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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5843601" data-attributes="member: 10479">This essentially speaks to the problem of gutting the institutional memory of a company where on the one hand their branding is tied to tradition and on the other hand their success dependent on leveraging the technology of the present and the future.Bringing Monte Cook back on board was a good idea in principle (only the final product of 5E will speak to whether they took full advantage of his experience) but they might have gone a bit further, hiring on some of the early designers as consultants.  They could have done so if for no other reason then to have those veterans run games using some of the original rulesets for the 5E designers as a form of research.In a limited way, toward achieving the same goal, they might even make sure that their core designers attend some old school conventions (like Gary Con later this month) and be sure that they are playing in the games being run by the old vanguard.  If that is part of the plan, they haven't mentioned it as such and I am unaware of any agenda along these lines but we'll see what the next three weeks bring.  Running the old rulesets in-house with the current mindsets and modern gamer sensibilities simply won't yield the same results and is unlikely to capture the sense of wonder and tradition older rulesets engendered.All of this leads me to believe that tying 5E to the OGL and making the old materials available again via the PDF model are the only viable way to reach out to lapsed players or multi-system players who wish to find any support for the old rulesets from WotC directly or indirectly.  They might be able to do so in other ways (producing new materials for old rulesets, tying the old materials to DDI, etc.) but not without fundamentaly changing their approach to addressing how they are anchoring the brand once again in the traditions it originally propagated.</blockquote>

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