A (Very) Brief look at the D&D Editions
Dungeons & Dragons has been around since 1974 and is currently in its 5th edition. With its popularity at an all-time high, I figured why not take a look back and see where the game started, the bumps along the road, and how we finally ended up here. In many ways, we do this every two weeks here at Dump Stat with our Deep Dives. I am constantly having to look up how certain mechanics worked for creatures in older editions, what some of the abbreviations meant, ponder the meaning of life as I try to decipher 1st edition psionics, and am still trying to figure out why anyone would think THAC0 was a good idea.
This isn’t meant to be an in-depth exploration into each edition, discussing rules and gameplay at such great lengths that everyone will fall asleep. It is, however, important to look at one’s past to see how they arrived at the place they are today. It’s exciting to see the game talked about on the news and in mainstream articles about all the positives it brings to the table. For someone that was in their teens when the satanic panic was all the media talked about, it’s a pleasant change.
1st Edition
Just in case you needed a creepy sound for your dungeon (1)
Jumping into the way back machine, we land in 1974 and the first edition. The game had been around for a few years already, but apparently, OD&D doesn’t merit its own edition. The First edition was a hack and slash game that grew out of the basic wargaming model of the 1970s. There wasn’t much flashy about it when you compare the game to what we play today, but at the time, it was revolutionary. It was also a quagmire of contradicting rules and a mind-numbing number of tables that required you to roll dice. There are over 20 tables for random encounters by location, whether it be a dungeon, castle, or temperate or sub-tropical, uninhabited/wilderness areas, frog subclass chart (yes, that does exist). There are tables for wind type and strength, how much every item in the construction of a castle was (from arrow silt to tower to moat), and how many languages your fancy magical sword could speak.
No one in their right mind used even a quarter of the charts. If you didn’t like a rule or thought a monster needed to be more powerful, you changed it. It was the idea behind the insane amount of rules that took root. People wanted to slay dragons and become a superhero. We found a strange enjoyment out of rolling dice. You played with friends in your basement, away from the cruelties of the world. It was the outlet nerds like myself were looking for, and we loved it.
A few things to know about the 1st edition: there were two versions of the game, Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. TSR, the company, created to produce the game, stands for Tactical Studies Rules. The art used in the core texts was godawful at best, softcore porn at its worst. And Gary Gygax is not the creator god the lore has made him out to be. (2) In fact, he “borrowed” the entire concept from Dave Arneson. (3) Some people get very bent out of shape when you discuss whether Gygax should be celebrated or loathed. My opinion is that he only did what people have done throughout history - he took a product or idea and commercialized it. Edison took Tesla’s work and changed the world. Woj may have created the motherboard of all motherboards, but Jobs turned it into Apple. Gygax just took an amazing idea, wrote it all down, and sold it to the public.
2nd Edition
Patricia Pulling was the founder of Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons…and an idiot. (4)
Things had started to go off the rails prior to the release of this edition, and they continued down a strange and confusing path that almost lead to the death of the game. Gygax had moved to Hollywood with dreams of producing a Dungeons & Dragons movie and become famous within the mainstream. At the same time, TSR was faltering financially. In addition, the satanic panic had led to parents forbidding kids from playing the game, so changes were needed to appease the masses, bringing mainstream media coverage, but not the kind that Gygax was lusting after.
Both Basic and Advanced D&D released new versions of the game in the 1980s. You don’t have to look very closely to see that the 5th edition actually mirrors the Basic version way more than the AD&D, even though that was the more popular version of the game at the time. There is a larger library of books for AD&D. It was a rules-based game where combat took place under a strict set of mechanics where Basic tended toward more of a simple set of rules, less combat, and more social interaction. No matter which you were playing, the most noticeable change was in response to the negative media exposure that the game received related to the satanic panic. All references to demons and devils were scrubbed from the game in response to the insanity of organized religion inciting an irrational fear amongst parents everywhere. (5) Unless you lived through the 1980s you cannot fully grasp how nuts it was. While we couldn’t go out a kill the Arch Demon Orcus anymore, at least we still had dragons to slay.
The near demise of the game can be summed best in the acronym, THAC0. Standing for "To Hit Armor Class 0", THAC0 was the roll you needed to hit on target with an AC of zero, which in turn is used to calculate other attack rolls. It’s not as confusing as people made out to be, but it was an unnecessary complication to what should be a simple process. TSR, in an attempt to either expand its popularity in other genres or make a blatant cash grab, (It depends on who you ask) began to produce more textbooks with rules and campaign settings. Books for Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer flooded the market. A simple sword and magic game had now become so complicated and confusing that people began to walk away.
3rd Edition
On the verge of bankruptcy, TSR was purchased by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. (6) They wisely set about reworking the game at released the 3rd edition in 2000, using the d20 system in an effort to simplify the game. In a nutshell, the d20 system is a set of rules where your beloved d20 is the focus die upon which all of the core mechanics revolve around. No one is perfect, and even though they spent three years producing this new rule set, the 3.5 edition was released in 2003 as a follow-up and clarification of the game’s rules. It’s better to admit your mistakes (something they may want to remember nowadays) than to just try to push through them, and the 1/2 edition release was able to make a number of small, but important tweaks.
This is only page 1 of 2 of your 3.5e character sheet (7)
The 3rd edition is all about the crunch. People wanted to be able to play more than just a fighter or cleric, and being able to multiclass wasn’t going to do the trick anymore. The feat system was introduced, allowing for players to customize their characters in ways that they had never been able to do before. Of course with the good comes the bad. Combat slowed down to a crawl. It was quite possible for a single encounter to take an entire 4-hour session THAC0 was, thankfully, removed from the game, but the rules were still cumbersome and hard to understand, limiting access to the game. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard enough time reading five pages of instructions for a new board game, let alone 100+ pages of text just to create a character. This doesn’t even begin to cover what you’d need to learn to be a Dungeon Master. WotC obviously wanted to recoup their investment as quickly as possible, releasing over 12 core textbooks and 50 supplement texts between 3.0 and 3.5e.
The other big-ticket item was the introduction of the OGL or open gaming license. (8) This opened the floodgates for individuals (or two odd individuals such as myself and Stephen) to create material for D&D without having to get the express consent of WotC. In many ways, it was a genius idea, since people like yours truly provide the company with an ad hoc advertising arm and they have to do nothing but let me work. I’m not sure they felt the same way after Lisa Stevens, Vic Wertz, and Johnny Wilson created Pathfinder in 2008 (9), after which considering they scrapped the OGL, although it was replaced with a much more restrictive GSL in 2008.
4th edition
Powers - the short and sweet version (10)
I have never played 4th edition, and I’m not going to jump on the 4e hatred bandwagon. It was different, but in many ways, was the perfect precursor to the 5th edition. The edition went to great lengths to explain the game mechanics and attempted to slim down what had become a massive system. Rules were clearer and easier to understand, and there weren’t so damn many of them. It kept many of the same things that people loved from 3.5e, such as the prestige path concept, renaming the paragon paths, and it made it easier to obtain and level up through.
It re-established the need for playing with miniatures, although it was by no means a requirement. Playing with minis has always been my preferred method since I need to see the battlefield layout as it is hard for me to visualize what is going on in my mind. I’m also, bias when it comes to playing with minis, having 100’s of them in my teenage years. They were made of metal, impossible to paint, and could kill you if thrown hard enough. But they were my addiction, not unlike the dice addiction I now have.
While 4th edition creature lore is sadly lacking - all you have to do is read a couple of our Deep Dives to know my feelings on this subject - it more than makes up for it with three Monster Manuals and over 5000 creatures to choose from. You also have the ability to customize each creature using a set of provided rules. Meta gamers everywhere may have hated this, but it provided the DM with the chance to make every encounter unique.
With the good comes the bad, and the bad in the 4th edition was Powers. In a desperate attempt to create a new and one-of-a-kind system, Powers moved away from everything long-time players were accustomed to and forced you to use a whole new system. It also contradicted the whole idea of simplifying the game. The Powers system may have been easier to follow and use, but requiring everyone to learn a new way of gameplay seemed like a punishment to older players, and they raged against it. People began to abandon the game en mass, moving to Pathfinder, which Paizo had modeled on 3.5e. Pathfinder sales began to surpass Dungeons & Dragons, and WotC knew something had to be done. (11)
5th Edition
As we arrive at the 5th edition, most people will agree that WotC found the perfect sweet spot between mechanics and roleplay. Old mechanics were brought back, and the mechanics were streamlined for ease of use and are easy to learn. This made the game way less intimidating to the new player, and people responded, flocking to the game. Roleplaying became just as important as combat, with social interaction amongst everyone at the table being as important as rolling dice.
Once the 5th edition gained a foothold in the general population, WotC wisely started to bring back some of the popular old monsters and adventures, including Ravenloft and Count Strahd von Zarovich in Curse of Strahd (2016), the Eberron campaign setting for the 3rd edition in Eberron: Rising from the Last War (2019) and Baldur’s Gate of the video game fame in Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus (2019). This appeal to the old guard has been met cautiously by many, but players like myself have found the nostalgia drawing me back to the game.
Now there are issues. Character customization is once again limited, with a few recent attempts at remedying this occurring of late. Balance is the name of simplification that has made the game the equivalent of playing a video game on easy mode. I liked the monsters having a fighting chance against the characters, but now the concept of running away from an encounter has all been forgotten. Personally, I’d love another dedicated monster manual, not a miniature version such as Volo’s. I know Stephen would kill for the Planescape setting's revival, although I don’t see that one happening any time soon. In the end, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
I hope Dungeons & Dragons continues to grow in popularity. More people playing the game helps grow its base, increases the demand for new products that keep the game fresh and new, and hopefully means more people reading Dump Stat. History is important, as we can learn from it and avoid our previous mistakes. (Of course, as human beings we are notoriously bad at learning from history - see World War I and World War II). WotC has its work cut out for itself on many fronts, (12) but it seems, as far as Dungeons & Dragons is concerned, they are avoiding the mistakes from the game’s past.
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References
1. Dungeon Master’s Guide, 1st Edition (1979)
2. “Dungeons & Deceptions: The First D&D Players Push Back On The Legend Of Gary Gygax”, Kotaku.com, August 2019.
3. Dave Arneson, Wikipedia.
4. Patricia Pulling, Wikipedia.
5. “The Games Wizards: Angry Mothers From Heck (And what we do about them)", Dragon #154, Feb. 1990.
6. “Disaffected Fans Cheer D&D Buyout”, Wired.com, April 1997.
7. 3.5e Character Sheet
8. Open Gaming License, Wikipedia.
9. “The History of Paizo”, Paizo.com, July 2009.
10. Dungeon Master’s Guide, 4th edition (2008).
11. “The story of Pathfinder, Dungeons & Dragons' most popular offspring”, Polygon.com, August 2016.
12. “Wizards of the Coast is addressing racist stereotypes in Dungeons & Dragons” Polygon.com, June 2020.
Header Art Credit - Teen Speed Press/Wizards of the Coast
