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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 3278230" data-attributes="member: 20741">I don't think TSR goes under at all.  I don't think Iron Crown Enterprises goes bankrupt either. West End Games does not vanish. Grenadier continues. Ral Partha continues. RAFM minaitures eeks it out. Global Games survives. Last Unicorn Games arises - and continues. All kinds of things unfold in unexpected ways... Perhaps FASA remained quite healthy and was never bought out.Moreoever, if ICE never went under, then Dark Age of Camelot ends up being a VERY different MMO (it was initially based on Rolemaster but ICE caused the dev to dump it when ICE ran into difficulty over unsold dice and cards and a floundering RPG.)And ICE does not lose its chance to make a killing off of Lord of the Rings as a polished and well supported RPG setting - which is certainly what would have happened. West End Games and Global Games would have had a chance to make a fair bit of dough with Star Wars right when Phantom Menace comes out - and I don't think they would have screwed it up as much as WotC and Hasbro did - moreoever - they wold have been content to have the game a popular also-ran, instead of trying to make it into a powerhouse in the market and bailing on it when massive sales did not transpire.With both West End and ICE - it was horrible timing that pushed them under a year before their respective moments.  Take away M:TG - I don't think they go under at all.I'm not even sure the Random House hit happens. A lot of those novels were dumped out there in a desperate attempt to create brand awareness for a floundering game. And  AD&D was floundering because the  market had been wrecked by M:TG.Moreover, I think generally, that a number of competitive small RPGs and miniatures companies continue to be manufactured and the industry does not change a great deal. It meanders on.Magic:TG was a disaster for RPGs. Kids who got into it skipped over RPGs entirely and went straight to computer games. Whereas before AD&D had been the main "feeder game" with players learning RPGs from AD&D and then churning off to play different systems -  all of that just plain broke in its entirety for three years+.  The echo of that effect  on those companies who relied on churn from TSR to provide them with new customers took the hit later - but they got hit by the same bus.It wreaked havoc on the industry for nearly seven years as a result.And it wreaked havoc on a stable market model that manufacturers, distributors and retailers understood.There are no flats of unsold Spellfire, unsold Dragon Dice  - and there is a lot less unsold RGP material. And as a result - there is no massive glut of novels churned out and no massive hit that nearly slays the company.Perhaps Lorraine Williams gets out of the business - perhaps not. I really don't know. Probably she does at some point.While BioWare would probably not have been a suitor at the stages discussed in one of the above scenarios - they would have been later and if not - someone else would have bought it for the computer game licensing angle.  And then does what Microsoft did with Battletech: it keep the computer rights and license the rest off to someone who will continue to make the PnP RPG and promote your brand - while not frustrating your computer game design goals from time to time through IP approval.Interestingly, if TSR does not go under and is NOT bought by WotC that in turn was gobbled up by Hasbro - then there is no firesale or exclusive grants over WotC IP to Atari nee Infogrames when they sold off Hasbro Interactive.The whole D&D computer brand changes a fair bit as a result.And I think a D&D MMO would have emerged earlier and with better funding.Might be that the company - Blizzard say - might have snapped it up at some point and changed the game quite a bit. Could be the D&D brand might have ended up at the heart of the best-selling MMO.Who knows?I do think CCGs were a disaster for the RPG industry in the mid-90s and that many of those ills could have been avoided  - at least in the short term.It might be that otherwise, things might not be that different. I don't think d20 and the OGL would somehow never have come to pass. The impetus to do that came from other market trends - and those trends don't go away because of CCGs.</blockquote>

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