How did you get into 3e?

[GilesTheCleric]

Share your story! It'd be especially interesting to learn about why you've gotten into it after 2007. Have you switched to PF after 3.X was no longer in publication?

[flappeercraft]

My dad has played this game for about 25 years and about in 2012 august he got me into it as a casual hobby after showing me. It is just recently (2016 January/February) that I really started getting addicted to this thing and became an optimizer.

[EisenKreutzer]

I started playing roleplaying games in the late nineties, when I was maybe 15 or 16, with AD&D 2nd Ed.

I played a lot of Magic:The Gathering at the time, at a local nerdy youth club, and the guy who organized it thought it would be fun to get us into rpgs. He brougt in an older guy (mid 20's) he'd met at the book store he ran, who told us about roleplaying games and invited us to join in a campaign. I and a group of my friends said we wanted to join, and thats how I was introduced to roleplaying.

I picked up 3.0 as it released, and played it for a while until I discovered Vampire: The Masquerade.
I started up again with D&D when 3.5 was released, and played it for a few years with friends. Then I oved to a new city, and stopped in favour of other "more mature" roleplaying games.

Then, when Pathfinder was released, I decided I wanted to try out the system I had so much fun with again, and now Pathfinder is one of my go to games (in addition to a bunch of weird indie games and other stuff).

[LordOfCain]

I began playing 3e with some of my friends and just kinda kept playing. Now I'm trying to get them to switch to Pathfinder, but that's a different story.

[GilesTheCleric]

I began playing 3e with some of my friends and just kinda kept playing. Now I'm trying to get them to switch to Pathfinder, but that's a different story.

Where did you and your group of friends hear about 3e?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I used to be an avid reader of Dragonlance Novels when I was a kid then, in 2005, I popped into my FLGS to pick up some M:tG cards and saw the Dragonlance Campaign Setting on a shelf. Picked it up on a whim. Picked up the PHB a couple weeks later to figure out what all these numbers meant and things just snowballed from there.

[LordOfCain]

Where did you and your group of friends hear about 3e?
Okay... If I recall correctly, I found a 3e PHB in my local library and was bored so... I read it and thought it was cool so I started a group with my friends.

[Buufreak]

OO! OO! I got this one!

So, I was introduced to D&D somewhat as a joke while hanging out with all my fraternity brothers at a bar. Someone mentioned something about how an Elf differs from a Human by the way they carry themselves, and then we see Smack (frat name) start gallivanting about as he thinks an Elf would. But I was super interested in the idea, having always liked fantasy settings and games, so I inquired further. Within no time, we were buying books, making sheets, and setting up times that we could all play. Our elder brother who had played since AD&D was going to DM. It all sounded great. However, we were playing 4th edition, and quickly ran into the issues of having a DM from older editions trying to update, while also explaining it. Not a huge deal. But it did cause some issues.

Fast forward 3 years. I haven't played in forever. Still didn't know if I wanted to play. New brothers came in, old brothers graduated. My little asks me if I knew anything about 3rd edition. Frankly, I didn't know there was much of any kind of difference, but I was given a hard copy of 3.5 PHB and never bothered to open it because I really didn't have much a reason to without a gaming group (and no knowledge of such a large online community to talk/game with). So I humor Patrick, and tell him I'd be glad to watch him play a game with a few of his friends, or roll together something to help move things along in case he had those lull moments that tend to happen with new players.

Within the first session, I had been 1 shot'd to -6ish, stabilized, and sent on a quest (less quest, more dominate) by a succubus. Eventually, that character died, but his legend lived on because he was a Dragon Shaman (yes yes, I know) who was hellbent on convincing the world he was legitimately a dragon. At level 4 when he got his acid breath and used it to finish a troll, the party finally started to accept that Yo-Lam Tayga was actually a dragon. By his death, he had payed numerous bar dwelling bards to spread the story of his life, paying extra for any embellishing they would add.

So, I guess Brian got us into D&D, but it was Patrick and friends that really brought me to love 3.5.

[Uncle Pine]

I've been introduced to 3.5e when I was in my 2nd year of middle school: a friend of mine asked me if I was interested in joining he, his sister's boyfriend and his sister's boyfriend's friend in this fantasy game where everything was possible. I asked him to explain himself and he mentioned a bunch of classes, the Druid among the others. Druids could have animal friends and if you played one you could ask the Dungeon Master to make animals appear for you. "So if I say that I want a lizard a lizard just walks around the angle?" I asked. "Yeah, sure." And then we just didn't stop playing until earlier this year. After the first small adventure the guy who was the DM at the time simply vanished in a puff of logic (bringing with him our PHB copy, damn him) and no one ever heard about him anymore, then I was nominated DM and have more or less been stuck in the role ever since. It's been over 10 years and it was a total wild ride.

Fun fact: everything has been freaking possible so far! Except for shooting two-handed weapons with a bow (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?389104-Did-you-just-kill-someone-by-shooting-a-halberd-at-him-Yes), but we don't talk about that. This is also the reason why I've never abandoned 3.5e for another system: if you can do everything, generally in at least a couple of different ways, why switch? :smallbiggrin:

[digiman619]

3rd Edition actually came out at the worst time for me. I graduated high school in 2002 and circumstances didn't permit me to go to college; and for those who forgot, 3.0 didn't come out until mid 2003. So AD&D was ancient and 3rd didn't exist yet, so it would be years until I got into it. I actually found the DMG at a yard sale/thrift store (I forget which) and found it interesting, so I bought the PHB & MM. I then spent the next several years fiddling with the books while not finding anyone remotely interested in playing/campaigns dying before 3rd level (I live in a pretty small town, so the possible player pool wasn't that big to begin with). It also didn't help that I was the (often only) guy who new the rules, but am an okay GM and absolutely horrible at making my own game worlds. Eventually I stumbled on these boards and was introduced to the joy of PbP and have enjoyed it since, though I am now more of a Pathfinder guy than 3.X.

[rrwoods]

Freshman college roommate was DMing a game, and I got into it and took to the fantasy aspects pretty quickly. I was already an avid Magic player and Weis & Hickman reader.

After college a good friend of my now-fiancé's started up a game that I ended up in as well. Took 7 levels of fighter (oh, past me) before discovering the wonders of the internet community. My character's class levels directly reflect my skill at optimization over a long period of time (that game is still going, gets played pretty infrequently, and we're only level 14 after 5 years of intermittent sessions). Fighter 7/Warshaper 4/Warblade 3.

[Krazzman]

Started my A-Levels, met the son of one of the customers of my parents tanning salon and talked to him as well as chatting via ICQ with him. He invited me over for one game (Shadowrun) and the week after that I helped redecorating and started building an elven rogue for a campaign. It ran for somewhat about 20 sessions before stopping and we started playing One-shots with 3-session games for a few years in 3.5. Played Marvel, Shadowrun (one longer spanning campaign that broke down due to some really nasty fight between the DM and player [picture death threats]), Gurps and a later switching to Pathfinder around the time the Magus was released.

[Remuko]

So I must have gotten into it right when it came out because it was nearly 15 years ago. One of my friends got this : https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61fZvYVLEtL.jpg

We played a bit with it because we all loved console RPGs. We had a lot of fun. We eventually decided to get the 3.0 core rulebooks and start playing more, so we did. We have never played any official adventure since. Every campaign was in our own fictional world(s) not a pre-established one, though we did use the standard 3.0/3.5 pantheon (the one with Hextor and Bahamut etc).

That's about how it went. When 3.5 came out we jumped at the changes and have been playing 3.5 since.

[you randomly]

it was about maybe 4 years ago and i and my regular gaming group (mostly mine craft) at the time had just started playing the mmo version of neverwinter and the father of one of the friends (who we also played with) told us that he plays D&D and would be happy to run a game for us, we stubbed through the gm custom world breaking a few game rules by mistake but it still ended up being the most memorable campaign for me currently on my 6th campaign where the original gms son is trying there had a gming (having fun so far)

i picked up the rules very quickly and most of the source material via handbooks and read the books to the point where my friends talk to me about a concept and i let them know how they could go about achieving it.

[Xanyo]

My brother's friend lent me a Player's Handbook. He later apologized for that. :smalltongue:

[Thurbane]

After my 1E/2E group dissolved, a few years later started playing 3E with two friends: one who had never played D&D, and one who had dabbled in 2E and 3E. It started as a session playing Heroquest, and I asked if they would be interested in D&D.

Group is still going strong several years later.

[lylsyly]

Played D&D since Christmas, 1974. Done OD&D, BECMI, AD&D and 2e (never did B/X for some reason) and played many different versions of Traveller since it came out in '76.

3e? Got out of prison in August 2016, my old group had made the move to 3e (2012 when I got locked up we were mostly playing Traveller, hadn't done D&D since I closed out an almost 18 year old BECMI campaign).

I'm still trying to read everything and figure out the various levels of synergy going on :smallamused:

[Naez]

My group had played 4e for a while. It was tactically interesting but combats were a slog. So our DM suggested for Our next campaign to run in 3.5 since he was familiar with it and he thought we'd like it better. So we did and we all had a lot more fun since 3.5 has a ridiculous amount of options and the scale of the PCs power is much larger. A max level wizard in 3.5 can create and destroy entire planes of existence, in 4e a max level wizard can level a fortress...maybe.

So it was more fun but also much more complicated, since a significant amount of the rules are completely open to DM interpretation. In 4e the DM fiat and interpretation didn't really exist. The rules were written very specifically and with no room for interpretation and the few examples where they were, they were quickly errata'ed.

[shuyung]

I was playing weekly RPGA Living City (It's a beautiful day in Raven's Bluff) events at a game store. WotC had purchased TSR and everyone would occasionally ask if any news had come out yet. One day, the owner announced he'd gotten the promotional material for 3rd edition, and distributed some of the handouts. A few months go by, and the PHB finally hits the shelves. So I picked up my copy, and never really looked back.

[Hurnn]

I bought my 3.0 PHB the day it came out and it is/has been my favorite edition ever since I started playing in 1978, with 5th coming in a distant 2nd.

[Palanan]

I started playing in 1983, after I heard a couple friends at school talking about a “gelatinous cube.” They were sitting on a rusty stairwell outside of a classroom, and I had no idea what they were talking about. That was my introduction to roleplaying. I learned fast.

I played for a couple years, then moved hundreds of miles away, and since I didn’t know any kids at my new school, I spent more time building characters and designing a game world than actually playing. I almost joined a 2E game late in high school, and planned to start one myself when I went to college; but my college group ended up playing a very homebrew game of Star Trek instead. After college, work and life took over and I didn’t touch RPGs for years.

When 3.0 came out I never noticed; but a friend of mine started a 3.5 group in August of 2003, right after that version appeared. I ended up staying with that campaign for several years, then started one of my own, and I’ve played with a number of groups since then.

A couple years ago I joined a Pathfinder game, then switched to a different Pathfinder group and became thoroughly Pathfinderized. Now I’m running my own Pathfinder campaign, and while I’ll always have a fondness for my large collection of 3.5 sourcebooks, at this point Pathfinder is my game.

[Flickerdart]

It must've been around 2004 or 2005. One of the juniors or seniors in high school wanted to start up a D&D club that met during lunch, a kid in my friend circle invited us all, and the rest is history. Of course, you can't do much gaming in a 45 minute period, and even the DMs barely knew the rules, but I was still hooked. When 4E came out I gave it a shot, but it wasn't able to capture my imagination in the same way that 3.5's obscure tomes of ridiculous rules did. Then Pathfinder came out, but I never saw the point - it was claiming to fix a problem that, for me, did not exist.

If I ever have the time for a 5e group, maybe I'll get into that one. But by the looks of it, WotC is trying to avoid the very thing that made 3.5 great in my eyes.

[Bad Wolf]

OotS, if I'm being honest.

[Leewei]

I'd started out with D&D as a kid, and played into my college years. From there, I discovered several other systems, such as GURPS, Rolemaster, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, and so on.

A friend of a friend wanted to run a 3e D&D game. The group had many other friends of mine in it, and ran in the large meeting room of the local Atari offices, after hours. How could I pass that up?!

[Flickerdart]

OotS, if I'm being honest.

That seems like a weird order of events - opening up a comic where the first page only makes sense if you know these rules, and then learning the rules.

[Rhyltran]

That seems like a weird order of events - opening up a comic where the first page only makes sense if you know these rules, and then learning the rules.

I got a friend into 3.5 who liked order of the stick but never knew anything really about 3.5. Converting him to 3.5/Pathfinder was easy.

To answer the question? I knew nothing about D&D and I was sitting at a lunch table in highschool when three people next to me were planning out their next characters. I scooted over to them and asked what they were talking about and they kind of gave me this look like they were unsure if I was being serious or looking for an angle in order to pick on them. I asked again and asked if I could see the book so they pushed it over to me (it was 2nd edition). After a bit of flipping through I think they kind of figured out I was genuinely interested so they started telling me about it. I made a wizard, got to playing it, and had a good time. Came home, told my parents about it, and was told my uncle played. I learned some more from him and when 3rd edition came out I purchased both books, enjoyed it more than 2nd, and have been playing since.

[Telonius]

Let's see, that would have had to be ... shortly after it came out in 2000. A group of us in college tried it out - I still stay in touch with some of them. We upgraded to 3.5 when it came out. I never went in for Pathfinder, though ported back a few of the skill streamlines. It seemed to be chipping away at the edges of the balance issue without really fixing it - not a bad attempt, but not enough of a fix to bother with all of it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Flickerdart
That seems like a weird order of events - opening up a comic where the first page only makes sense if you know these rules, and then learning the rules.

Just looked at the first page. There’s goblins and heroes. That’s more than enough to catch someone’s interest.

The second page gives us a situation familiar to anyone who hated gym class: being the last one picked for a team. Either team. Now we have sympathy for a character.

And from there, we have the beginnings of a story. No rules knowledge required to be interested enough to follow along.