Learn From Your Elders - How Older Editions can Improve your Game

While I currently play 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, I started playing in 3.5e. The game at that point differed greatly. Not just the mechanics, but the lore of the game as well. Looking back now it almost feels like 3.5 was a different d20 game with all the minor changes that have happened over the past two generations. With that said, I still find a lot of use out of the many 3.5e books I have, and will often crack them open during session prep. They provide a lot of insight and inspiration when I am trying to make an exciting encounter.

Every edition of Dungeons and Dragons has brought something new to the table. Whether it involves going into great detail on a subject, or having interesting mechanics, they all approached how to play DnD slightly differently. Knowing what they offer, and learning from these elders can help take your game to the next level.

Decades of History

Dungeons and Dragons has had many iterations since its initial release in 1974. Each edition brought something else to the game, changing how the game approached adventuring. The mechanics became more advanced in certain areas and streamlined in others. The lore was built, altered, and adjusted with each generation. No matter how each version of the game approached things, each added more to Dungeons and Dragons, creating a vast library of information. With such a vast resource, it only makes sense to make use of it.

5th edition is a solid edition. As the current version, it provides a somewhat streamlined way to play the game. The mechanics involved have an intuitive feel to them. The lore itself has been paired down, with official canon that is slowly expanding in its own way. However, some might find it lacking. The official 5e might not have the lore you are looking for, or go into detail like you want. The mechanics might be simple and streamlined, but feel lacking for what you want to represent. At that point, it makes sense to delve into the past. We want to learn from our elders, and use those older versions to enhance our games.

Lore

5e has done a wonderful job, especially recently, at bringing the older settings into the modern age. They brought in the fantastic and unique world of Eberron, as well as updating the Ravenloft setting to include more of the original elements. The setting of Exandria from Critical Role debuted in 5th edition, and provides an interesting and unique setting for players to interact in. They also have a few more on the way, specifically the Spelljammer and Dragonlance settings as well. 

But while these settings are nice to have in 5e, sometimes it feels like it can be a very summarized version. It gives you the basics, and instructions on how to build further, but it will lack the depth. Sometimes you want to flesh out a specific part of a setting in greater detail, but the 5e material does not provide what you want. I often can find that depth in the material from a previous setting. In that case I usually will turn to older material. For me that means 3rd edition or 3.5.

3e: Encyclopedic Lore

3rd edition has a ton of information available. Considered the “Kitchen Sink” by some, myself included, 3rd edition provided tons of information on the various lore in the DnD universe. If you wanted detailed information about something specific, you could find it. Looking into devils and demons, you had multiple choices available, each with tons of stats and lore for everything. The setting guides had tons of information and would sometimes be multiple books for one area. Basically, if something existed in the era of 3rd Edition, they talked about it to great lengths.

While this is an immense well of lore, I like to use it as guidelines more than doctrine. Just because a previous edition has vast troves of knowledge does not mean that you need to pull everything that you find, and only taking pieces leaves room for you to fill in the blank. So you can stick to 5th Edition, supplement with bits from 3e, and let your creativity fill in the blanks. I used this very process when I wanted to flesh out Sharn, an iconic city in the Eberron setting.

When Wizards announced Eberron would come to 5th edition, I could not wait. One of my favorite settings when it came out originally, I could not wait to run adventures in the world. The lore present in the official 5e material went into some detail, but I was hoping to find more. I wanted to focus my adventure on the City of Sharn. The 5e sourcebook for Eberron covered some details, but I wanted to flesh out the shops and factions more. So I found the 3.5 book Sharn: City of Towers and started reading it. 

City of Towers gave some additional details on Sharn. I could look at shops that existed in the different levels of the city and add it to what I had from the 5e book. I happily took that information, bringing some ideas into my game but mostly using it to build my work. The book also talked about some of the minor gangs at work in Sharn. The 5e material focused mainly on the bigger factions, like Daask, and I wanted to have some minor gangs to fill in the blank. I could take this information and bring some more gangs in, providing minor players in my version of Sharn.

I also like to use old lore for pulling old, iconic monsters into the current edition. The newer modules provide a wonderful selection of monsters to throw at your party, with interesting mechanics. But sometimes I find a missing element in 5e and need to go back. Once again, I ran into this in Eberron. In this setting there is a faction of aberrations known as the Dalkyr. Their plans are mysterious, but they often corrupt and twist mortals for their own gain. One of these aberrations in particular would warp and corrupt the goblins under their sway. This resulted in goblinoid aberrations. The 5e material provides stat blocks for corrupted goblins, Dolgrim, and corrupted hobgoblins, Dolgaunt. But they did not provide any information on a corrupted Bugbear. I turned to the older editions to find out if such a creature existed before I had to make one myself. Looking, I found they used to exist, called a Dolgarr or Dolgrue depending on the edition. This terrifying creature would provide the heavy bruiser that I wanted to add to the ranks of the aberrations my players would face in their journeys close to the Khyber.

Mechanics

Besides Lore, the older editions are full of wonderful mechanics that can enhance your current game. The 5e system, when compared to the older iterations, is fairly streamlined and easy to run. Bounded accuracy and the Advantage/Disadvantage system creates a game that moves swiftly. With that said, there is always room for additions and improvements. I would argue that with 5e’s setup it actually encourages small additions onto it. The system is only moderately crunchy for a d20 system so it leaves a lot of space to add to it if you desire.

There are many places to pull inspiration from for additional mechanics. The previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons provide a variety of different options that work well. These mechanics can bring different perspectives to the table and provide a unique experience. When I am looking for a mechanic to add some complexity to my table, I usually go to the same play. I like to pull from the 4th Edition.

4th Edition

4e was a very different version of Dungeon and Dragons. Coming from a very mechanical and heavy 3.5, this system made a lot of changes to the game, both mechanically and lore. While some enjoyed the changes that 4e brought, many did not like these changes. They felt that they were too “video gamey”, and stepped too far away from the core of Dungeons and Dragons. Pathfinder partially came about as a way for players to enjoy what they loved about the older game. Whether or not you enjoyed the system, it brought in a lot of interesting elements to the game mechanically.

I use quite a few elements pretty regularly from 4e. The top item that I use would be Skill Challenges. You may be familiar with them, as they are a very popular edition to the game. I even talked about them as one of my favorite ways to run heists. This mechanic, in its simplest form, allows the players to use their teamwork and abilities together to overcome an obstacle in a relatively short amount of time. In order to set up a skill challenge, you will want to determine the amount of success needed prior to a failure. After mapping out what those challenges could be, you can then determine a range of DC depending on how the party approaches the challenge. Once you have a general layout for the skill challenge, you can ‌run your table through it. At the end of the Skill Challenge the party will either succeed or fail, with the results dependent on how they did.

I absolutely love using Skill Challenges. I use them any chance I get since they do an excellent job of montaging encounters. They are fast-paced and allow players a lot of opportunities to use all their abilities creatively in order to succeed. I believe Skill Challenges work better than the standard 5e Chase mechanic, allowing for a much smoother system altogether. Many people have brought over the 4e mechanics to 5e, so it is easy to find guides. I like this guide by Dragnacarta , which takes the original mechanic and provides solid guidelines for creating these exciting encounters for any level of play.

Another mechanic from 4e that I like to use is minions, often paired with a boss style monster. Any monster can become a minion. They act identically to their non-minion counterparts, but with one big difference. Instead of having a HP Pool, minions will die after one or two hits. Wolf Minions, for example, could use their attacks and have an advantage due to pack tactics. If hit, however, they would most likely perish.. Mechanically this provides a creature that will add to the action economy and deflect attacks and actions away from the boss monster, but only take a single attack to end.

When running solo bosses the action economy might not be in their favor. Even if I homebrew them to have Legendary Actions, sometimes it is not enough. Minions can provide a once or recurring boost to the action economy and change up combat in interesting ways. Often I will have minions enter midway through the battle, around either half or third health of the boss in question. The minions rush the battlefield, getting around the party. This forces a change of tactics as the players decide who will handle the new threat and who will keep focus on the boss.

Other Options

In my examples above I mostly pulled from 3rd, 3.5, and 4th Editions for enhancing my tabletop games. I played, or at least knew people who played these editions while they were the current version of Dungeons and Dragons, and because of that have a bit more knowledge of them. But the other editions also have a wealth of information available to them and have a lot of value for enhancing your game.

Ravenloft and Count Strahd von Zarovich have been a part of the game since 1983. At that point The Ravenloft Module, often referred to by its code I6, was released for the 1st Edition of the game. This module created Strahd and the land of Barovia, paving the way for the rest of what is now considered Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread. Although very different from what we know nowadays as the 5e Curse of Strahd module, it brings a lot of interesting information to the table. If you want to run Curse of Strahd, I highly recommend picking it up and looking at it.

Final Thoughts

The previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons, the elder generations, have a wealth of resources available. You just have to play the role of Archaeologist (or tomb raider) in order to get them. You can find interesting elements of lore in the previous editions. 3e has a vast wealth of lore, covering many things in great detail. You can pull and incorporate that lore into your game, using it to help expand out on what you already have available. Previous versions always have unique and interesting mechanics that can change up how you play out at your table. 4e in particular, for its faults, has some amazing and interesting mechanics available such as the Skill Challenge and Minions. I use both at my table to great success, as they help me create a style of gameplay I want at my table. These elements of lore can help provide inspiration, guiding you to make some interesting and unique enhancements to your setting.

Do you use older editions at the table? If so, what do you use? I would love to hear!

I am working on a newsletter, which will let you know what I am working on! If you are interested in signing up check here.