3e Memories

3e is my favorite edition of D&D, but I wonder how much of that is due simply to familiarity. Before ever playing an actual D&D game, I had read my dad's collection of books (the six OD&D books, the Holmes blue box, and the three AD&D rulebooks) but I did not realize quite how they fit together (I remember trying to create a character in the blue book and looking up the rules for the classes in the PHB).

I really started playing earnestly with 2e in junior high. When 3e was announced, I jumped on the bandwagon and started buying the books and running games with my brother immediately. I knew the rules by heart, memorized the formulas that undergird each table and price (I was famous in my gaming group for knowing the prices of just about every magic item off the top of my head, mostly thanks to reversing the math on them). I spent hours on Monte Cook's message boards, creating homebrew content, answering rules questions, and just absorbing everything. I remember how proud I felt when Derek Dyer, a poster who I felt knew the rules better than just about anyone, chose me as a judge for a prestige class contest because he trusted my judgement of game balance.

The culmination of all that was the ability to run the game without really looking at the rules. Not only did I know the rules, I knew the reason behind the rules and the effects of changing the rules. I remember running the Red Hand of Doom and changing enemies on the fly to make the game more fun (my party technically killed the black dragon on like turn 2 but I managed to stretch the fight out for a full session and everyone loved it).

When 4e came out, I sought to dive into it as well. I bought the PHB at midnight the day it came out and played Living Forgotten Realms for months at the local store (easily racking up hundreds of hours of time playing or running the game). I absolutely fell in love with the Warlord class and wished that 3e had had something like it (it had the Marshal from the Miniatures Handbook, which I also loved). However, 4e was a very different game and I did not like it as much as 3e. The rules were very explicit, the math very obvious. But it just never clicked for me as D&D (I loved it as a tactical miniatures wargame, though).

Then I went to pharmacy school and stopped playing 4e. I still popped into Pathfinder games for years, playing somewhat regularly at game stores or with a new group. Given Pathfinder's pedigree, it kept my 3e knowledge fresh.

5e came out and I tried once again to get into it. I participated in the playtesting of D&D Next, I bought the starter set the day it came out, and then the rulebooks as they released. I liked the 3e aspects that returned and felt the 4e bits they kept were the good ones (including the warlord power for the fighter class). But I never had enough time to play and ruminate like I did in high school with 3e and, of course, I had over a decade of further experience with 3e-style rules.

So now I find myself nostalgic for my old 3e world, Trokair, and the many bits of 3e that explicitly made their way into its very DNA. This post was supposed to be a list of potential houserules for 3e to address problems with the system but then it turned into this.