My Favorite D&D

Dungeons & Dragons has had a lot of editions. It was first released in 1974 as a box of three booklets. Then in 1977, the first Basic set was released along with the AD&D Monster Manual, which was followed by the Players Handbook in 1978 and the Dungeonmasters Guide in 1979. The Basic version was further revised in 1981, then again in 1983, then yet again in 1991. AD&D 2nd edition was releases in 1989 and then revised in 1995. Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, with its d20 system, came out in 2000 and then it was revised in 2003. After that, there was 4th edition in 2008 and then 5th edition in 2014.

Yeah, that's a lot. D&D is 42 years old this year (a special number for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans). So which D&D is your favorite?

I first encountered D&D in 1980, when I perused my cousin's AD&D Monster Manual. Oh, what a picture in my head that gave me! Valiant men & women vanquishing strange monsters and rewarded with magical treasures! I then read through the Basic set in 1983 and by 1984 my friends and I were devising our own dungeons and running each other through them in our idea of what D&D was supposed to be like. I didn't actually get to play D&D, which was actually AD&D, until 1987. I branched out to other RPG systems and then tried D&D again in 2000, when the 3rd edition came out. I never played 4th edition and I recently got the starter box for 5th edition but I haven't played it yet.

I've been reading through the 3rd edition Players Handbook, 1st edition AD&D, and the 1983 version of the Basic Set lately along with a bunch of retroclones. I love the simplicity of the Basic set. Rolls are simple, modifiers are few, and everything seems streamlined so we get right into the play of the game. But then I also love all the options of AD&D and 3rd edition. More races, more classes, multiclassing, and even feats are fun additions to play. And I love the advantage system in 5th edition where you get to roll 2d20 and take the best result (or worst result if you are disadvantaged).

So what's my favorite D&D? I'd say it's Basic with the races and classes from AD&D and the some of the cool character options from 3rd edition and the advantage/disadvantage system from 5th edition and oh, maybe some of the cool stuff I've seen in Dungeon Crawl Classics. My favorite D&D is an amalgamation of a bunch of things and I suspect it's like that for a lot of people. I'd like to write up my favorite D&D sometime and let you all look at it so you can compare it to your favorite D&D.

So what is your favorite D&D?