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I don't think purely monogamous fans were the problem so much as the fact that each product cost money to produce and needed to occupy shelf space at stores, which cost the stores money. This creates more customer confusion and fragmentation. For instance, TSR made an effort to bring Greyhawk...

CFHB was the first splatbook!

Not the way I think TSR of the time did, although I suspect D&D would have done OK if the management had been smarter and they'd not generated a ton of hardcover books which ended up being returned, which I understand is was what put them into bill lock. Yeah, late '90s I realized I often...

You're right, they are (just checked) but they look pretty conceptual. The rest of the art is the line art of that time. One of my favorite pieces of art from that era. She's just seriously ba---s and there's a story in the picture.

It's certainly gone up but I'm not amused at how fast my PHB has taken it. The internet, like Pepperidge Farm, remembers. However, it does not seem to remember the art in CFHB, though it does remember the text of the book. (I'm sure with more looking it would.) I no longer have a copy but...

I played a Mage in a Vampire game, replacing an NPC when I joined the campaign, and ended up liking Mage so much I pretty rapidly lost interest in Vampire. (The joke was my character never slept because I'd be up during the day doing all sorts of stuff that the vamps couldn't while sleeping and...

I still run a 2E game and I have to say I don't think so. I'm not saying all the art is great---it's not---but a lot of it is pretty solid. It was a big step up from 1E, nostalgia factor aside, and is printed fairly well. I don't think it's as good as later printing, but a good bit of that's...

They had indeed seriously proliferated settings: Spelljammer, Birthright, al Qadim, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dark Sun, and Mystara. I may have missed one or two. They had really good material but there was a lot of it. Not exactly. Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, and Changeling...

My understanding was that the AD&D and BECMI D&D markets were relatively distinct, though I can't recall where I heard that. The market fragmentation I was thinking of happened in the late TSR era, when they published many different campaign settings and products. Many were cool, but there was...

It was pretty jarring in the early days of 3E, especially in the PHB and DMG, where you had the likes of "Mr. Buckle" the iconic sorcerer and another guy who looked like Sensitive New Age Pony Tail Guy complete with a lip piercing. That was pretty good as I recall. I look at 2E books pretty...

I think the term was "dungeonpunk". This was the time when body piercing was a pretty big fad, if you recall, and I'm sure the art director wanted things to look hip or edgy. I was not a fan of the early 3E art in general---I always felt I was seeing pictures of adventurers, if the adventurers...

AD&D was more popular in the USA but I believe that BECMI sold quite a bit better in the rest of the world. Also, BECMI was in the toy market more than the book and hobby shop market due to it being in a boxed set and thus fitting the expectations of the toy retailers. I still run my old house...

Yeah, for some of my childhood/early teens, I lived in rural Wisconsin, almost on the Mississippi. There weren't any book stores nearby, much less game stores. My mom lived in Chicago so I had more access to big city stuff and ended up buying many of my game products there. I had friends who...

Yeah, when one is on the exponential rise, it's really not a good idea to over-expand. Chances are good a plateau is coming soon because you're likely to really be on an S-curve.

The one and only LARP I ever played was in '92 or so before MET hit the shelves. I was at a con in my home town. It was, in fact, the first Vampire game I ever played at all as I didn't start playing it TT until '94. I believe (but don't have access to the book to check) that the idea of LARP is...

I think it's quite fair to say that TSR's senior leadership mismanagement in that era is what killed TSR.

Yeah, I've been on the internet since the early '90s and many of the bad behaviors that showed up back then are still present, but it's truly become "September forever" except in environments where there's some community moderation.

It's certainly true that it's slipped a few times but I think 80+% dominance is a pretty good record, all things considered.

The role of luck is drastically underestimated by many people. Good timing makes a huge difference. The first time D&D was big in the late '70s/early '80s came about riding on the wave of LotR (not saying D&D is "just" LotR---I've long argued it's really not), when fantasy as a genre...

However, nearly all of those earlier competitors were rather challenging for many potential players to obtain. That was quite unlike TSR's products, given the fact that TSR had a Random House distribution deal and had substantial penetration into stores like Toys 'R Us, hobby stores, bookstores...