Creating Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 was going to be a lot easier said than done. The rules set that had made up Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a conglomeration of hundreds of authors who had added various rules over the years, often for reasons that only had applications in the specific TSR products they were writing. They had stuck around for years through inertia, though. Players, on the other hand, were familiar with the 2nd Edition rules, and were quite content with mixing and matching rules as required by their own individual campaigns. How then, would the team go about picking through the detritus in order to make the simpler, friendlier game envisioned in the 3.0 design document? There was only one way.

Throw out everything and start again.