not letting them do whatever they want. And I suspect those players drove a lot of DM's who were just hanging on by their fingernails dealing with those people away from DM'ing. 5e is so much easier to DM than anything before it and PF 2.0 while a bit more difficult than 5E is much easier than 3.0 as well. Any system that can't keep enough DM's is borked and I think at the end 3.0/3/5 was slowly dying because of that very trend. Now if I have a group of players who just want to play and can accept they can't have everything ever printed I love 3.0. I think it's better than 3.5. Far more flexible far better at high levels even if it turns characters into Anime superheroes. But if you throw a few obnoxious power gamers (and not all power gamers are obnoxious) in the mix I"m going to PF1e or DND 5e. If i'm going to have to argue with those kinds of players to be able to have a group then I'm going to play a system that has rules that allow me to shut them down and move on.

 

[nevin]

I'm not quite sure how best to respond to this. Has the collective wisdom really reached the stage of thinking 3rd edition was a badly designed game but we on EnWorld might still be able to rescue it into something playable?

Lots of people played it for a very long time, including me. I am still playing it, in as much as I'm still running Pathfinder 1st edition - including at high levels.

The best way not to break the game is to agree that you are not going to break the game. If everyone agrees to that in advance then it's not necessary to have a long list of banned rules. I think the only thing I banned outright was the Black Tentacles spell, and that was because of the sheer tedium of the 3.5 grapple rules when used against large groups (I'm happy to allow it in Pathfinder games since grapple works differently).

Its great strength is that characters are incredibly customisable, so you'll never run out of things to play.

From the DM's side, I think it is important not to be too caught up in the details. All the time spent making sure enemies have the correct number of feats, skill points etc. is time that you could have been spending coming up with awesome situations. And if the PCs are having too easy a time of it, give the monsters the Advanced template from Pathfinder i.e. +4 to all ability scores.

see I don't agree the base game was badly designed. I'd argue the lack of control in the splat books and supplements just destroyed the core design. If you are very picky about which supplements you used 3.0 isn't a bad game. If you just use everything it's a freaking swamp.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

the biggest problem with 3.0 was that the players found cool stuff in splat books that DM's refused to allow and then all hell broke loose. I had 2 groups, and one longtime player during the 3.0 years almost melt down over my refusal to allow things that jsut didn't fit the game or in one instance were simply so freaking overpowered that I offered to allow it if I was allowed to completely redo the prestige class. I don't think it was as badly designed as some claim. It was however a game that relied on the DM being able to adjust the power level of everything based on what the players were doing. The higher the level of the game the more this became a necessity. I think that more than anything else is what let to 3.5 then pathfinder 1e and then the desperate clawing away from 3.0 to PF 2.0. There may never be another system with the sheer volume of supplements and splat books that 3.0/3/5 had but for some that is the draw and for some that is the problem. I really think that 3.0 is what eventually drove the current large minority on the internet to constantly bicker about Authoritarian GM's not letting them do whatever they want. And I suspect those players drove a lot of DM's who were just hanging on by their fingernails dealing with those people away from DM'ing. 5e is so much easier to DM than anything before it and PF 2.0 while a bit more difficult than 5E is much easier than 3.0 as well. Any system that can't keep enough DM's is borked and I think at the end 3.0/3/5 was slowly dying because of that very trend. Now if I have a group of players who just want to play and can accept they can't have everything ever printed I love 3.0. I think it's better than 3.5. Far more flexible far better at high levels even if it turns characters into Anime superheroes. But if you throw a few obnoxious power gamers (and not all power gamers are obnoxious) in the mix I"m going to PF1e or DND 5e. If i'm going to have to argue with those kinds of players to be able to have a group then I'm going to play a system that has rules that allow me to shut them down and move on.

No RPG needs rules for a group to show a nuisance the door.

 

[nevin]

that's

No RPG needs rules for a group to show a nuisance the door.

true but even people who aren't nuisances get frustrated and fights occur when they buy rule books and are then told they can't use the new "flavor of the month" prestige class, race etc. The lack of control over what they released and how it interacted with the game. (to be fair thier design goal was everything's possible but it's up to your DM what he allows". Created many many avoidable frustrations between DM's and players. I had many friends in the 3.0 era that just quit DM'ing over it. I don't remember an other version with the amount of conflict over what someone just pulled out of an official "DND" book. And I see it from both sides. Sucks to go buy an official book lets say the "Barbarian Handbook" because I remember it well and then be told "no" because the barbarian class in it got a freaking tiger mount at level one that was better in every way than the entire freaking party at combat. The player wanted He-man and if you are playing that game and you can give the other players stuff to keep up that's fine. But if you are just starting a basic game then as DM of course it's "NOPE". But then you were the bad guy refusing to use Wizards of the Coasts rules. It was a freaking mess and both DM's and Players had the right to be mad at it from both directions.

Wizards simply punted on the idea of quality control and standards and that eventually created PF 1E. which only patched the problems and created a game where things simply don't make logical sense because of all the random "NOPE that doesn't work" rulings and rules that make the entire game an illogical mess. Which starts a whole different kind of argument with players when you are trying to justify bizarre things like why wall of Iron is permanant but the iron can't be melted down and reworked into actually functional iron things. But it's iron enough to stop a dragon's breath. but why is wall of stone good enough to make a castle wall? Just because my friend just because.

 

[Deset Gled]

the biggest problem with 3.0 was...

I'm going to say at least 90% of this is player/DM issues that are system agnostic. The only thing I can completely get behind is that DMing is easier in 5e, but even then it's only easier if you assume you want to play the game that 5e wants to be.

Some of your assertions are simply factually wrong, like the idea that 3e has the most supplements. 2e has far more published material than 3e+3.5e combined, even ignoring compatible 1e stuff.

 

[nevin]

It may be that 2e has more supplements. I don't remember them being particularly problematic for most games Like a lot of the 3.0 supplements. Maybe I"m wrong but 2e seemed to be a lot more tightly monitored, controlled and had better quality stuff released. It wasn't perfect but all the crazy stuff I remember from those days came out of magazines not official supplements. I still stand by the flat out lack of quality control or even trying to set a standard for how well something should integrate into the existing ruleset as 3.0's biggest problem. My memory may not be perfect but that's how I remember those days and it's still what I see when I go through old 3rd edition stuff. Some of it is stellar work, some of it looks like two high school students scribbled it out at lunch for a different system.