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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8355141" data-attributes="member: 58197">That is what folks in the Magic world call a "Christmasland" outcome, where all the pieces fall together just right. Consider all the ways this rosy scenario could go off the rails:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gary Gygax helms "New D&D," and turns out to be just as lousy a businessman post-TSR as when he was in charge. After soaring briefly, "New D&D" crashes and burns.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The D&D community has been weakened by years of TSR's hostility and poor business practices, and the bankruptcy proves to be the final blow. Everyone but a handful of diehards moves on. By the time "New D&D" emerges, there aren't enough players left to sustain it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The market splinters among multiple competing "New D&Ds." No one is able to consolidate the RPG community, which disintegrates into a lot of insular factions, all withering for lack of new players.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Just because you can't copyright game mechanics, doesn't stop you filing a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement--and if your opponent can't afford the legal costs of a trial, it doesn't much matter how shaky your case is. One of the banks with a share of TSR's IP sues "New D&D," or threatens to, and the owner simply folds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"New D&D" avoids all these hazards, and then... simply fails to grow. Iterating endlessly on TSR-era D&D, unable to figure out how to attract new blood, it cultivates a slowly dwindling fanbase of grognards while the rest of the world moves on.</li> </ul>Ryan Dancey, who was in a far better position to know than any of us, thought there was a real risk of D&D itself failing if TSR were allowed to collapse. Could it have survived? Sure. But it was very far from guaranteed.</blockquote>

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