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Message: <blockquote data-quote="arscott" data-source="post: 3276336" data-attributes="member: 17969">Without the WotC buyout of TSR, the company flounders for a few more years until it goes bankrupt in 1998, and TSR's various Intellectual properties are sold off seperately.Forgotten Realms is bought by a book publisher.  FR novels continue to be released, but no further role-playing products are made.  With no RPG support, interest in the novels gradually declines, and by 2007, only a single FR novel (A Drizzt Novel by RA Salvatore) is being released each year.Dragonlance is bought by a company formed by Margret Weis and a few other TSR authors.  They continue producing novels, while releasing a new edition of the Dragonlance RPG that remains fairly close to 2e D&D.  They enjoy moderate success up through the present.  They're generally regarded as the primary heirs of D&D.Greyhawk is purchased by Avalon Hill, and Chainmail, their strategy boardgame is a best-seller.  The following year, they release Greyhawk Adventures, and entirely new RPG co-designed by Gary Gygax.  Although the game is marketed as a nostalgia product, it ends up being much closer to Lejendary Adventures than 1e D&D, and isn't sufficiently old-school enough to attract many customers.Ravenloft is purchased by White Wolf.  A messy lawsuit erupts between WW and the publisher that buys FR over the Realms-derived domains.  The oft-delayed Storyteller version of Ravenloft is a commercial disaster, but is highly regarded by the few who purchase it.  The use of Masque of Red Death elements in the New WoD released in 2004 is widely criticized, but lack of 3.0/3.5 D&D means that WoD fans are more receptive of the nWoD in general, resulting in better sales than it got in the real world.Planescape is purchased by a pre-existing RPG publisher, and almost all of the planescape authors go to work for the new company.  Monte Cook becomes the lead designer for a new Planescape RPG.  In order to avoid the same sort of lawsuit that WW had to deal with, they change the focus of the new RPG to be less Planescape specific and more generic.  The end result is something fairly similar to 3e, but less tied to pseudomedieval fantasy.  It's released with a few separate settings, including a radically revised Planescape, and something akin to Dark•Matter.  It's a huge short-term success, but it fizzles out after only two years.Al-Qadim is bought by another RPG publisher.  The release of Al-Qadim at GenCon 2001 gets minor publicity in the mainstream media following the Trade center attacks by Al-Quaeda the following month.  The whole "RPG's are satanic" thing picks up somewhat, and the Al-Qadim game dies.  However, the publicity eventually results in an overall net increase in RPG sales.The remaining TSR properties change hands several times, but few products are made.  Weis's company ends up with several of the minor settings, and begins releasing them in 2004 under a modified version of their new Dragonlance system.  Gamma World is the best seller, though the Dragonlance rules are slightly clunky a Post-Apocalyptic game.Games Workshop is releasing a new version of the Boot Hill RPG next month, alongside a new wild-west miniatures game.  The minis look awesome (and totally out of my price range), and from what I've seen in previews, the RPG is going to be great too.</blockquote>

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