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<blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7694263" data-attributes="member: 32740">How many can the hobby support?&nbsp; Well, if you're correct that each new clone only gets a few dozen people playing it then it can support a LOT more, because each individually typically would have no effect on the overall hobby.&nbsp; There are, I suspect, a FEW OSR clones that get most of the players and attention which have some BARELY measurable effect upon the hobby as a whole.&nbsp; Most players still choose the currently in-print edition, or are still playing the older official editions - which are by definition not clones.No version of the game has an expiration date.&nbsp; Even if it stops being published it doesn't stop people from playing it much less making a gazillion clones of it and playing those too.&nbsp; That either means that at some date in the future it will be impossible to have new editions or even clones because the saturation point will have been reached - everyone will have found their preferred set of game rules and won't really be interested in changing... Or else there will NEVER be a saturation point, because a large percentage of players will ALWAYS move on to the newest edition, leaving only a fraction of players behind to play older stuff and those that are left behind are made up for by NEW people entering the hobby - most of whom will go for the newest official edition and only a fraction of whom will end up choosing the older stuff instead.And sometimes simply changing the TERMINOLOGY is what people really want.&nbsp; Can't tell you how much I despised the term &quot;healing surge&quot; in 4E.&nbsp; Despised with the flame of 10,000 suns.&nbsp; But yet I created a mechanic for my 1E game that was strikingly similar but is called &quot;fatigue recovery&quot;.&nbsp; Simply by calling it something different I found I could accept the underlying principle of the rule - the underlying principle was something I actually really wanted in order to move a lot of healing responsibilities away from clerics.&nbsp; I don't consider my rule original or innovative as such.D&amp;D is - and always was - a game of INDIVIDUAL CAMPAIGN modifications made by DM's acting as their own game designers with EVERY rule they make.&nbsp; Just because some of them publish them as new OSR clones doesn't mean they have that much more effect on the hobby as 1000 DM's who never hear of much less care about that published OSR clone but who nonetheless make just as many changes to their own games.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Man in the Funny Hat, post: 7694263, member: 32740"] How many can the hobby support? Well, if you're correct that each new clone only gets a few dozen people playing it then it can support a LOT more, because each individually typically would have no effect on the overall hobby. There are, I suspect, a FEW OSR clones that get most of the players and attention which have some BARELY measurable effect upon the hobby as a whole. Most players still choose the currently in-print edition, or are still playing the older official editions - which are by definition not clones. No version of the game has an expiration date. Even if it stops being published it doesn't stop people from playing it much less making a gazillion clones of it and playing those too. That either means that at some date in the future it will be impossible to have new editions or even clones because the saturation point will have been reached - everyone will have found their preferred set of game rules and won't really be interested in changing... Or else there will NEVER be a saturation point, because a large percentage of players will ALWAYS move on to the newest edition, leaving only a fraction of players behind to play older stuff and those that are left behind are made up for by NEW people entering the hobby - most of whom will go for the newest official edition and only a fraction of whom will end up choosing the older stuff instead. And sometimes simply changing the TERMINOLOGY is what people really want. Can't tell you how much I despised the term "healing surge" in 4E. Despised with the flame of 10,000 suns. But yet I created a mechanic for my 1E game that was strikingly similar but is called "fatigue recovery". Simply by calling it something different I found I could accept the underlying principle of the rule - the underlying principle was something I actually really wanted in order to move a lot of healing responsibilities away from clerics. I don't consider my rule original or innovative as such. D&D is - and always was - a game of INDIVIDUAL CAMPAIGN modifications made by DM's acting as their own game designers with EVERY rule they make. Just because some of them publish them as new OSR clones doesn't mean they have that much more effect on the hobby as 1000 DM's who never hear of much less care about that published OSR clone but who nonetheless make just as many changes to their own games. [/QUOTE]

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