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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1239106" data-attributes="member: 3649">Some somewhat connected thoughts. Huh. Really, I see the RPG situtation as the best it's been in a a long long time since d20 came onto the scene. I see more and better product coming into the stores than I have in several years (esp. since the days when the CCG phenomenon was riding high). It reminds me of the way the hobby was years and years ago, when you could go into the store and find something new almost every week.  Hoghead and FASA are gone. Eh. Just off the top of my head, I don't even know who Hogshead is; all of FASA's major lines have been picked up by other people. Most games are not so lucky. Many, many other companies, new companies, are out there now. New companies and new writers and new artists that without d20 might never have gotten off the ground.  These new companies have a foot in the door, now. They might be the one to produce the 'Next D&D'.  Sure, d20 will level off. Everything does and everyone knows this; a good thing cannot last forever. That kind of thinking brought us to systems analysts working for 25K. But unless it's spectacularly mismanaged (and it might be; it has been before, remember?) D&D will stay the top dog. Before d20, before the Card Boom, before TSR went toes up, D&D was king. Yes, there were a lot of other games out there, vital innovative and very cool games. I've certainly played most of them. And all taken together, I'm willing to bet they didn't fill half of TSR's footprint, for all the shouting and arm-waving.  Multi-Genre systems were gaming's 'holy grail' for a long time, and it's still a desirable thing. The ease and convenience of a rules set that at least bears a passing resemblance to other incarnations of itself is great. It reduces a GM's workload by a great deal. Sure a good GM can pull ideas from any published source and convert but it's scads easier when you don't have to convert that much.  I've seen people leave the hobby forever. The single most common complaint? It takes too much time. Maybe if they had not had to do so much work, they'd still be gamers today.  Players don't have to switch gears that much. It lets people explore different genres easily, something they are loath to do when they also have to learn a new system.</blockquote>

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