D&D 3.x Seeking Old Design Diaries for D&D 3.0

[VHawkwinter]

I'm looking for old Design Diaries regarding the choices they made for D&D 3.0, in revising AD&D. I found a few old RPG Hour Chat log word documents on the Wayback Machine, but there were a lot more interviews I remember from back in the day. I'm particularly interested in the ones where they talked about why they made the changes they did for Cleric and Druid and Wizard. I remember reading them waaaaaaay waaaaay back. Google isn't seeming to point me in the right direction. Does anybody remember /where/ I would have read these things back in the day? Would it have been in some old issue of Dragon or Dungeon? Should I be doing more digging through the wayback machine looking for archivals of ancient webpages?

Thanks.

 

[JEB]

I'm looking for old Design Diaries regarding the choices they made for D&D 3.0, in revising AD&D. I found a few old RPG Hour Chat log word documents on the Wayback Machine, but there were a lot more interviews I remember from back in the day. I'm particularly interested in the ones where they talked about why they made the changes they did for Cleric and Druid and Wizard. I remember reading them waaaaaaay waaaaay back. Google isn't seeming to point me in the right direction. Does anybody remember /where/ I would have read these things back in the day? Would it have been in some old issue of Dragon or Dungeon? Should I be doing more digging through the wayback machine looking for archivals of ancient webpages?

Thanks.

Suspect looking at Wayback Machine archives of the D&D website circa 2000 would be your best bet.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Also, Eric Noah's website (via Wayback) would probably be a very good source for references.

 

[Deset Gled]

Sean K Reynolds had a website back in the early days of 3.0. http://www.seankreynolds.com It's now gone, and is probably searchable with the Wayback machine. He would occasionally posts things about his design opinions; I thought most of them were pretty good (at the time). I doubt it will have the interviews you're looking for, but it may be helpful.

Dragon #275 had an article about feat design.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Suspect looking at Wayback Machine archives of the D&D website circa 2000 would be your best bet.

Wizards of the Coast - Dungeons & Dragons

Wizards of the Coast - Dungeons & Dragons

web.archive.org

None of the articles I'm looking for seem to be there, sadly. Now I'm wondering where I read them. Maybe it was in Dragon. I think they were interviews with Monte Cook or Jonathan Tweet, or Skip Williams, or one of the other people who worked on the 3.0 PHB.

I remember a specific talking point being that nobody wanted to play a Cleric, because it wasn't fun playing the healer, and so they had to add a bunch of other stuff on to cleric to try to make them palatable.

Sean K Reynolds had a website back in the early days of 3.0. AD Piston Ring Company | Auto Diesel Piston Rings, Seals It's now gone, and is probably searchable with the Wayback machine. He would occasionally posts things about his design opinions; I thought most of them were pretty good (at the time). I doubt it will have the interviews you're looking for, but it may be helpful.

Dragon #275 had an article about feat design.

He has some good ones on there as well from the early 2000s. I'll make sure to collect his, but the ones in particular about the class design that I really want to reread, I don't think were by him.

Also, Eric Noah's website (via Wayback) would probably be a very good source for references.

I will have to hunt for a link to start from for that. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Heh. Probably not what you're looking for, but this site has some articles by Jonathan Tweet about the Road to 3e. You can find it towrds the bottom of the Columns menu.

 

[Rabulias]

Nevermind.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Heh. Probably not what you're looking for, but this site has some articles by Jonathan Tweet about the Road to 3e. You can find it towrds the bottom of the Columns menu.

Much appreciated. Not what I was looking for, but an interesting retrospective from the devs of the system.

D&D 3E/3.5 - Jonathan Tweet: Third Edition and Per-Day Spells
"At that point, designers were still in simulation mode, and encounters that were “per-encounter” by fiat seemed too artificial."
Heh. "Simulation mode" is something I still value in TTRPGs as a player and DM some ~25 years later. Tossing it in the bin for balance purposes just leaves a foul taste in my mouth, even if you hit those balance aims. But, I admit that it makes balance more difficult to attain.

Good read, though not the articles I was looking for.

 

[howandwhy99]

At a recent convention Peter Atkinson and Ed Stark spoke about The Making of 3rd Edition D&D. An hour long seminar.

Six Sides of Gaming recorded this for Youtube but it isn't uploaded yet. From Gamehole Con.

My notes say,

They were very afraid at first of invalidating 2e. The first instinct was to do something like 2.5 (the Option books). More of a unification of all rules in 2e, including the 2.5 version in 1996.

• [This would have been quite large]
• Peter did not like a 2.5 edition initially. He wanted a larger revision.
• Then they asked, "What are the sacred cows?"
• [My take is they wanted to make extensive changes to the game from the start and largely saw 1e and 2e as similar games]

All 3 designers took a shot at complete first drafts. They all came back with completely different games. So Jonathan Tweet was brought in as a Lead Designer to coordinate design.
- The talk validated how this change really sped up design and was appreciated by all.

A Skill System was added, initially one quite similar to the one in 5e. [Much smaller than 3e]

• They didn't care that 3e was too complicated at the time.
• They realized too late it was too hard for a simple sheet and pencil game. Not the spreadsheet which Peter had been using to play 3e during design.

100 RPGA Players who took tests to playtest the game. They later advocated and defended WotC on early forums before designers had even published 3e.

Peter didn't remember the tagline "back to the dungeon" for 3e during Q&A [It's practically 25 years]
- [Many had taken this not as adcopy but a leading design principle]

 

[earthsea_wizard]

At a recent convention Peter Atkinson and Ed Stark spoke about The Making of 3rd Edition D&D. An hour long seminar.

Six Sides of Gaming recorded this for Youtube but it isn't uploaded yet. From Gamehole Con.

My notes say,

They were very afraid at first of invalidating 2e. The first instinct was to do something like 2.5 (the Option books). More of a unification of all rules in 2e, including the 2.5 version in 1996.

• [This would have been quite large]
• Peter did not like a 2.5 edition initially. He wanted a larger revision.
• Then they asked, "What are the sacred cows?"
• [My take is they wanted to make extensive changes to the game from the start and largely saw 1e and 2e as similar games]

All 3 designers took a shot at complete first drafts. They all came back with completely different games. So Jonathan Tweet was brought in as a Lead Designer to coordinate design.
- The talk validated how this change really sped up design and was appreciated by all.

A Skill System was added, initially one quite similar to the one in 5e. [Much smaller than 3e]

• They didn't care that 3e was too complicated at the time.
• They realized too late it was too hard for a simple sheet and pencil game. Not the spreadsheet which Peter had been using to play 3e during design.

100 RPGA Players who took tests to playtest the game. They later advocated and defended WotC on early forums before designers had even published 3e.

Peter didn't remember the tagline "back to the dungeon" for 3e during Q&A [It's practically 25 years]
- [Many had taken this not as adcopy but a leading design principle]

Is this available anywhere?