Davelozzi
Explorer
Inspired by MerricB's thread "TSR's Comics and the Buyout by WotC", I started thinking about the dark days of 1997 when TSR was floundering and stopped printing new products for a period of roughly 7 months. Even if you had a subscription to Dragon or Dungeon, nothing came for months.
At any rate, I know that there's a lot of folks here that are D&D fans from way back, and I'm wondering what happened in those days for you. How did you get your D&D fix? Did you just keep playing the game, unphased by the lack of new material? Did you use it as an opportunity to check out some of the other games on the market?
Myself, I was in my last semester of college at the time, and since I was broke anyway, I just focused on school and other things for the time being. At this point in time, I hadn't really put too much effort into checking out any other games, so it really was all about the D&D for me, so I do remember being worried that the end of my hobby was nigh.
And I remember when rumors of the WotC buy out were announced, being worried that they were just going to put a nail in D&D's coffin. That seems silly now, but at the time, with Magic: The Gathering leading the CCG craze that was commonly blamed for the downfall of RPGs, it seemed reasonable, especially having heard how TSR treated E.G.G.'s Dangerous Journeys, and a another title or two that way (Dragonquest, maybe?).
Of course, finally details came out, along with the news that Peter Adkison was an avid gamer and D&D fan, and that WotC was posed to save D&D. But for a while there, things looked pretty grim. So, D&D junkies - how'd you cope?
At any rate, I know that there's a lot of folks here that are D&D fans from way back, and I'm wondering what happened in those days for you. How did you get your D&D fix? Did you just keep playing the game, unphased by the lack of new material? Did you use it as an opportunity to check out some of the other games on the market?
Myself, I was in my last semester of college at the time, and since I was broke anyway, I just focused on school and other things for the time being. At this point in time, I hadn't really put too much effort into checking out any other games, so it really was all about the D&D for me, so I do remember being worried that the end of my hobby was nigh.
And I remember when rumors of the WotC buy out were announced, being worried that they were just going to put a nail in D&D's coffin. That seems silly now, but at the time, with Magic: The Gathering leading the CCG craze that was commonly blamed for the downfall of RPGs, it seemed reasonable, especially having heard how TSR treated E.G.G.'s Dangerous Journeys, and a another title or two that way (Dragonquest, maybe?).
Of course, finally details came out, along with the news that Peter Adkison was an avid gamer and D&D fan, and that WotC was posed to save D&D. But for a while there, things looked pretty grim. So, D&D junkies - how'd you cope?
To this day, had D&D been killed, I would probably have continued playing D&D on and off, house rules and all, and got a LOT more work done in current-day. 
