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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9418537" data-attributes="member: 7026594">The business-driven decision to publish and sell it (at a then-princely $10 per set) in 1974 is the reason why (probably) all of us in this discussion ever heard of it, got to play it, and are enjoying it now 50 years later.The later business-driven decision to release mass market intro Basic sets making it easier (or possible at all) for kids to learn it on their own/teach themselves and their peers is the reason a large number of us ever got into it.If by "the game itself" we mean the availability of players to actually play it with, and its popularity and cultural prevalence, it seems pretty clear that having a business promoting it has been fairly essential.If by "the game itself" we just mean the pure design, yeah, we might say that's better served without a profit motive being involved.  I've seen lots of great designs in the OSR during the height of the blogosphere which were free and just given away and designed for the love of them.OTOH, 4E is one of my favorite editions, and that's such a massive overhaul that I'm not sure if anyone would ever have designed it if they weren't being paid to do that as a day job.  Similarly, some of my favorite and certainly the most beautiful (in terms of production value and art, certainly) books which have been produced in the third party space are absolutely only made possible by their creators being able to sell and make money from them, so they can afford that lovely art, and those offset print, sewn-binding hardcovers....which brings us back to 1E AD&D, come to think of it.  Those books were spectacular productions for the hobby industry at the time, and they tend to survive and still be usable now, 45ish years later, because TSR was able to sell them for money and thus afford to produce such high quality physical books.  Heck, we also know now that all those beautiful boxed sets TSR sold in the 2nd ed era were only sustainable if TSR had been paying close attention to the numbers and had charged more for them, and because they weren't, they were among the factors which bankrupted the company and nearly wound up locking the game IP up with creditors.  Which is another example of the game suffering, and nearly dying, because of poor decision making on the business side.</blockquote>

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