D&D 3E/3.5 The 20th Anniversary of 3rd Edition D&D

[ccs]

When 3e launched I was playing mostly minis games,, playing RPGs only at GenCons.
The group from the high school/early 90s was almost a decade dispersed.
The group id been playing rpgs (mostly WW stuff) & MTG with since about 92 was fading into smaller & smaller factions.

I played a few 3e games at GC that year & picked up the phb/mm/dog - even though I wasn't overly impressed by what I'd just played (to this day I still prefer 1e) & wasn't really expecting to play it other than at cons.
Reading it in depth once home? I still wasnt overly impressed. I dont much like the skill, feat, MC, or magic creation/buying systems. Some of these more than others...

The true standout? The OGL. I listened to a talk on this & everyone was all so excited. Sitting in the back my 1st thought was "WOW, thats going to bite them in the ass."
Flash forward to 2008/'09....

And my pattern of minis & eventually board gaming at {home} & only playing D&D (any edition) at Gen Con continued until the early fall of 2006.
I ignored 3 & 3.5 purchase wise as I only dealt with them about 8-12 hrs/year.

Early fall of 2006 - I return to D&D
A friend from my early days (who I was playing some minis games with), his brother & a friend decided to get a D&D going. I got a call asking if I'd like to play.
Even though it was 3.5 I said "sure. Why not?" And bought a 3.5 PHB.
Late fall of 2006 - a couple of friends from college/90s open a hobby shop. And I find myself in another 3.5 game.
By summer of 2007 the original 3.5 DM had to drop out for a while (family ***). Someone had to become the DM.... And so I inherited a 3.5 DMG. MM, & a copy of Red Hand Of Doom.
(I'm still not a fan of 3x skills, MC etc...)

2008/'09 arrives. As does 4e & Pathfinder. As well as my prediction of that OGL biting WoTC in the ass.
Still playing in a 3.5 game at this point. Still DMing in a rotation.
I gave 4e a try. I ran a year long game 2008 - '09. I played in a 4e game 2009-2010. 4e is not for me.
Meanwhile? Went with Pathfinder.

Ah Pathfinder....
A bit better than 3x. I dont hate it, but all the bits im not really a fan of are still here. They've done a good job with their APs though. And the people im playing with really like it. So...
I've been playing in & DMing PF since its launch.

And now? Its off to play in my weekly Sunday PF game.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

20 years damn. We played 3E like 2E. At first.

In April 2001 I discovered forums. Started to shift more towards the form meta I suppose.

Game stopped resembling 2E with bells and whistles.

Same here. In fact, we're in love with the game for as long as we played it as d20 system AD&D. Once we realized 3e had its own style and adopted it, the game went down the hill quickly, but it took us some time to understand what was wrong.

Met my wife a few months later.

I had to wait 11 more years to meet mine! xD

 

[Richards]

If something came up in the game and they were interested in Arcane Archer, oh, too bad, you didn't take these skills two levels ago.

That exact situation came up in one of my 3.5 campaigns: we had a teenage player discover the arcane archer prestige class and suddenly he wanted his ranger/cleric to become an arcane archer. So we had him take sorcerer levels until he qualified on that front, and then I had him discover a magic longbow infused with the spirit of a famed arcane archer, who "loaned" the PC the needed feats until he was of high enough level to take them himself. Problem solved.

Johnathan

 

[wingsandsword]

20 years damn. We played 3E like 2E. At first.

In April 2001 I discovered forums. Started to shift more towards the form meta I suppose.

Game stopped resembling 2E with bells and whistles.

I think this is why me and my gaming group never burned out on 3.x and still play it, because we mostly started with 1e or 2e and went straight to 3e from those editions.

Nobody else in the group reads forums, and I don't care about "builds" or character optimization or other "forum meta".

If you play 3e or 3.5e with the same general mentality as 1e and 2e, it holds up really, really well. When you try to embrace the metagame concepts espoused in online forums, the game comes apart, because it was never designed with that mentality in mind.

I've had players play characters that would probably make forum people scream, like a Monk with the Vow of Poverty feat from BoED. . .and it worked fine, because the player wasn't trying to powergame it (and I as the DM wasn't trying to trip her up on technicalities of the vow) and it was her concept to play a monk that eschewed material wealth. . .but that ran into the problem that the game has a heavy presumption of magic items. . .so I introduced her to that feat, and it worked well from there.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I don't miss 3E at all. But it is the edition that introduced me to D&D, so it'll always have an important place in my heart.

Others have already said so much about it, the only thing that I'll add is that I miss the cover art of the 3rd edition. Having art that suggested that the books themselves were part of the game's diegetic felt so cool. The chains, the locks, the eye on the monster manual. I also love the gorgeous art that we get now, but they lend to very different feelings.