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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9694112" data-attributes="member: 6779310">It was a solid game, but the genre was changing heavily in the 70's - with both Sci-Fi Westerns (Wild Wild West, Battle Beyond the Stars, Westworld, and to a degree, Planet of the Apes and Return to the Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek TOS/TAS), and the Spaghetti Westerns... and the Clint Eastwood style darker westerns (some of which were Spaghetti Westerns).  Sure, some classics remained on TV, especially in syndication: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Wild Wild West... It is also worth noting that 1E's campaign section seemed entirely an afterthought... The game could easily do Gunsmoke, much of Bonanza, and much of many novels. It lacked rules for much of the non-combat side of things, including how much food one needs. (It also doesn't reference AH's Survival... but I suspect that was purely oversight. The implied references in the campaign section are vague but fit with TSR design of the era.)But the game couldn't do Wild Wild West, nor the social side of much western fiction... Hell the Newman and Redford rendition of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is mostly talk... but it has some really well choreographed fights... nor easily do the Westworld setting as a game. Now, the lack of social is typical of the era...Further, it came out just as a Native Rights movement was coming into full swing... not long after the 1974 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), with that win riling up a lot of Native Rights and Reparations discussion and protesting. (The majority of Natives in Alaska got just as screwed by it as the Reservation residents... but the Bristol Bay Area Native Corporation and the Cook Inlet Regional Incorporated are the big success stories of the ANCSA, 50 years on.) Further, I don't think Mr. Blume was thinking in RPG terms; he was still a minis wargamer in mindset, and the campaign rules in 1e make it clear he wasn't thinking about character needs.I think it's just a case of it was a minis-game 10 years too late, and didn't become seen as much more until better options had come along, coupled to a genre that was both losing social relevance and also becoming a dogwhistle for anti-native sentiment in some places.On RPGGeek, a similar discussion is going on, and it's been mentioned that Gygax seems to have prioritized his own designs over Blume's during the OE/(Dev of AD&D 1e) era. Not that there were that many of Blume's to support.Another thought that just occurred to me: D&D really takes off in 1976... there might not have been staff time to devote to the lesser gameA whole stack of negative factors resulting in not a lot of love from the design staff.</blockquote>

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