There is a particularly dumb question that has caused more fights in Dungeons & Dragons fandom than any other.

I do have an answer to the question but it’s probably not the answer most querents expect.

What is the best version of Dungeons & Dragons?

The dumbest question about D&D is the question, “What is the best version of Dungeons & Dragons?”

There are two false assumptions embedded in this question.

• All editions of D&D are trying to do the same thing.
• All gamers who play a version of D&D want the same experience of play.

Here is how I think about these assumptions.

The same label, different game.

There have been many editions of Dungeons & Dragons over the last 50 years. Even though we call all these games Dungeons & Dragons, I don’t think they are entirely the same thing. 

The general concept is the same. Heroic adventurers in a fantasy setting fighting monsters and villains is more or less the same. Many of the mechanisms are similar from edition to edition. Some are close enough that they can be grouped together.

Different editions require different mindset for both player and DM.

Different approaches and different mechanisms produce different experiences.

AD&D‘s Dungeon Master Guide famously declares that it is a book for the Dungeon Master and the Dungeon Master only. It contains rules that Gary intended for the DM alone to know. Players have to make a guess about how their crazy plan might turn out.

Third edition was designed to be a robust player facing rule-set with a unified mechanic that accounts for all possible situations. The 3E designers intended for players to know precisely how the rules would be applied to their actions before declaring them to the Dungeon Master.

This produces a very different game experience.

I played 4E a few times when it was the current edition. To me, it felt unplayable without battlemats and miniatures. I don’t use a battlemat very often when running old school editions of the game. It can be helpful in a complex battle with many combatants but isn’t necessary most of the time.

5E characters almost never die.

You’re a clever player (or maybe just lucky) if you can get a B/X magic user to 5th level.

I don’t think these can be compared as versions of the same thing. They were developed with different intentions. For the most part, the different versions of D&D produce the experiences the designers set out to accomplish. Those intentions were different from edition to edition.

I’m not going to claim one edition is best when they do what the designers intended them to do and that thing is different across each edition.

Best for whom?

Every time a new edition is published, some gamers switch to the new game because it has something they prefer over the previous edition.

Some gamers continue playing the version of the game they already have. They feel that the new version of the game does not offer an experience that they like better than the version they are already playing.

Are they wrong about their own preferences?

If 2E meets the preferences and desires for particular group while 5E does not, then how can I objectively determine which one is best?

How could the claim that 2e is “best” make any sense at all when what a particular group wants to play is a game with a unified roll high D20 mechanic, saves based on ability scores, and milestone leveling?

Different gamers play different games for reasons that are different from other gamers.

For many fans of Original D&D, “best” is about the DM.

For fans of Original Dungeons & Dragons “What’s the best version of Dungeons & Dragons,” might better be phrased as “Which DM runs the best OD&D campaign you’ve played in?”

I (and many others) consider Original Dungeons & Dragons to be a DIY fantasy adventure game toolkit.

Every OD&D Dungeon Master is running their own edition of OD&D. There can be a lot of overlap between campaigns but many are very different. This was one reason why Gary wrote Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. There was too much variability between groups as far as he was concerned.

If every DM running Original D&D is playing what is effectively a different game, how do I even begin to answer the question of “Which edition is best?”

For me, my hacked, modded and abused edition of OD&D is best.

Dungeons & Dragons is useful label but has it’s limits.

Dungeons & Dragons is a label that’s been affixed to many different games. Those games are recognizable as Dungeons & Dragons as a general category but they vary in significant ways.

Which of those games is “best” is largely subjective. My preferred experience of D&D is probably different from your preferred experience of D&D. Without a set of criteria for what makes the game of Dungeons & Dragons a great game of Dungeons & Dragons we can’t come to an objective statement about what makes one edition the best edition.

I am willing to say that a particular mechanism of a particular edition is poorly designed when it fails to do what the designer intended it to do.

I am also willing to say that a particular mechanism of a particular edition is well designed when it does what the designer intended it to do.

For there to be a “best” would require every edition of D&D to have the same design intention and this is not the case.

Even within groups that like and play the same version, there are disagreements about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t like or use the 9 fold alignment system when I run AD&D . Some old school gamers consider alignment a critical element of that edition.

The concept of a game called “Dungeons & Dragons” provides a useful shorthand for conversations. We can broadly use the term to discuss fantasy adventure role-playing using mechanisms and a play method that originated with Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor game and was published as a toolkit in 1974.

What do you want to play?

The version of the game that produces the experience you want to have and can get a group of players to participate in is “the best” version of D&D.

Maybe that’s a version that TSR or WotC published. Maybe that’s your own idiosyncratic version with loads of house rules and bolted on mechanisms from other games.

The best version of Dungeons & Dragons is the version that produces the experience that the people playing it want to have.