D&D is now in (exceedingly awesome) commercial form

[Hussar]

so we have no firm evidence that TSR's financial troubles were due to flagging sales of core products.

Original Unearthed Arcana anyone?

Now we have BOTE claiming that there wasn't a drop in the number of players throughout the TSR era. Do I have citations? Well, do I really need any? Good grief, this is about as close to a commonly accepted fact that we have about that period. Gaming population spiked in the very early 80's and then declined every year after that until 3e came along and brought the numbers back up.

So, yeah, Red Box brought lots of people into the hobby. But not as many as were leaving the hobby. If it was, then the gaming population would have been constantly growing no?

But, unless I'm really out in left field here, playing in a "fact free zone", the gaming population shrank pretty much constantly year on year until about 2000.

So, if the Red Box wasn't enough back then to bring in enough new gamers to grow the hobby, why on earth would it be good enough NOW?

Did it slow the tide? Quite probably. Lots of people did come into the hobby that way. But, the fact still remains that while it might have brought in lots of gamers, it didn't grow the hobby enough to stem the tide of those leaving the hobby.

So, why the belief that doing so now would start growing the hobby?

 

[Raven Crowking]

(Shrug)

That the earth is flat was once a commonly believed "fact"; didn't make it true.

I require meeting a standard of evidence to think I know something.

YMMV.


RC

 

[Hussar]

Really? This is your argument? That the gaming population has either remained static or actually grown throughout the history of the hobby?

I'm a little taken aback to be honest. I thought that this was one point where pretty much everyone agreed. The gaming population (particularly D&D gaming) spiked around 1982 (ish) and then fell pretty much year on year, with perhaps a bit of a bump around 1990 with the advent of Vampire and White Wolf, until the release of d20 in 2000 (ish).

At least, that's always been my understanding. What have you seen that disagrees with that?

 

[Stormonu]

Just some information to throw out, this is summarized from "The History of TSR" from the Silver Anniversary set:

1978-1982 TSR sales double every year (sometimes twice in a year). In 1982, TSR rakes in $20M sales
1983-1986 TSR begins its biannual layoff to keep multi-million $$ debt from sinking the company
1987 TSR posts its first profit of $1M since 1983.
1987-1994 TSR continues to float.
1995+ TSR starts to wither

Clearly, a lot of steam was lost after 1982. Though obviously the company made some horrible decisions in 1983, sales apparently never got back up to the boom back in '82.

I don't have any information about how 3E fared compared to those previous years, but from my own personal experience, the first two years of 3E was the first time since about '95 or '96 I had even seen a D&D game at our local Con (White Wolf's Vampire game wounded D&D down here - making those who played D&D pariahs, then once MtG started gathering speed, D&D up and died until 3E. Once 3.5 came out, I haven't seen a D&D game at our local Cons since then).

 

[Beginning of the End]

Really? I didn't know that. What is a "Speed Dice"?

He seems to be fundamentally incorrect. The core rules of Monopoly remain unchanged. Recent editions, however, have incorporated optional rules for Speed Dice: Speed Die | Monopoly | BoardGameGeek

 

[Beginning of the End]

Now we have BOTE claiming that there wasn't a drop in the number of players throughout the TSR era.

Uh... No. I said exactly the opposite of that. (Unless you're claiming that the TSR era ended in 1990.)

You seem to be nestling comfortably into your fact-free zone.

You mean the people who are ultimately irrelevant to your bottom line because they don't have enough disposable income to regularly purchase your (niche) entertainment products?

There are so many things wrong with this sentiment I don't even know where to start. But how about with this: Over the past 20 years I have spent more than $40,000 on roleplaying games. A significant percentage of that has gone into the pockets of TSR and WotC.

I started as a 12 year old kid saving up his allowance to buy the Basic Set.

The idea that only rich kids should get to play D&D is absurd. Your implication that you should grab $20 off 'em as you kick them out the door is offensive.

 

[AllisterH]

3e preserved far more sacred cows than it slaughtered. I'm just not seeing "all sorts of sacred cows" ending up as hamburger. I'm seeing a select few. Some of them may have had wide reaching implications, sure. But the amount of sacred hamburger, not so much.

No it did not.

3e FUNDAMENTALLY changed how the gameworld operated.

Pre 3e, one did not have to consider the effect of magic on a setting due to how RARE magic was...Not just spellcasters but in terms of actual spells.

The fact that in 1e/2e, a 16 int wizard only KNEW 11 spells per level, that even the NAME-level wizard a.k.a one in the entire kingdom only could cast 3 2nd level spells per level (and you couldn't use higher slots for lower level spells), that a 16th int only gave you a 70% chance to learn spells, that you even needed to be 9th level to even attempt to create the weakest magic items (potions and scrolls) AND that you can actually purchase magical items where before you could only find magical items and the tables were slanted towards weapons and armours that the wizard couldn't use? Let's not even get into the change into spells becoming less dangerous for wizards, easier to use in combat and actually becoming harder to resist as they levelled up.

And you consider this a small change?

The change in the rules of magic CREATED the Batman wizard, an archtype simply unheard of in 1e/2e

The 4e world is MUCH closer in feel IMO to a 1e/2e world than the 3e world.

EDIT: Metal band like Twisted Sister and Metallica are "cool" once again among the 16 and under crowd...

Now if this was the 90s...then I'd say Metal was dead...

 

[Neonchameleon]

He seems to be fundamentally incorrect. The core rules of Monopoly remain unchanged. Recent editions, however, have incorporated optional rules for Speed Dice: Speed Die | Monopoly | BoardGameGeek

Bidding was taken out for about a 20 year period. And the speed die is now, I believe, the default rather than the optional rule in new Monopoly sets - and mandated in tournament play. Both significantly change the way the game works.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Really? This is your argument? That the gaming population has either remained static or actually grown throughout the history of the hobby?

You fail to understand what I am saying.

I am not arguing that your conclusion is wrong. I am specifically arguing that I cannot know whether your conclusion is right or wrong, and neither can you, unless there is some evidence that you have not put forward.

An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Saying that there is no evidence for X does not mean not-X must be true. It means that, barring evidence, you cannot know if X or not-X is true.

The only rational thing you can do is accept that you do not know, await further information, and not base your plans or your self-image on the idea that either X or not-X is true. The last (not basing your plans or self-image on an unknown foundation) is simply because either (1) you will dismiss information that appears to contradict you, in order to retain those plans/self-image, or (2) you stand a good chance of seriously mis-planning or having your self-image destroyed.

My argument is not that there are droves of earlier edition players. My argument is not that there are not droves of earlier edition players. My argument is that we do not know how many earlier edition players there are, or how the numbers of the same correlate to what they did when TSR went under.

Any arguments that are based upon a presumption that we do know automatically fail as a result. Again, the conclusion of an argument that fails may still be true, but we do not know it to be true, nor can we infer it to be true on the basis of the argument.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Just some information to throw out, this is summarized from "The History of TSR" from the Silver Anniversary set:

1978-1982 TSR sales double every year (sometimes twice in a year). In 1982, TSR rakes in $20M sales
1983-1986 TSR begins its biannual layoff to keep multi-million $$ debt from sinking the company
1987 TSR posts its first profit of $1M since 1983.
1987-1994 TSR continues to float.
1995+ TSR starts to wither

Clearly, a lot of steam was lost after 1982. Though obviously the company made some horrible decisions in 1983, sales apparently never got back up to the boom back in '82.

There are two problems with using this as evidence to support Hussar's claim.

(1) After 1982, there is no actual sales information supplied. Depending upon costs, it is quite possible to have rising sales and still fall deeper into debt.

(2) It fails to seperate product lines. TSR published a lot of material for Buck Rogers, for example, as well as Spellfire, and if sales were flagging for those products, one might erroneously conclude that they were also flagging for the core D&D products. Likewise, TSR produced a lot of secondary D&D products which may, or may not, have sold well, and a failure of HR1 Vikings to sell well should not be taken as evidence that D&D itself was not popular.

Again, we do not know, and the rational thing is to accept that we do not know. I mean, is that really so hard to do?


RC