John Kim's D&D Notes

These are my notes and thoughts on the Dungeons & Dragons^TM role-playing game. I played D&D solidly for several years when I was in grade school in the 1980s, but since entering high school, my D&D games have been mainly short adventures or mini-campaigns. In the 00's, I played the 3.0 "Gambino Campaign" run by Mike Derry, and much later a run of Shackled City. I have only played a few one-shots of the 4th edition game, along with a dozen or so plays of the related boardgames (Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and Legend of Drizzt). Most of the links below concern the 3.0 or 3.5 edition.

D&D Adventure System Board Games: Notes on the board games based on D&D that came out in 2010 and 2011, concurrent with 4th edition - "Castle Ravenloft" and "Wrath of Ashardalon".
Free 4th ed D&D Rules: A collection of links to 4th ed D&D rules released free by WotC.

3.0 Player's Handbook Review: This is my complete review of the D&D Players Handbook, third (3.0) edition.
3.0 Dungeon Master's Guide Review: This is my complete review of the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide, third (3.0) edition.

Ability Probabilities: This is a discussion of dice probabilities for "best 3 out of 4d6" ability die rolls -- i.e. the standard for D&D3.0 or method V for AD&D. It includes a complete probability table for all six scores from highest to lowest.
Class Comparison: This is a table roughly comparing the stats of the various classes, created around the time of the 3.0 release. It is handy for getting an overview of what classes are like, although obviously details are skipped. For amusement, see also:
Super-Build Links
Omniclassing
Feat Progression: This includes ASCII-graphic listings of the D&D3.0 feats that is organized by field and prerequisites rather than alphabetically. It is useful mainly to show prerequisites for combat feats.
Level Progression: This is some general discussion of level progression in D&D3.0, looking at exactly what is gained with level advancement in the different classes.
Spell Tables: This is a collection of spell tables for the basic PHB classes and spells. I have completed a program which parses all of the spell fields into a general format, and now I am just trying out what tables and output would be useful.
Product Interest Survey: This is a brief overview of a d20 Product Interest survey conducted by James Kittock. The full data is no longer publically available at his request, but I thought it would be fair to post snippets of the results.
Ray Winninger's "Dungeoncraft" Essays (Added February 3, 2006): A series of essays by Ray Winninger on game-mastering a fairly traditional dungeon-based campaign, originally published in Dragon magazine from 1997 to 1999.
An Overview of D&D/D20 Settings (Added April 19, 2006): This is a brief outline of over twenty published settings for D&D.
D&D Adventure Survey Summary (Added April 19, 2006): This collects the results of a survey on the most popular D&D adventures from the ENWorld community.
Melan's Dungeon Mapping (Added October 5, 2006): A guide to the design of dungeon maps, analyzing the linearity and shape of a number of classic dungeons modules.

External Links

Here are some additional D&D3 links:

The Hypertext d20 SRD: An excellent online browsing resource. An offline version is available for download only for paying subscribers, however.
SwoRD - The System wide-open Reference Document: An SRD from Behemoth games which supposedly incorporates some third-party open content.
System Reference Documents: A number of open-content D20 documents, but the core has not been converted into HTML.
3eProfiler: An online HTML-based character sheet database.
SSA-X2 D&D Character Sheet: A PDF-based self-calculating character sheet.
PCGen: The leading open-source, multi-platform program for creating 3rd edition characters and other elements.
Freeform D&D3 Character Generation: An alternate character generation method by Robert J. Hall, for the 3.0 edition.
Chris Cote's Rules Downloads: A campaign journal with house rules and collected rules downloads.
rec.games.frp.dnd FAQ: A slightly out-of-date UseNet FAQ.
Literary Sources of D&D: A list compiled by Aardy R. DeVarque.
Official "What Is D&D" Demo: A flashy animated demo.
The Acaeum: A repository on earlier editions of D&D, with detailed information on the printing and collectible value.
Dragonsfoot: First Edition AD&D: A site devoted to first edition AD&D, with dozens of free modules and supplements to the game available for download.
Aardy DeVarque's RPG Page: A personal page with various utilities for D&D players, including spell tables.

Adventures & Adventure Resources

World Building sites

J. Hanju Kim <hanjujkim-at-gmail-dot-com>

Last modified: Sat Jan 28 16:30:00 2012