Loved 3.0. Enjoyed 3.5 as well. I was driven away from the game by 4.0 and now play PF.

A side mention - 4th ed. helped give rise to the 1st ed. of Pathfinder. I have heard Pathfinder 1st ed. referred to as D&D 3.75.

I started playing in '82. One of the things I think needs mentioning is the quality of the original 1st ed. books. Many of the other books from other editions I've played have fallen apart in fairly short order; my old 1st ed. books are in better condition than the newer books, despite having been moved around repeatedly & used extensively. Also, I would argue that the 1st ed. Bard is the first Prestige Class.

You missed a bunch of editions including the best, B/X

3.5 or Die... Its THE BEST PERIOD 5e players will have their minds blown THAC0 was basically a quick math that reflects the 1rst Edition hit tables ( you looked up your score and cross referenced by AC) You can download 3.5 update material for the 3.0 books if you are stuck with a 3.0 books 3.5 just tweeked a bunch of stuff that was messed up in 3.0 I use both 3.0 and 3.5 most people do because some books never got a 3.5 update, just an update .pdf Most people who hate it are 5e players who never really played 3.5/3.0 3.0 - 3.5 barely changed actually Harm is a 6th level spell the opposite of heal... You need to be 11th level to cast that spell, you should be facing pretty tough creatures by then CR 11+ its hardly broken, remember that SR is a thing, also not going to work in any encounters with Undead (which is VERY common) 11th level is powerful look at other 6th level spells a lot of them are doozies 3.5 fixed a lot of the CR ratings for most encounters, traps and monsters Because something with a CR of 11 or 12 would have a good chance of ressisting it even without a saving throw, the cleric needs to make a melee touch attack to use it as well,

3rd was good the way 4th was good. And likely the way 5th was good. Which is to say they should have left the game alone at AD&D 1st edition and worked on making ROLE play the point and not ROLL play. Because D&D has become nothing but a math test. There is little point for the Intelligence stat, and Wisdom is also a why bother stat, and Charisma is are you serious? stat. D&D is only for the combat. Which make me think 4th was back stabbed to sell more books all over again. Anyone buying 5th 2024 is a willing sucker and fool. If you want quality settings and adventures, you want something other than D&D. Warhammer FRP any edition, Forbidden Lands, A group that actually like roleplaying. Roleplaying in D&D just ends up being called a pointless waste of time.

Why are people so uncomfortable to deal with negative values?

Guy the other day at work gave me his dad's old mtg collection for free it had two trop islands and two lion eyes I was shaking

I don’t know, they all suck for different reasons

I dunno if it's the best but it's my favorite. No learning curve for the players. D20 to attack and save. D6 for everything else

Ewwwhhh, Basic/ BX, BECMI, the evil mirror universe of D&D🫣

Great interview. I am running Rats in the Walls tonight. My groups first foray into Hyperborea.

Forgotten Realms has always been my favorite setting, in large part because the sheer depth of lore of a huge setting in which most of the published stories and characters come from one region, the north west, but they don't skimp on fleshing out the rest of the continent. this is important to me, and a lot of the folks i played with as i loved having all that to pull from for stories and such, but i didn't like playing in that part of the world. those stories and characters were already well covered, they are all doing their thing up there but there is so much more of Faerun to explore and it's all pretty well documented. this is a shortcoming i found in a lot of other settings, that only the pieces that were covered in novels and such really got focused on in the printed resources. ran multiple full campaigns that never once set foot west of the Anauroch or north of Amn and that was just fine. it let the players feel like their characters at higher levels really were a part of that world and rivaled the named characters from all that lore, but didn't have the problem of not being mentioned in any resource alongside those named characters, as they came from hundreds of miles away and their exploits hadn't quite reached that area yet. Forgotten Realms also is the only setting in ANY fantasy game that ever "fixed" the one major fantasy trope derived from Tolkein that i HATE, from Tolkein on in any setting it's always past the time of elves and dwarves, who's ancient kingdoms are now hollow shells of what they used to be and their entire civilizations are on the decline and that's that. it always felt like the magic of a setting was slowly dying away with that trope, but this edition of FR fixed that, they specifically cover the relatively sudden (by dwarven standards anyways) spurt of increased fertility and dwarven births that included the almost never before seen twins, and a lot of them, and the dwarves called this the thunder blessing and was seen as a resurgence of their dwindling culture. and the elves, most had abandoned their faerunian cities and taken off to evermeet, with small and dwindling populations left behind. this edition covers the growing change of heart of some of the elves on evermeet that maybe abandoning faerun was the wrong idea and that they should return and help fight the ever growing evils.

Where can I get one

What was the levels for the magic user in the original Dungeons & Dragons?

The GOAT

I love these covers

Wagon is not included in the box!

Well, this was an unboxing video I needed to see. I purchased a Dragonbane boxed set in March 2024 (I notice the date of your video is August 2023). But my set did not include a GMs screen nor the large print fabric map of the Misty Vale. All other items seem identical. Just wondering if your set was some sort of special issue or Kickstarter only deal? (Only difference was mine included a link to download a PDF version of the contents. 🤔) Great game and product regardless, and I LOVE the artwork. 👍🏻

3.0, I remember i ve played it through the neverwinter nights game, I ve killed a lot of dragons with the harm spell, Sooo fun.

Great review, I love this set and I'm working through mine at the moment. Made me laugh when we both did the hand size comparison with the side of the box in our reviews 😂

I'm so glad this setting is being preserved by someone.

I love the idea of this video, but it would have helped the video if more was shown of the rules and book contents, and as a personal opinion is ok, but it is hard to have counterarguments to that. You start mentioning something that I think it is elemental and it is how you can trace very clearly the evolution of D&D AND MOST RPGS at the time by looking at how D&D moved from the latter AD&D books, into 3, then into 3.5 and later into PF. This evolution was genre defining and it altered so much of how games rules were perceived at the time. In this you are right, this was a transition and a big one at that.

3.x had its problems, but it had answers for almost any question a DM could have and I think it's still unmatched when it comes to customizing characters. It also requires either/both a strong willed DM and/or collaborative players to avoid its excesses (super feats chains, op spells combo, etc), unless of course that's what you like. Luckily, my group met all the criteria, so that wasn't a problem. I played/DMed BECMI and 3.x and DMed 5e, finding pros and cons in all of them but still enjoying them all. If I had to choose my favourite edition, it would probably be 3.0, because it was my first long campaign as a DM (1st to 21st) and in the FR, the setting I love the most. Though I homebrewed it so much that in the end I bought the 3.5 manuals, because most of the changes were already included there 😁. But I left it nonetheless, because handling its huge amount of rules, bonus tables and spells was becoming increasingly difficult. 5e solved much of those problems, but created other ones. Currently, I'm running my FR adventures/campaigns with SWADE and the system looks great, expecially after some homebrew to make it a bit more D&Dish (Pathfinder for Savage Worlds helped quite a bit).

Very nice and cozy video! Thanks a lot!

It's a beautiful book that I think can also slot into a lot of other SF games just because of the idea density - Eclipse Phase / Alien / Expanse

Thanks so much for the detailed overview, I'm glad you like it! And yes, my goal from the beginning was to make not only a cool RPG, but a sci-fi toolbox, since there aren't that many around (or weren't, 3 years ago when I wrote this, now there are a few available). As for the spine text, that's the continental Europe way of doing it, haha (this was printed in Lithuania, the same printer that Modiphius uses, actually).

Yeah yeah, I get it, it was tongue in cheek... but THAC0 equating PhD level math??? It was 5th grade math! How old is the average 5th grader? Ten or eleven years old?

Anything is better than what WotC is producing nowadays

Great video, thanks for the review. I missed the KS but looking forward to picking it up.

I've warmed up to 4E after all these years. I'd rather play it than 5E these days lol but I've also soured on d20 in general as I've played game systems that are BETTER. 4E is strangely unique in a lot of ways and that makes it enjoyable.

A few rules clarifications. When rolling attributes I could have actually placed them in any order of my choosing but made one switch afterwards if I wasn’t happy. I misinterpreted the rules as they are written. Also, the rules suggest that the Mage’s chosen spellcasting skill (in this case, elementalism) is Intelligence based rather than Will.

Well, in the Swedish rules then you first roll one attribute and then decide where you want to place it. So for the first, 11, you can place it wherever you please. For 12 then you have 5 attributes to choose from. 14, then you have 4 attributes...all the way down to your last 9. Then you switch two scores. Assuming I rolled like yourself, I would have liked to be a thief, so I would place the first 11 on Int, then as I roll 12 on charisma (and hope for good scores to come), 14 on CON, 18 on AGILITY and then the two 9 on WIL and STRENGTH. After that I would switch charisma with strength in order to carry more equipment. Personally I use 4D6 and reroll all 1's (including tripple reroll if I reroll 1 again and again). The minimum sum of all abilities need to be at least 75 with CON being a minimum of 13 (else HP will be sooooo low and the character dies too easily). If the minimum score is still below 75 the player can reroll the whole ability score or choose a standard array of 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 & 8. I always let the players first roll and then choose ALL abilities and then place them where they like and also choose freely what profession they want to be. Good video!!!! keep em coming

Given that lowest roll seems to be 3 (1+1+1+1) (83% chance last one is better) and average would be 9 (3+3+3+3) (50%) and highest 18 (6+6+6+6) (0%) I am guessing those were quite amazing rolls x) ?

Nice video! You did the ability score swap correctly. The other thing to note is that typically you select (or roll for) your profession _before_ rolling attribute scores. Then, you assign your rolls to whichever attribute you want as you roll them (not after rolling all 6, like in the modern Ampersand game). I think that's a pretty fun method, and the swap rule allows you to fix it a little in case your rolls didn't turn out the way you hoped.

This book had a great things going, which was more likely to happen in 3.0 books than 3.5 ones: it was immersive. It made you love the world. Same thing for the ELH - it was bugged and many things didn't work but the tone just PUMPED you toward high level play and there was enough to have a lot of fun. The fact that this FR book had a trade network just shows the mentality and care of the designers back then.

My biggest issue with 3.0 is how many monsters, specifically outsiders, have too few HDs.

THAC0 just subtracted armor value from attack rolls instead of adding armor to target to hit number. Only difference there. The tables should never have been printed. It was first grade math if explained clearly enough, and was easily applied prior to the roll making exactly like todays attack rolls.

It had some hiccups from being a significant change from 2e in some ways, but wasn't a bad system. People were mad because they lost direct access to all of the character options the sprawling 2e catalogue presented and had a sorta mini revolution against it at a time the ownership of the IP had only recently left TSR and caused a panic with the new ownership. They had planned to translate most of the 2e stuff but got scared into just working on an updated base edition.

Fantastic video, thanks for the gift!

Love that book. So glad that I have it !

I've played nearly every version of D&D and to this day I would say that in order of preference for me it would be 4e > BECMI/RC > 2e > 5e > BX > 3e/3.5 > 1e > Basic

I think it looks really great man! Terrain is really fun to do when you're feeling demotivated with the hobby. Its not as high-stakes as model painting. Your mistakes usually make some great "creative choices" with each piece a lot more than mini painting even though some mistakes with my mini assembly and painting have turned into interesting ideas later on in the process. My recommendation for everyone is to let the mistakes happen if its not too catastrophic lol. You never know what that mistake can turn into. Also when it comes to terrain making I use a mixture of Mod Podge and cheap black acrylic paint almost like a primer. After the plaster step cover the entire piece with that stuff and then you are free to paint it normally. It works wonders and sometimes I put some sand in the mixture to create more texture.

Sweet video sir just subbed :)

I have the entire collection from this book and was an old-school avid ever request player in the MMO days. I played it for about six years. The role-play game I ran a year and a half long campaign for which I actually prefer it to regular 3.0 and 3.5 There are parts of it that are obviously a little bit more rules crunchy, but it adds so much flavor to it. It’s crazy. Some of the arguments that people had when the book 1st came out are the first players handbook was that the magic users did not have utilities, spells available in normal dungeons and dragons However, they did put out a book called Al Kabor’s Arcana, which gave the DND spells man points and categorize them into the different casting classes that could cast them. Some of them had a few slight modifications, but overall stayed the same. Now, one of the crunchy aspects of it that some people loved, and some people hated the weapon speed system in the game. You almost had to keep a separate page for a combat log for different weapon speeds for your character. Because of the way the haste system , this is where some of the people said it became too much I would play it over fifth edition any day. And I absolutely love the setting. Norrath holds a special place in my heart, and is probably one of my favorite classic fantasy settings. I’m actually gearing up to run a savage world riffs game. But seeing this video makes me want to pull out my books I haven’t played it in years.

What I remember most about this edition was the cool character builder CD that came in the back of the player's handbook.

3e was fantastic when released. It was countless leagues better than 2e, which laden with far worse than “clunky” mechanics throughout, to put it mildly. I do prefer 5e today because it’s streamlined mechanics require less from me to prep as a DM. But back in my late teens and early 20s when I had much more free time, I loved spending hours crafting NPCs, antagonists and allies (especially as the party approached higher levels and the Epic Level Handbook was released).

To answer your title, yes it does. Back in the days, I run a 3.x campaign with only this manual and Magic of Faerun as manuals and I had everything I could need. Other FR 3.x manuals came after them, but those two were the basics and I'm including MoF mostly for its incredible spell list. In fact, I took for granted that, when 5e came out, all its background material would have been of this same quality, so much that I sold my FR 3.x manuals and waited for the newcomers. As you can imagine, I was more than pissed off when the only thing we got was SCAG, so I bought them back, chose to set my campaign in my own timeline (end of 3e era, no Spellplague occurring but my own world not-so-shacking event) and I learned the valuable lesson of not taking anything for granted by WotC (or any other publishing company you may have trusted in the past, for what matters). Needless to say, this manual proved again to be very useful, for example providing me with all the info I needed to run some adventures in Calimshan and Thay, places that 5e seemed to forget. I now run my adventures and campaigns using Savage Worlds as a system (I grew increasingly frustrated by 5e mechanics as well), but always in the Realms and always using this manual as the cornerstone of my background material (taking of course into consideration the changes occurred in my own timeline). The only thing I generally don't use is its wonderful looking map, because the scale is wrong when compared to the original material (1e/2e), with Faerun getting squeezed to the point where the Moonshae Isles are below Baldur's Gate than above it. But apart from this thing, this is the best FR lore product I've seen so far.

If you don't want to be harmed, then use negative energy plane protection LOL!

We've all been there brother. That piece of styrene would have been such a waste. Awesome shape.