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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6767583" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't really think that's the issue. I just checked Ebay, a 3rd printing of the 1e PHB, in like new condition, goes for under $20 there. These books were mass produced in quantities which guarantee they will be easily available and cheap for decades to come. I believe the retro-clone phenomenon was more a matter of aesthetics. It is probably also driven more by a desire to clean up and customize the Original D&D than simply to possess some sort of copy of its rules. In fact I don't think the retro-clones are really a recent thing. I think even back in the 80's people were recompiling their own private versions of the old D&D rules. Playing with massively hacked compendia of amalgams of Dragon articles, supplements, bits of different rule books, homebrew, etc. The advent of self-publishing tools just caused some of the more ambitious of these to emerge into the light and be passed around. The OGL provided enough of a fig leaf that a few people were able to put a few bucks into really cleaning up and for real publishing the best examples. So, 4e might get a similar kind of treatment, some day. What has to happen I think is a further 'digestion', and then the gaming community has to move on from its d20-like phase to whatever the next iteration of said games is, so that the space is left open. Then a lot of homebrew will gestate in that space and some of it will be passed around as self-published 'hacks' that one day might get cleaned up and actually published (though that's less likely than with 1e and its ilk unless WotC issues a newer OGL-type license to fig leaf it better). I'd give it 10 years.</blockquote>

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