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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7665215" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maybe. It's certainly true that I entered AD&D via Basic.I can still honestly report that I've never encountered this interpretation before! I don't know if I like it or not.Again, maybe. I see a big difference between 2nd-ed style "be rewarded for playing in character" and "indie"-style "be rewarded for playing to or against character so as to generate drama/complications", but others might not.Thanks, interesting. That seems a little bit LotR-ish. I think I still stand by my comment of four years ago, that I reposted upthread:But the question of whether or not there is market demand isn't a normative question. It's not about (for instance) "being true to" or "turning one's back on" the tradition of D&D. It seems pretty clear to me that there are OSR players and authors who believe that what they're doing is truer to the tradition of D&D than what WotC is doing. They're not obliged to change that view just because WotC's market is 100 or 1000 times bigger than the market for their games.Anticipating and supplying markets for these sorts of luxury leisure goods requires commercial cleverness. The goal of that commercial cleverness is profit (and at a reasonable rate of return relative to other opportunities that were available - given that RPG design is not all that capital intensive, I would think that most of the relevant investment is going to be in salaries). If someone wants to argue that WotC would have been financially better off not going down the 4e path then I'm very interested to hear the argument - personally I'm a little doubtful, but I'm not sure that anyone posting here has got sufficient data (including reliable projections for what money WotC might have made or lost had it stuck to 3E, how much money the 4e-inspired boardgames have made, what the profit was on DDI and what alternative income stream would take its place under the 3E scenario,etc).My feeling is that if 4e really was a net financial disaster for the group, they wouldn't have been given two years to develop 5e. But that's just untutored intuition.I'm aware of (some) others' experiences and conceptions. In some cases, more so than I would care to be if I ruled the world!In some cases, I think the presentation of those experiences and conceptions suffered from confusing (i) the failure of a commercial producer of goods, from whom was accustomed to buying goods, to continue to supply goods that one wanted to purchase, with (ii) betrayal of some important value by someone who owed a duty to uphold it.When TSR published 1st ed AD&D I was a customer - I own all the hardbacks up to Greyhawk Adventures, and used to buy Dragon magazines from time-to-time, plus a few modules. When TSR published 2nd ed AD&D, my consumption reduced (the only thing I can think of that I didn't buy 2nd hand is the City of Greyhawk boxed set and, in the late 90s, the Slavers and Scarlet Brotherhood supplements). When WotC published 3E I bought a reasonable amount (core books, plus probably 5 or 6 supplements) because I had robust cash flow at the time and some of it seemed interesting. When WotC published 4e I bought 40-odd products, so somewhere between $1200 and $1500 worth, between 2008 and 2012. It seems unlikely that I'll be purchasing any D&D products from WotC in the immediate future, as I'm not likely to use them and not as cashed up as I was in the 3E era.These are my personal consumption decisions. I can explain them in more detail if anyone's interested (though I don't really see why they would be). They're not a normative judgment on TSR/WotC, nor on anyone else whose consumption preferences are different from mine!</blockquote>

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