Every time I think that I am done with Dungeons & Dragons, it comes back into my life with force. There has been a weird confluence of experiences over the past 24 hours that have brought me back to the question of what exactly lies unresolved in my experience with D&D. I’m not quite sure what it is but I thought I’d share the exploration.

First, let’s review the three events that have emerged in my experience. The first was rediscovering (on the shelf) the D&D Third Edition “Adventure Game” boxed set aimed at starters and published in 2000. That brought to my attention the fact that I got into D&D 3e twenty-five years ago. It also unlocked a deep appreciation for that edition.

The second event was the request at school to specify an enrichment activity for next year which I would be willing to organise and run for students. Naturally, I proposed continuing the D&D Club and that led to a colleague (who is a 5e GM) to offer to join me and run some games from September. Given that the school has funded the 2024 books, well…

The third event was the impact of reading through the 3e Adventure Game before finding my way to the shelves and unearthing my original Player’s Handbook. Much as with GURPS Third Edition, I had a deeply positive response to opening those pages. Memories flooded back from the game I ran from 2000 until 2003, then with 3.5 until 2008.

The longest and most sustained campaigns I ever ran were with Alternity from 1999-2000 and then with D&D 3e from 2000-2003. I ran games in shorter campaigns from 2004 until 2008. Weirdly, the end of D&D 3.5 was where I began to experience a loss of confidence and direction in my gaming.

D&D 4e killed my enthusiasm for the game system and with it my long-form play. I didn’t return to the Third Edition, however: I jumped off into the OSR and returned to earlier editions, retroclones, and all that anti-3e jazz. None of it proved sustainable at the table, although I had some success with 1980s Basic D&D with students.

Since then, I’ve been haunted by the subgenre of “fantasy” that is Dungeons & Dragons – trying to emulate it in GURPS being the most notable – but nothing has stuck or worked out. The students kept asking me to teach them D&D and so I ended up diving into Fifth Edition in 2014. I ran games from 2014 until 2016 solidly, then irregularly until 2020.

What is it that keeps drawing me back? I think there are a couple of things that I enjoy, despite all my misgivings about the very bland and general way in which most Dungeon Masters run their D&D games. Mostly, I think it’s easy to pick up and play a game. But I also particularly enjoyed the Third Edition system when it arrived in 2000.

The biggest choice that allows Dungeons & Dragons to work for me has been the decision to limit the elements from the game that I am going to include in my campaign. Running it with just the core books and by selecting the pieces that fit my vision of a particular world was what made for the best play experience back twenty-five years ago.

As denigrated as the Third Edition has become, it was the most popular and successful D&D until 2014. It arguably saved the RPG hobby from a slow death when the d20 System was made available under the Open Gaming License. For those who were there, a great deal of passion and joy was unleashed and (for a time) things were good.

I’m not sure that, twenty-five years later, the Third Edition is entirely my cup of tea but I do know what opening the old books has released. I realise that sometimes I want to play Dungeons & Dragons. There are several roleplaying games that are (in my opinion) superior but, honestly, I can’t quite admit to not enjoying D&D as a thing all its own.

Dungeons & Dragons from 2000 is an artefact that I still value. More than any older edition, frankly. Heresy though it is in some quarters, I like the detail and grounded play experience that Levels 1 to 5 give in that old game. Married to an interesting world, with carefully crafted choices and options, my sense is that you could have some good play experiences.

And I realise that I owe it to myself to be honest about what I liked and enjoyed. For many years, I have silently allowed people to talk down the edition of Dungeons & Dragons that finally grabbed my attention. You see, we played Basic D&D (and Advanced) a bit back in the early 1980s… but then we moved on to Rolemaster. Until Y2K.

Game on!