Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5250935" data-attributes="member: 80487">Likewise, the "small" parties have problems just getting product out the door when the Institutional Revolution won't let them in the door in the first place.I like the way things are better than the hypothetical Dominant One. I might like yet better the way things were in the 1970s-80s.Maybe TSR's advertising in mass media had a big payoff for everyone, or maybe not. Is what WotC does today actually comparable?How does this translate to "one dominant game" being desirable? Are the hobby and the industry better off for having the publisher of D&D publishing no other RPG? Are we better off for not having Dragon and Dungeon (and Space Gamer and Different Worlds and White Wolf and etc.) at the news stand, carrying ads for Chaosium and Hero, FGU and ICE? Are we better off for Avalon Hill (except as a Hasbro brand name, like Atari) and GDW and SPI simply not existing?How many more must fold to make things as much better as "the technological future" is supposed to be?That looks backwards to me. It also illustrates the trap of circular thinking. Homogenized pasteurized process cheese product with textured vegetable protein sure is great for attracting people who happen to want just that. If that's all you offer, then after a while your customers are likely to think it's pretty spiffy! After all, if they wanted something else (such as real cheese and steak) then they wouldn't be your customers ..."Thus", eh?This reminds me of a cartoon panel of a chalkboard-filling, scientific-looking equation with "(insert divine providence here)" along the way.D&D was not a big thing when I got introduced to it by a player of the game. It was chiefly by that person-to-person means that interest in the game grew even more rapidly than TSR's ability to supply sets to meet the demand.The big advertising budget was a product of the large number of sales generated prior to -- and thus without -- its assistance.</blockquote>

Verification