I want know how many of you are still playing in 3e games (on either side of the DM screen). More importantly, I want to know what source materials are being used in those games.
So if you are playing 3e, tell me how often, as a player or a DM, and what source materials you are using, and any other information that is pertinent to your game please.
I am both playing and DMing 3rd Edition games, and will for the forseeable future. My last face-to-face group dissolved over a year ago due to work schedule changes and stuff, but I'm still running and playing 3E D&D over the internet on OpenRPG, a virtual tabletop program, and on EN World's play-by-post forums. If I could just find some consistent players again that aren't too far from my corner of Phoenix/Glendale, I'd try to form a new face-to-face group for D&D and stuff.
For now, I'm DMing the For More Than Glory campaign (3.5, The 13 Kingdoms, not an official D&D setting but one available on the Internet), which is around level 14 now and started at 1st-level. I'm not the regular DM for FMTG, but it's been round-robin for the past few years since the original DM had to go on hiatus. This campaign uses the 3.5 core rules and the T13K Setting Guide PDF (free), but other material is used when approved by whoever's DM at the time (for now, we have a few Draconomicon feats in use by the half-dragon ranger/Ceomyrian Pathfinder (renamed Horizon Walker), and I don't think there's any other non-core, non-T13K materials in use there). Several PCs have come and gone in FMTG, and some of the earlier PCs used other non-core materials. FMTG started before 3.5, and converted around the time the PCs reached level 3 under the original DM (had it been my own campaign, I would've kept it using 3.0....).
I'm also DMing a "non-canon" T13K 3.5 D&D game called Fall of the 14th Kingdom, taking place in an alternate/possible past and on a different continent that isn't part of the established T13K setting. This game is smaller and lower-level, since it's recent, PCs between 4th and 5th level now. I'm allowing most 3.x D&D materials in this game, but only a little of that has actually seen use so far. We've have one soulknife, one telepath psion, one dragon shaman, a crusader, and nothing else non-core so far in the party, but it's still early in the campaign so that may change if we get any more players in that game. The current party is the dragon shaman, the crusader, a sorcerer, and a fighter. Nothing 3rd-party has been used in this campaign yet, but I think I'm one of the only folks in the group that has any 3rd-party material.
I'm playing in another T13K 3.5 D&D game, called Perils of Thunder Island, in which I am now playing a mud dwarf sorcerer 5 (mud dwarves are a T13K race that could be likened to gully dwarves from Dragonlance/Krynn). My human evoker-wizard got impaled and trampled by dinosaurs after the group's melee and summoner types totally failed to even slightly delay the onrush of dinosaurs in one battle (actually most of the battles, really, but my wizard narrowly survived the first time a dinosaur started eating him in his bedroll)..... That game's much like the first in materials allowed, just core rules, T13K Setting Guide PDF, and what little the DM of that game has that he's willing to allow if anyone asks.
I'm also DMing a PbP here, A Hard Time In Harrowdale (FR 3.5), that is recent and just about to reach 2nd-level. I'm allowing a few materials in that game, from the core rules to the PHB II to the few FR 3.x materials I have, and a few bits and pieces outside of that material. The party's bard has a non-core feat, the wizard has an FRCS feat if I recall, and the party has a duskblade PC, but nothing else non-core has been used so far (aside from me throwing Bonebats at the PCs early on, from Monsters of Faerun).
I'm playing in several other PbPs of 3.5 D&D, and one Pathfinder Beta PbP. They're all pretty stingy in the area of allowed materials, though I can understand that some DMs just don't have many books. I'm only barely starting to play a 1st-level crusader in one slow PbP and a 1st-level duskblade in another, and have been playing a halfling rogue/swordsage for about a year in another PbP, but that's the only non-core stuff I've been able to use so far.
At some point soon, when I can manage to finish my prep-work, I'll be starting up two more 3.x PbPs of my own, one based on Final Fantasy and allowing various non-core stuff including EQd20 and Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved and other 3PP stuff, as well as official D&D materials. The other is also going to be a mixed-material campaign, loosely based in Oerth/The World of Greyhawk (in that I'm mashing Rokugan, Dor-Erthenos, and other places onto Oerth's continents). At some point in the future I'll run other PbPs using 3.0 D&D rules instead and most likely using my own homebrew settings (I only own a few materials for published settings).
