Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gosh, I love Dungeons & Dragons, but I feel like there’s not nearly enough math and total party wipes?” If so, welcome to the world of D&D 3e and its 3.5 revision, a pillar of tabletop gaming in the sense that one falling pillar can TPK you and every NPC you ever loved. This much-beloved edition full of unique skills, feats, prestige classes, and highly tactical combat, remains a staple of TTRPG gaming with vast potential for customization within its tomes. Here are rankings for the five best places to find your perfect D&D 3/3.5e party.

1. StartPlaying

StartPlaying was specifically designed to connect players with verified, experienced DMs. Each dungeon master undergoes a verification process and builds a reputation through player reviews, ensuring you're joining a table run by someone who genuinely knows how your Base Attack Bonus works.

The intuitive interface clearly displays available seats at each virtual table, session schedule and frequency, associated costs, and style of play. You can filter searches specifically for D&D 3/3.5e, and further refine by experience level, age range, and other preferences. They’ll also handle all the logistics of scheduling and payments, freeing you to focus on crafting the most broken Pun-Pun build imaginable.

Find your D&D 3/3.5e group today.

2. Discord

The player base for D&D 3/3.5e is small but dedicated, and the Discord servers for it are very similar. You’ll find a handful of tagged servers on the very useful Disboard site ranging from 100-200 members, with a few in the 300 or 400 member range. Your best bet will be at the Yawning Portal Tavern, which has two Looking For Group (LFG) channels, one of which is specifically for 3/3.5e. The Unofficial D&D 3.5ecord is a small indie server with a helpful moderator and an LFG channel, and The Axe and Sickle is another small channel that describes itself as “A Left-Wing DnD 3.5e West Marches-Style Discord Server.” Sounds like a perfect group if you’re looking to stage a peasant uprising against the corrupt local lord who controls the emerald mines. 

3. Forums

D&D 3/3.5 is a little old school, and in that same vein, you’ll find its fanbase still enjoys old school internet forums. While you can always try the general LFG forums on Virtual TableTops (VTTs) like Roll20 for free or paid games, another option is perusing the ancient scrolls at an old staple, Giant in the Playground (GitP). The Finding Players (Recruitment) section sees regular LFG posts, many of which are for 3e or 3.5e or some homebrew combination of those rulesets, as well as the common practice of throwing in some Pathfinder into the mix as well. The users here are passionate about the game and plenty have been posting here for over a decade, so it gets a higher ranking if for no other reason than their love and dedication throughout the years. However, for that same reason, LFG posts here may not be what you’re looking for if you’re totally new to the game. 

4. Facebook

Facebook remains an active venue for game-seekers, especially for a larger property like this one. There is a popular Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 which features LFG posts for both online and offline games. Also, because 3/3.5e falls within the realm of the most popular TTRPG on earth, many LFG groups on Facebook include it in its list of acceptable game settings to post about. In other words, Facebook groups like D&D LFG, DnD Group Finder America, RPG Connection (LFG Only), and D&D TTRPG LFG will all see their share of 3/3.5e posts. Facebook groups tend to be bigger than Discords but smaller than reddits, and generally have the lowest engagement out of any of the previous options just due to how people engage with Facebook groups these days. 

Finally, this is the best way to find offline groups in your area. Search for D&D Facebook groups that are local to you, or a gaming space or bar nearby that regularly hosts games with open tables. 3/3.5e is still popular enough that you’ll very likely find DMs looking for players explicitly in this system. 

5. Reddit

While there’s a subreddit for everything, as far as game-seeking goes, reddit is geared more toward finding a 5e game. To find a group specifically playing 3/3.5e, your primary destination should be the search function on r/lfg, which will show all the most recent relevant posts. You’ll usually find at least a handful from the past month or so that are still actively looking for players. That subreddit also allows you to search by tag for whether the game is online or offline, which posts are specifically looking for players, and so on. There is a subreddit r/DungeonsAndDragons35e, but LFG posts are not encouraged there. Reddit is straightforward and knowledgeable when it comes to legacy versions of D&D, but even here you’ll find that a lot of posts are actually just invitations to join via StartPlaying. 

Coming To A Tavern Near You

From Greyhawk to Sharn, D&D 3/3.5e offers one of the most mechanically rich tabletop experiences out there. Your best bet to finding an adventuring party in this classic system is StartPlaying, providing the most structured, reliable approach to finding games. Discord and online forums are other great online options, with Facebook being your best bet for an in-person table. D&D 3.5e may have been published decades ago, but it defined a generation of gaming, and some players just want to keep that old magic alive. You’ll be feverishly optimizing feat trees with your new party in no time. 

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Paul is an author and forever DM with a traditionally published sci-fi novel on the way. He’s a fan of all things narrative, especially when it involves dice and a lot of math. Find him on Instagram discussing the general state of the world.