How much use did you get from D&D 3.0e?

[AlphaOmega]

How much use you ask... I'd like to think quite a bit. Let's do some super-advanced math (note this math is not all that super nor advanced) and see if that statement holds water.

Campaigns I've DMed
1st to 5th - ended because I moved cross-country
3rd to 4th - same reason as above
1st to 6th - current campaign

Campaigns I've played In
1st to 9th - ongoing but nearing an end
1st to 3rd - on hold

So that's 25 levels of Dnd. But if you throw in Spycraft (since it is d20) I'd have at least 10 more levels of that. Not as much as I first thought. I'd better get busy and play more often.

 

[MerricB]

Hmm...

One campaign from 1st to 14th level.
One campaign from 1st to 7th level.
One campaign (current) from 1st to 8th level.
One campaign (current) from 1st to 4th level.

All in all, I've DMed about 200 sessions of 3E. I think I've got my money's worth out of it.

I've played in only 4 sessions.

All the campaigns have been linked, in the same World of Greyhawk setting.

Cheers!

 

[Psion]

I ran

1 game from 1st-6th or so.

1 game from 1st-20th.

1 game from 1st-5th (current)

A few other aborted attempts and one-offs.

 

[maggot]

One game from 1st level to 13th (about 65 sessions)
One game from 3rd level to 12th (again about 65 sessions)
One game from 3rd level to 4th (about 5 sessions)

So that is 135 games in 3 years. I bought the 3E books for 60 bucks, that's under 50 cents a sessions.

And we are still going.

 

[HellHound]

1st through 16th
1st through 18th
1st through 4th
1st through 9th
4th through 6th

I got plenty of use out of those books. And they are falling appart on me so I'm looking forward to my new ones.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Campaigns:
1st-23rd
1st-7th
1st-6th
1st-8th
And 2 10th level 1 shot adventures.
So about 47-50 levels.

My PHB has come out of is binding and thats always a good way of measuring how useful a book was. So I'd say I've got my moneys worth (proably not though from some of the supplements I've bought).

 

[Harlock]

1st to 20th
1st to 14th (current, not converting)
several aborted attempts at other campaigns
a couple of aborted IRC games.

Considering what I've spent on 3e books, which sits somewhere around $2200 US at this point if I had to guess, versus how much time I've spent reading them, developing games, drawing maps, rolling PCs, NPCs, magic items, conversed on messageboards, listened to Mortality Radio, talking with friends at session, playing a session and chatting after a session and talked in IRC channels, I'd say it costs me maybe pennies per hour. Yup, just did some math and it's roughly like 25 cents an hour considering 8 hours a day of at least dreaming or thinking about D&D along with reading, playing etc. Golly darn! That's one of the cheapest addictions I can think of. Hell, a pack of smokes costs 3 bucks a day I think these days... GAME ON!

EDIT: My math sucks and to edit it took the page like 10 minutes to reload... =/

 

[Christian Walker]

WotC had a good idea from their player survey that capaigns usually last 1-1.5 years, and thus decided to design 3.0e so that it's possible to reach level 20 in that time.

Man, this has always irritated me. Reaching 20th level has NEVER been the goal of my campaigns, but thanks to 3e, I've had to do a lot of tinkering to undo that design component.


On a more positive point, 3.0 did fuel 19 issues of Scrollworks, so hey, cool!

 

[Aitch Eye]

Our long time DM was the first to find out about the new edition, got excited from what he heard, and decided to convert our 17 year 1e campaign right after he saw the PHB. It's a 20 year 1e campaign now, but hopefully it will never get to drink.

My wife did start a game a couple years ago. Most of the characters have just reached 2nd level. Mine's 51 points short, and since I'm playing an apprentice level character, I may never actually get to play a character with a full class level under 3e.

But we'll get our money out of them because it's hard to actually learn to play from the SRD, but otherwise it works fine, so we don't actually need to buy the new books. And if I hadn't got the books, I wouln't have been hanging around here; which has been nice for me, and our version of 3.5 will be a lot stronger and better suited to the group because of it.

 

[EricNoah]

I myself managed to get good milage out of my 3.0 stuff -- I DM'd one campaign and played in two others almost the entire 3 years. So between playing and prepping I spent a lot of time with my books.

However... I started thinking about this from the point of view of a few of my players. These are guys who only played in my campaign and did little or no gaming outside of that. We met, on average, 1 time per month to play a 4-5 hour session. I went through and counted, actually, and it is going to be our 35th session next time we play. So let's say 35 sessions x 5 hours = 180 hours. Which divided by 24 is 7.5 days.

That's not a lot of time. I can totally understand why my players don't want to go through the hassle of stepping up to 3.5 completely. It's taken them seven and a half days (spread out over 3 years) to get used to playing 3.0. I don't think they relish another 3 years (or 2 or even 1) of second-guessing each rule, looking everything up again. And I don't think it's about the money; heck, I'd see printouts of SRD sections as being a lot less convenient than a nice bound book with the rules all in it.

Fortunately, with the way open gaming and the SRD work, we can decide to make a transition in very small steps. A spell here and there, introducing a character from a revised core class now and then, and see how it goes. It will be relatively easy for us to go back if something isn't working out, though the more we go forward to 3.5 rules the more likely at some point that we'll end up feeling the need (convenience-wise) to just go whole-hog 3.5. But there's no pressure. We can take this one step at a time.