In this week's Flashlight, we talk about playtesting at scale, becoming a cult leader, and the development of D&D 3e and D&D 3.5e as well as Pathfinder. Reilly shares his philosophy on ability checks and roleplay. Jake really doesn't know anything about cinema.

We mention the games Swords of the Serpentine and Time Watch, both of which look extremely fun. Also, here are some links that we used in research for the episode:

• Here’s a Department of Commerce study called “A Nation Online” that talks about who would be able to access the Internet in the era of the 3rd Edition playtest, complete with some very old-school Excel charts.
• Here’s a forum thread from Jonathan Tweet (the lead designer on D&D 3rd Edition) that talks about the changes in 3rd Edition.
• Here’s a contemporary Death Cookie review of 3rd Edition that discusses some of the changes from previous editions.
• Here’s a review of 3rd Edition play from 2000 that’s mostly positive.
• Here’s another forum thread with a retrospective on how players felt about D&D 3rd Edition.
• Here’s Monte Cook, one of the designers for 3rd Edition (but not 3.5) talking about the development of 3.5.
• Here’s a brief history of Paizo, the publisher of Pathfinder.
• Here’s the character generator we used in this episode.
• We didn’t really get into this, but Roll20’s Orr Report shows the relative popularity of different TTRPG systems.

Head over to our website to see to the character sheet that Reilly builds in this episode.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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