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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5989027" data-attributes="member: 996">I think the core of the OP's premise: that ever ed (and, indeed, half-ed) saw fans of the prior reject it, is quite obviously true.  Every ed faced criticism, every ed has someone playing it now.I'm not so sure about the 'tipping point.'  For one thing, the biggest losses probably weren't to new eds.  The biggest losses, I'd guess, were when D&D stopped being a fad, late in the 80s, and when it kinda petered out under bad management and strong competition for new players from CCGs and LARPS in the 90s.  Of course, those losses were players that left D&D and never came back, or were prime target market it never captured in the first place.  (As an aside, I think the primary 'real' target of both Red-Box Essentials and 5e was and is these long-lost fans.)  But the big thing was the OGL.  Going open-source saved D&D, turning d20 into a core system (like Chaosium Basic RP, or Hero or GURPS or FUDGE or Interlock or Fuzion and others).  That was nothing new, obviously, FUDGE and Fuzion were even open-source and preceded 3.0 by years.  What was new as that d20 was open-source with some of the cachet of D&D, the semi-mythical 'first' RPG.   Would-be (and actual) competitors leaped on the d20 bandwagon, becoming de-facto partners promoting d20, and D&D, buoyed by that, returned to preeminence.  As soon as WotC tried to bury the OGL, those partners became competitors again, and D&D was vulnerable - or, in hindsight, doomed.One thing WotC has been silent on is whether 5e will be a d20 game with an SRD and OGL that'll let other companies make a buck off it without having to sacrifice their first born, or if it's going to more or less go it alone...</blockquote>

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