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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9154107" data-attributes="member: 907">It certainly didn't work for 2e. You talk about "so many dedicated fans buying every book it spat out", but the problem is that they didn't. That's why Ryan Dancey wrote about <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/ryan-dancey-acquiring-tsr.661632/" target="_blank">touring TSR's warehouse </a>and seeing stacks and stacks of unsold books.It's hard to say what killed TSR exactly. Random House no longer wanting to be paid for unsold novels in store credit was certainly the actual death blow, but TSR was certainly in bad shape before that. If a dragon starts a fight with 100 hp, is the magic missile that takes it from 5 hp to 0 to credit for the kill? In the post I linked above, Ryan Dancey talks about the early days of WOTC buying TSR, and he puts the ultimate blame on TSR's lack of market research. That's what lead to having five or so different "vanilla" fantasy settings for D&D (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Birthright, Mystara) in addition to the weirder ones (Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft). That's what made them try for not one, but two different CCGs (Spellfire and Blood War) based on D&D. That's what lead to products being priced lower than their actual production cost.</blockquote>