A story to tell and a story to hear.

That was a great era for gaming, wasn't it? I was also big into it around then, although I was a bit more than 10 at the time. I'm not sure that is a good thing or a bad thing... 23 year old nerd spending all his time playing PC games.

A brave and expensive goal, but one many of us will cheer on. It is quite expensive. I'm not nearly as bad as many or most people out there and I've got way too much "junk" (meant in the most endearing way possible).

About two years ago I played it for the 3rd or 4th time. I didn't finish it that time because I got hooked into Planewalker. That game is awesome. There are several other fanatics on the forums. There are a few threads as well as some content over on the main site geared around Torment.

That's like asking for "nuclear physics for dummies"... there's too much! As you said, there have been 30+ years of this stuff! The history is so rich and so deep. It was relatively "simple" back in the early days. Then people started to tinker during 2nd Ed. and we got all sorts of cool content and ideas. That was also when it started to splinter into the multitude of campaign settings (not in this order)... Al Quadim, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and many more, including our beloved Planescape. I like to think I know quite a bit of the game's history, but I know so little.

Then came 3E. Some see it as the greatest thing since ol' Gygax put some rules on paper. Some see it as creating the McDonalds of gaming (fast, cheap, and lots of it). It really is a bit of both. But as I often say, "the game is what you make of it". 3E (and 3.5E, etc.) gave us all a common framework. I could ramble on and on. I've done it before, and plan to do it again when I bring my Jorune conversion back to the Jorune community (see GenCon page, search for "Jorune")

For the confusion, that's what we're here for. Ask questions and you'll get lots of answers, or at least opinions. As for mircs, chats, etc., they are cool, but they aren't the same. You can't capture the same sense of passion, intrigue, or other emotion that you can face-to-face. Some people may disagree, and that's fine. Again, the history is so broad. Some things existed "back in the day", but in what form they existed varies. Many people that were into the Forgotten Realms might have seen Neverwinter on a map or read it in passing, but it didn't have nearly the depth it does now until much later. A footnote or casual reference in 1990 might have a whole book about it today. Planescape is the same way. That's what we are doing with Planewalker. We're carying on what existed, fleshing out that which had little or no substance, creating new content, and even evolving the "world".

There are actually two "elemental evil" paper versions. The original was written back in the heyday and then turned into the PC game. They also created the "return to the temple of elemental evil", revitalizing it, converting it to 3E, and adding some fun stuff.

And yes, there are both Dungeon and Dragon magazines, one more geared for DMs and the other for players respectively. Both are good magazines. It just depends what you want out of them. And both magazines often have supplemental content for just about anything; definitely everything mentioned on this thread so far.

So many questions! And that is a good thing!

When I say I got hooked into Planewalker, I meant the website. Not to bore with my own history, but the short version is that I am good friends with the person who currently holds ("owns" on loan) the rights to Planewalker. On our way to and from GenCon a few years ago, he got me hooked, so I started working with Sarah (a.k.a., Clueless or Bast) and we redid the whole website. Well, I did a lot of the planning and plumbing and she refined it and fixed all my broken stuff when I got too busy. Since then, she's the real power behind all this. Without her, we wouldn't even have these fun forums we're using right now!

Anyway, I really need to answer the question "What is Planewalker?" Well, it is the official website for Planescape (PS). So what is Planescape? It is what we call a "campaign setting". D&D and d20 are the core rules while the campaign settings are all the fun places, histories, etc. And yes, Spelljammer (not Spacejammer), Ravenloft, and Forgotten Realms (FR) are other settings.

That is not a simple question. "It depends." Each setting carries its own set of views. Sometimes they work with others and sometimes they do not. Many times there are official viewpoints and then there are adaptations, house rules, etc. to make them all fit. FR and PS are good examples. PS uses "the great wheel" cosmology. I forget what FR calls theirs, but it is sort of a tree-looking thing. In many ways, they don't fit. There are plenty of adaptations, essays, and "rules" out there, including on the Planewalker site that try to fit it all together.

And yes, in short, anything "Forgotten Realms" happens on one world. The world is called Toril. It is a Prime Material plane/world in PS terms. Most FR stuff centers around Faerun, basically a continent on Torril. The FR:CS (Forgotten Realms: Campaign Setting) has some great maps of Faerun, and even a small map of the entirety of Toril. Dragon Magazine released a set of 4 or 6 large color maps of Faerun a few years ago. Dungeon Magazine has been releasing Greyhawk, another setting. And just to jump around, Greyhawk is not only a setting, but is also the "default" world of 3rd Edition D&D.

PS is a bit unique in some ways. Most settings are a world. PS is a universe, or as we like to call it a multiverse. It tries to bridge countless worlds, settings, and even planes of existence. Not a small task!

Yes, it is confusing. Again, there are official versions, semi-official versions, and unofficial versions. There are too many to even go into. In general, the official content developers (WOTC, etc.) try to "play nice" with other people's work, but it doesn't always work out. Just mention the somewhat recent Planar Handbook to old-school Planescape folks and be sure to step back or you'll get caught in a rumble.

I don't remember them all. FR is a bit odd with ages. The most common is Dale Reckoning, or DR. The Dalelands are an area near central Faerun that are considered to be culturally and socially more developed. I believe old Elminster is from somewhere in the Dales. If not, I do know his main tower/home is there. The FR:CS has a listing of calendars and how to convert between them. I'm too lazy to go downstairs and get my book.

Another thing about FR and its years are that every year for literally thousands of years is named. "Year of the Spider", "Year of the Mage", etc. There is a story behind them, but basically think of it as some slightly prophetic and mostly crazy man (in the setting) came up with the names and they stuck.

See above about some of the map stuff. Yes, there are other famous places. There is the nation of Thay, where the infamous Red Wizards are from. There is Zhentil Keep where the evil Zhentarim are located. You have Ten Towns, up in Icewind Dale. You have Calimport on the west coast. You have Menzoberranzan, a famous drow city. So many wonderful places!

Yes, "3E" is third edition. In a nutshell (excuse any errors or missed steps): There was 1st edition, simply known as "Dungeons & Dragons", or D&D. Then there was 2nd edition, simply known as "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", or AD&D. It wasn't until 3E that the old ones really firmed up as "1E" and "2E". Now there is "3.5E". I know there was something before 1E, something like "Chainmail", but I don't recall and am running out of time tonight to look it up.

I'm bad with dates. 3E came out around 2000, I think. 1E was in the '70s. 2E was in the '80s. Fallout, while a great game and its game engine was based on an engine used in some D&D-based games, it is not "D&D" in any way. Actually, Fallout was loosely based on a previous PC game called Wasteland. Another great game using something very similar to the original Bard's Tale engine (circa 1987).

I'm so out of touch with PC games nowadays, especially mods. I know there are some good NWN mods out there, including a whole Underdark mod.

(No time to go back and proof this massive post. Gotta run!)

Skipping the details, because I'm too lazy to look them up exactly, that's not quite right: First there was Dungeons & Dragons in various box sets ranging from the Red Box (Basic, I think it was called, for like levels 1-5) up through the Gold Box (Immortals). [OK, very first was Chainmail but we'll let that slide.] Original D&D was very simple; I don't remember many of the details except that the alignment system was the pseudo-Moorcockian "Lawful" (= good) and "Chaotic" (= evil) with, I think, some kind of Neutral in there at some point or other. The plethora of dice was there from the beginning, though; that's never changed. This was in the late 70s.

What we now call 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was released in the early 80s (1982? was it even earlier?) and it featured a wealth of complexity (and improvements) over the original D&D. Of relevance to Planescapers is the fact that the alignment system became two dimensional (with Good and Evil added to allow Lawful and Chaotic to become meaningful terms once again). I'm still inordinately fond of the 1st Ed DMG; it's got so much stuff in it as to defy belief. To be honest, I frequently dipped back in there for inspiration even years down the line. The gaming system was broken as all get out -- anyone remember a 1st Ed monk? -- and they periodically tried to improve it, "culminating" in Unearthed Arcana in about 1984 or so.

2nd Edition AD&D came out in the mid 80s -- I think 1986-7? -- and featured yet another wealth of improvements over the original 1st Ed system. [It also axed some things unnecessarily but hey, that's life.] That's the system that most people nowadays think of as AD&D. It suffered from a couple of key structural defects (beyond the basic deficiencies of AD&D) that really kind of screwed things up, but TSR was probably at its height then so it more or less got away with it.

[Planescape came out in 1994, btw, with the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set and was axed in 1998, I think, shortly after Faction War's release.]

Finally, in 1999-2000, WoTC completely revamped the aging, ailing 2nd Ed AD&D system into the spiffy new 3rd Edition we all know and love. Part of their... well, let's call it a systemic paradigm instead of a marketing gimmick, shall we?... was to go "Old School", back to the naming conventions of the older editions. First, they axed the word "Advanced" from the title as being too off-putting to newbies; so despite the name D&D 3.x is really AD&D 3.x, bearing almost no similarity whatsoever to the original D&D. Second, all the names of the various D&D 3.x products -- Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Deities & Demigods -- are the names of the equivalent 1st Edition AD&D products, updated for the new system. Lastly -- and most controversially amongst Planescapers -- they went back to 1st Edition's paradigm of providing statistics for everything, including gods, as against 2nd Edition's tendency to leave certain things unstatted and unexplained.

[In fact, D&D 3.x goes beyond 1st Ed AD&D in that it not just provides stats, it provides actual mechanics for dealing with things that previous editions had simply omitted, like the precise way in which divine power is controlled and disbursed.]

That's all off the top of my head so I could well be wrong, but I think that encapsulates the various twists and turns in the D&D saga.

My advice to you, Enadam, is to NOT read the D&D rulebooks. They are a straitjacket for the mind and they will bind your soul forever to the D&D business strategy. Keep playing with your own rules and your own imagination, and just plunder the various worlds of Planescape, Forgotten Realms, et al. for ideas and story material. Planescape is the best setting to do this in because the PS books have so few rules and so much wonderful description.

As for Drizzt and all the rest, you can probably find a synopsis of their adventures on the net, or read the Icewind Dale books. Frankly you're better off reading good fantasy literature, like the Sword in the Stone/Fortress of the Pearl/Song of Ice and Fire/etc. than anything by RA Salvatore.

And welcome to our little planescape home.