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A New Taxonomy for TSR-Era D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8347736" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Like so many historical claims of "declines", this doesn't really make sense.</p><p></p><p>Most historical "declines" don't exist, or rather the culture/quality of culture doesn't "decline", but some sort of outside force completely screws the culture over. What the force is varies - tribes migrating/invading is a common one, as is localized climate change - but I'm struggling to think of a case where a culture actually "declined" in the sense that Victorian (and really up the 1970s) historians used to be so found of, and pop-history buffs often like to cite.</p><p></p><p>I don't see much evidence of a "decline" in the period you state. Indeed, some of TSR's very best products come out of these era, and many of their worst and weakest products come from the 1985-1994 era (the early 2E "Complete" books are a trashfire compared to later ones, for example).</p><p></p><p>What screwed WotC over wasn't a decline in quality of output, it was a number of bad decisions, including the magnificently dumb "Dragon Dice" fiasco, as Ryan Dancey and others have discussed at some length.</p><p></p><p>So I think it's unhelpful to either understanding what is going on, or to just accuracy in general to call this period a "decline". On the contrary, you might call it an experimental period, where TSR started trying to find their way into the future, but where poor management decisions re: that future - most not directly related to D&D, ensured they were in a position to be bought up by the very company they were trying to ape the success of.</p><p></p><p>I would broadly agree with this. All the people I knew who liked and used a lot of UA stuff from 1E adapted pretty well to 2E, whereas those who hated all that basically rejected 2E and many of them seemed to leave RPGs entirely (I dunno if they really did, but they didn't seem to stick around).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8347736, member: 18"] Like so many historical claims of "declines", this doesn't really make sense. Most historical "declines" don't exist, or rather the culture/quality of culture doesn't "decline", but some sort of outside force completely screws the culture over. What the force is varies - tribes migrating/invading is a common one, as is localized climate change - but I'm struggling to think of a case where a culture actually "declined" in the sense that Victorian (and really up the 1970s) historians used to be so found of, and pop-history buffs often like to cite. I don't see much evidence of a "decline" in the period you state. Indeed, some of TSR's very best products come out of these era, and many of their worst and weakest products come from the 1985-1994 era (the early 2E "Complete" books are a trashfire compared to later ones, for example). What screwed WotC over wasn't a decline in quality of output, it was a number of bad decisions, including the magnificently dumb "Dragon Dice" fiasco, as Ryan Dancey and others have discussed at some length. So I think it's unhelpful to either understanding what is going on, or to just accuracy in general to call this period a "decline". On the contrary, you might call it an experimental period, where TSR started trying to find their way into the future, but where poor management decisions re: that future - most not directly related to D&D, ensured they were in a position to be bought up by the very company they were trying to ape the success of. I would broadly agree with this. All the people I knew who liked and used a lot of UA stuff from 1E adapted pretty well to 2E, whereas those who hated all that basically rejected 2E and many of them seemed to leave RPGs entirely (I dunno if they really did, but they didn't seem to stick around). [/QUOTE]
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