A little more on TSR's strange strategy

[TerraDave]

TSR has become infamous for its many "interesting" bussiness decisions over the years.

This is one I stumbled across, and was a little surprised by it. Though it could be seen as just responding to the customer.

From this webpage

the Seventeenth printing [of the 1st Edition Players Handbook] was in July 1990 (actually a year after the 2nd Edition Players Handbook had been released, since dealers were still placing orders to TSR for the 1st Edition PHB!).

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm honestly sometimes surprised the hobby managed to survive the 1990's.

 

[Whimsical]

Well, I remember when 2nd ed. came out some of my fellow players/DMs didn't like it because it changed too much (and I'm thinking that it didn't change enough by far). I was playing in a hybrid 1st ed. game with selected 2nd ed. elements included for several years after 2nd ed. came out. But I prefered 2nd ed.

 

[diaglo]

OD&D was being produced/published alongside the Basic sets (2edD&D and 3edD&D Holmes) and 1edADnD until 1979.

 

[Henry]

...the Seventeenth printing [of the 1st Edition Players Handbook] was in July 1990 (actually a year after the 2nd Edition Players Handbook had been released, since dealers were still placing orders to TSR for the 1st Edition PHB!).

Now THAT'S an eye-opener - and NOT just about TSR's communications chain.

 

[Particle_Man]

My DM let me play a 2nd edition bard in a 1st edition game. After that, I stuck to 1st edition classes in his game.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Actually, doesn't that just show that the original game was still a strong seller, even AFTER the advent of a "new edition?"

 

[Crothian]

Hey, they were getting orders for the book, might as well print it and make money off of it.

 

[Janx]

The problem is the expense of having staff to support the old edition, while the current one is available.

Figure there were expenses to print the reprints, plus the fact that somebody had to be paid to pay attention to those orders. It's far cheaper to say, it's out of print, buy this instead.

Will you lose some sales? Maybe, but then again, you already did if they're still buying 1e PHs (and likely not buying any 2e extra books). By continuing to feed the malcontents, you discourage them from switching to the new version (why bother, I've got my 1E PH). Look at Diaglo, he won't switch, for example.

I think key to TSR's strategy is that they lacked one. They didn't really have a version transition plan. The 2E to 3E transition went much smoother, partly because, they advertised and released conversion guides (the internet helped a lot with that).

Janx

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Hm. Very interesting. It was easy to use 1e and 2e materials together, so I could see keeping their 1e modules and sourcebooks in print, but that's pretty darn weird.