In Search Of... Castle Greyhawk

 I started this post once before, but I am returning to it now. Especially now with so much new Castle Greyhawk material to be had.  I also wanted to do another of my In Search Of... feature.

In Search Of... Castle Greyhawk

Castle Greyhawk has been a quasi-mythical dungeon. It did exist, in one form or another, and was part of Gary Gygax's own D&D campaign. It was rumored to be anywhere between 13 levels, to 70 to 100s of levels. It was merged with Rob Kuntz's "El Raja Key" at some point and made even larger. The full Castle Greyhawk had always been promised to us but only partially delivered. I'll have some links below so you can read more on all of these topics.

The Published Castles Greyhawk

Despite never getting a full and proper publication, many Castles Greyhawk have existed over the years. Some official, others...well, less so, but all fit the spirit of the idea of Castle Greyhawk. I will cover them below with my own experiences.

WG7 Castle Greyhawk

I remember being quite excited about this one. The *real* Castle Greyhawk. Finally! Well...that is not the case, really. I like humor in my games, but this was not a great adventure nor a particularly good "joke" one. There are some good bits here. I loved the idea of multiple levels. I loved the idea of a different author/designer taking on each one. Some of the levels were also fun send-ups of my early D&D tropes like "The Temple of Really Bad Dead Things." Sadly, it all never really worked.

Getting different designers to cover each level was fun in theory. They never connected at all. Some were even so bad that I had my players bypass them altogether. For example, when they got to Level 8, I put a "handwritten" sign (in ketchup, no less) up outside the entryway saying, "Food fight in progress, please proceed to Level 9."  Eventually, the whole thing collapsed under the weight of its own silliness. 

There are some good ideas here. There are some good hooks, and I like the introduction and the first level. Though I do remember some awkwardness in the transitions between levels. One I recall was Level 10, which assumed that you had gone all the way back up to Level 1. Seemed to run counter to the stated reality of the adventure. The maps are good, the art, for the most part, is fun, and again, pulling it all apart to make a bunch of unrelated mini-adventures might be the way to go.

However, I can't help but think that there was a little bit of vindictiveness in having such a high-profile and "bad" adventure carry the name Castle Greyhawk come out in the days after Gary Gygax had been let go.  Given that the previous WG7 was supposed to have been a high-level adventure from Gygax called Shadowlands. There is a lot of evidence against this, but thinking back to 1988 and knowing that Gary had been booted. Plus, at the time, I was connecting with other gamers from all over the state, and we shared our pre-Internet opinions. Well, conclusions, truthful or erroneous, can be drawn, and opinions die hard.

Don't misunderstand me; I know Gary loved a good funhouse dungeon. And really, is this one any more ridiculous than "Tomb of Horrors" or the really awful puns in the graveyard of Castle Ravenloft? This one, however, feels like a bridge too far.  It was too bad, really. I was in the midst of my "Greyhawk renaissance" at the time, and I wanted to consume anything and everything related to Greyhawk, but mostly official Greyhawk material, rather than the pastiche I had built over the years. 

I had a copy, but I lost it many years ago, and I recently reacquired my copy from my old DM's collection. I have the PDF, but I never had a desire to grab a new PoD version. However, I did think about it back in my early days working with Eden Studios, when I read the WitchCraft short story "The House that Dripped Clichés." I wanted to make something good of the Castle Greyhawk adventure. But ultimately, I reasoned I would be better off making my own. Thankfully, I didn't have to.

WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins (2e)

After the misfire of WG7 Castle Greyhawk, TSR had another go at presenting the legendary dungeon in print. This time, in 1990, they gave us WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins, written by Blake Mobley and Timothy Brown, for 2nd Edition AD&D.

On the surface, this one looked like a course correction. Gone was the parody tone, gone were the ketchup-smeared signs, and in their place was a serious attempt to frame Castle Greyhawk as an honest-to-goodness megadungeon. The adventure describes the ruins of the Castle aboveground, and beneath them, three partially intact towers that served as gateways to the deeper dungeon levels.

This felt much closer to what I had always imagined Castle Greyhawk to be. The presentation was straightforward: keyed maps, monsters, treasure, and plenty of challenges. In many ways, it’s a classic meat-and-potatoes dungeon crawl, and for DMs who wanted a usable Greyhawk megadungeon without wading through parody, it delivered.

But there were two problems. First, no published module could ever live up to the myth of Castle Greyhawk by this point. Gamers had been hearing about Gary’s original for over fifteen years, and expectations had grown to impossible heights. Second, the stink of WG7 still lingered. After being burned once, many fans weren’t ready to embrace a new “official” Castle so soon. That left Greyhawk Ruins in a tough spot: serious in tone, expansive in scope, but struggling to shake off its predecessor’s shadow.

I also have to admit, I’ve never been a fan of the cover. It doesn’t capture the sense of awe and menace I wanted from the ruins of the game's greatest dungeon. Inside, though, the content is solid. Twenty-five plus levels of dungeon to explore, each with its own flavor, from ruined laboratories to caverns crawling with monsters. It’s not subtle, but it is dangerous, and it can easily keep a party busy for years of game time.

Looking back, WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins represents the first truly earnest attempt to give us Castle Greyhawk as an actual megadungeon. It wasn’t Gary’s Castle, and it wasn’t Rob’s either, but it was playable, and it kept Greyhawk alive at the table in the early 2e era. For me, it feels like the first step toward reclaiming the myth after WG7, even if it never stood a chance of satisfying everyone’s expectations.

This is another old adventure of mine that was in the collection of my old DM. I think I bought it with the idea that he would run me through it, but it was the 1990s, and I was still finishing up my undergrad studies and likely never got around to it.

Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk

By the time 2007 rolled around, I had already been through the highs and lows of Castle Greyhawk in print. WG7 had left a sour taste, WGR1 had done some course correction, but the mythical real Castle Greyhawk still seemed just out of reach. Then came Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk for D&D 3.5. On paper, this was the one that might finally get it right.

This was a big (224 pages), glossy hardcover and part of Wizards’ “Expedition” series that included Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, and Expedition to Undermountain. These books were meant to be love letters to classic adventures, rebuilt for the then-current edition. And with writers like Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs, and Erik Mona (names I respected then and now), I had reason to hope.

The book immediately set itself apart from WG7’s funhouse antics. Instead of a parody, it gave us a full-on campaign, a sprawling dungeon crawl combined with political intrigue in the Free City of Greyhawk. Iuz, Zagyg, my ex-girlfriend Iggwilv, and even Zuoken show up, giving the adventure cosmic stakes beyond just “loot the dungeon.” It’s pitched for characters of about 8th–13th level, which honestly felt right. By that point, adventurers are strong enough to tangle with demigods, but not so epic that the whole thing feels like a superhero comic.

The design is ambitious. You don’t just get dungeon rooms mapped and keyed; you get partial maps, encounter tables, and plenty of blank space to make the Castle your own. That’s clever; it echoes the fact that Gary’s original Castle Greyhawk was never static. It was a living, changing environment, tailored to the players at the table. Of course, the downside is obvious: if you're looking for a completely mapped, plug-and-play megadungeon, you won’t find it here. DMs had to be ready to improvise and prep.

I ran pieces of it rather than the whole campaign. Some of the encounters, especially with the new monsters (the aurumvorax got a facelift here, and the cataboligne demon was nasty), were deadly even for 13th-level PCs. My players loved that sense of danger, though — it felt like the dungeon had teeth again.

But did it finally give us the “real” Castle Greyhawk? Well. That depends on what you were hoping for. If you wanted Gary’s original notes, this wasn’t it. If you wanted a megadungeon that was both a campaign centerpiece and a love letter to Greyhawk lore, it largely delivered. It felt like Mona and Jacobs, in particular, were saying, “Yes, Greyhawk matters. Here’s why.”

I remember closing the book after my first read-through and thinking: this is probably as close as we’re ever going to get to a “canon” Castle Greyhawk. Not Gary’s, not Rob’s, but a 3rd Edition interpretation that pulled from the mythos, built a strong framework, and left room for each DM to add their own touch. Say what you like about 3rd Edition, but at the time, respect for Gary was at an all-time high. 

Thankfully, it was not the last word. 

Castle of the Mad Archmage

If Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk was Wizards of the Coast’s official attempt to canonize the Castle for 3rd Edition, then Castle of the Mad Archmage was the fan-driven answer — and in many ways, it feels closer to the dream of a “true” Castle Greyhawk than anything TSR or WotC ever put out.

Joseph Bloch, the “Greyhawk Grognard,” originally released Castle of the Mad Archmage starting in 2009. His idea was simple: if Wizards of the Coast wouldn't and TSR couldn't (because they were gone) give us the real Castle, then he would build one in the old school spirit, level by level, and let people play in it. Later, he expanded and polished the whole into a professional print version through his company, BRW Games. You honestly have to admire that. 

This is a megadungeon in the classic sense, sprawling, multi-layered, with dozens of levels stacked on top of each other. Unlike WGR1 or Expedition, Bloch’s Castle doesn’t pull back. It goes all in. If you want a dungeon that feels like it could go on forever, with weird sub-levels, eccentric monsters, and dangerous tricks, this is it. The DNA is clearly Gygaxian: funhouse elements mixed with deadliness, nods to pulp fantasy, and the sense that anything could be around the next corner.

When I first cracked it open, I remember thinking: “This is what I wanted WG7 to be.” It’s not parody. It’s not restrained to three towers. It’s not half-mapped. It’s a full megadungeon you could run a whole campaign in, or strip for parts if that’s more your style. And it’s very much meant for old-school play, resource management, exploration, and danger at every turn.

Is it Gary’s Castle Greyhawk? No, of course not. But in spirit, it comes closer than most. Bloch captures that sense of scale and unpredictability that the Castle always promised. For me, this book represents what the fan community can do when official channels fall short: keep the torch burning, keep the dungeons sprawling, and keep Greyhawk alive at the table.

Now I am a bigger fan of "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk" than Joseph is. But I am happy to have both in my collection.

There are several "flavors" to choose from to suit your gaming needs.

• Castle of the Mad Archmage (5E Edition) Digital + Print Bundle
• Castle of the Mad Archmage (Pathfinder Edition) Digital
• MA1 Castle of the Mad Archmage - The Core Levels
• MA2 Castle of the Mad Archmage Level 3 East, The Museum and the Watery Caves
• MA3 Castle of the Mad Archmage Level 4 South, The Gardens
• MA4 Castle of the Mad Archmage Level 9 West, The Brumal Realm

There will likely be more.

Castles & Crusades Castle Zagyg Yggsburgh

When Gary Gygax himself returned to publishing in the early 2000s, hope flared again that we might finally see his Castle Greyhawk the original megadungeon that started it all. Of course, Wizards of the Coast owned the Greyhawk name, so Gary couldn’t publish it directly. Instead, he partnered with Troll Lord Games and released it under the title Castle Zagyg (Zagyg being Gary’s famous mad archmage, his own anagram).

The first product in this line was Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh in 2005. Rather than plunge straight into dungeon levels, this hefty book detailed the city of Yggsburgh, Gary’s version of the Free City of Greyhawk. It was written for Castles & Crusades, Troll Lord’s ruleset that deliberately hewed close to the feel of old-school AD&D, but conversion to earlier editions was painless.

Yggsburgh wasn’t the dungeon itself, but it was meant to set the stage: a living, breathing city that adventurers could use as their home base before venturing into the nearby Castle. The book offered districts, NPCs, and hooks galore. For those of us who had been following the “Castle Greyhawk saga” for decades, it was tantalizing. At last, we had something directly from Gary’s hand.

The plan was to follow this up with the dungeon levels themselves, released as boxed sets under the Castle Zagyg name. A few pieces trickled out, Castle Zagyg: The East Mark Gazetteer and The Upper Works (2008), before Gary’s death in March 2008. After that, the line was discontinued. For various reasons that I don't really need to get into now the line would remain dead for the next 15 years.

In 2023, Troll Lord Games released a 256-page Classic Reprint of Yggsburgh through DriveThruRPG and their own website, making this long out-of-print title available again to fans who missed it the first time. It’s a facsimile edition, preserving the original text and layout; a chance to finally own one of the last projects Gary worked on. Not only that, the maps are by none other than Darlene herself.

So, what we got in Yggsburgh was a glimpse of what could have been: Gary’s vision of the city that would sit at the foot of his legendary Castle. The megadungeon itself never fully saw print. That fact alone makes this one bittersweet. Reading through Yggsburgh now, you can see the connective tissue to Greyhawk, but also Gary striking out on his own terms, freed from TSR and later WotC.

For me, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh is less about the content (though it’s rich with Gary’s flavor and quirks) and more about the promise it represented. We almost had the real thing. We almost got to walk the halls of the original Castle with Gary as our guide. Instead, we’re left with fragments. 

And the myth grows ever larger.

How to Reconcile All These Castles Greyhawk?

Regardless of what version of Castle Greyhawk you prefer, someone else has a different opinion. How can we have ALL the Castles Greyhawk in a game? 

Well. We borrow from the real world. 

Zagig Yragerne as Ludwig II of Bavaria

Known as "The Mad Archmage," Zagig Yragerne was the builder of Castle Greyhawk. But what if the Mad Archmage had something in common with another famously "Mad" person? In particular King Ludwig II of Bavaria, also known as "The Mad King."  Why was he mad? He built castles. Lavish ones at that.  Neuschwanstein Castle, Linderhof Palace, and Herrenchiemsee. Neuschwanstein is a "fairy tale" castle and is the model for the castles of Disney World and Disneyland. There is even a tenuous connection to Castle Falkenstien here that I might explore later on. 

So what if all the Castle Greyhawks are real? All were built by Zagig Yragerne, and all of them were called at one point or another "Castle Greyhawk?"

Which leads me to my next thought.

Castle Greyhawk as a Pan-Dimensional Altgeld Hall

On five Illinois college campuses, castles were built during the time of Gov. John Altgeld. These buildings are all called Altgeld Hall, and all resemble Gothic Revival Castles. There has been a long-standing rumor that you could take these buildings and put them together to form one massive castle. There is no evidence of this, but it was a powerful idea. Plus, having walked by Altgeld Hall at SIUC for years, it left a powerful image. One too good to ignore. 

What if all of the various Castles Greyhawk are connected somehow? Not like I suggested with the Temple of Elemental Evil (one location that exists simultaneously across multiple realities), but one supermassive structure built in different pieces in different locations. 

What was Zagig trying to accomplish? Was he going to build these different castles and link them? Merge them across time and space? This may explain why WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins and Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk have similar maps in some places but very different ones in others.

Maybe I could tie this into my whole idea of Erde/Oerth/Arth/Urt/Learth/Ærth, where there is a Castle Greyhawk on the various connecting planes, and they are the point of contact. From the Castle's perspective, it is one massive structure; it's just that mortals only see what is on their own plane. Now, are the castles there because the planes are connected? OR are the planes connected because the  Castles are there? 

There is at least some published evidence to this. Erde/Aihrde, the world of Castles & Crusades, has its own Castle Yggsburgh, AND for a time, they were the publisher of Lejendary Adventures. So maybe Erde/Aihrde is what I jokingly refer to as Learth. 

Frank Mentzer gave us Urt, an earlier name for Mystara which is Earth circa 150 MYA. And we know that he was working on the other side of Oerth; Aquaria. It is not a stretch then that there is a Castle Greyhawk on Mystara/Urt too. Those with the knowledge can move from to the next and thus cross realities.  NOTE: I am not going to explain why Empyrea failed here. There are more sites on the net that have gone over that far more in-depth than I will or even want too. 

By this logic, there could be more Castles Greyhawk out there in the D&D multiverse just waiting to be discovered. 

In Search Of the Real Castle Greyhawk

At the end of this long journey through the printed Castles Greyhawk, I keep coming back to the same realization: there was never just one Castle Greyhawk. Every attempt to capture it on paper; from the parody of WG7, to the earnest sprawl of WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins, to the ambitious but incomplete Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, to Joseph Bloch’s Castle of the Mad Archmage, and finally Gary’s own Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh; all circle the same mythic source but never quite touch it.

Part of that is simple: Gary’s Castle was never a finished product. It was a living dungeon, reshaped by play, rebuilt after disasters, improvised week after week for the players in his original group. You can’t publish that experience whole cloth. At best, you can give glimpses, fragments, or homages. It will never be the late 1970s in Lake Geneva, WI ever again.

But maybe that’s the true legacy of Castle Greyhawk. Not the maps, or the monsters, or the towers above the Free City, but the idea that the dungeon is never done. It’s always changing, always waiting for the next group of adventurers to descend into its depths. Every version we’ve looked at, official or unofficial, serious or silly, carries a spark of that truth.

Gary himself got closest with Castle Zagyg, and though his death left that project unfinished, what we did get reminds us that the Castle was never about completeness. It was about potential. It was about mystery. It was about a group of players gathered around a table, wondering what lay behind the next door.

So, in a sense, the real Castle Greyhawk has always been with us. It’s in every megadungeon we map, every ruin we stock with monsters, every campaign we launch into the unknown. The Castle is a myth, yes, but it’s a myth that keeps inspiring us to build, to imagine, and to play.

And maybe that’s the best tribute of all.

Links

This is not an exhaustive list, it is the one I used when researching this post. 

• Castle Greyhawk at the Greyhawk Online Wiki
• Castle Greyhawk at Grognardia
• Castle Greyhawk at Swords & Stitchery
• Castle Greyhawk at Zenopus Archives
• Gygax's Yggsburgh (2005) available once again
• Castle Greyhawk at Greyhawk Musings (I especially enjoyed the stuff on the Circle of Eight)
• Castle Greyhawk at Greyhawkery
• Castle Greyhawk Comic
• Greyhawk Grognard, who has forgotten more than I know about Castle Greyhawk
• Posts about Castle Greyhawk
• Posts about the Castle of the Mad Archmage
• Castle of the Mad Archmage 10th Anniversary edition
• Wikipedia
• Castle Greyhawk
• Castle Greyhawk (module)
• El Raja Key
• Gary’s Immersion in Castle El Raja Key: The Four-Way Footsteps, EN World by Rob Kunzt
• Kunzt Bibliography
• El Raja Key Archive
• El Raja Key Archive and the Mapping Styles of Kuntz & Gygax
• Frank Mentzer notes
• Empyrea and  Aquaria, east of Gygax’s World of Greyhawk Setting
• Empyrea at ENWorld
• Empyrea at Dragonsfoot (with the disappointing ending of it all)

25 Years Dungeons & Dragons 3.0

It was Monday, September 11, 2000.

I actually remember it pretty well. I went to my Favorite Local Game Store and I picked up the new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. I grabbed the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Creature Collection, the first OGL monster book released. I had to wait a bit longer for the official Monster Manual.

That was 25 years ago this week.

 When D&D 3.0 hit the game stores in 2000, I was ready for it. I had been away from D&D for several years and was eager to get back into it. So, D&D 3.0 was the right game for me at the right time. In truth, there is still a lot I love about D&D 3.x, and significant advances were made in terms of game design and lore.  

This edition was new. So new that, unlike the past editions, this one was not very backward compatible. This was fine since Wizards of the Coast (now dropping the TSR logo) had provided a conversion guide. The books were solid. All full color and the rules had expanded to fix some of the issues of previous versions of D&D. Armor class numbers got larger as the armor got stronger, as opposed to lower numbers being better. Charts for combat were largely eliminated, the number on the sheet was what you had to roll against. Everyone could multiclass, all the species (races) could be any class without restrictions, though some were better at it than others, and everyone had skills. 

But the most amazing thing about 3rd Edition D&D was that, aside from a few protected monsters and names, Wizards of the Coast gave the whole thing away for free! Yes, the books with art cost money. But the rules, just a text dump, were free for everyone to download. It was called the System Reference Document or SRD. It was all the rules so that 3rd-party publishers could produce their own D&D compatible material. With these rules, you could play D&D without the books. There was no art and no "fluff" text, but everything was there.

D&D 3rd edition had an good run from 2000 to about 2008. 

I played it quite a bit to be honest and there is a lot about it I still love. It was the game system I used to teach my kids how to play and one I still enjoy going back to. It is also one of the few editions of D&D I never really played much. I was always a DM. So other than a version of Larina and Johan Werper IV, I don't have a lot of characters for 3e. The only time I ever got to play it was at conventions, mostly Gen Con.

I loved the 3rd Edition's multiclassing and, honestly, I loved Prestige Classes. But things got ridiculous at high levels. Ever try stating up a high level character from scratch? But I would still play it if given the chance. 

So here is to 25 years of D&D 3.0. You were not the perfect game, but your were perfect for me at the time.

Review: Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5)

Near the end of of the life cycle of D&D 3.5 people were beginning to suspect that a new edition was on the way. They were not wrong, but before that happened we saw some changes in the adventure format from Wizards of the Coast. Certainly a trend to more tactical maps. These last few adventures were all mostly re-visions of some of the classic adventures of old. Castle Greyhawk, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Undermountain, and of course, Castle Ravenloft.

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5)

2006. by Bruce R. Cordell and James Wyatt. Based on Ravenloft by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Cover art Kev Walker. Interior art, Dave Allsop, Kalman Andrasofsky, Ralph Horsley, William O’Connor, Lucio Parrillo, Anne Stokes, and Eva Widermann. Cartography Jason Engle, Kyle Hunter. 224 pages.

For this review I am considering my PDF and Print on Demand copies

It is not a new edition of D&D unless we have new take on the classic Ravenloft. This adventure sees Ravenloft back in it's original home; not just in terms of the adventure published by Wizards of the Coast after Sword & Sorcery Studios license, but Castle Ravenloft, divorced from the Demi-Plane of Dread. This is the 3.5 revision of the original adventure.

Like the original I6 Ravenloft adventure, this adventure plunges players into the cursed land of Barovia, a realm dominated by a bleak atmosphere and ruled by the vampire lord Strahd von Zarovich. Adventurers take on the daunting mission of navigating Castle Ravenloft, confronting Strahd, and ending his sinister reign over Barovia once and for all.

The revamped (heh) Expedition to Castle Ravenloft expands on the original with enhanced encounters, new rules, and a more comprehensive campaign that immerses players in Strahd’s haunting domain. The new encounter system of 3.5 takes up the later half of the book, but makes it easy for DMs to plan out how they want to do their encounters. Given we are on the eve of 4e, this means which minis to grab and which maps to use.

The adventure is expanded into a mini-campaign of sorts. And really, that has always been one of the strengths of this adventure; its ability to do more. The adventure can cover 20 sessions, raising characters from 6th level to 10th or broken up into smaller sessions. It can even be run exactly like the original adventure as a straight forward 1 or 2 sessions of "Find the vampire and kill it."

While that is a great bit of flexibility for the adventure, I already did that back in the 1980s. It would be a shame not to use all the new great material here that Cordell and Wyatt (two excellent designers) have done here. There are new antagonists and new locations to explore. 

Barovia itself is a character in this module: a mist-laden, gloomy land filled with mystery, danger, and spectral beauty. Players are encouraged to explore its towns, ruined abbeys, and dense forests, meeting unique NPCs who add depth and lore to the journey. The encounters are varied and challenging, balancing tense dungeon crawls with narrative-driven encounters that test both the characters' skills and the players' wits. And then finally getting to Castle Ravenloft itself. A locale that has lost none of its "charm" over the years. 

We still have the Fortunes of Ravenloft here, among other classic notes expanded for this new adventure. And like the original, Count Strahd von Zarovich is front and center. Not just in the adventure but in the book as well. 

I have played and run the original Ravenloft many, many times. I honestly think this version is rather fun. It stays true to the original while updating the adventure is good AND providing more adventure as well. It is rare when a "remake" can improve, but this one does.

Even if I were to run Ravenloft again under the 1st or 2nd Ed of AD&D, I would still import ideas from this version to those, especially all the locales around the castle and in Barovia. The original adventure kinda just drops you in (not a big deal, works fine) but this one gives you more land to explore, more people to interact with. 

Strahd is still awful, tragic, powerful and one of the more interesting villains in D&D. Castle Ravenloft is still wonderful to explore filled with dangers both obvious and hidden. 

The art is amazing, and really the views of Castle Ravenloft alone in both art and maps makes this must have for any fan of the adventure. 

The adventure/book is divided into five major sections, four chapters and an Appendix.

Chapter 1 covers Adventures in Ravenloft. An overview of what one should expect to see (or do since this is a Dungeon Masters' book) in the area. While the demi-plane of Ravenloft is not used here, there are area affects due to Strahd and his evil.  This also features our first encounter areas.

Chapter 2 the Village of Barovia covers D&D's own "Hammer Hamlet." 

Chapter 3 details the Lands of Barovia. We have more encounter areas here and our "Fortunes of Ravenloft" options.

Chapter 4 is Castle Ravenloft itself.

The Appendix details some new feats, a new spell, and various magical items.

About the Print on Demand

Of all the Print on Demand products I have bought, this one might be one of the very best. It is the "Hardcover, Standard Color Book" option and it compares very well to the off-set printing ones of the same era. 

The pages are crisp and easy to read. The binding is solid.

I am pretty sure the idea to divorce Ravenloft: The Adventure from Ravenloft: The Demi Plane was a.) to get a new generation into the adventure in it's "original" form, and b.) maybe part of their larger plans for it moving away from 3.x to 4e. But I have nothing to back that up.

This is a great adventure by all accounts for D&D 3.x. It has everything the original AD&D adventure had and more.Maybe it is my "nostalgia goggles" (as my son would say) but I still prefer I6 Ravenloft.

This adventure also marks the end of the 3.x Ravenloft line. Next time we meet in the Land of the Mists it will be under 4th Edition D&D rules.

Review: Van Richten's Arsenal, Vol 1

Ok. A bit of an odd one, but one I wanted to take time out to do.  I am still covering the 3rd edition era of Ravenloft, mostly published by Swords & Sorcery Studio. I didn't buy many of these books. After 10+ years of Ravenloft I was ready for something new. But I did buy a few in PDF. OR at least I think I did. I went back to DriveThruRPG and could not find ones I knew I had purchased. It was not until I plugged in my external drive of 3rd edition PDFs that I did find them and yes I had bought them on DriveThruRPG. No idea when (the file date is 2008), but they are all watermarked. 

As you can see with the cover to the right, the scan is not very good. Though my order number confirms it was purchased from DriveThruRPG (or maybe RPGNow). 

Van Richten's Arsenal, Vol 1

2002. By Andrew Cermak, John W. Mangrum, Ryan Naylor, Chris Nichols, Andrew Wyatt. Art by Jeff Holt, Brian LeBlanc and Talon Dunning. Softcover/PDF. 160 pages.

Of note, John W. Mangrum was very active in Ravenloft fandom during the 2e days. He was one of the main authors for the various Books of S___ produced by the Kargatane. Looking him up now I see he ended up with a few more official Ravenloft books under his belt. Happy to see that.

Ok. So why this book? Well it has a witch prestige class in it, so I had to buy it. 

Introduction: Like many of the "Van Richten guides..." this one works under the conceit of have been started by the eponymous hunter of evil and completed by his various protégés.

Chapter One: Stake and Silver. This chapter deals with variou mundane tools used to hunt the supernatural creatures of Ravenloft. 

Chapter Two: Faith and Fury. This covers new arcane and divine spells. There are quite a few good ones here too. Makes me wish this was an OGC book and not a licensed one. Spells are divided into offensive and defensive.

Chapter Three: Instruments of power. These are new magic items and other ways to enhance weapons.

Chapter Four: Bottled Lightning. Introduces alchemical devices and feats. It essentially gives us an alchemist class, or more to the point a way to build and alchemist out of any other class.

Chapter Five: Perilous Pursuit.  These are our Prestige classes. They include Alchemical Philosopher, Anchorite of the Mists, Avenger, Crypt Raider, Dirgist, Guardian Seeker, Hallowed Witch, Knight of the Shadows, Pistoleer, and the Stygian Attendant. The Hallowed Witch was why I bought the book but these all were very fun. In some ways I miss Prestige Classes. I did have a Dirgist at one point as an NPC. 

I should point out that this witch is again different than the witches that appeared in the AD&D 2nd Edition VanRichtens Guide to Witches. This witch for example HAS to be a spell caster first, and have both divine and arcane spellcasting. In 2nd ed the witch had to be anything but a spellcaster first.

This witch does have coven casting abilities too. 

Chapter Six: Tricks and Tactics. This covers how to plan investigation and battles with the supernatural, and extra-normal elements of the demi-plane. This includes dealing with the Vistani, and how to research. Some details on various monster types are also covered. Such as vampires, liches and lycanthropes.

DM’s appendix: NPC stat sheet and detailed background for Gennifer and Laurie Weathermay-Foxgrove (The Weathermay Twins), George Weathermay, Perseyus Lathenna, Lord Balfour de Casteelle, Agatha Clairmont, Toret Johann Severin, and Jameld of Hroth. Each comes with a background, 3e stat blocks and "Dread Possibilities" on how these good hunters of evil may have become corrupted. No witches though. Maybe I should stat up Goodwife B of Kartakass above. I am not sure if I remember HOW to do a 3rd Edition character. I would give her the minimums of cleric or druid for her divine spell casting and the minimum levels of sorcerer. She feels more clerical to me than druid to be honest.

I do still like this book, though I lament that it is no longer available on DriveThruRPG and print copies are more than I want to pay for just for a casual stroll down memory lane.

Review: Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death d20

Ravenloft was doing well from what I can recall so it was only natural that Sword & Sorcery Studios would eventually want to take on Ravenloft's other setting, Gothic Earth. So in 2004 they published the new Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death.

Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death d20

2004. by Jackie Cassada, Claire Hoffman, Carla Hollar, Harold Johnson, Rucht Lilavivat, Nicky Rea, Andrew Scott, and Peter Woodworth. Art by Talon Dunning, Jeff Holt, Marcio, Fiorito, Brian LeBlanc, Jeremy McHugh, Claudio Pozas, and Beth Trott. Cover art by Ron Thompson. 288 pages. Hardcover.

There is no PDF option for this title at DriveThruRPG. So, for this review, I considering only my hardbound copy. 

I LOVED Gothic Earth for Ravenloft AD&D 2nd Edition. To me, it felt like a bold attempt to try something brand new. Plus, I love Victorian Gothic Horror, so it was an easy win. But despite all of that, some of the things in Masque of the Red Death for 2ne Ed just really didn't work. The "new" Masque of the Red Death for the d20 rules fixes some of those problems. But does it measure up?

The background is largely the same, or at least I didn't see anything jump out at me as very different. 

Chapter One: A History of Gothic Earth

This all feels very similar to the AD&D 2nd Ed version. I can't find anything here wildly different.

Like the original, there are sections of "Forbidden Lore" spread throughout the book. 

Chapter Two: An Atlas of Gothic Earth

This chapter covers all the continents in a very brief manner. There is more here than the AD&D set, or at least it is presented with some more information. They still use a "Western" or even "British Empire" point of view here. I feel that this is the right way to do this. Why? The British Empire was at its zenith now, and this was the time when "the sun never sat on the British flag" so coming from this point of view works here. Plus why not add in the horrors of colonialism to it all as well. 

I feel more lip service is paid to the Domains of Ravenloft here, but I am not able to quantify it in any meaningful way. 

Chapter Three: Character Creation

This naturally has the most changes over its predecessor. It also has some changes over the D&D 3.x/d20 Modern rules. The six core classes are Adept, Athlete, Intellectual, Mystic, Sleuth, and Tradesman. For me this is the biggest improvement in these rules. The classes have be redesigned with an Earth-like world in mind. This is much better than trying to fit the AD&D classes into an Earth-shaped hole. 

Each class also has a few sub-classes or specializations. I would recommend keeping a tighter hold on the subclasses. Most can be accomplished with the parent class and some roleplaying. But that is up to individual game masters, really. In truth, all the classes are good fits, and there is plenty of choices here.

Skills are expanded/shifted to cover a 19th-Century Earth environment. Same with the Feats. 

Chapter Four: Money and Equipment

Re-read Dracula, esp. the last third of the book to see how important this is for a Victorian game.  This is not a long chapter but it is an important one.

Chapter Five: The Magic of Gothic Earth

Magic on Gothic Earth is different. It is less powerful and more dangerous to the practitioner than it is in other D&D/d20 worlds.  A bit of history is given, providing the background on why magic works and what is happening when the caster calls on these powers. 

Spells from the D&D 3.x and the Ravenloft Player's Handbook 3.5 are listed for the new classes and some new spells are also detailed. 

Gothic Earth is a magic-seeped world, but that doesn't mean mortals can or even should control it. There are no arch-mages here. Not anymore.

Chapter Six: Combat

Covers the sorts of combat that the PCs are likely to get into. Most importantly this covers the guns of the time.

Chapter Seven: Madness and Mystery

This chapter covers how the supernatural effects everything in the world of Gothic Earth, in particular magic and how people deal with the supernatural. This includes "insanity" rules. Now, I typically have a lot of issues with how games deal with sanity, madness, and psychological trauma. One nitpick here, they use "insanity" instead of madness. I typically prefer madness or even lunacy when doing Victorian-era games since that was the more common term. Thankfully we do not get a long list of mental illnesses here. I would rather see none than horribly wrong lists. 

Fear, Horror, and Madness are all dealt with as a subset of the Will Save. Which actually works well for me.

Chapter Eight: A Practical Guide to the 19th Century

This is a great guide for any Victorian-era game. While Gothic Earth is mentioned, this is fairly system—and setting-free. The timeline of inventions (real) and popular books and music of the 1890s is quite fantastic. 

We get into some "setting" details with the section on Clubs and Cabals. Some are real, and some are invented for this setting.

The "Language of Flowers" section is great addition. If you know your Victorian-era then you know how important this actually is. 

Appendix I: The Villains of Gothic Earth

Ahh...The Usual Suspects! This is the crunchiest part of the book so far and that is expected. Featured here are Dracula, Imhotep, Frankenstein's Monster, Professor Moriarty (still a Rakshasa, not my favorite choice), Xavier Von Tuerin, Madame Delphine LaLaurie, and Sarah Winchester (of the Winchester Mansion). 

Appendix II: Monsters in the World

A brief monster section on creatures unique to Gothic Earth. 

Appendix III: Lairs of Evil

Covers what I would call "Sinkholes of Evil" and their effects. Some specific examples are given. 

Appendix IV: Adventures in Gothic Earth

Covers how to run adventures in Gothic Earth and what makes them different. Several adventure ideas and seeds are given.  One of my favorites is the "Ghosts of Salem."

There is a good index in the back to wrap it all up.

Comparing the Two Masques

Both editions of Masque of the Red Death are wonderful to have. There is a lot more detail for AD&D Second Edition (a boxed set and two more books) compared to the single book for 3.x/d20.

The 3.x/d20 edition "feels" like a better fit for the world. 

What I can't tell is this. Do I like the AD&D 2nd Edition version because of the impact it made on me when I bought it and the 3.x/d20 version pales in comparison to that? Or is the 3.x/d20 quantifiably lacking in something? 

I don't think it is, especially considering that I can use the additional AD&D 2nd ed Gothic Earth books with the 3.x/d20 version. I can also use other supplements like d20 Past, Gaslight, and many other Victorian OGL titles. Not to mention all the Victorian games I already have.

I really need to come back to this world sometime.

Review: Ravenloft 3.0

 We are moving into a new territory now with Ravenloft.  TSR is gone, and Wizards of the Coast is in its place. AD&D 2nd ed is done, and the brand new D&D (no more "A") 3rd edition is out. And there is a new Ravenloft core rules out. BUT it was not being done by Wizards.

Well. It is. Sort of. 

Newly formed Swords and Sorcery Studio is a division of White Wolf and their label Arthaus and its purpose is to publish material for the brand new d20 STL license under the Open Gaming License. They obtained a license from Wizards to produce the new Ravenloft. White Wolf. The makers of Vampire: the Masquerade, now in charge of Ravenloft?!

If you had told me this was going to happen back in 1992 I would have never believed it. But here we are. I remember the very animated discussions on the RAVENLOFT-L mailing lists at the time. 

Ravenloft 3.0

2001. by Andrew Cermak, John W. Mangrum, Andrew Wyatt. Art by Leanne Buckley, Mike Chaney, Talon Dunning, Anthony Hightower. Jeff Holt, Steve Prescott, and Richard Thomas. 224 pages. Hardcover.

Ravenloft 3.0 was one of my favorite books I bought in the new 3.x era and I loved how it looked. I splurged and grabbed the limited edition version from my favorite local game store.

I thought the art was fantastic and loved how well it adapted to the 3.0 rules. But I had already had some experience with 3.0 and had even picked up some Swords & Sorcery Studios books and enjoyed those as well. The races were a nice treat, to be honest. For the first time, I really felt like I could run a Ravenloft game with the likes of gnomes, halflings, and especially half-orcs, now rebranded as Calibans and the new Giogoto.

I think, though, I was expecting more at the time. SSS was part of White Wolf like I mentioned, and I was hoping for some of what made Vampire: The Masquerade so good to be here. In re-reading it now, so many years later, I had unrealistic expectations. In truth, this book is a much better organized and updated version of the 2e Domains of Dread book. 

The nice thing about Ravenloft (and many of the D&D worlds) is that the plot kept moving along despite edition changes. However, there is also a nice timeline included so DMs can do what they want. You don't need to know all the details of say, The Grim Harvest, just know it happened.

This book had a black and white interior, while most others were going full color. This is a feature, not a bug. Ravenloft is a world of shades of grey; the art here helps convey this. The book is an introductory campaign guide including the people, the lands, and, most important for Ravenloft, the horrors of the lands. There are some new feats and skills. No new spells, but suggestions on how magic will be altered by the Mists. There is even a section on the Gods of Ravenloft.

Since most of this book covers the lands, their inhabitants, and the Cultural Level of each, there is only a little crunch. Translation: You can use this with any other version of D&D you like. Even the feats look like they would work well with 5e. Even the "Fear, Horror and Madness" section would work well.

It lacks large foldout maps of the 2e days, but it is a surprisingly good resource to me these days. Well worth picking up.

It is available as a PDF and Print on Demand on DriveThruRPG. I do not have the PoD, so I can't speak to that version. 

At some point the rights to the 3.x versions reverted back to Wizards and now they sell the PDFs/PoDs on DriveThru and not SSS/White Wolf's storefront.

My physical copy is nearly 25 years old (24 years and 1 week, according to the ISBN database), and it is still in great shape. 

Review: Star Wars Roleplaying Game (d20)

 I am bouncing around a bit here on my cruise through the science fiction games from TSR/WotC to find one that I actually rather like, even though I know many do not. I am discussing the d20 Star Wars RPG from Wizards of the Coast.

I will freely admit that I have not played a lot of the West End Game's d6 Star Wars, though I do know it is widely held in high regard. I also have never played the Fantasy Flight Games edition of Star Wars (though my son has). So, my review might be a touch myopic, and I am OK with this. 

Star Wars and D&D

Before I begin this review I have to talk a bit about my background and why I think d20 and Star Wars was a good fit.

I have talked about Star Wars a few times here, but I am obviously a much bigger Star Trek fan. I had (and still have) a good sized collection of Star Wars toys from the Kenner era in the 1980s and I religiously have seen all the movies. I enjoy the Disney+ shows and find many of the fans to be exhausting. Ok, to be fair many Trek fans are the same way. But I am a causal fan. I had read some of the Extended (or is it Expanded) Universe books and I liked many of them. I thought Grand Admiral Thrawn was a great character and getting Lars Mikkelsen to play him in live-action has to be the most brilliant, or most obvious, casting choice ever.  When the EU went away...well I honestly felt not that much. Sure lots of great stories were gone, but Star Wars had a relationship with their canon that Star Trek novels could only dream of. 

But for me, my Star Wars obsession was in the 1980s. When I had action figures and playing out new scenarios in my head. When I took a Colonial Viper model, some extra action figure guns, and an AMC (or Revel, can't remember now) 1978 Corvette and built one of my first Kitbashes. I could not afford a real Slave 1 back then (so now of course I have three) but I did build "Slave II" and it was quite literally "Fett's Vette." And I was obsessed with D&D.

I have said it before, and I will say it here again, Star Wars, aka A New Hope, is a D&D movie. We have a hero, a villain, a princess (who is also a hero), an old wizard, a rogue, an impenetrable fortress (the Death Star), war, magic (tell me to my face the Force is not magic) and a quest.  There are sword fights, monsters, and interesting locales. It is D&D in all but name. They even meet the rogue in a bar! 

I can't even begin to count the number of times we tried to do "D&D Star Wars" and our attempts were lame compared to others. Do an internet search on "D&D Jedi" prior to 1999 and see all the stuff that was out there, though admittedly not as much now as it was at the time. 

Even later on I often likened the Star Wars EU to another line of novels and quasi-canon material; that of the Forgotten Realms. 

So for me D&D and by extension d20 and Star Wars seemed like an obvious fit.

Star Wars RPG - Revised Core Rulebook

2002, Wizards of the Coast. 384 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. d20 System.

This is the revised version of the Star Wars d20 RPG, first published in 2000. 

This game is very closely related to the D&D 3.0 edition that had been released in 2000. I don't own a copy of the Star Wars RPG from 2000, so I can't comment on what was changed, but there is a "feel" to me that this might be an early draft of D&D 3.5. Much in the same way that Star Wars Saga Edition was an early draft of D&D 4.0.

The game is built on the d20 mechanics, so there are alien species, classes, skills, and feats. The book is divided into a players section and a game master section, so I guess the better comparison here is d20 Modern. Especially once we get in to it in detail.

Characters have a species and class, and the same six abilities as D&D. There are same 3.x era saves of Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. There are also Vitality and Wound Points.  If you can play D&D d20 era or d20 Modern then you know how to play this game. 

Chapters 2 and 3 cover Species and Classes. There are 17 species to choose from, including standard humans and Ewoks (!). Classes cover the expected varieties, including Fringer, Scout, Scoundrel, Force Adepts, and Jedis. There are Prestige classes covered later. 

Chapters 4 and 5: Skills and Feats look and act like their D&D/d20 counterparts. Skills are mostly the same, but the feats take on some new aspects. While there are many that are the same, there are new ones like Force Feats (which does a lot to help explain Jedi Powers).

Chapter 6 covers the final pieces of building heroic characters, including some more "Star Wars" flavor.

Chapter 7 is our Equipment guide and it is a rather fun one. Lots of gear in the Star Wars universe. 

Chapter 8 covers combat, a needed chapter since "War" is practically the last name here. 

Chapter 9 though takes us into new territory with "The Force." This is more complicated than magic, but there are some great ideas here to take back to a D&D game for Game Masters that want to use the corrupting power of magic.

Chapters 10 and 11 deal with Vehicles and Starships, respectively.  Honestly, I could spend all my time on the Starships chapter.

Chapter 12 is Gamemastering. It covers a lot of ground from how to teach the game to new players, to setting challenges, to Prestige classes (Bounty Hunters, Jedi Masters, and more). The GM Characters from d20 Modern also get ported over here as the Diplomat, Expert, and Thug.

Chapter 13 deals with the Eras of Play. Or at least how they looked in 2002 before the Clone Wars series and Revenge of the Sith hit our screens. There are hints of the Expanded Universe here, but not a lot. Now I know that Wizards, with their own Star Wars books, helped expand the Expanded Universe. We even get stats for the poster girl of the Expanded Universe, Mara Jade Skywalker. I am actually really happy about that. I have a soft spot in my heart for Temporal Orphans. 

Chapter 14 covers Allies and Opponents, which, of course, can vary depending on what era you are playing in. This also contains Wizards of the Coast biggest contribution to the Expanded Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong, which I always found kind of cool and wanted to port them back to D&D in some way.

Chapter 15 covers the one area where Star Wars is superior to Star Trek. Droids. 

The game really relies a lot on the players' and game masters' own knowledge of Star Wars. Yes, you can play it without that, but it certainly helps. 

Is this the best Star Wars game? I can't say. It is the best one for me. It has enough to allow me to build a game universe and play. I can add in d20 Future material as I like, including some d20 Gamma World or even d20 Traveller. 

The Wizards of the Coast d20 Star Wars lines are out of print. The new owners of the Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight Games (bought by Asmodee in 2014) have their own system. My oldest likes it and has run a few games with it. I'll try it out. I suppose I should also review the d6 West End Games Star Wars at some point as well.

#AtoZChallenge2024: P is for Pathfinder (and Paizo)

 A bit of a divergence today for, well, a bit of divergence.  Let me set the stage a bit. It is 2007, and Wizards of the Coast has decided to end the publication of the wildly successful Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition line and will now produce Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition.  D&D 3e was the edition that brought many back to the game. It was the edition that rekindled my enjoyment of the game after so many years. The idea that this would end only after 7 years (10 years per edition had been the average) seemed a bit odd.

In any case, 4th edition was released, and ... well, I'll talk about that on Sunday. But people were not ready to give up their 3rd Edition rules. Enter Paizo and Pathfinder!

Back when 3rd Edition was popular, Wizards of the Coast had licensed out the RPG Hobby's flagship gaming Magazines, Dragon and Dungeon, to Paizo, Inc. Here they helmed both magazines for many years and built a few 3rd Edition compatible products thanks to the Open Gaming Licence. In 2007 Wizards of the Coast announced 4th edition they did not renew the contract with Paizo to produce material. So Paizo went on to produce their own Pathfinder periodical, a set of publications similar to the Dungeon magazine. 

In 2008 D&D 4e started out with good sales, but soon they began to fall. Fall faster than expected. Paizo saw there was still a market for 3rd-edition compatible material, but they also wanted to make some changes. Thus, in 2009 the Pathfinder RPG rules were born.

So in 2009, we both did D&D 4e, which was not compatible with D&D 3x or any other D&D rules set. And Pathfinder, which was 95% compatible with D&D 3.x.  That last 5% is for the differences in the D&D 3 and 3.5 rules and the extras Pathfinder added in. But honestly, you could take your D&D 3.0 characters, fight D&D 3.5 monsters while the Game Master ran Pathfinder rules, and everyone would be fine.

Sadly, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro has a very bad habit of firing people. The good news here though is that some of those people would go on to be hired by Paizo to work on Pathfinder. I mentioned before that Pathfinder is often thought of as being "Dungeons & Dragons 3.75" and there is a lot of truth to that. There is a lot here that feels like D&D 3.x perfected. They certainly had the advantage of 9 more years of playing and writing to help them out. 

Pathfinder then did the impossible, it dethroned D&D as the best selling Fantasy RPG. They beat D&D at their own game. If the OGL was one of the reasons 4e got made, it was 4e's failures that got 5e made. In the meantime, Pathfinder just kept moving along and doing its thing.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition came along in 2019. It was different. While the rules were still very much tied to the OGL and the system first created for D&D 3, these rules had more divergence. The Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules were created to go after the D&D 5th edition, which by this time had reclaimed its market superiority. 

This would change again in 2023 when Wizards announced they were going to "revoke" the OGL (something they actually could not do legally). Pathfinder relied on the safe harbor of the OGL (as do many publishers) so in April of 2023 they announced their Pathfinder 2e Remastered. This would be their 2e ruleset, rewritten to avoid using the OGL and instead their own ORC license. While this did not deal the blow to D&D 5e that Pathfinder did to 4e, it was enough to have some people (myself included) move from D&D 5e to Pathfinder 2eR. 

Pathfinder 2e and 2eR. I am still a sucker for a ribbon in my book.

I can find no significant differences between the Pathfinder 2e rules and the Pathfinder 2eR ones. I know Paizo is no longer selling the 2e rules in favor of the 2eR, which is as it should be. Pathfinder 2e is a fine game in its own right, and I like it better as long as I am not trying to compare it to either D&D 3e or 5e. And then only because they can all do the same sorts of games, just in different ways.

Tomorrow is Q Day, and I am going with a tried and true one. I will talk about the various Queens of Dungeons & Dragons.

#AtoZChallenge2024: Sunday Special, D&D 3rd Edition

This is another Sunday special to talk about another edition of D&D. Today, we are going to visit the year 2000 and the Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition

Ok, let's get caught up. By 1997 I was married, had a new house, a new job and we were planning on starting a new family. I was also really, really burned out on D&D. I was tired of the nonsense that TSR kept pulling on their fans, I was tired of the infighting between the fans of different settings, and the power creep in the books was getting to be way too much. 

In April of 1997, TSR was not just in dire straits; they were failing life support and hemorrhaging money. In comes Wizards of the Coast, flush with cash from the success of Magic the Gathering. They buy TSR, and Dungeons & Dragons, and wipe out all of TSR's debt. 

For a while, things seemed, well, weird. Wizards ran TSR as an extension, and books were still produced using the TSR trade dress.  However, in late 1999, I got an email. I want to say it was December since that roughly corresponds to my 20th anniversary of playing. This email, which I was told was ultra-confidential, was the play test documents for the new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition.

Then 2000 rolled around. On September 11, 2000 (not *that* 9/11) I went into my Favorite Local Game Store and bought a copy of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. 

This edition was new. So new that unlike the past editions this one was not very backward compatible. This was fine since Wizards of the Coast (now dropping the TSR logo) had provided a conversion guide. The books were solid. All full color and the rules had expanded to fix some of the issues of previous versions of D&D. Armor class number got larger as the armor got stronger, as opposed to lower numbers being better. Charts for combat were largely eliminated, the number on the sheet was what you had to roll against. Everyone could multiclass, all the species (races) could be any class without restrictions, though some were better at it than others, and everyone had skills. 

But the most amazing thing about 3rd Edition D&D was that aside from a few protected monsters and names, Wizard of the Coast gave the whole thing away for free! Yes the books with art cost money. But the rules, just a text dump, were free for everyone to download. It was called the System Reference Document or SRD. It was all the rules so that 3rd-party publishers could produce their own D&D compatible material. With these rules you could play D&D without the books. There was no art and no "fluff" text, but everything was there.

Eventually the system was updated to a 3.5 with various levels of compatibility with 3.0. It was I still say 98% compatible, except for where it wasn't.

The books were larger, and had some new art, but they were still largely the same. They were close enough that originally I did not feel the need to buy them. But when the "Special Edition" leather-bound covers came out, I had to have them. Plus I am a sucker for a book with a ribbon. 

D&D 3rd edition had a very solid run from 2000 to about 2008. 

The rumor I have heard was that the higher-ups at Hasbro (who now owned WotC) demanded a 4th edition because they could not believe that WotC was just giving away the game in the SRD. The way the license was written though they just could not pull it. They tried this back in December 2022/January 2023 and the fans and the publishers revolted. Hasbro's stock fell and subscriptions to their online tool, DnDBeyond, tanked so bad that Hasbro not only backtracked, they dumped the whole 5th Edition SRD into the Creative Commons.  I might to cover that in detail someday.

D&D 3rd Edition, though, still lives on. The Pathfinder RPG was created by people who worked with WotC on D&D 3.x and is often called "D&D 3.75." Pathfinder 1st Edition was published in 2009 and directly competed with D&D 4. By many measures, it out-sold and outperformed D&D 4. Pathfinder 2nd Edition was published in 2019. While not as backward compatible as the 1st edition, we are now at a point where the D&D 3.x (also known as d20) rules are approaching 25 years old.  That is some longevity. 

I still enjoy 3rd Edition. I played it a lot with my kids and had a great time. It rekindled my love for D&D, and that was no small achievement.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.x Edition was also the edition which Wizards really embraced PDF format. So to my knowledge nearly everything is available at DriverThruRPG.

Tomorrow, we will be back to regular A to Z posting. It is M day and Monday, so you know I am going to talk about Monsters!

#AtoZChallenge2024: Sunday Special, Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons Editions

 I am going to use Sundays of this Challenge to talk about the various Editions of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game that have been published over the last 50 years. 

One of the challenges people have when getting into a game like D&D is where do you start? Generally speaking, you are always best starting with the edition that people around you are playing. If they are playing the newest edition (right now, 5th Edition), then great! This will make finding products easier. If it is an older edition, then great! All editions are fun. 

But what are the Editions? Are there 5 then? Well...it is a bit more complicated than that. Hopefully, this graph (making its rounds on social media and started on Reddit.) will help. The editions are all only sort-of compatible with each other. I'll explain that throughout the month. 

So there are, by some counts, 15 different versions of D&D. Some are 100% compatible with each other, some less so. 

For my posts, I am likely to focus on Basic era D&D (1977-1999), Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977-1988), and D&D 5th edition (2014-2024).  Right now "One D&D" is not out yet. It is due near the end of the year, and by all accounts, it should be 100% backward compatible with D&D 5. We will see. 

Here are a couple of notes for people who don't know (or care) about the differences in these games.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition is the edition made popular by Stranger Things and E.T. the Extra-Terristrial. It was the one popular in media in the 1980s, though there is some evidence that it was D&D Basic (edited by Frank Mentzer, aka "The Red Box") sold better.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the edition made popular by Critical Role. 

I hope that this month I can help with some of the confusion and mystery and maybe, just maybe, make so new players out of you all.

In addition to doing the April A to Z challenge, I am also doing the Ulitmate Blog Challenge. 

AND

I hope to have some good entries in the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted in April by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.