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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spell" data-source="post: 4008852" data-attributes="member: 19718">first of all, let me tell you that i would in general agree with you: supporting older systems would be way cool.on the other hand, a change of prospective might shed more light on why this is unlikely to happen.let's say that your guesstimation of how sizeable the "older D&D editions" maket might be is correct. it probably is. i'm sure there's a lot more gamers out there that have stopped playing with 1e, 2e, and BECM put together that 4e buyers.the thing is: how knows if these people are still gaming today? some of my friends have stopped altogether. at first because BD&D was not supported anymore in italy AND u.s. but now, after... a good 10 years, their life has moved on. they have different hobbies. they are married. they don't have children yet, but they might soon.even if Wizards printed the best ever BD&D sourcebook, and shipped it at their door completely free of charge, chances are that they wouldn't start a campaign any time soon.even those players that are out there playing older editions right now might be quite hard to win back. after years of developing their own material, why would they need to buy "book X"? their game might have moved away from the original assumptions of the older editions. these players might have all the rules they ever need.even if you chained Gary Gygax himself to a chair and forced him to come up with a new sourcebook, would they have any use for it? and if Gygax is not a sure sale, why should Rich Baker (or whoever else) be? moreover, the old edition gamers are, at best, a divided market. some guy stopped playing when unearthed arcana came out, because it's rubbish. another thinks that you can't top D&D rules cyclopedia. i love 2e core and splatbooks, but i didn't like too much 2 of the player's option books.it's a bit like greyhawk's canon: every player have their own take, and it's literally impossible to get them all to agree! (as this thread, in its limited scope, has demonstrated so far).one final point would be advertisement. i remember that some of the 3e designers said that wizards had to put ads for 3e in places other than dragon or dungeon for the simple reason that gamers that stopped playing because of their dislike of 2e, would have not be aware of 3e if the ads hadn't been put in "unusual" places. (i don't ahve a source for this, sorry. i hope someone else will point it out for me... merric?)what if wizards wanted to put a OD&D book out today, aimed at older gamers? where would they advertise the idea? how? we're talking about reaching people htat might not have an internet connection... and if they do, they might not be using it to read EnWorld and other RPG related forums.so, even if the market was there (and it might be), Wizards would be facing:1. a division of their buyers (it's better to concentrate your forces on producing 1 or more 4e book a month, than dissipate them on those same 4e books, AND a number of releases for other systems).2. angry vocal customers ("how comes you're not putting out more 2e books? you just want our money, you evil @@@@@!!!" or, even more likely: "how comes you are wasting your time and energies putting together books for those inferior systems?!?! i'm sure my Book of evil bananas would have no typos had you not wasted any time with those releases!!! you just want our money, you evil @@@@@!!!").3. a shaky advertisement situation.4. a source of profit that is not that immediate or secure, even less so than the current 3e gamers that are so vociferous about their hate of 4e (you never know, they might change their mind later!).5. the ghost of TSR financial crack, almost universally attibuted to their manager incomprehensible decision to support so many settings all at once (among other things... factors like the raise of computer/ console games, or CCGs are generally ignored... god knows why).for all of those reasons, it would take BIG BALLS to make a u turn and support older systems. with all due respect, even as i would think that they'd be quite foolish to do so. and i *love* older editions and would buy new books/ adventures for them, if they were as good and evocative as those i love.it's sad, in a way, but it's only logical. RPGs are not meant to support large institutions like computer software does. they are not required to fly safely a plane that might be out of production, but still in good conditions.RPGs are, let's face it, just a cheap, little known, niche hobby, mostly for nerds. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />hardly the kind of market that will keep buying without causing too many problems. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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