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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 380439" data-attributes="member: 447">I was a frequent TSR customer and active AD&D player during the 90s, and I can think of a number of reasons for AD&D's decline in market share that have nothing to do with the "maturity" with which the material was presented, some of which have already been mentioned in this or other threads. Off the top of my head, I point to rules bloat, internal inconsistencies, power creep (kits!), market segmentation, recycled art (leads to a "seen it already" attitude), product/brand mismanagement, the subordination of creative direction to uninformed business processes, market-blind design, increasingly outdated "look and feel" (including graphic design), and the feeling (rational or no) that "sucky" products (like the ones you bought) were being marketed to us as must-buys.Among my tiny little circle of gamers (which I know is not a representative sampling), none of us knew TSR was in dire financial peril. Also, none of us had the feeling we were being talked down to. We only knew that reams of iffy product were pouring from the mill, with only the occasional gem among the chat. Personally, I feel as though AD&D would have done better if TSR had decided to cease releasing 5-6 *blah* products a month and start releasing 2-3 *good* ones. We'll never know for sure, but at least an argument could be composed in that vein which is as unsubstantiated (as yet) as the argument that AD&D 2E was skewing too young.I'm not claiming the TSR designers weren't hemmed in by a restrictive "ethical" code (and in fact I believe they were). I'm not claiming that "edgier" content wouldn't have sold (it very well might have). I'm even led to understand that AD&D 2E was consciously aimed at 12-14 year olds (I think we were told this during the marketing blitz for 3E). But I still claim that, without proof, the contention that "AD&D's drop in market share during the 90s was due to its complete lack of edginess" is logically unsupportable. I might be wrong. I'm certainly neither an insider nor even close to being one. Given proof, of course, I'll be happy to change my outlook on the matter. And if I've misread the argument, I certainly apologize.Fair enough. I suppose it was the "crocodile tears" thing that left me with the feeling there was more to the passage than a set of premises and a conclusion. I'm willing to let this one alone too. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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