Chargen Lab: Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

Well, today's character hails from D&D 3e.  The rules for D&D 3e can be found at the d20 SRD page, though I'm afraid character generation is omitted due to the terms of the Open Game License and d20 System License.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 2e

So now onto a character generated in AD&D 2nd Edition.  This is a bit more complicated than the Rules Cyclopedia and 1st Edition characters, so there's more explanations to be had.  Bear in mind that the character I wrote up is a more complex character than the typical 1st level character.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 1st Edition

Continuing a series of characters generated under the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons, here's one generated under AD&D 1st Edition.

Chargen Lab: D&D Rules Cyclopedia

I thought I'd do some articles on character generation in various editions of D&D  to lead up to Monday's official release of 5e.  I would like to say that it is the same character so that we can compare and contrast the various editions, but differences in the chargen methods across editions make that impossible.  We'll start with the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, because that's what's on my desk at the moment.

D&D Retrospective: Basic Dungeons & Dragons

Once upon a time, there were two Dungeons and Dragons; it was in a time before Pathfinder and D&D 4e were competing for supremacy.  One was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the other was simply Dungeons & Dragons.  Sometimes it was called 'Basic' D&D because of the existence of 'Advanced', other times it was called BECMI D&D.  Or it was named after the people who edited the rules for a given edition.

It might surprise younger readers that Dungeons & Dragons had five editions between 1974 and 1994.  These were evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary, small fixes and clarifications to the game rules instead of vastly different versions of the rules.  Want to know more? See you after the jump.

D&D Retrospective: The Fall of Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the best-selling RPG from 1974 to 2011.  That, by itself, should speak volumes about the popularity of the game; a thirty-seven year reign at the top.  But what happened?  What became the best-selling RPG from 2011 to present day?

The Pathfinder RPG, published by Paizo Publishing, knocked D&D off the top of the heap.  And that is an interesting story in itself.

D&D Retrospective: The Edition Wars

I haven't been updating the blog because of health issues that have been pretty soundly thrashing me, in case anyone was wondering.  I usually try to get these things written up ahead of time as well.  But enough of that.

Since Dungeons and Dragons is relaunching on August 18th, I figured I'd write a few retrospective type articles about it.  Well, retrospective in the sense of looking how the game has evolved over the years, anyway.  Now, I'm not old enough to have been in at the beginning of the game, which emerged in 1974 with a collection of small booklets in a portfolio.  I don't have this edition of the game, even though Wizards of the Coast released a collector's edition of it last year.  But let's talk about the various editions of D&D.