wingsandsword
Legend
Twenty years ago this month, the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, 3rd Edition, was released.
I thought this might be a good time to remember the release of 3e and talk about the release and the changes it brought to gaming.
The release was the focus of this website when it was originally founded as a 3rd Edition news and rumors page.
First, for the first time, D&D had a single coherent system. Before that, it was simply an ad-hoc combination of rules and subsystems. You'd roll low on a d20 for one thing, but high for another thing. There was very little consistency.
Second: This gave us the OGL and the SRD's. This was an immense breakthrough for several reasons. For those who played D&D in the 1990's while TSR owned the game, we could remember when TSR was jokingly said to mean "They Sue Regularly". They were openly hostile to fans trying to publish their own D&D materials online. Fans (or their web hosts) would get Cease and Desist letters for simply hosting a page about their homebrew campaign setting, or posting their own spells, character classes, monsters and such. Now WotC was bringing a completely different mindset to fan-created material.
They also opened the door wide-open to third parties making games comparable with, or derived from, D&D. No longer did every game company that had an idea for a setting, or bought a license for a property, have to kludge together a mediocre attempt at a game system to go with their setting idea. . .a popular and decently written system was now available to everyone for free. WotC would even make more D&D-derived games in the coming months and years, like their d20-based editions of Star Wars (the first version of which came out a few months after 3e, in November 2000), or d20 Modern, their D&D compatible game for modern-day (and sci-fi) adventuring.
This even put the basic "DNA" of D&D into the open in perpetuity. There was a time in the late 1990's, shortly before WotC bought TSR, when it seemed D&D might vanish forever, that the company that made it might just go out of business and the game would permanently go out of print. The OGL and the SRD's meant that 3rd edition D&D could live on and be reprinted (albeit without the name "Dungeons and Dragons" and a few "product identity" creatures like Illithid) in perpetuity no matter what happened to the company that made it. If someone wanted to reprint the entire 3e core rules today, with just those few "product identity" elements (a few D&D specific monsters and the wizard names in some spell names) removed, they could. That very idea was unthinkable beforehand.
Third: It revitalized D&D in a way that hadn't been seen in almost 20 years. While D&D had a surge of popularity in the early 80's, that popularity faded over time, and throughout the 90's, many gamers drifted from D&D to other games. 2nd Edition AD&D looked painfully archaic compared to games published only a few years later, and there was a time in the 90's when White Wolf was the biggest name in RPG's, not D&D. By 2000, D&D seemed positively outdated compared to most other games on the market. I know most gaming groups I played with at the time had to heavily house rule AD&D 2e to even make it anything they wanted to play. However, D&D 3e got people that hadn't played D&D in many years to come back, it got groups that had skipped the change to 2nd edition to adopt 3rd, it created a huge resurgence of interest in D&D.
Fourth: Demons, Devils, Assassins, Barbarians, Half-Orcs, and Monks were all back in the core rules. AD&D 2nd edition had sanitized many things that TSR had feared would offend "moral guardians", like assassins, demons & devils, or half-orcs. They removed Barbarians from the core rules as well, saying it was redundant compared to the fighter, and they removed the Monk, specifically saying it should be confined to the realm of "Oriental Adventures" supplements. 3e celebrated the classes and lore of the 1e era in that sense and introduced a new "Dungeonpunk" aesthetic, breaking away from a trend in 2e's of making D&D into "Medieval Western Europe with Magic", by explicitly removing elements both of fantasy, and non-western cultures from the game. They also removed many arbitrary restrictions on character creation. Paladins no longer required a 17+ Charisma, and could be races other than Human. Rangers could be alignments other than Good. Druids didn't have to be just True Neutral anymore. Humans could multi-class freely now. Any multiclass combination was allowed (alignment restrictions permitting).
What are your memories, experiences, and thoughts on the 20th anniversary of D&D 3e?
I thought this might be a good time to remember the release of 3e and talk about the release and the changes it brought to gaming.
The release was the focus of this website when it was originally founded as a 3rd Edition news and rumors page.
First, for the first time, D&D had a single coherent system. Before that, it was simply an ad-hoc combination of rules and subsystems. You'd roll low on a d20 for one thing, but high for another thing. There was very little consistency.
Second: This gave us the OGL and the SRD's. This was an immense breakthrough for several reasons. For those who played D&D in the 1990's while TSR owned the game, we could remember when TSR was jokingly said to mean "They Sue Regularly". They were openly hostile to fans trying to publish their own D&D materials online. Fans (or their web hosts) would get Cease and Desist letters for simply hosting a page about their homebrew campaign setting, or posting their own spells, character classes, monsters and such. Now WotC was bringing a completely different mindset to fan-created material.
They also opened the door wide-open to third parties making games comparable with, or derived from, D&D. No longer did every game company that had an idea for a setting, or bought a license for a property, have to kludge together a mediocre attempt at a game system to go with their setting idea. . .a popular and decently written system was now available to everyone for free. WotC would even make more D&D-derived games in the coming months and years, like their d20-based editions of Star Wars (the first version of which came out a few months after 3e, in November 2000), or d20 Modern, their D&D compatible game for modern-day (and sci-fi) adventuring.
This even put the basic "DNA" of D&D into the open in perpetuity. There was a time in the late 1990's, shortly before WotC bought TSR, when it seemed D&D might vanish forever, that the company that made it might just go out of business and the game would permanently go out of print. The OGL and the SRD's meant that 3rd edition D&D could live on and be reprinted (albeit without the name "Dungeons and Dragons" and a few "product identity" creatures like Illithid) in perpetuity no matter what happened to the company that made it. If someone wanted to reprint the entire 3e core rules today, with just those few "product identity" elements (a few D&D specific monsters and the wizard names in some spell names) removed, they could. That very idea was unthinkable beforehand.
Third: It revitalized D&D in a way that hadn't been seen in almost 20 years. While D&D had a surge of popularity in the early 80's, that popularity faded over time, and throughout the 90's, many gamers drifted from D&D to other games. 2nd Edition AD&D looked painfully archaic compared to games published only a few years later, and there was a time in the 90's when White Wolf was the biggest name in RPG's, not D&D. By 2000, D&D seemed positively outdated compared to most other games on the market. I know most gaming groups I played with at the time had to heavily house rule AD&D 2e to even make it anything they wanted to play. However, D&D 3e got people that hadn't played D&D in many years to come back, it got groups that had skipped the change to 2nd edition to adopt 3rd, it created a huge resurgence of interest in D&D.
Fourth: Demons, Devils, Assassins, Barbarians, Half-Orcs, and Monks were all back in the core rules. AD&D 2nd edition had sanitized many things that TSR had feared would offend "moral guardians", like assassins, demons & devils, or half-orcs. They removed Barbarians from the core rules as well, saying it was redundant compared to the fighter, and they removed the Monk, specifically saying it should be confined to the realm of "Oriental Adventures" supplements. 3e celebrated the classes and lore of the 1e era in that sense and introduced a new "Dungeonpunk" aesthetic, breaking away from a trend in 2e's of making D&D into "Medieval Western Europe with Magic", by explicitly removing elements both of fantasy, and non-western cultures from the game. They also removed many arbitrary restrictions on character creation. Paladins no longer required a 17+ Charisma, and could be races other than Human. Rangers could be alignments other than Good. Druids didn't have to be just True Neutral anymore. Humans could multi-class freely now. Any multiclass combination was allowed (alignment restrictions permitting).
What are your memories, experiences, and thoughts on the 20th anniversary of D&D 3e?
