D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge + Day 15

15. What was the first edition of D&D you didn't enjoy?

I believe that a good DM can run any edition of D&D and still give the players a rewarding game experience. However, some editions are harder work.

When D&D had a major overhaul and was rebranded as 3rd edition, I bought the three core rule books and ran a campaign using them. We had a lot of fun. The groups first encounter with a troll will always be remembered for the ferocity of that first round of melee and it's unexpected result. Rend

D&D 3rd edition was (and still is) a great game. The time it took to prepare a session or roll up a character had greatly increased though. In fact the Character Generator CD that came with the game helped immensely. Especially when running a campaign. In combat, the attack of opportunity rules were unnecessary.

Perhaps it would be too harsh to say I didn't enjoy 3rd edition D&D. Why? Because as a DM it inspired me to think differently about monsters. I even had the opportunity to play online with Swords & Sorcery creators from Necromancer Games. One of my characters, a half-orc Wizard named Vok Wightkicker, even made it into one of their modules.

In the end though, I left the books to sit on the shelf. It is telling that the next campaign I ran was with the D&D Basic and Expert rulebooks. Eventually I sold my 3rd edition books online.