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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9652223" data-attributes="member: 7026594">You really think so?&nbsp; How?&nbsp; The point of retro-compatibility is minimizing how much of your old books and notes you have to change to use old materiels with the new rules, right?&nbsp; 2E was designed to highly prioritize that.How do you define a success?&nbsp; I want to know where your goal posts are.I think your prior statements that it was a failure and that backwards-compatible editions (you cited 3.5) are generally successful are also contradictory.&nbsp; I don't agree with the premise that new editions are mostly unsuccessful, but maybe your definition of success is different from mine.&nbsp; Generally new editions are the most reliable source of broad new sales for D&amp;D and other games which do them.&nbsp; The exceptions seem to be when it's been a pop culture fad, like (A)D&amp;D was in the late '79-~'83 period, and like it's been again in 5E.&nbsp; The nature of the beast with RPGs is that once you have a rules set you're happy with you never NEED to buy another product again.&nbsp; But a lot of folks do get tired of old rules or feel problems with them more over time, and enjoy the refresh and new energy and ideas that a new edition brings.We're really focusing on sales and business success right now, right?&nbsp; Although there are other elements we could consider.&nbsp; I consider B/X and BECMI very successful in part because they also simplified the game and explained it better than AD&amp;D did, and made it easier to learn.&nbsp; They also sold very well, of course. 2E was after the big fad period but also succeeded in clarifying and simplifying AD&amp;D to a large extent. Gods know it needed that initiative overhaul, for example. 2E sold well on release, and later products and campaign settings seem to have sold worse in large part because they were competing against one another- cannibalizing each other's sales, as a group saw themselves as &quot;primarily Forgotten Realms&quot; players, or &quot;primarily Dark Sun&quot;, or Ravenloft, or what have you, so each setting-focused product was functionally selling to a smaller sub-set of the fan base.&nbsp; This combined with management failures in cost containment (especially selling elaborate boxed sets they actually lost money on), in investing huge capital in unsuccessful products (Buck Rogers, for example, or the late 80s board games, like Dragonlance, Mage Stones, and Gammarauders) or the &quot;comic book modules&quot; effort with TSR West which stupidly alienated DC Comics while producing no profitable competing products), and an inability to capitalize on successes thanks to the factoring agreement, meant the balance of sales vs liabilities was bad on a much broader basis.&nbsp; TSR under the Williams regime didn't go down under eight years after 2E released in 1989.&nbsp; 2E sold, and it made AD&amp;D much more accessible to new players than 1E had been.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 9652223, member: 7026594"] You really think so? How? The point of retro-compatibility is minimizing how much of your old books and notes you have to change to use old materiels with the new rules, right? 2E was designed to highly prioritize that. How do you define a success? I want to know where your goal posts are. I think your prior statements that it was a failure and that backwards-compatible editions (you cited 3.5) are generally successful are also contradictory. I don't agree with the premise that new editions are mostly unsuccessful, but maybe your definition of success is different from mine. Generally new editions are the most reliable source of broad new sales for D&D and other games which do them. The exceptions seem to be when it's been a pop culture fad, like (A)D&D was in the late '79-~'83 period, and like it's been again in 5E. The nature of the beast with RPGs is that once you have a rules set you're happy with you never NEED to buy another product again. But a lot of folks do get tired of old rules or feel problems with them more over time, and enjoy the refresh and new energy and ideas that a new edition brings. We're really focusing on sales and business success right now, right? Although there are other elements we could consider. I consider B/X and BECMI very successful in part because they also simplified the game and explained it better than AD&D did, and made it easier to learn. They also sold very well, of course. 2E was after the big fad period but also succeeded in clarifying and simplifying AD&D to a large extent. Gods know it needed that initiative overhaul, for example. 2E sold well on release, and later products and campaign settings seem to have sold worse in large part because they were competing against one another- cannibalizing each other's sales, as a group saw themselves as "primarily Forgotten Realms" players, or "primarily Dark Sun", or Ravenloft, or what have you, so each setting-focused product was functionally selling to a smaller sub-set of the fan base. This combined with management failures in cost containment (especially selling elaborate boxed sets they actually lost money on), in investing huge capital in unsuccessful products (Buck Rogers, for example, or the late 80s board games, like Dragonlance, Mage Stones, and Gammarauders) or the "comic book modules" effort with TSR West which stupidly alienated DC Comics while producing no profitable competing products), and an inability to capitalize on successes thanks to the factoring agreement, meant the balance of sales vs liabilities was bad on a much broader basis. TSR under the Williams regime didn't go down under eight years after 2E released in 1989. 2E sold, and it made AD&D much more accessible to new players than 1E had been. [/QUOTE]

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