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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 2896846" data-attributes="member: 158">The big question to me, on whether it would be short-term profitable, is this:How many people who already use those rules would buy it? Maybe half of the Basic D&D users active? Because I'm willing to wager that the number of people NOT using those rules currently who would pick it up would be only half the amount of those usingthe rules willing to buy it.Assume there's maybe 50,000 people currently playing Basic D&D (round figure). so maybe 25,000 people might buy it. Of that, only half of that number (maybe 12,500) who don't currently use those rules might buy it. A product that sells only 40,000 copies would be astounding to anypublisher but WotC -- who has problems when a product pre-orders for less than 50,000 copies.I've never seen enough fan participation to make me think that more than 50,000 or so people currently play Basic D&D (and that's to me the high end of the scale); and if you're working from those numbers, then to WotC it's just not viable. They could be higher; only the publishers of products like C&C and Hackmaster have any idea if they're close or not, and direct sales figures aren't that forthcoming (I think I remember Steve Kenzer on a dragonsfoot post two years ago saying something like 25,000 of the Hackmaster PHB and 15,000 of the GMG sold, but I could be mistaken..)</blockquote>