Glad to hear they are prepared to try to go mass-market again.
(I just hope the "D&D = Satanism" thing doesn't return as well, although in these days of easy research on Wikipedia, it is less likely to happen)
Edit: Who am I kidding, if D&D becomes popular again, Fred Phelps and his faithful handful will probably rally outside GenCon next year...
With dozens of ultra-violent video games where brutal murder, rape and thieving are well within the bounds of the game, D&D doesn't really seem very 'freaky' or 'dangerous' anymore.
Fantasy Genre is now mainstream in video games and cinema which is massively important in mainstream culture. MMORPG like WOW have gone a long way in dispelling those kinds of 'demons'. That's millions of people we are talking about. Besides, given the choice, what would you rather have your kid be doing; playing at thieving and murder, running down innocent bystanders with a car and ... yeah, it gets worse... or playing at being a fantasy character fighting in a world of magic, struggling against evil?
When I was a wee boy my parents sat me down and gave me a very serious warning to stay away from D&D because it lead to demon posession. That talk would torment me with guilt for years as I tried to find ways around it without breaking my promise. I was maybe 6 or 7. As I grew up the same attitudes continued. We had to turn off The Never Ending Story at the part where the wolf appears chasing Atrieu through the Swamp of Sorrow for the first time. I didn't see E.T until I was 21. I actually only eventually watched it just becuase I hadn't been allowed. My parents knew of my passion for fantasy and science fiction but it had always been seriously frowned upon and constantly discouraged. I used to hide books inside books, so i could read tales of the Dragonlance without getting in trouble. To this day they don't know what an avid D&D player/lover their warnings and prohibitions turned me into. I digress.
My parents came to visit me in Europe a couple of years ago. I knew their attitude towards Fantasy in general had changed due to the movie Lord of the Rings. Yeah, we're kiwis... and before LotR, mapmakers would often leave us right off the map because we were too near the edge (besides, who would notice), so, after LotR we were allowed back onto the map, and so it was pretty much every kiwis obligation to dutifully love it as proud patriots. I remember my mum saying afterwards that she'd come to realise that it didn't matter that they were ugly little creatures, it was still a story about the struggle between good and evil.
That change in itself was surprising enough. But my biggest surprise was when I was playing Guild Wars one evening, thinking they'd gone to bed, and my Dad came and sat down beside me just to watch. It wasn't to watch to see if he approved, it was because he was fascinated. And there were some pretty ugly creatures involved, elementalists, ritualists calling up spirits, necromancers calling up undead minions out of the corpses of fallen monsters... he stayed up til well past 3 in the morning with me and he was totally enjoying it.
Seriously, if my parents attitudes can change towards magic, dragons and fantasy in general, and hence d&D itself, anyone's can (and probably have already as well). And if you're curious, my dad was an evangelist minister for nearly 30 years, so you don't get much more 'staunchly against' than that.
